The SheerLuxe Culture List: March

Palm Royale is set in high society Palm Beach in 1969, starring Kristen Wiig and Laura Dern. We’re excited: the renowned ensemble cast also features Allison Janney, Ricky Martin, Josh Lucas, Leslie Bibb, Amber Chardae Robinson, Mindy Cohn, Julia Duffy and Kaia Gerber. The series is an underdog story that follows Maxine Simmons (Wiig) as she endeavours to break into Palm Beach high society. As Maxine attempts to cross the impermeable line between the haves and the have-nots, Palm Royale asks the eternal question: how much of yourself are you willing to sacrifice to get what someone else has?

Visit TV.Apple.com

Based on the New York Times bestselling non-fiction book from author James L. Swanson, Manhunt is a conspiracy thriller about one of the best known but least understood crimes in history: the astonishing story of the hunt for John Wilkes Booth in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Tobias Menzies stars as lead investigator Edwin Stanton – and the cast also includes Anthony Boyle (Masters of the Air), Lovie Simone (Greenleaf), Will Harrison (Daisy Jones & The Six, Patton Oswalt (A.P. Bio), Matt Walsh (Veep) and Hamish Linklater (The Big Short).

Visit TV.Apple.com

Six months into a solitary research mission to the edge of the solar system, astronaut Jakub (Adam Sandler) realises that the marriage he left behind might not be waiting for him when he returns to Earth. Desperate to fix things with his wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan), he is helped by a mysterious creature from the beginning of time he finds hiding in his ship. Hanuš (voiced by Paul Dano) works with Jakub to make sense of what went wrong before it is too late…

Visit Netflix.com

After premiering at Cannes Film Festival, where it won an award for Best Documentary, this Oscar-nominated Tunisian documentary is now in UK cinemas. Four Daughters, from director Kaouther Ben Hania, blurs the lines between documentary and drama to tell the true story of Olfa Hamrouni, a Tunisian woman and mother. Her two elder daughters, Ghofrane and Rahma, have fled home to Libya to join Islamic State, while her two younger daughters, Eya and Tayssir, remain. To fill the absence of Olfa’s two missing daughters, director Kaouther Ben Hania sets up an extraordinary film mechanism as we see the family come together with professional actors, working collectively to retell their story. Together, in one single location, the actors and family members recount and relive the events that brought them to where they are today. 

Visit Picturehouses.com

This forthcoming Netflix series is set in the world of The Gentlemen film, but with a whole new cast, combining Hollywood talent and some British film and TV legends. When Eddie Horniman (The White Lotus’s Theo James) unexpectedly inherits his father’s sizeable country estate, he discovers it’s part of a cannabis empire. Moreover, a host of unsavoury characters from Britain’s criminal underworld want a piece of the operation. Determined to extricate his family from their clutches, Eddie tries to play the gangsters at their own game. However, as he gets sucked into a world of criminality, he begins to find a taste for it. Also stars Kaya Scodelario, Daniel Ings, Joely Richardson, Vinnie Jones, Giancarlo Esposito, Max Beesley, Peter Serafinowicz, Ray Winstone and Guz Khan.

Visit Netflix.com

No talking, no smiling, no going outside. The Academy at Ivy Ridge claimed to use therapy and recreational activities to help troubled teens. Instead, teens suffered mental and physical abuse in a programme that operated like a cult. In this gripping investigative docuseries, a filmmaker and other former students recall their horrific experiences attending a disciplinary school, and expose the horrors of the troubled teen industry.

Visit Netflix.com

If you’re suffering from Eleven withdrawal, Millie Bobby Brown is back on Netflix this month in Damsel. As Elodie, Brown flips the script on the traditional fairy tale as a princess whose happily ever after is brutally interrupted when her Prince Charming sacrifices her to a dragon.

Visit Netflix.com

Written and directed by Ava DuVernay (Selma, When They See Us, 13) and inspired by the 2020 New York Times bestseller Caste: The Origins Of Our Discontents, Origin stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Niecy Nash-Betts, Nick Offerman and Blair Underwood. The film chronicles the tragedy and triumph of Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson as she investigates a global phenomenon of epic proportions, travelling throughout Germany, India and the United States to research the caste systems in each country's history. Portrayed by Oscar nominee Ellis-Taylor (King Richard), Isabel experiences unfathomable personal loss and love as she crosses continents to write one of the defining American books of our time.

Visit Picturehouses.com

In new horror flick Immaculate, Sydney Sweeney (Anyone But You, Euphoria, The White Lotus) stars as Cecilia, an American nun of devout faith, embarking on a new journey in a remote convent in the picturesque Italian countryside. Cecilia’s warm welcome quickly devolves into a nightmare as it becomes clear her new home harbours a sinister secret and unspeakable horrors.

