I was eager to get back on
Hulu primarily to finish the second season of Welcome to Wrexham (MC-77). I liked the first season more than I
expected, but I absolutely loved the second season, which puts the very good Ted
Lasso to shame as an American introduction to British football. Heretofore my appreciation of the sport was
mainly predicated on Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, but now Wrexham is
my touchstone for the appeal of the game and my fellow feeling for its
fans. Wrexham’s sports history reminded
me of Cleveland’s, a down-on-its-luck working-class industrial town with a
fabled litany of disappointment for its supporters. And this multi-dimensional documentary series
is so much more than an advertisement for the two American stars, Ryan Reynolds
and Rob McElhenny, who purchased the woebegone football club of this Welsh
mining town with the mines long gone, and football glory long past. While matching the incongruous over-the-pond
humor of Lasso, this series, exciting enough as a sports saga, delves
into many aspects of Wrexham’s history and culture, from Britain’s worst mining
disaster to its superlative women’s team, as well as the home lives of many
players. The un-English length of this
show, 33 episodes over the two seasons, may seem like more than you want to
know about a minor league soccer team, but if you are anything like me, you
will become engrossed and enchanted by the fate of Wrexham, its football club
and fans, and look forward to sequels (Season three starting on 4/19).
Mention
of personal favorite Nick Hornby leads me on a tangent, to a six-episode British
tv series based on one of his novels, Funny Woman (MC-70, PBS), which stars Gemma Arterton as a Blackpool
beauty queen who leaves for Swinging Sixties London, in hopes of becoming the
UK’s answer to Lucille Ball. Despite
social and gender discrimination, she succeeds in getting her own tv show, and
setting straight all the men who surround her.
Arterton is excellent, the supporting cast good, the sense of period and
place strong, and appropriately for a Hornby story, the music selections are
spot-on. I won’t say that it's a great
show, but it tickled me. With this and Lessons
in Chemistry and Julia (unfortunately not renewed for a third
season), we’ve lately had a lot of looks behind the scenes at Fifties tv
production.
Back
to FX series on Hulu (most of the TV worth watching on the channel, aside from Abbott
Elementary and a nice array of oldies-but-goodies), Fargo (MC-84) has been hit or miss with me, with season two the
standout (Kirsten Dunst!), but the presence of Juno Temple, John Hamm, and
Jennifer Jason Leigh drew me back to sample some of season five (Wiki for summary and full
cast). I watched on sufferance through six
episodes, with the humor barely outpacing the violence and brutality, but in
the seventh a new level of imagination and seriousness began to emerge, and by
the final tenth the braiding of themes, including domestic abuse, predatory
lending, and right-wing militia violence, made for a fully satisfying show,
highlighted by excellent acting and visual style all round.
On
the other hand, the second season of Feud (MC-76), Capote vs. The Swans, dropped off
considerably from the first, Bette vs. Joan – I didn’t make it past the
third episode, when it became clear that the show had little to offer beyond
swanky gossip. Tom Hollander comes in
third place, behind Toby Jones and Philip Seymour Hoffman in his portrayal of
Capote, at an admittedly more obnoxious period of his life, when he betrayed
the confidences of the stylish society matrons who were his best friends,
played here by Naomi Watts, Diane Lane, Chloe Sevigny and other familiar faces. Despite their presence, the result was, to
me, decidedly un-fabulous.
Genius (MC-62) is another middling series -- I didn’t watch the
seasons on Einstein and Picasso, but I did check out Cynthia Erivo as Aretha,
and gave a chance to the latest, MLK/X.
With Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Martin Luther King and Aaron Pierre as
Malcolm X, it took an episode or two for me to get over their physical
differences, but I was eventually won over by their performances, and I’m
always happy to revisit the lives of two key figures of my formative years. And I especially appreciated the parallel treatment
of Coretta Scott King (Werucha Opia) and Betty Shabazz (Jayme Lawson). I was also drawn in by the involvement of exec
producers Gina Prince-Bythewood and Reggie Bythewood, whose work has always
impressed me. The show isn’t especially
ground-breaking or profound, but for me it was a worthy reminder of two pivotal
lives. So I decided to make the series
my regular accompaniment to stationary biking for a week or two. But I’d certainly recommend Selma and Malcolm
X (or even Rustin and One Night in Miami) over this series.
