Stevie watches more TV

In my previous installment of television commentary, listing my top ten shows of all-time, perhaps the most anomalous choice was Buffy the Vampire Slayer at #4, which in fact represents slippage from #1 since The Wire supplanted it.  Soon after my ranking exercise, it came to my attention that Hulu offers the entire 7-season, 144-episode run of the show (1997-2003), so I took another look at some well-remembered episodes.  And believe me, the show holds up -- in its own right, but especially as the unlikely forerunner of the era of quality TV that continues to this day.  Whatever else the show’s cultural influence has spawned (I can’t remember willingly watching any further teen vampire romances, such as the immensely popular Twilight series), Joss Wheedon’s creation opened the way for witty, clever, audacious, and metaphorical approaches to network series. 

Remember the boastful slogan:  “It’s not TV.  It’s HBO.”  Now there are a dozen HBOs out there, producing quality content on a regular basis.  But it was a break-through for a show of such bold wit and intellectual heft to appear on a network catering to a teen audience.  Buffy’s appeal extended to any adult who had ever been a teen.  The niche became the norm.

Sure, you had to endure several minutes out of every 44 watching martial arts hijinks, but it was a small price to pay for the humor and insight of the rest, and the storytelling on several levels of meaning and irony.  Aren’t all high schools built over the Hellmouth, when you think about it?

While the young ensemble of actors has not gone on to the estimable careers of those from Freaks & Geeks, for example, they were all very well schooled in delivering the snappy dialogue and banter created by Joss and his team.  And despite the stylization, they came across as genuine teens, exploring all kinds of authentic emotions.  It was also bold at the time for one of the main characters, perhaps the most endearing, to come out as lesbian, and wind up in bed with her girlfriend.

I started my retrospective with the musical episode from the sixth season, “Once More, with Feeling,” where a spell compels everyone to sing their dialogue, and was immediately hooked all over again.  Then there was “Hush,” where all the characters are rendered mute and have to communicate in pantomime.  At the other end of the spectrum are episodes like “The Body,” where Buffy comes home to find her mother dead, in a realistic and empathetic survey of the types and stages of shock and grief (providing the antithesis to all the bodies that pile up – or rather, go poof – in each episode).  After watching more than a dozen episodes, I've refreshed my memory well enough to dip back in anywhere.

For another way Buffy demonstrates the emergence of an era, watch as the first season struggles to find its tone and substance, then the second really develops continuity, and the third achieves genuine cultural cachet.  Then the fourth adapts from the old tv aspect ratio to the modern 16x9 frame, with high-def video, and thereafter the approach becomes fully cinematic, and anything goes in terms of subject matter and style.

As it happened, I was re-watching Buffy episodes at the same time I was re-watching much of Normal People, and while they couldn’t be more different in approach, they shared one trait in common – authentic understanding of young adult emotions and relationships.

And that’s my segue to a more current recommendation.  My Brilliant Friend (MC-88, HBO) represented another recent instance when my appreciation for a film adaptation has been enhanced by not having read the book on which it was based.  I went into this series cold, despite the huge success of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels.  Even better reviews for the second season than the first, finally led me to give the series a try.  It takes a while to get acquainted with all the story’s characters and their relations, especially after the time jump in the third episode, in which all the young actors change.  So for those unfamiliar with the books, I definitely recommend studying the HBO graphic guide to “The Neighborhood.”  Both the younger and older girls playing Lila and Lenu are fantastic, and equally well-paired.  And the whole ensemble is very effective, as is the recreation of a lower-class housing project in 1950s Naples.  A lot of the masculine violence and domination casts an unfortunate light on my ethnic background, but director Saverio Constanzo also recalls the glories of Italian neorealism.  But the relationship between the two girls is what makes the series, and is highlighted by HBO’s accompanying documentary My True Brilliant Friend, about how both sets of girls were found and trained, and the developing relationship between them that shines through this story of young female friendship (it’s also one of the best making-of docs I’ve ever seen).

