The Blood Countess review – Isabelle Huppert reigns supreme in a surreal vampire fantasia

Vienna turns into a playground of camp, cruelty and aristocratic disdain in a blackly comic take on the Báthory legend – with Huppert gloriously suited to the title role From the dark heart of central Europe comes a midnight-movie romp through the moonlit urban glades of Euro-goth and camp from German director Ulrike Ottinger. As for the star … well, it’s the part she was born to play. Isabelle Huppert is Countess Elizabeth Báthory, 16th-century Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer, legendary for having the blood of hundreds of young girls on her hands and indeed her body, in an attempt to attain eternal youth. The “blood countess” has been variously played in the past by Ingrid Pitt, Delphine Seyrig, Paloma Picasso, Julie Delpy and many more, but surely none were as qualified as Huppert who importantly does not modify her habitual hauteur one iota for the role. Her natural aristocratic mien and cool hint of elegant contempt were never so well matched with a part. She gives us the ...

One of Them Days review – Keke Palmer and SZA take a bumpy but fun ride

The stars shine in bright and boisterous new buddy comedy, executive produced by Issa Rae, that only stumbles when it leans into cartoon

I will be the first to say: I miss Insecure, which left a dynamic duo-sized hole in the TV landscape since it concluded in December 2021. Issa Rae’s era-shaping series was about many things – the Black community in south Los Angeles, the diversity pablums of the 2010s, millennial dating, for starters – but at its core, it was a seminal portrait of longstanding, complex female friendship in one’s late 20s, the kind forged by time, ridiculous escapades and plenty of meaty conflict for viewers to hash out at the proverbial water cooler.

The shadow of the erstwhile HBO series looms large over One of Them Days, a boisterous new buddy comedy executive produced by Rae and penned by the former show writer Syreeta Singleton. Also set in south Los Angeles – albeit on one sweltering, no-good first of the month, when the rent is due and tenancy is in flux – One of Them Days, directed by the Rap Sh!t and music video veteran Lawrence Lamont, similarly concerns two wayward twentysomething besties who can, for enough moments to suffice, conjure the fizzy magic of its forerunner.

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