Back to the tube

After more than a month “across the pond” and away from my usual screens, I’ve got some catching up to do, so let’s get right down to it.  First off, I have to mention two well-received films from 2021 that I caught as in-flight entertainment, with all the attendant liabilities, missing a lot of dialogue in one, and in the other scenes too dark to see, not to mention the tiny screen (and interruptions) for both.  Nonetheless, Parallel Mothers (MC-88) may muscle its way into my Top 10, and C’mon C’mon (MC-82) will slot high among my Runners-up (see here for the current state of my lists).  Both Pedro Almodovar and Mike Mills approach their best work with their latest, as do Penelope Cruz and Joaquin Phoenix in the respective lead roles.  And both films will warrant a second, better look.

 
Over in England, I happened to catch the first half of the final season of Better Call Saul (MC-94).  I’ll reserve comment till the ultimate episodes land later this summer, but the show would have to stumble badly for me not to anoint the BB/BCS duo my favorite television of all time.
 
While over there, I also happened to read the novel on which the outstanding AppleTV+ series Pachinko (MC-87) was based, which gives me a chance to redouble my recommendation for one of the best new shows of 2022.

Speaking of which, Julia (MC-76) will certainly figure in my best of the year list too, though I am far from a foodie and had to be won over by the sheer quality of the acting, writing, and production in general.  Caught the final episode upon my return, and it did not disappoint; now looking forward to a second season.  Can’t say the same for another HBO series, Winning Time (MC-68); I’m a sucker for hoops flicks, and I certainly remember the Magic-Kareem “Showtime” Lakers, so I watched to the end in spite of qualms about style and substance, suspect characterizations and weak game action.

[Update:  HBO now offers another Julia (MC-69), a documentary feature from Betsy West and Julie Cohen, who previously made RBG and My Name is Pauli Murray, other estimable portraits in female heroism.  This doc pairs nicely with the series, though I found it more interesting on Julia Child’s life before celebrity took hold.]
 
Two HBO series I’ll be sticking with are Gentleman Jack and Hacks, both having strong second seasons which I’ll highlight below.  HBO Max is the streamer of the moment for me, as the rest of this post will attest, but I have to highlight an unusual offering from that channel – an extensive retrospective of the films of Yasujiro Ozu!!  The Criterion Channel offers a deeper dive into the work of the master, but the dozen titles on HBO Max make a very tasty sampling (here are my comments from an earlier Ozu survey).

HBO continues to produce documentaries of interest.  The Janes (MC-83) were a feminist collective in Chicago, emerging from the civil rights and anti-war movements of the Sixties, who found their political and humanitarian purpose in providing illegal abortions in the pre-Roe v. Wade era.  This historical account by Emma Pildes and Tia Lessin is regrettably timely, in showing just what overturning that Supreme Court precedent may mean today.  An effective if workaday balance of period photos and footage combines with more recent interviews with the women involved, to make this film generational time-travel that hit very close to home for me.
 
Though too long at four hours in two parts, I’m not sure what I would leave out of George Carlin’s American Dream (MC-85), Judd Apatow’s follow-up to his similarly in-depth examination of Gary Shandling.  Carlin’s 40-year career certainly describes an arc of American humor and American history, and it’s more than amusing to take that journey with him, in an exploration of just what stand-up comedy can accomplish.
 
Shifting gears, HBO presented Sundance documentary award winner Navalny (MC-82), which was a worthwhile introduction to a significant geopolitical figure, as Putin’s foremost domestic opponent.  Daniel Roher’s film definitely conveys a sense of Alexei Navalny’s personality, but for me faltered in the end by going for a thriller vibe in the all-access, you-are-there, real-time account of his return to Russia, after proving who tried to poison him and implicating Putin himself.  That discovery anchors a remarkable sequence, but in the end we know he’s going to be arrested the minute he gets off the plane, so all that build-up could have been spent painting a fuller portrait of the man and his movement.
 
Unlike your Bridgertons or Sanditons, Gentleman Jack (MC-80) is an English heritage piece that is more interested in history than contemporary fashion, though its tale of lesbian romance in the early Victorian era seems very of the moment.  Show creator Sally Wainwright grew up close to the antique Yorkshire mansion Shibden Hall, which is the primary location of the series, and she’s been obsessed for decades with the voluminous diaries of gentlewoman Anne Lister, since they were decoded and published.  That level of detail and attention infuses the production, and Suranne Jones embodies the energies and passions of the formidably accomplished Miss Lister, a force of nature, bold not just sexually but entrepreneurially, a model industrialist, investing in canals and railroads, coal mining and casinos.  Sophie Rundle makes a good match as Miss Walker, wife avant la lettre, and the rest of the cast is sterling.  Beyond the entrancing production values of the series lie provocative storytelling and profound characterization.  Subsequent seasons have yet to be greenlit, but the second season finale works just as well for the series.   We can only hope that Wainwright gets to continue her historical affair with this “Yorkshire lady of renown,” though in the meantime she’ll be re-teaming with Sarah Lancashire (of Julia) for a third season of Happy Valley, which was certainly what I found the landscape of the Yorkshire Dales to be on a recent visit.
 