Though you’d never know it from their interface, buried on Hulu there are quite a lot of new and excellent films unavailable elsewhere, including foreign films and documentaries. Most recently, Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers (MC-90), which seems to be a dream within a dream, or maybe it’s a ghost story, in a screenwriter’s emblematic chamber piece. I don’t hold any of that against the film, and in the event, I was happy (and sad, and otherwise moved) to go along for the ride, all about loneliness, love, and reconciliation, in a manner that feels extremely personal. Andrew Scott is superlative in the lead role, as a writer whose isolation is broken into by a handsome stranger, in a correspondingly feeling performance by Paul Mescal. The Scott character lost his parents in a car accident when he was twelve, but recovers them through memory or magic (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, touchingly younger than Scott), in order to say what he never told them back then, most importantly that he was gay. The acting carries the film (and carries the viewer over any obscurity or implausibility) but the cinematography and music also provide marvelously evocative moments. Haigh (45 Years, Lean on Pete) has proved himself to be an elusive but naturally compelling filmmaker.
I stuck around on Hulu well
into March to catch two Best Picture nominees.
I didn’t expect to like Poor Things (MC-87), since I’m no fan of
director Yorgos Lanthimos. The movie is
certainly too much in several ways (length, camera tricks, over-the-top design,
impulse to shock), but I must admit it’s not bad, with a comically crazed sort
of intensity and integrity as a Frankenstein-like construct. Set in a steampunk-style Victorian world, it
tells of a mad(?) scientist (Willem Dafoe) who transplants the brain of an
infant into the body of a female suicide (Emma Stone). As her brain and reflexes rapidly catch up to
her body, she becomes engaged to the medical student (Ramy Youseff) who is
monitoring her progress, but then runs off with a cad (Mark Ruffalo) who
introduces her to sex (and lots of it). Along the way she develops a social conscience,
feminist principles, and career goals.
Back in 2011, I prophesied that “One of these days Emma Stone will be in
a decent movie, and she will be amazing.” By now, she has won two Best Actress Oscars
(and two supporting noms) – one of which was indeed for a good film – but I
won’t argue that she didn’t deserve this recent statuette (though I was rooting
for Lily Gladstone).
Having recently been
unimpressed by two Justine Triet films and not overly enamored of courtroom dramas,
I wasn’t expecting too much from Anatomy of a Fall (MC-86),
despite a Palme d’Or and five Oscar nominations. But the film far exceeded my expectations,
gripping throughout and anchored by a superlative performance from Sandra Hűller,
as a writer suspected in the death of her husband. Though focused on a trial, the film is really
an anatomy (or autopsy) of a marriage. And also a disquisition on the relation of
truth to fiction. The wife is German, the husband French, so they speak
English in a futile effort at communication.
Did he jump or was he pushed? And
who will ever know? What about the blind
son who is the most important witness? The
proceedings in a French courtroom, so different from American or British, provide
further interest. The writer-director refused
to tell Hűller herself whether her character was guilty or innocent, which adds
another layer of fruitful ambiguity and mystery to her portrayal.
Blue Jean (MC-87) is a real find, with the debut of writer-director
Georgia Oakley and a breakout performance by Rosy McEwen as the title
character. Jean’s a secondary school PE
teacher in Thatcherite England, hiding a private life as part of a lesbian
collective while the vile PM promotes homophobic legislation. The blue starts with her eyes, establishes
the palette of the film, and describes her disposition. McEwen is mesmerizingly
beautiful while convincingly deep and dark, and the film charts a turn in LGBTQ+
acceptance from one generation to the next, the teacher remaining closeted in a
way that undermines her closest relationships, while one of her students is
much more open in her orientation. This
film seems to emerge from lived experience rather than dramatic or polemic
construction, content to leave its questions open-ended.