Having now watched the second season of My Brilliant Friend, I redouble my recommendation, as the girls go into marriage or college in the Sixties.  The mix of realism and melodrama is perfect, the acting and staging are exemplary, the story is serious yet full of twists, immersing us in the fates of these characters we know so well, despite their enigmas.  Now I see an apt comparison to one of my favorite films of all time, The Best of Youth, the Italian family/historical epic from 2003, so I appropriate my comment on that:  “[This series] is transformative, endlessly involving, like life itself, so sad and yet everything is beautiful. You are put through an emotional wringer, as the hours and years go by, and yet you love it and come out wiser at the end, just as we wish with life itself.”  I eagerly anticipate two further seasons to match Ferrante’s quartet of books, may even have to read the books themselves.

I Know This Much is True (MC-67, HBO), only Mark Ruffalo makes this HBO limited-series misery-fest watchable.  Adapted by Derek Cianfrance from a Wally Lamb novel, this is the story of twin brothers played by Ruffalo, one of whom ends up in a mental institutional and then prison after a shocking act of violence.  The other wants to be his brother’s keeper, but has more than enough problems of his own.  Really, I can’t even tote up all the horrific anguish this series depicts, reaching back generations to the malevolent patriarch who immigrated from Sicily.  Ironic that HBO is concurrently running two series that cast a harsh light on the liabilities of my ethnic manhood.  Rosie O’Donnell is a pleasant surprise as a prison social worker, but overall this series is not worth the pain it inflicts. 

Ramy (MC-85, Hulu) returns for a second season, and Ramy Youssef is not here to make himself – or you – comfortable, but to render an authentic slice of Arab-American experience.  Though he comes across as sensitive, serious, and even sweet, he is always making bad choices, especially damaging to other people, not so much with the best of intentions, as because he is myopically self-absorbed with his own needs, both physical and spiritual.  The Muslim Millennial perspective is very fresh, and in this season Ramy’s quest for his Islamic roots takes him to a Sufi mosque, whose sheikh is portrayed with Mahershala Ali’s trademark gravitas and sly wit.   Hiam Abbass returns as Ramy’s mother, wonderful as ever (compare this character with the third Mrs. Roy in Succession, then go back and look at her native Palestinian roles in films like Lemon Tree).  She gets an episode all to herself, as do Ramy’s sister, father, and uncle, all straddling the generational divide between being Egyptian and being American.  For a comedy, it’s awfully serious, and for a drama, it’s awfully funny, but not at all joke-based.  You will wince as often as you laugh.

I went on to another selective retrospective of one of my Top Ten TV series, Friday Night Lights (2006-11, MC-83, Hulu).  Let me make one thing clear from the start – I have not been any kind of football fan since the genuine Browns left Cleveland in 1995, and even before that, only out of hometown loyalty, and not out of any appreciation for the violent and militaristic attributes of the sport.  But I loved, and continue to love, this show.  As with Buffy’s martial arts, you have to put up with on-field action for several minutes in most episodes (very well done, I must say), but this series is not about high school football, but about family and community in a rural Texas town, with a strong documentary quality backed by a large and talented cast.  Coach T and his wife Tami, played with touching authenticity by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, are front and center through all five seasons, but the circle of players and families is extensive, and ever-changing.  Michael B. Jordan is the most famous of the young actors to emerge from this series, but many got to do their best-ever work, under the encouraging impetus of the freedom they were given to develop their own characters.  With all the camera work at the service of spontaneous performances, most scenes were shot in one take with three cameras, giving the series a hurtling you-are-there sensation.  This series is also outstanding in its ability to reinvent itself from season to season, with new characters and new storylines, which all add color and dimension to a small-screen masterpiece.  Follow this team and these kids all the way to State!

And She Could Be Next (PBS), a two-part documentary on “POV,” is a stirring and hopeful documentary about women of color running for office in 2018.  We follow a handful of campaigns that give an overview to the movement, both its successes and the obstacles encountered.  Most attention goes to Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian-American who won a Congressional seat in Detroit, and Stacey Abrams, who was deprived of an historic win for governor in Georgia by blatant voter suppression.  There are also congresswomen elected from Texas and Georgia, a Latina elected to the California state senate, and a very young Muslim woman making inroads in Skokie IL (I’m old enough to remember the neo-Nazi demonstrations that MLK confronted there).  The film is heartening for the mobilization depicted, and frightening for the blatantly anti-democratic corruption of voter suppression, which will certainly be a feature of the 2020 election.  Will righteousness or repression win out?  Watch this miniseries to see what’s at stake.

