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.]