I’m a shade less enthusiastic about the second season of Hacks (MC-88), but the pairing of Emmy-winner Jean Smart as the aging Las Vegas star comedian, and Hannah Einbinder as her millennial writing assistant, continues to work well.  This season they’re trying to put her career (and their relationship) back together, hitting the road in a fancy tour bus, trying out new material in random venues.  Other characters weave in and out, with generally amusing tangents, while the frenemies keep bumping up against their generational differences, even as each has a passion for their common work.  Quite enjoyable, but I’m not longing to see more.
 
Of new limited series on HBO, We Own This City (MC-83) serves as a worthy postscript to The Wire, as David Simon and many of that superlative show’s writers and actors return to Baltimore and the underbelly of its poe-lease and politics.  This six-parter is a docudrama about an actual case of police corruption, as the investigation unfolds in pinball fashion with time leaps and flashbacks, frankly not so easy to follow unless you’ve read the nonfiction book on which the series is based.  The attendant temporal whiplash is this series’ biggest problem, though the viewer has to piece the story together just as the investigators do.  Still, the details accumulate and paint a fatal picture of the human costs of the war on drugs, and the police behavior it unleashes.  A solid cast led by live-wire Jon Bernthal is directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard), with a cameo by Treat Williams enunciating the primary theme of show, in a nice nod to Prince of the City, a memorable film that indicates how little reform has come to policing over the past forty years.  As a footnote to the postscript, also on HBO, Wire alum Sonja Sohn capably directs Slow Hustle, a documentary on the fate of one of the main characters in We Own This City, good in its own right but excellent as a companion piece.
 
But there’s one new film on HBO to mention.  First Reformed was announced as Paul Schrader’s final film, but here we have The Card Counter (MC-77).  Maybe he should have quit while he was ahead, though I suspect Scorsese put him up to this Taxi Driver/Color of Money/Zero Dark Thirty mash-up.  Though Schrader’s always been a film maker that I’ve taken seriously, this movie seems like a rehash of some of his obsessive themes and tropes, most dubiously the conclusion with some kind of redemptive violence for the troubled protagonist.  His spoiled Calvinism does not appeal to me, but much in this film is well done, topped by the riveting lead performance of Oscar Isaac.  And I credit the film for introducing me to the piquant Tiffany Haddish, whom I had not encountered before.  But I debit it for trying to be too many different things at once, and losing me after I was drawn in.

 
I’ll end this post by taking note of two offerings from Hulu, just as I am readying to rotate that streaming channel out of subscription and plugging back into Netflix.  For me, The Worst Person in the World (MC-90) did not live up to its Metacritic rating, Cannes acclaim, Oscar nominations, or even my own reaction to the previous two films in Joachim Trier’s “Oslo Trilogy.”  I seem to have a blind spot for the appeal of actress Renate Reinsve, somewhat as I used to for Greta Gerwig (though all is forgiven after her direction of Lady Bird and Little Women), as they played winsome but directionless young women approaching thirty (a genre revitalized by Fleabag and its successors).  So this is likewise a dark rom-com, and I appreciated the lived-truth of many scenes, but could not bring myself to care how the main character would wind up, or even whether she was in fact the title character.  Her fate was as indifferent to me as her bookstore job was to her – pretext without text, though with some texture.  Not painful to watch at all, but short of heightened expectations.
 
You don’t have to be in love with Emma Thompson to enjoy Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (MC-78), but it certainly doesn’t hurt.  She is joined by, and matched to, Daryl McCormack in this hotel-room two-hander, though a different part of the anatomy might be more descriptive.  She’s a fifty-something widow, a former religion teacher, who wants to discover what she’s been missing in her whole sex life.  He’s a twenty-something Irishman, though gorgeously biracial, who’s almost as much a therapist as a sex worker, confident but not without his own sore points.  Through a series of encounters, they explore each others’ vulnerabilities and gratifications.  It’s all about the two performers, but the writing by Katy Brand and direction by Sophie Hyde brings out the best in them, in this poignant and funny exploration of getting naked and achieving satisfaction.
 
One further postscript, from another streaming channel I’m signing off for now.  I thought a Sundance audience award winner on AppleTV+ might replicate the appeal of CODA, but Cha Cha Real Smooth (MC-69) had more in common with something like Garden State, an egomaniacal attempt to be ingratiating. Cooper Raiff writes, directs, and stars in this presumably autobiographical story of a recent college graduate working in a parody of a fast food place, who finds a more congenial job as a “party starter” at Bar/Bat Mitzvahs and other middle school celebrations.  He’s attracted to the mother of one autistic girl who shows up to many of the parties.  No mystery there, since she’s played by Dakota Johnson.  The first film I ever saw her in was The Lost Daughter, but now I discover that she was the star of the Fifty Shades of Gray movies, and many others I would never watch or even hear of.  So her mannerisms were fresh to me, and I was won over to her performance, while Raiff himself remained too sweet for my taste, too cute for my belief.