Another excellent two-part PBS documentary, this one from “American Experience,” The Vote (PBS) commemorates the 100^th anniversary of women’s suffrage across the U.S.  This program has two exceptional attributes: a clear and comprehensive account of a scandalously little-known passage of American history, and marvelous documentation through period photos and film, much more interesting visually than mere talking heads.  It definitely rewrites the standard story of women being “given” the vote in 1920 by the 19^th Amendment, and shows that the vote was won by a generations-long struggle of political will and strategy by courageous women.  Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are well-known, but not the latter’s daughter, Harriet Stanton Blatch, who carried the torch for many years, until the narrow victory was achieved by the inside-outside, political-militant combo of Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul.  Now I know why the new dorm my son lived in at Swarthmore was named for the latter, and was quite thrilled by an actual unpublished letter that Alice Paul wrote to my partner’s grandmother, just after they both graduated from Swat, in which she tells of going to her first suffragist meeting with another young woman, in the midst of a roomful of grey heads.  She would soon bring her youth and energy to the cause, through audacious militancy over an extended period, developing a new playbook for political movements.  Essential viewing!

I watched the documentary Slay the Dragon (MC-73, Hulu) with the expectation that I might get a glimpse of my brother Chris, since he’s been so involved in trying to slay the gerrymander in PA, but this film focuses on different initiatives in MI, WI, and NC.  The film is still well worth seeing for its recapitulation of the issue, and for its focus on one activist in particular, a young woman in MI who could easily be part of a sequel to And She Could Be Next.  I’ve got to admit she’s cuter, and possibly even more effective, than my egghead brother.   

One last documentary to note:  A Secret Love (MC-77, NFX) is a modest home movie that blossoms into a number of larger themes.  Chris Bolan made this film, with great intimacy, about his aunt Terry, who was a catcher in the women’s baseball league portrayed in A League of Their Own, and her “longtime companion” Pat.  We follow their 70-year relationship from the necessary secrecy of the 1940s to their late-in-life marriage, with lots of fascinating period photos and film.  They are filmed in their later years, as they move from the Chicago area house they shared for decades to an assisted living facility and finally back to family in the wilds of Western Canada, from whom they were closeted for 60 years.  Aside from a story of gay liberation, this film turns into a study in gerontology, which for some reason is a subject of growing interest to me.  You wouldn’t regret the time you spend in this couple’s company.  

Ancient history of last year

It’s always at least half-way into the next year before I can compile my comprehensive list of favorite and recommended films from the previous year, but this time round it seems a particularly long time past, from an entirely different epoch.  It will take me a little time still to round up a few stragglers that may shoulder their way onto either list.

If “edge of your seat” is a cinematic experience you seek, then you might like Uncut Gems (MC-90, NFX), Ben and Joshua Safdie’s unsavory scramble through a NYC demimonde of jewelers, gamblers, loan sharks, muscle men, party people, hipsters and hoopsters.  Is it a thriller?  Is it a comedy?  Is it a character study of a man with no character?  Adam Sandler is a diamond district dealer, an adrenaline junkie who’s forever putting everything he’s got (and more) on the line, always looking for a big score to settle his debts.  Very little about him is likable, but he does create a whirlwind of energy in his wake.  The Safdie brothers are known for their on-the-fly style of shooting, but here a bigger budget means a larger canvas on which to inscribe their manic energy.  They look at the intersection of Jewish culture and Black culture in the arena of sport, with solid supporting performances from Lakeith Stanfield and Kevin Garnett as himself, off the court and on (from the 2012 NBA playoffs).  So there’s plenty here to keep you watching, but likely stuff to turn you off as well.  Just sayin’.

I gather that I had the perfect approach to Where’d You Go, Bernadette (MC-51, Hulu), not as an adaptation of a popular novel, but as the latest from one of my favorite directors, Richard Linklater.  As such, and with a dynamite title performance from Cate Blanchett, good supporting roles, and excellent locations, I liked it much more than the Metacritic rating would suggest.  Cate/Bernadette was a genius young architect in LA, and is now a sort of mad housewife in Seattle, where hubby Billy Crudup works at Microsoft, and she has a good but fraught relationship with the daughter she gave up her career for (Emma Nelson, in a promising debut).  Again, unfamiliar with the novel, I had no problem with the film, and could just enjoy the way it begins and ends with spectacular footage of Antarctica.