In
a similar vein, Monica (MC-75) is an intimate and sympathetic look at a trans woman
alluringly played by Trace Lysette, who transfixes the camera in Andrea
Pallaoro’s film. The title character
returns from SoCal to the midwestern home from which she was banished as a
teenager, in order to help care for her dying mother (the reliable Patricia
Clarkson), who does not recognize or acknowledge her former son. The brother with whom she was close when they
were boys together is slow to reconnect as well, but his wife and children are
welcoming to Monica, accepting her as who she is rather than who he was. The film was shot in an arty and askew manner
that I don’t always endorse (e.g. Aftersun), but was totally won over by
here, pulling the viewer inside the scene, sometimes shadowed and obscure,
sometimes clear and close. Not a lot is
said, but every image seems to have meaning, and conveys a subtle message of
acceptance and family connection.
BlackBerry (MC-78) plays successfully as
a mash-up of Silicon Valley and The Social Network, telling of
the meteoric rise and fall of the Canadian company that dominated the
smartphone sector before the advent of the iPhone. I never owned one of
the infernal machines, but I certainly enjoyed the movie. Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton are
convincing and comic in equal measure as nerd genius and corporate shark
co-CEOs. But the film belongs to Matt
Johnson as the manic geek who turns out to be the soul of the company, and as
director and co-writer. The proceedings
move swiftly from highlight to highlight without troubling too much to fill in
the gaps in the story. (For example, whooshing
through how the device got its name, originally the PocketLink.) We’ve heard it
all before anyway, tech bros falling for the Faustian bargain, getting rich and
then blowing it, either morally or financially. But this iteration makes for funny and
illuminating viewing.
While
back on Hulu, I could complete my survey of Virginie Efira films with Benedetta (MC-75), in which the pervy 83-year-old Paul Verhoeven purveys
another piece of sleaze and cheese. It’s
redeemed by a surprisingly accurate recounting of an Italian nun in early 1600s
Italy, who parlayed stigmata and mystical Bride of Christ visions into becoming
abbess of her convent by 30 and a political force, especially as the plague
encroached on her town. When a papal
nuncio came for an investigation, a contemporary court report provided a window
into the time. But Verhoeven peeps
through for the testimony on lesbian nuns, which he is happy to portray in
lascivious softcore detail, along with other provocations, as a master of trash
with flash. But who am I to complain
about Ms. Efira playing her scenes in the altogether?
I
never saw an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond but was a fan of Men
of a Certain Age, so I was inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to Ray
Romano’s debut as a feature film director, Somewhere in Queens (MC-61),
despite the substandard Metacritic rating. The milieu of an outer-borough
Italian-American family, a story line about a high school basketball player’s
hopes for a college scholarship, and the presence of Laurie Metcalf as the
boy’s mother were enough to tip me into watching. Those ingredients, and the rest of the
acting, made for a pleasant if lightweight entertainment, with hints of deeper
character development, as Romano’s schlemiel (what’s the counterpart in Italian?)
of a father, trying to live through his son’s athletic prowess, flirts with the
dark side on several fronts. The film
pulls its punches for a more platitudinous resolution, but I didn’t mind the
company of this familiar family for an hour and a half.
Though you’d never know it from their interface, buried on Hulu there are quite a lot of new and excellent films unavailable elsewhere, including foreign films and documentaries. Most recently, Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers (MC-90), which seems to be a dream within a dream, or maybe it’s a ghost story, in a screenwriter’s emblematic chamber piece. I don’t hold any of that against the film, and in the event, I was happy (and sad, and otherwise moved) to go along for the ride, all about loneliness, love, and reconciliation, in a manner that feels extremely personal. Andrew Scott is superlative in the lead role, as a writer whose isolation is broken into by a handsome stranger, in a correspondingly feeling performance by Paul Mescal. The Scott character lost his parents in a car accident when he was twelve, but recovers them through memory or magic (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, touchingly younger than Scott), in order to say what he never told them back then, most importantly that he was gay. The acting carries the film (and carries the viewer over any obscurity or implausibility) but the cinematography and music also provide marvelously evocative moments. Haigh (45 Years, Lean on Pete) has proved himself to be an elusive but naturally compelling filmmaker.