Visit Picturehouses.com

It is August 1971. Football teams from England, Argentina, Mexico, France, Denmark and Italy have gathered at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium. The scale of the tournament is monumental: lavish sponsorship, extensive TV coverage, merchandise on every street corner, and crowds of over 100,000 roaring fans turn this historic stadium into a cauldron of noise, match after match. A fawning media treat the players like rock stars. The atmosphere is reminiscent of the greatest moments in international football history. But this is a tournament unlike anything that’s happened before. The players on the pitch are all women. And it’s likely you’ve never even heard of it. This is Copa ‘71, the unofficial Women’s World Cup. Dismissed by both the governing body and domestic football associations around the world, this event has been sidelined in history. Until now.

Visit Picturehouses.com

Regina King stars as political trailblazer Shirley Chisholm in a new film chronicling her ground-breaking run for president of the United States. In 1972, Chisholm became the first Black candidate to seek a major party’s nomination for president. But she was already a pioneer: in 1968, the Brooklyn native made history as the first Black woman elected to the US Congress. Written and directed by John Ridley (also an Oscar winner for his 12 Years a Slave screenplay), Shirley tells Chisholm’s inspirational story.

Visit Netflix.com

For the press tour following the record-breaking release of Greta Gerwig’s award-winning Barbie film, producer and star Margot Robbie and her stylist Andrew Mukamal immersed themselves in some of Barbie’s most iconic outfits and curated vintage pieces, then approached designers, from Giorgio Armani to Donatella Versace, to create looks inspired by the doll-size originals. Many of these looks were not seen as the official Barbie press tour was cut short due to writers’ strikes – so Margot and Andrew worked with renowned fashion photographer Craig McDean to shoot her in the looks exactly as they were curated: Schiaparelli in Los Angeles, Vivienne Westwood in London, vintage Chanel with matching Streamline luggage at the airport, and beyond. Accompanying McDean’s photography are original Barbie dolls from the period, a treasure trove of rare materials from Mattel’s Barbie fashion archives, and the designers’ sketches and Polaroids from fittings.

Visit Amazon.co.uk

When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person. But that didn't happen for her. Now in her 40s, she sets out to explore the realities of a life lived in the absence of romantic love. Using Joni Mitchell's seminal album Blue – which shaped Key's expectations of love – as an anchor, Arrangements in Blue honours a life lived completely by, and for, oneself. Building a home, travelling alone, choosing whether to be a mother, recognising her own milestones, learning the limits of self-care, and the expansive potential of self-friendship, Key uncovers the many forms of connection and care that often go unnoticed.
With candour and intimacy, Arrangements in Blue explores the painful feelings we are usually too ashamed to discuss – loneliness, envy, grief and failure – and inspires readers to live and love more honestly.

Visit Amazon.co.uk

This is a rediscovered novel from the late Nobel prize-winning author of Love In The Time Of Cholera and One Hundred Years Of Solitude. Sitting alone, overlooking the still and blue lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach surveys the men of the hotel bar. She is happily married and has no reason to escape the world she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover. Amid sultry days and tropical downpours, lotharios and conmen, Ana journeys further each year into the hinterland of her desire, and the fear that sits quietly at her heart. Surprising and sensual, Until August is a meditation on freedom, regret, and the mysteries of love, from one of the most widely read writers the world has ever known.

Visit Amazon.co.uk

Photographers Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron are two of the most influential women in the history of photography. They lived a century apart: Cameron working in the UK and Sri Lanka from the 1860s, and Woodman in America and Italy from the 1970s. Both women explored portraiture beyond its ability to record appearance, using their own creativity and imagination to suggest notions of beauty, symbolism, transformation and storytelling. Showcasing more than 160 rare vintage prints, Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In spans the career of both artists – and suggests new ways to look at their work, and the way photographic portraiture was created in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Visit NPG.org.uk

Adapted from John Cassavetes' legendary 1977 film, Opening Night at the Gielgud Theatre follows Myrtle Gordon (Sheridan Smith), a famous but troubled actress, as she attempts to stage her comeback with a touring production of The Second Woman. However, the drama soon spills offstage when Gordon encounters obsessive teenage fan, Nancy. The meeting between the faded star and her die-hard devotee takes a sinister turn, and soon Gordon's personal turmoil forces everyone within the company to deliver the performance of their lives. Can the theatre troupe perform the roles needed, or will they crack under pressure?

Visit DelfontMackintosh.co.uk