Adapted from a popular Brazilian novel, Invisible Life (MC-81, AMZ) is a vivid melodrama about sisterhood oppressed by patriarchy, surprisingly directed by a man, Karim Ainouz.  The film is long and lush, intense and elliptical, following two devoted sisters who lose track of each other in 1950s Rio, and spend their lives trying to find each other again, all the while suffering abuse from men, from their father on down.  Somewhat lurid and explicit, the film rides on the performances of the two actresses, who are completely believable as sisters, together and apart.  A fine immersion in the colors and culture of Brazil.

Another view of Latin American womanhood, Too Late to Die Young (MC-80, CC) is an autobiographical film from Chilean Dominga Sotomayor, recreating a summer interlude (i.e. around New Year’s Day) on an artistic commune up in the hills, immediately after the fall of Pinochet, when everyone from dogs to teenage girls to married adults was lunging toward freedom and the pursuit of happiness.  It’s a mood piece drenched in specific memories, rather than a story as such, fascinating but not compelling to watch.

I didn’t regret watching The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (MC-87, NFX), but I wouldn’t advise you to unless you have substantial patience and tolerance for real-time, continuous-take cinema.  We follow (quite literally) two First Nations women in the Canadian West, one a pregnant and abused teenager, and the other a sympathetic career woman who takes her in and tries to steer her toward a shelter.  The latter is played by Elle-Maija Tailfeathers, who also wrote and directed.  She’s thoughtful and sympathetic, and not put off by the younger woman’s acerbic recalcitrance.  The push and pull of their transient relationship is involving and thought-provoking, even while the filming seems rudimentary, though sophisticated in the attempt to seem like one long unbroken take.

This has become a theme for me lately (and ironically), finding film adaptations more congenial than many reviewers did, because I had not read the book.  It’s almost axiomatic that if you really love a book, you’re going to see the gaps and flaws in its cinematic manifestation.  But if you’ve got nothing invested going in, you won’t be disappointed and can see how the film stands up on its own.  And I’m here to tell you that Just Mercy (MC-68, AMZ) is a better film than you may have heard.  Adapted from the beloved memoir of Bryan Stevenson, of the Equal Justice Initiative, by Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12), this legal drama is graced with Michael B. Jordan as the young Stevenson, and Jamie Foxx as the first unjustly-convicted person he would get released from death row.  They are excellent together and apart, and the supporting cast is also very effective.  The film’s theatrical release may have been mistimed, but its multi-channel streaming availability could not have come at a better moment.  Okay, maybe it’s only halfway on the path from In the Heat of the Night to the realities of the surging Black Lives Matter movement, but it’s an honorable way-station on the road to freedom and justice.

Subtract the Hollywood gloss, and take a look at the solid documentary True Justice: Brian Stevenson’s Fight for Equality (HBO), which is mostly told in his own voice, and covers his career up through five Supreme Court wins to the opening of the EJI’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice (and lynching museum) in Montgomery, AL. 

In Peterloo (MC-66, AMZ), Mike Leigh sacrifices his greatest strength, character development, to make an angry and all-too-relevant social statement.  Even in his other historical films, like Topsy-Turvy and Mr. Turner, despite the immaculate rendering of period detail, the emphasis is on characters and relationships.  But here the historical rendering is in service of a political reckoning, in commemoration of the 200^th anniversary of a massacre by the British military of peaceful protestors in Manchester, when the center of the Industrial Revolution threatened to become a site of political revolution.  In a headlong rush, the key actors are sketched in, more than the uninitiated could possibly take in, and set in motion to converge and clash on the day of the event, a reform rally of many thousands from all around Lancashire, carrying colorful banners demanding suffrage and repeal of the Corn Laws, come to hear a celebrated London orator.  The title is a contemporaneous journalistic coinage, combining the site of the massacre with the military’s vaunted recent victory at Waterloo.  I definitely appreciated the well-illustrated history lesson, and its polemical message, but this is the rare Mike Leigh film that won’t figure among my favorites of the year.   At several points, it reminded me of Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, as well as suggesting a passion project that just got out of hand.  Viewed in light of recent events, however, around the White House and elsewhere on the streets, Leigh seems prescient and definitely on the right side of history.

