Netflix redux

After a month off, there was plenty to bring me back to Netflix for another couple of months at year’s end, starting with the sixth and final season of The Crown (MC-78).  While the series has lost some of the surprise and depth that had me considering a place among my all-time favorites, it remains a solidly satisfying show.  But where it once vied with Succession as an incisive and informative excursion into the realms of insane privilege, it’s gone a bit soft, less scathing satire than domestic melodrama, more tabloid recapitulation than historical perspective.  On the other hand, the production values are still jaw-dropping, and the acting excellent across the board, led by the three Elizabeths – Claire Foy, Olivia Colman, and Imelda Staunton – who get to share one scene at the end.  In this last season, they are joined by Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana, who manages to make me interested in her story, in a way I assuredly was not at the time.  But that, and the subsequent story of Prince William and Kate, and the relative lack of interest in the audiences between the Queen and PM Blair, drain away some of the more trenchant historical perspective (and wit) of earlier seasons.  Nonetheless, as the focus returns to Elizabeth at last, in the magnificent portrayal by Imelda Staunton, the series concludes on a somber high note.
 
With Rustin (MC-68), the Obamas remain quality producers of Netflix programs, with a film designed to recover the accomplishments of Bayard Rustin as a key figure in the civil rights movement, principally as the main organizer of the pivotal 1963 March on Washington.  As a “commie fag” he was pushed to the background of that event, and its subsequent history.  In fact, he was a Quaker, union man, and indefatigable community organizer, recognized by another when Barack bestowed a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom on him, before offering this memorial. Colman Domingo is outstanding in the title role, with Jeffrey Wright, Chris Rock, and several alumni of The Wire playing other movement leaders.  Director George C. Wolfe follows Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom with another fine effort.  Perhaps a few rough edges are smoothed over, and the treatment of MLK’s iconic speech a little hokey, but this is a worthy portrait of an admirable human being.  Complementarily, I also recommend the documentary Brother Outsider: The Live of Bayard Rustin (2003, Kanopy).
 
I wonder what drew the Obamas to Leave the World Behind (MC-68), which hardly seems worthy of the Higher Ground brand.  Barack must have liked the novel it was based on.  They attracted a quality cast, to be sure, with Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, and Mahershala Ali.  And writer-director Sam Esmail earned some credit for Mr. Robot.  The film surely has its moments, but the whole is scattershot, overlong, and unresolved.  Roberts channels her inner Karen, and Hawke is a soulful weakling; they and their two teens rent a super-deluxe Airbnb on Long Island, amidst some unknown disruption of all electronic communications.  The owner of the house (Ali) arrives unexpectedly with his daughter (a surprisingly good Myha’la), and the dimensions of the disaster ramify, with oil tankers and airliners crashing onto the beach.  In this isolated setting, without communication, they all struggle to figure out what is going on, and the two families interact uneasily.  Is this the end of the world, and who is behind it all?  Don’t expect to get the answer, just various thrills and chills, with a bit of sardonic humor for seasoning.
 
May December (MC-85) is a film I can’t pretend to have understood, after reading reviews that talked about its comic or satiric aspects, which did not really register on me at all.  Todd Haynes’ film is enigmatic and compelling, but I never found the key to its tone and meaning.  Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman deliver strong performances that are equally destabilizing.  Moore is the matriarch of a well-to-do Savannah family, who has invited Portman, an actress preparing to play her in a film, to visit and research the role of the 36-year-old woman who had an affair with a 13-year-old boy, and became tabloid fodder when she had his child in prison.  Now the pair are long-married, with twins graduating from high school, as is a grandson from her previous marriage.  But nothing is quite as it seems, for any of the characters.  I got the Persona-like aspect of shifting identities between the two women, and watched with interest, even when I didn’t really get the whole story.  The film itself has a shifting identity, and my response was equally shifty, but I’m not inclined to watch again to figure it all out.
 
With Maestro (MC-77) Bradley Cooper makes a very good film that might have bitten off more than it can chew, trying to span thirty years and more in the life of a many-faceted character.  Cooper writes, directs, and stars as Leonard Bernstein in this lively and scrupulous biopic.  Carey Mulligan almost steals the show as Bernstein’s wife Felicia.  Scene by scene, the settings and characters are strongly evoked, by both the main and supporting players, but I was left with some uncertainty what it all added up to.  After a retrospective intro, the film races headlong through Lenny’s life from his conducting debut at 25 through the many manifestations of his brilliant career, while tracing the vicissitudes of his life with Felicia and their three children, balanced by his numerous affairs with men.  Cooper effectively channels Bernstein’s passionate creative energy, while Mulligan beautifully captures Felicia’s soulfulness, and the location scenes at Tanglewood give the film a nice local flavor.
 
It Ain’t Over (MC-79) is a remarkable sports documentary, in that it could win my admiration for a New York Yankee.  As I was growing up, the Yanks would outdistance my hometown Indians every year, except 1954 when Cleveland won 111 games only to be swept by the New York Giants in the World Series.  Through all those years the hated Yanks were backstopped by a stubby, goofy-looking fireplug named Lawrence Berra, but universally known as Yogi, winner of 3 MVPs and 10 WS rings, which he later added to as manager.  This film is a family affair, produced by his granddaughter and featuring sons and nieces, as well as home movies of the beloved grandparents, married 65 years.  Sean Mullin directs, but the driving force of the progeny’s project is to refurbish the rather clownish image Yogi retains in popular culture, not only to reinforce (convincingly) the prowess and acumen of his baseball career but moreover his wisdom, humor, and love as paterfamilias.  This doc made me respond to Berra as a real paesano, roughly my father’s age and likewise the son of an immigrant bricklayer, growing up on Dago Hill in the Midwest and humbly transcending to stardom.
 
Radical Wolfe (MC-65) is a well-put-together survey of the life and work of Tom Wolfe, based on a profile by Michael Lewis, who is one of several talking heads who offer commentary, but do not overshadow Wolfe himself, in decades of television talk show appearances.  There’s a rich visual archive to keep the story moving.  I was a big fan of Wolfe from the origins of so-called New Journalism through Bonfire of the Vanities, but thereafter his Southern reactionary manners became more apparent, and he feuded with my man Updike, so my interest cooled.  But much of this documentary was quite evocative for me.
 

Before pausing my Netflix subscription again, I caught one more highly-recommendable show, the second season of Love on the Spectrum (MC-83), following upon the two original seasons from Australia, which altogether rank with my favorite tv of the past several years.  “Reality” dating shows are ubiquitous on the tube, but I was never tempted to watch any until this one, about a cohort with whom I identify.  Many types of autistic personality are represented, and I tend to relate to all of them in one way or another.  The show is respectful, funny, and endearing, and even you neurotypicals will enjoy dating anxieties and triumphs that ring a bell across many spectra.  In this season, I particularly relished that some of the dates took place at sites familiar to me, like the Crane Estate in Ipswich or Lincoln Park Conservatory in Chicago, reinforcing the feeling that these characters are just where I have been.
 
(Several Netflix comedy specials are covered below in the previous post).