What to watch: Heartwarming ‘Rental Family’ is an endearing triumph

This week s releases include a touching funny dramedy about our need to connect with others a perfect film for the holiday season as well as the second season of the Bay Area-related treat A Man on the Inside Here s our roundup Rental Family Struggling American actor Phillip sees his TV and film gigs in Japan dry up so he turns to a different kind of performing job working at a thriving business where customers hire someone to perform a specific role The assignments range from being a mourner a friend a groom the other lover and in one development a father figure to a girl named Mia whose stressed-out mom requirements a husband to increase her odds of getting into a prestigious school Little does Phillip and his new family realize that all will be touched by the job he performs Hikari s second feature her first being the wonderful Seconds ostensibly centers on the evolving relationship between Phillip Brendan Fraser melting hearts in such an effortless way and Mia Shannon Gorman but the sweet but restrained screenplay co-written with Stephen Blahut explores other relationships One subplot involves a veteran actor Akira Emoto who believes Phillip is a journalist But it is Phillip s work family his workaholic boss the accomplished Takehiro Hira of Shogun and a wary weary coworker a terrific Mari Yamamoto who add the most of to the film It s a testament to the cast the screenwriting and Hikari that all these narrative threads weave together for an uplifting message about our need to connect with others and be part of a locality Rental Family is not only a perfect holiday movie but one of the best films of Details stars opens in theaters Nov A Man on the Inside Season You d need to be a squawking curmudgeon to not be thoroughly charmed by creator Michael Schur s huggable mystery series True to Season there s nary a bloodied corpse to be revealed here and the crime at hand won t land anyone in the big house Call it quaint Call it old school Call it a whole lot of fun This season brews up another warm-tea diversion from the disharmony in our world and again takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area Mills College in Oakland subs for the show s Wheeler College and there are certain other exterior shots filmed in San Francisco with well-dressed PI-in-training Charles Nieuwendyk Ted Danson under the auspices of stern and officious PI Julie Lilah Richcreek Estrada posing as an engineering professor at Wheeler College He and Julie have been demanded to collar the culprit who s trying to throw a monkey wrench into a massive much-needed donation set to be given by a jerk of an AI tech billionaire Gary Cole channeling a vapid narcissist with glee The list of subjects run the gamut including a carefree music facilitator a delightful Mary Steenburgen who is married to Danson and a James Joyce-loving professor David Strathairn with disheveled hair Playing in the background are characters familiar from the first season Stephen McKinley Henderson as Calbert Sally Struthers as Virginia Foldau Stephanie Beatriz as the manager of the Pacific View Retirement Public the scene of the crime in the first season But what distinguishes these eight episodes is that each further develops who these characters are as we learn more about Julie s family life and how Charles s daughter Emily Mary Elizabeth Ellis feels stuck Add in Max Greenfield as a slick president being targeted for blackmail and you have an extra-cozy mystery series that once again begs for another season Details stars drops Nov on Netflix Rebuilding Josh O Connor further cements he s one of our best actors for playing low-key often interior-dwelling eccentric with Max Walker-Silverman s indie a thoughtful slowly paced chamber piece about a group of fire survivors who create a society as they inch closer to a more certain future in a wildfire s aftermath Viewed mainly through Dusty s O Connor eyes a homeowner who lost his home and now lives in the interim in a FEMA-produced trailer along with others in Colorado Walker-Silverman s feature is less about plotting and more about evoking a feeling of being shattered and unmoored by calamity Dusty doesn t say much but his eyes do He keeps emotions tucked away and spends more time with his daughter his ex-wife Meghann Fahy and his former mother-in-law Amy Madigan while searching for what s next and hearing the stories from his neighbors O Connor s lived-in performance is a beauty in this fragile quiet reminder that even when life is precarious there s hope that something will emerge that is just as significant to protect and cherish Details stars opens Nov in select theaters Malice In this wanna-be tawdry domestic thriller creator James Wood flips the switch giving us a manny from hell vs the nanny from hell The switcheroo doesn t exactly change much of anything consequential except for the fact that Jack Whitehall has a bit of jaunty fun playing devious Adam a manny hopper with no ethics and who s hellbent on revenge Handsome Adam hopscotches from one fam to the sinfully wealthy Tanner family David Duchovny and Carice Van Houten while they re vacationing in the Greek isles All in his new family come with major White Lotus issues so it s hard to give a damn about the fate of the whole lot Still this six-episode series while being essentially indistinguishable from so multiple others of its ilk goes above its own pay grade when Jamie Duchovny starts smelling a rat likely living in his posh London digs now That s when the series kicks into high gear and the hunt turns deadly if predictable Details stars available now on Amazon Prime Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy gmail com