I can’t rouse myself to comment on Rocketman (MC-68, Hulu) except to say that it was okay as this year’s version of Bohemian Rhapsody, a musical biopic of a singer of whom I was never a fan but could hardly avoid some familiarity with.  Perhaps Rami Malek was more engaging as Freddie Mercury that Taron Egerton as Elton John, while director Dexter Fletcher perhaps refined his style from film to film, so it’s a close call between them, but I wouldn’t urge either on the uninitiated.

I was late to the party of Leonard Cohen adoration, so I was happy to fill out his backstory with Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love (MC-69, Hulu), which tells of his relationship with the Norwegian muse he lived with on a Greek island through much of the Sixties.  Nick Broomfield’s documentary elevates her memory, though it remains mostly Leonard’s story, which I was happy to revisit, interesting to me even if the film itself is hardly essential.  It might be too cursory for the devoted fan, or too obscure and minor for the uninitiated, but it suited me just fine. 

Safe to say that motorsports are not my thing, so the cars provide little attraction, but some of the people involved in Ford v Ferrari (MC-81, HBO) induced me to watch and enjoy the film.  If the whole business of rowdy boys with their big shiny toys wears a bit thin, Christian Bale and Matt Damon are there to add dimension and shading to the fraught friendship between two men, who combine their engineering and driving prowess to the mission of dethroning Ferrari from its dominance over international racing.  With uneasy corporate sponsorship by Ford, they meet their match at the LeMans 24-hour race in 1966, with the race itself taking up most of the second half of this movie, which certainly moves but is also quite moving (and very true to history, as I found out on Wikipedia afterwards).  Credit director James Mangold on all counts, though the corporate infighting between the cowboys and the suits pads the running time without adding much substance, even if Tracy Letts has a fine turn as Henry Ford II.  The concept of “pushing the envelope” may have little resonance for me, but Bale and Damon make me appreciate their automotive quest.   

An altogether grimmer buddy movie is 1917 (MC-78, dvd), which is essentially a nightmare in a hellscape.  If you’re into first-person-shooter video games, you may find it entertaining.  The immediacy is striking, and it’s not a bad film, technically speaking.  The direction by Sam Mendes and cinematography by Roger Deakins cleverly simulates real-time, one-continuous-shot documentation, as two Lance Corporals (George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman) are assigned to carry a vital command message through the trenches and across no-man’s-land, into burning villages and down raging rapids (and on and on and on).  The unknown but appealing leads encounter a host of familiar faces up the chain of command – spotting them is part of the game-play.  This ain’t War and Peace, this is war straight up, no chaser.  Its fundamental mendacity (pun unintended, but apt) is revealed in an obligatory scene with a woman and baby (of course!  At least he doesn’t sleep with her in the five minutes they spend together, though there is an exchange of bodily fluids.)  I appreciate the you-are-there feel of this film, but if you really want to know how it felt to be there, I recommend Peter Jackson’s documentary They Shall Never Grow Old.

Having seen virtually all the films I could or would see of Metacritic’s compilation of the top films of 2019, I’m ready to pronounce my favorite films of the year in comparison with theirs.

My Favorites

(It would take repeat viewings to choose among my top three, all of which I loved – and two of them by filmmakers who were also making a baby at the same time.)

The Irishman (#3)

Marriage Story (#4)

Little Women (#6)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (#2)

Diane (#17)

The Farewell (#9)

Wild Rose (#71)

Non-Fiction (#99)

Pain and Glory (#12)

A Hidden Life (#100)

Worth Seeing

Booksmart (#34)

Knives Out (#49)

Just Mercy (NR)

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (#75)

Atlantics (#26)

Peterloo (NR)

Parasite (#1)

Where’d You Go, Bernadette (NR)

Sword of Trust (NR)

The Souvenir (#5)

Invisible Life (#48)

Transit (#46)

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (#39)

Ford v Ferrari (#60)

Uncut Gems (#7)

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (#38)

Woman at War (#59)

Wild Pear Tree (#22)

The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (#14)

Top Docs

Honeyland (#24)

Varda by Agnes (#27)

American Factory (#23)

One Child Nation (#29)

For Sama (#8)

Apollo 11 (#13)

Expect to love when I finally see:

63 Up (#11)

More odds & ends

I will soon deliver my last word on the films of 2019 (doubting whether I’ll ever devote such coverage to future years, as my approach to film viewing and reviewing changes), but here I offer a potpourri of more recent offerings via streaming video, arranged by channel and updated periodically.

