Some streaming channels are
offered as premiums, either for an additional charge (or parsimoniously by free
trial) or as a bonus to other subscriptions.
HBO has transitioned into MAX, but I resist that name more than I would
any trans individual’s, so it’s still HBO to me. Meanwhile, Showtime now falls under the
umbrella of Paramount+
[HBO/MAX]
I’ve been slow to comment on
the grand finale of Succession (MC-92),
despite moving it into my all-time Top Ten, my recommendation being
superfluous, since everyone has either seen or heard about such a buzzy show,
and already formed an opinion. I
thoroughly enjoyed this festival of schadenfreude, this mocking revenge
on the 1%, well-made in every respect, from writing and directing to acting,
music, and design. (For a masterful
dissection, see Andrew O’Hagan’s review in the NYRB.) But I want to
single out show creator Jesse Armstrong for particular
homage. He will certainly win his 4th
Emmy for writing this season, but I urge you to go back and watch his first
series, Peep Show with British comedy duo Mitchell
& Webb (plus Olivia Colman!).
The second season of Somebody
Somewhere (MC-93) lived
up to the first, and
then some. This group portrait of a
circle of offbeat characters in a Kansas town is never too gross or too sweet,
homegrown but wild and tart. Get over
fat-shaming or other types of prejudice, and just enjoy this show.
Reality (MC-83) is a novel docudrama
with a timely resonance. When the FBI showed
up at Reality Winner’s door, they had a tape recorder which caught the search
and interrogation in real time, and provided the script for Tina Satter’s film
(adapted from her stage production).
Sydney Sweeney is superb at embodying Reality’s reality. She was an NSA translator who blew the whistle
on Russian interference in the 2016 election by passing a secret memo to the
press, and wound up spending six years in prison for a one-page violation of
the Espionage Act. How many years do you
think the Orange Menace will spend behind bars for all those boxes of
classified documents at Mar-a-Lago?
As stand-up, Marc
Maron: From Bleak to Dark (MC-90) lives
up to its title, focusing on the death of his partner, the film director Lynn
Shelton, extracting some hard-won laughs and wisdom from common woes. I liked Sarah Silverman: Someone You
Love too, but the real comedy gem on HBO is How To with John
Wilson (MC-93), now
in its third and final season of wayward autobiography, in which each episode jumps
off from a How-To question – some common, some esoteric – in whatever direction
Wilson’s offbeat personality and camera eye take him. My brother clued me into Gary Gulman:
The Great Depresh (MC-81,
2019), which I particularly enjoyed because he was so reminiscent of a close
friend of mine.
[Showtime/Paramount+]
The return of Couples
Therapy (IMDb) was enough
to compel a look-in on Showtime, easily the best series I’ve ever seen on that channel
(supplanting Nurse Jackie).
I’ve been pleased to see this show become something of a cultural
phenomenon, highlighted by a New Yorker profile of psychoanalyst Dr. Orna Guralnik. Each season there are four couples, of
interesting ethnic and gender mixes, at whose weekly therapy sessions
we sneak a peek in a mock-up of the analyst’s office, rigged with multiple
hidden cameras. It may not sound all
that thrilling, but each 30-minute episode culls a lot of relationship drama
(and humor) from all those 50-minute hours.
Rarely have I failed to “get”
a movie as much as Aftersun (MC-95), either the film itself or the reactions of critics
I trust. I found most of writer-director
Charlotte Wells’ stylistic flourishes quite irritating, in this story of a
divorced dad and his 11-year-old daughter vacationing at a resort in Turkey Normal People.
As the daughter, first-timer Frankie Corio steals the show, but not
enough to make it hold together in my view.
We get furtive glimpses of the character grown-up, at roughly the age of
the father of her memories. One can put
the shards and pieces of this film together, like half-remembered vignettes of
one’s own childhood, but the willful puzzle is off-putting, as are the askance
angles and obscure, protracted, or pixilated scenes. Perhaps I’d see more on a second viewing,
which I am not inclined to endure.
Two other recent films on
Showtime warranted a look. Red
Rocket (MC-76) is Sean
Baker’s follow-up to Tangerine and The Florida Project. If not quite in the league of those two, it
remains a funny and insightful look at marginal lives. Simon Rex plays an aging porn star, feckless
but egomaniacal, who returns to his hardscrabble Texas town with tail between
his legs, crashes with his ex-wife and her mother, and schemes to hook up with
a jailbait teen at the local donut shop.
The ugly industrial landscape of the Gulf Coast is almost a character in
this incongruously widescreen film.
