The streaming channel Hulu
lays out a smorgasbord that looks unappetizing at first glance, partly because
its format highlights inedible network fare, and partly because the basic
subscription includes indigestible commercials.
But if you pay extra for the commercial-free option, and know what to
look for, you may - like me - find more delicacies on Hulu than any other
channel, whether it be a ballyhooed new foreign or independent film, or award-winning
documentary, or edgy TV series, or some distinctive original programming. To take the most obvious example, start with
last year’s widely-acknowledged best film, Nomadland. Look at this
NYT list to get some idea of the range of what you can find on
Hulu. And read on to find some of the
more recent additions to the groaning board.
For those of us eagerly awaiting the Covid-delayed second half of the second season of their original series Pen15, Hulu has filled the gap by offering Plan B (MC-74), another tale of two misfit teenage besties, out of place in their South Dakota town, one Desi and brainy (Kuhoo Verma) and one Latina and bi-curious (Victoria Moroles), both appealing and funny. This high school sex comedy plays like a female Superbad, but director Victoria Morales flavors the proceedings with a bit of Never Rarely Sometimes Always, as the two girls go on a risky roadtrip in search of the eponymous pill, in a reproductive healthcare wasteland. Wacky adventures ensue, but also some genuine feeling and observation. It’s not supergood, but it’s good enough to keep Hulu viewers amused till Pen15 comes up again.
Supernova (MC-73) features another roadtrip, this time through the English Lake District, by a graybeard-baldhead gay couple. They are played by Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci, and that’s really all you need to know, guaranteed to be worth seeing. One of them has early-onset dementia and both are coming to terms with their impending loss (they’ve said in interviews that they switched the roles as first assigned). Harry Macqueen’s writing and direction are blunt about the choices they face, but the actors provide nuance and shading, and the landscape provides some relief from the grim prognosis, in this loving portrait of a couple facing the worst together.
The “period lesbian romance” has become enough of a thing to be parodied on SNL – here comes another: The World to Come (MC-73), which I am happy to put in a class with Portrait of a Woman on Fire and Ammonite, not to mention Gentleman Jack. This one in particular is right in “my” period,America Romania
Not interested in period lesbian romance? Then how about geriatric lesbian romance, i.e. Two of Us (MC-82)? Much in this film seemed admirable to me, in cleverness and craft, feeling and truth, but I didn’t feel that all the pieces held together. First-time director Filippo Meneghetti effectively establishes an atmosphere, but takes a little bit from this film and that, from Amour to Hitchcock to one more lament for the love that dare not speak its name, dissipating the force of the central story. Two handsome older ladies have pretended to be just neighbors in aParis Rome
MLK /FBI (MC-81)
is a substantial documentary by Sam Pollard, an impressive survey of M.L.King’s heroic
career, the arc of which bent toward justice, as viewed through the
surveillance of the Department of (In)Justice, which saw him as a
subversive, not to mention a liar and pervert.
Not sure I learned anything I was unaware of going in, but this film
puts it all together in a compelling way.
The archives of material are very rich, and Pollard’s innovation, which
I hope will be widely followed, is to avoid talking heads, by allowing audio
commentary to run over accumulating period visuals, with the speaker’s name in
an on-screen caption. In memorializing
King, this doc goes well beyond “I have a dream…” Definitely recommended.
In Some Kind of Heaven (MC-73), a very young Harvard-trained, NYT-produced documentarian named Lance Oppenheim returns to his native Florida in quest of local oddities, and comes up with a doozy – The Villages, the world’s largest old-folks community, known as “Disney World for retirees.” Immense and highly-regimented, this self-contained, make-believe town of more than a hundred-thousand residents has activity groups of all kinds, from golf-cart precision drill team to belly dancing to singles hangouts to synchronized swimming. The film follows four individuals or couples, with differing experiences of the place, intermingled with highly-stylized visuals accentuating the artificiality of the environment, and marked by a serious anthropological intent leavened by humor. (It doesn’t capture, however, the Trump-supporting Villages resident who went viral, riding around in a golf cart with a big, bold “White Power” sign.)
Stray (MC-83) is a dog’s-eye documentary set in Istanbul, where in reaction to government attempts to exterminate all strays, a law was passed to prevent euthanization or capture, so the loose pooches have the run of the city. We mostly follow one endearing dog on its rounds, though she chums up with another, and then a cute little pup, all of them following a group of glue-huffing street kids, refugees from Syria. It’s a dog’s life for both canines and humans without caretakers, free-ranging but continuously at risk. All-purpose filmmaker Elizabeth Lo followed her primary subject for two years, and cannily put together this dark but empathetic take on an anti-Disney “incredible journey.” Humans come into it only from the dogs’ perspective, but even they can see what’s going on in Erdogan’sTurkey
Last but far from least, Hulu offered Summer of Soul (MC-96) the same day it was released in theaters. Exceptionally well put together by director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, this documentary is a rousing concert film and a painless (though tearful) history lesson. He resurrects the lost footage of tv director Hal Tulchin from the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, a series of free concerts held in what is now Marcus Garvey Park in the center of Harlem, and situates it within the context of major events happening at the time: assassinations and riots, the transition from “Negro agitation” to Black Power, white backlash and Nixon’s “law & order” presidency, the first moon landing, Woodstock. The film’s subtitle is “(…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” and it reconsiders all this within the memories of performers and attendees, in an extremely potent mix of pride, joy, and sorrow. Also within the context of changing styles in Black music, fashion, and politics. Whether blues, soul, gospel, jazz, funk, pop, with Latin or African inflections, all this music rocks hard and true, be it Stevie Wonder or B.B. King, the Staples Singers or Mahalia Jackson, Gladys Knight or Nina Simone, the Fifth Dimension or Sly and the Family Stone. I felt a particular force from this film, since I watched it in the context of re-reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, appreciating how far we’ve come but lamenting how little has changed in fifty-odd years. If you don’t have Hulu, or even if you do, go see this in a movie theater, for an extraordinarily moving experience that will take you “Higher.”