Those of us who love Michelle Obama will be exhilarated, moved, and saddened by following her pop-star book tour for Becoming (MC-65, NFX).  The book itself was great in the candid portrayal of her backstory, up to the point where she learned as the candidate’s wife to present a carefully-packaged profile to the public.  Thereafter, and to this day, at least to judge by this documentary, she has become a creature of cultural celebrity.  She carries it off well, but I think she has more to say than this film shows.  But oh the pangs of nostalgia for what we once had, instead of what we have now!

Another celebrity returned to Netflix at the same time, with the stand-up performance Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill (MC-74).  I’ve never been a particular fan of Jerry, have more familiarity with Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee than with Seinfeld, but there’s no denying he’s a cultural celebrity of the first order.  And he returns to a solo stage act for the first time in decades, as if to prove he’s still got it going at age 65.  I was surprised at how physical he was – not just standing at the microphone tossing off acerbic observations – and derived a satisfying quota of chuckles from the hour, which made an oh-for-the-good-old-days double-feature with Michelle.

Another Netflix stand-up special was eagerly anticipated, and just as eagerly received:  Hannah Gadsby: Douglas (MC-78, NFX), follow-up to her star-making performance Nanette.  The zaftig Tasmanian lesbian has broken through to fame by sticking to her guns:  mockery of the patriarchy, and embrace of her identity as an autistic art historian.  As you might imagine, those last three words are like catnip to me, but honestly I don’t know anyone who doesn’t find Hannah funny and thought-provoking (though there are definitely haters out there).  Nor do I know anyone who presents a more intricately-crafted hour-long solo performance, whatever you want to call it – comedy, lecture, screed.  I’d only caution that you need to have seen Nanette first.

Though HBO documentaries have lost their leading light and some of their luster, I enjoyed an evening’s double feature of two of their latest.  Western Stars (MC-80, HBO) is the filmed accompaniment to Bruce Springsteen’s latest album, and while I am not as over-the-top enthusiastic about this as I was about the solo show Springsteen on Broadway, it was nice to see him fronting a 30-piece orchestra in the loft of a big old barn on his property, interspersed with him doing intros to the songs on location in the desert.  This concert film offers familiarity and novelty in delightful combination, in the characteristic manner of the Boss.

Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind (MC-68, HBO) is very much a family affair, produced by and featuring her daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner, who interviews her sisters, father, stepfather, and Natalie’s friends, covering her short life and long career through film clips, recorded interviews, and private photos. The film would like to put to rest questions about Natalie’s mysterious drowning death, but is more successful in refreshing the appeal of her work, which will have me looking for a couple of old favorites, and a couple of her films that I’ve never seen.

Bad Education (MC-79, HBO) is not a bad film, but neither is it educational.  And it struck me as falling somewhere between the stools of satire and suspense, without really sitting its butt down on either one.  It also feels hemmed in by the true story it’s based on, about Long Island school administrators embezzling millions back in 2004, a story broken by a student journalist in the school paper.  Alison Janney is the district’s business manager, and Hugh Jackman superintendent of the high-rated public school system.  They’re good at their jobs, but also at dipping into the till, with suspect out-of-school lives.  Cory Finley directs, and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that the unflattering lighting was intended to convey the harsh illumination of a school building, but it is disconcerting.  This movie could have been funnier, or it could have been more probing of character and motivation, but it just skims the surface of its source material.

By a vestigial reflex, I watched The Painter and the Thief (MC-78, Hulu) as soon as it became available, though it turned out to be not at all what I expected, less a documentary than an artful psychodrama.  An art theft may be the precipitating event in this film, but it’s not at all the point, which is the tangled relationship that develops between the painter, a Czech émigré to Norway, and the thief, a heavily-tattooed Norwegian bad boy and drug addict.  Benjamin Ree’s film raises a lot of questions about how it was shot and put together, which are quieted by the momentum of the characterizations.  There may be some fool-the-eye staging here, and a canny bit of self-promotion for a gallery show, but the result carries conviction as a parable of seeing and being seen.