Similarly in A Love
Song (MC-78), the
landscape is a primary character, in this case a remote campground in Colorado,
where a lonely widow is waiting in her camper for the possible arrival of an
old flame, in a star turn by craggy-faced character actress Dale Dickey,
eventually joined by Wes Studi. Max
Walker-Silverman’s debut feature is quiet and subtle, slow-moving and affecting
in an economical 82 minutes.
[AMC+]
The culminating third season
of Happy
Valley Yorkshire
policewoman, returning after seven years to complete its story. I’m not generally a fan of British (or
American) police procedurals, but this one is more fixed on characterization
than solving crimes. With this next to
her series playing Julia Child, Lancashire begins to seem like an English Meryl
Streep, able to inhabit any character.
James Norton adds complexity to his role as her sociopath
adversary. The plot is twisty, the
suspense constant, the family relations complex, the wit a big plus, as is the
bleakly beautiful location.
While on AMC+, I took the
opportunity to watch Lucky Hank (MC-70), since it starred Bob Odenkirk and was based on a
book I really enjoyed, Richard Russo’s campus comedy Straight Man. Odenkirk is always watchable, this time as the
chair of a college English department, and Mireille Enos is good as his wife, but
the other faculty members tend toward caricature. Some of the banter and situations are funny,
but don’t go very deep. And at eight
45-minute episodes, it’s stretched pretty thin.
As with most films she’s in,
Sally Hawkins is reason enough to see The Lost King (MC-64, AMC+), with
actor/screenwriter Steve Coogan and director Stephen Frears striving to
recapture the magic of Philomena, with another female quest based on a
true story. This one’s about the 2012
discovery and unearthing of the body (and reputation) of Richard III, refuting
Shakespeare’s Tudor propaganda, largely due to the research and persistence of
one determined woman. As a
nonprofessional she confronts academic and political resistance, and then is
sidelined when her hunches prove accurate.
Like Hawkins’ character my daughter has ME, and my son is archaeologist
in the U.K.
[Prime Video]
Amazon Prime is a different
sort of premium channel, in that it comes as a premium for a free shipping
subscription.
First off, I should note that
Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, one of the best films of 2022, is now free
on Prime, my comment is here.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck
team up yet again for Air (MC-73), in a generally entertaining film that may be taken
as a two-hour commercial for Nike. It
can also be taken as a comedy that uses an unholy alliance of sports and
business to provide a stage for a lot of engaging actors. Affleck indulges in self-satire as the head
of Nike, while Damon puts on weight and bland clothes as the scout who goes all
in on NBA draftee Michael Jordan, after obsessively replaying his last-second
shot for the NCAA championship (you know the one, NC vs Georgetown, 1982). Jordan does not really figure in the film
otherwise, as the negotiating focus is on his mother, played by the redoubtable
Viola Davis. I grudgingly respect
Michael and his achievements, but it’s hard for me to get excited about a
basketball shoe that has made billions.
Chinonye Chukwe’s Till (MC-79) is an honorable if somewhat Hollywood-ized retelling
of the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Chicago-native Emmett Till, for whistling at
a white woman while visiting relatives in Mississippi. The film focuses on his mother Mamie, in a
performance by Danielle Deadwyler that lifts the whole production out of
pedestrian good intentions, though it may overstate her role in initiating the
civil rights movement. Certainly her
decision to have his funeral in Chicago with an open casket, to show the manner
in which he was brutalized, provided a galvanizing moment in the movement,
presenting a graphic demonstration of the demonic force of racism, a legacy
confirmed by the 2022 passage of the long-delayed federal Emmett Till
Anti-Lynching Law.
Ticket to Paradise (MC-50) –
George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Kaitlyn Dever, picturesque Australia standing in
for Bali – what’s not to like? Many were
disappointed that this old-fashioned “comedy of remarriage” was not better than
it was, but I enjoyed it more than I expected, perhaps because my expectations
were low. There’s a White Lotus
vibe about the ritzy vacation location, but little of the wit and bite.
The Planet Earth team,
fronted by David Attenborough, explores its native turf in Wild Isles (MC-83) which looks into various nooks and crannies of the
British Isles, finding plenty of beauty and wonder.
Judy Blume Forever (MC-79) is a
charming multidimensional portrait of the author most famous for the
groundbreaking realism of her children’s books, which got them banned back in
the 80s and even today, when they are quite tame by current standards of YA
genres.
I leave it for you to
discover which premium streaming channels are actually worth sampling.
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