For those of us eagerly awaiting the Covid-delayed second half of the second season of their original series Pen15, Hulu has filled the gap by offering Plan B (MC-74), another tale of two misfit teenage besties, out of place in their South Dakota town, one Desi and brainy (Kuhoo Verma) and one Latina and bi-curious (Victoria Moroles), both appealing and funny. This high school sex comedy plays like a female Superbad, but director Victoria Morales flavors the proceedings with a bit of Never Rarely Sometimes Always, as the two girls go on a risky roadtrip in search of the eponymous pill, in a reproductive healthcare wasteland. Wacky adventures ensue, but also some genuine feeling and observation. It’s not supergood, but it’s good enough to keep Hulu viewers amused till Pen15 comes up again.
Supernova (MC-73) features another roadtrip, this time through the English Lake District, by a graybeard-baldhead gay couple. They are played by Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci, and that’s really all you need to know, guaranteed to be worth seeing. One of them has early-onset dementia and both are coming to terms with their impending loss (they’ve said in interviews that they switched the roles as first assigned). Harry Macqueen’s writing and direction are blunt about the choices they face, but the actors provide nuance and shading, and the landscape provides some relief from the grim prognosis, in this loving portrait of a couple facing the worst together.
The “period lesbian romance” has become enough of a thing to be parodied on SNL – here comes another: The World to Come (MC-73), which I am happy to put in a class with Portrait of a Woman on Fire and Ammonite, not to mention Gentleman Jack. This one in particular is right in “my” period,
Not interested in period lesbian romance? Then how about geriatric lesbian romance, i.e. Two of Us (MC-82)? Much in this film seemed admirable to me, in cleverness and craft, feeling and truth, but I didn’t feel that all the pieces held together. First-time director Filippo Meneghetti effectively establishes an atmosphere, but takes a little bit from this film and that, from Amour to Hitchcock to one more lament for the love that dare not speak its name, dissipating the force of the central story. Two handsome older ladies have pretended to be just neighbors in a
In Some Kind of Heaven (MC-73), a very young Harvard-trained, NYT-produced documentarian named Lance Oppenheim returns to his native Florida in quest of local oddities, and comes up with a doozy – The Villages, the world’s largest old-folks community, known as “Disney World for retirees.” Immense and highly-regimented, this self-contained, make-believe town of more than a hundred-thousand residents has activity groups of all kinds, from golf-cart precision drill team to belly dancing to singles hangouts to synchronized swimming. The film follows four individuals or couples, with differing experiences of the place, intermingled with highly-stylized visuals accentuating the artificiality of the environment, and marked by a serious anthropological intent leavened by humor. (It doesn’t capture, however, the Trump-supporting Villages resident who went viral, riding around in a golf cart with a big, bold “White Power” sign.)
Stray (MC-83) is a dog’s-eye documentary set in Istanbul, where in reaction to government attempts to exterminate all strays, a law was passed to prevent euthanization or capture, so the loose pooches have the run of the city. We mostly follow one endearing dog on its rounds, though she chums up with another, and then a cute little pup, all of them following a group of glue-huffing street kids, refugees from Syria. It’s a dog’s life for both canines and humans without caretakers, free-ranging but continuously at risk. All-purpose filmmaker Elizabeth Lo followed her primary subject for two years, and cannily put together this dark but empathetic take on an anti-Disney “incredible journey.” Humans come into it only from the dogs’ perspective, but even they can see what’s going on in Erdogan’s
Last but far from least, Hulu offered Summer of Soul (MC-96) the same day it was released in theaters. Exceptionally well put together by director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, this documentary is a rousing concert film and a painless (though tearful) history lesson. He resurrects the lost footage of tv director Hal Tulchin from the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, a series of free concerts held in what is now Marcus Garvey Park in the center of Harlem, and situates it within the context of major events happening at the time: assassinations and riots, the transition from “Negro agitation” to Black Power, white backlash and Nixon’s “law & order” presidency, the first moon landing, Woodstock. The film’s subtitle is “(…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” and it reconsiders all this within the memories of performers and attendees, in an extremely potent mix of pride, joy, and sorrow. Also within the context of changing styles in Black music, fashion, and politics. Whether blues, soul, gospel, jazz, funk, pop, with Latin or African inflections, all this music rocks hard and true, be it Stevie Wonder or B.B. King, the Staples Singers or Mahalia Jackson, Gladys Knight or Nina Simone, the Fifth Dimension or Sly and the Family Stone. I felt a particular force from this film, since I watched it in the context of re-reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, appreciating how far we’ve come but lamenting how little has changed in fifty-odd years. If you don’t have Hulu, or even if you do, go see this in a movie theater, for an extraordinarily moving experience that will take you “Higher.”
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