Rewind (MC-87, PBS) was shown on “Independent Lens” soon after release, and as of now ranks as the 4^th best film of 2020 on Metacritic.  Sasha J. Neulinger delves into his family’s home movies to excavate a hidden history of multigenerational sexual abuse, in a film that rivals Capturing the Friedmans for revelatory catharsis.  Interspersed with candid current interviews with his father, mother, sister, psychiatrist, and former detective, he recounts the story of his early trauma and the testimony that sent some of his relatives to jail, illustrated at times with frame-by-frame analysis of old family footage.  While horrific, the film remains hopeful through the maker’s honesty and talent in coming to grips with a traumatic personal history.

Les Misérables (MC-78, AMZ) was France’s César-winner and Oscar-nominee, but the film has very little to do with Victor Hugo, but a lot to do with the personal experience of director Ladj Ly, who grew up in the rough immigrant suburbs of Paris, and to the inspiration of the great 1995 film Le Haine.  The film begins with France’s victory in the 2018 World Cup, with the final goal scored by an African from the neighborhood in which the film takes place.  But that celebration and supposed moment of national unity fades quickly, as we follow three plain clothes officers of the Street Crimes Unit into the neighborhood, where the brutish motormouth leader tries to dominate the streets, as tyrants will do.  Police brutality goes a step too far, and black youth is soon in violent revolt.  Does this story sound at all familiar to you?  Well, here it’s presented with energy and intimacy that make it compelling and upsetting to watch.

Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band (MC-62, Hulu) has been faulted for being too Robbie-centric, but I can’t imagine anyone like me – for whom the group was the touchstone of a formative era, who literally wore out the grooves of their second, eponymous album – not loving this documentary retrospective.  It’s based on his recent autobiography, and he gets to restate its themes for the camera, but many other voices come into the frame, from Springsteen and Scorsese back to Dylan and Clapton, even including Mrs. Robertson (though none of the other bandmates – three out of four long-deceased – aside from a few archival clips.)  But with that cooperation, the documentary access is superb, in everything from home movies to the professional photo shoots that produced iconic album covers.  Plenty of music as well, though quite reliant on footage from The Last Waltz, which I will have to revisit.

Shirley (MC-76, Hulu) is Elizabeth Moss’s show, playing eccentric 1950s author Shirley Jackson (Haunting of Hill House), living in Bennington with her husband, critic and professor Stanley Edgar Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg).  I’m not really familiar with her work, but back in the day, when I was living just down Route 7 in Pownal VT, I was mightily impressed with his book The Armed Vision: A Study in the Methods of Modern Literary Criticism.  The set-up of Jacqueline Decker’s film is similar to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, as the elder academic couple hosts a younger couple, but both the story and her direction take off in characteristically enigmatic directions.  Elizabeth as Shirley is a force of nature, powerful but unpredictable.  She is aggressive but then welcoming to the young wife, with Odessa Young rising to the challenge of confronting the older woman, as they begin to collaborate on a novel about a disappearing girl, a horror story that intersects with their own lives and dreams.  The film seems both real and surreal, clear and obscure, literary and pulpish.

I’m going to squeeze in one more biopic about a literary woman.  Wild Nights with Emily (MC-74, Hulu) is another recent reinterpretation of Emily Dickinson’s life and work, which pairs intriguingly with Terrence Rafferty’s A Quiet Passion (with Cynthia Nixon).  (Haven’t seen Apple TV Dickinson with Hailee Steinfeld.)  Here SNL alum Molly Shannon plays the Amherst poet quite credibly, but writer-director Madeleine Olnek casts the story as a lesbian romance with her next-door sister-in-law (Susan Ziegler).  This revisionist interpretation has much to recommend it, in wit and period flavor as well as well as provocation, but aside from the central pair, the acting has an arch and declamatory quality that may reflect the film’s prehistory as a play.  I did, however, appreciate how Emily’s poetry was worked into dialogue and situations, so with some reservations about directorial quirks, I found this film well worth seeing.

[This post's final update added at the end of June 2020.]