The two drops today know how to entertain but in different ways. In the case of Quiz Lady it’s broad comedy with a healthy balance between witty lines and physical comedy. With Fingernails, it’s examining love with wry humor and thoughtfulness.

Quiz Lady (Disney+ USA) - Touching on themes of our obsession with TV quiz shows, sister relationships, and Asian-American identity, there’s much to cheer about this film, which stars Sandra Oh and Awkwafina. They portray sisters, a decade apart, from a dysfunctional Asian-American family. The father deserted them, and the mother is a gambling addict, and even from a senior home, wreaks havoc by disappearing for Macau with a boyfriend and leaving the girls to answer to a $80,000 debt to the local Chinese loan shark. It’s the obsession and special gift of Annie (Awkwafina) for the game show Can’t Stop the Quiz, hosted by Terry McTier (Will Ferrell), that becomes the last hope for Annie and older sister Jenny (Sandra Oh) to raise the money and save their kidnapped pug, Linguini.

This obsession for game shows was explored seriously in Quiz Show (directed by Robert Redford), and used as a narrative device in Slumdog Millionaire; so it’s nothing new in itself. What should have worked for this film is the chemistry between the two leading ladies, but it’s here where the screenplay stumbles. Sandra Oh is terrific and has fun with her role, while Awkwafina has been told to tone down continuously and operates on one solitary note. There is a blend of funny lines with physical comedy, but if you want to watch a film filled with Asian-American leading ladies being allowed to let loose and hilariously challenge stereotypes, watch Joy Ride. Quiz Lady feels more like a sit-com pilot expanded to a feature film. It’s entertaining but uneven.

Fingernails (AppleTV+) - The director and writer of this SciFi film about Love and relationships, Christos Nikou, used to be an understudy of Yorgos Lanthimos. This may explain this film's relation to Lanthimos’ The Lobster. But here we have a much gentler examination of Love and compatibility. It’s some near-future that’s passive about technology, like a hipster’s Paradise. There’s a Love Institute, where couples can opt to check how meant they are for each other, and the process involves a single fingernail extraction by each partner. The Institute was founded by Duncan (Luke Wilson), and there’s Amir (Riz Ahmed) as one of the counselors at the Institute. While in an Institute-tested relationship with Ryan (Jeremy Allen White of The Bear); Anna (Jessie Buckley) applies to work at the Institute to learn more about the testing.

Having passed, you’d wonder why Anna needs to know more, as Ryan seems content in just getting on with their lives together. Anna feels they’re running on inertia, that there should be more to being in a relationship than what she’s experiencing. Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to surmise that Anna and Amir working together will lead to something, and has Anna questioning her reality, the Institute, and the veracity of the fingernail test. There are a lot of wry, funny bits in the film, like how a festival of Hugh Grant films is one way to put people in the Institute in a romantic mood. The extractions are painful to watch, and they’re a metaphor for how much pain you are willing to undergo in the name of love. Buckley is great here and makes the film watchable, but I was hoping for more from Ahmed and White, which doesn’t happen.