Wherein I check in with new
offerings on a variety of sub-channels available on Prime Video through Amazon 99¢
per month specials.
Paul Feig earned permanent
credit with me for Freaks & Geeks, so even in genres that do not
generally appeal to me, I’m willing to give him a chance, such as the 2018 comedy-mystery
A Simple Favor (MC-67, AMZ). Anna Kendrick is a widow who vlogs for
stay-at-home moms; at school pick-up, she meets Blake Lively, the glamorous,
successful mother of her son’s best friend.
As is customary, opposites attract, but with hidden agendas (and sins)
on each side. Their
relationship is funny and layered, before taking a dark turn and winding up in
a rapid-fire flurry of twists that left this viewer behind. But I appreciated cameos from Jean Smart and F&G
discovery Linda Cardellini, each about to embark on their own comedic series
about female frenemies (i.e. Hacks and Dead to Me)
.
I quite enjoyed a sampling of
Makari: Sicilian Mysteries (IMDB, MHZ) for its mix of mystery, comedy, romance, and
travelogue, but reading that it’s but a pale imitation of the long-running
series Inspector Montalbano (IMDB, MHZ), I took a look at that as well, when struck
by the urge to travel vicariously to the island of my forefathers. Montalbano is based on a series of
popular mystery novels, and altogether too talky, with Makari having
better characters, more amusing stories, and superior cinematography with HD
and drone footage. There are 35
feature-length episodes of Montalbano over 15 seasons, followed by Makari’s
11 over three seasons so far. I’ll stick
with the newer series when I want a dose of Mediterranean light and the company
of my paesanos.
Exterior Night (IMDB, MHZ) is a 6-hour Italian miniseries about the kidnapping
and murder of Aldo Moro, former prime minister of Italy and head of the ruling Christian
Democratic party, by the Red Brigades in 1978, an event likened to the JFK
assassination in this country. I was
amazed to see that this series was directed by Marco Bellocchio, whom I remember
for Fists in the Pocket and China is Near from the mid-Sixties,
when he was the hot new director of Italian cinema (to be followed by Bernardo
Bertolucci, who achieved more prominence but faded much earlier). Well-acted across the board, each episode
focuses on a different character: Moro himself, the friend who is the minister
responsible for freeing him, the pope who is also his friend, the terrorists
who abducted him, his wife and children, and finally the tragic ending. Bellochio directs with award-winning clarity
and impact, and the series earned its spot on the NYT list of
the best TV so far this year.
On that list I agree with the
choices of Asura and Couples Therapy, and also with Mr.
Loverman (MC-79,
Britbox). Lennie James is terrific as
the dapper Antiguan granddad living in London; he’s a closeted gay man
contemplating leaving his wife of fifty years (Sharon D Clarke) to live with
his male friendand secret lover (Ariyon Bakare) going back to their teenage years in the Caribbean. The married couple have two
adult daughters of opposing personalities to complicate matters and flesh out
the family. Not a lot happens, except
drinking and talking and fussing at each other, but in eight half-hour episodes
a memorable portrait is painted, and heartfelt questions of wider import are
raised with humor and insight.
Another new BBC series worth
watching is Outrageous (MC-74, Britbox), the unbelievable true story of the six scandalous
Mitford sisters. Created by Sarah
Williams out of a Mary Lovell biography, the series follows a posh English family
through the Thirties, as two of the sisters fall for very prominent Fascists
while another goes to fight with the Communists in Spain, and the others tend
to fall in line with Uncle Winston (Churchill, that is). The series is narrated by the oldest, the comic
society novelist Nancy. Well-acted
across the board, with a satirical eye on British aristocrats and socialites, both
amusing and pointedly topical, the first series only makes it into 1936 so it’s
likely to go on to WWII in future seasons, and I for one would come back for
more.
Over on Acorn, I couldn’t miss
a recent miniseries with Sharon Horgan, Best Interests (MC-85), where she is paired
with Michael Sheen as the parents of a 13-year-old daughter on life-support,
who differ on whether to give her aggressive treatment or palliative care. They are both excellent, as expected, but
Alison Oliver also deserves a shout-out as their older teen daughter. The four-part series is written by the prolific
British screenwriter Jack Thorne, who’s made a name over here with two recent Netflix series Adolescence and Toxic Town (see here), all
dealing with significant medical issues involving children. This one is similarly wrenching, provocative
without taking sides, but dramatizing personal and moral issues in an
even-handed and comprehensible way.
Acorn has some older series (not
exclusively) that I recommend enthusiastically – Doc Martin, The Detectorists,
This Is Going to Hurt – but leans heavily into British mysteries and
procedurals, which I’m not into. The
long-running documentary series Digging for Britain might have more
interest when my son finds another job in British archaeology, but for now I
sampled Art Detectives (MC-72), which I
expected to be a documentary series, but turned out fictionally to emphasize
the “detective” over the “art.” It’s not
bad, but it’s not my sort of thing.
Paramount is so desperate to
sell itself that it’s not only willing to give the Grifter-in-Chief an upfront
bribe of $16 million, but to offer subscriptions at 99¢ per month to increase its
subscriber base. That was the perfect
opening to watch the handful of programs I’d accumulated to watch there.
My immediate recourse was to
one of my all-time favorite shows, Couples Therapy (MC-tbd, P+), now
having completed the second half of its fourth season, with no diminishment in
my appreciation. I’m not generally a fan
of Showtime series or “reality tv” in general, but this program transcends both
categories. I refer you back to my original and
later
reviews for more detail. Here just let
me say this recommendation comes with jumping up and down and waving my hands –
look here! watch this! You’ll laugh, you’ll wince, you’ll nod your head and
ponder!
The next essential new viewing
on P+ was Hard Truths (MC-88). Mike Leigh likes to make films about
deplorables, various sorts of unlikeable and damaged people, aiming to elicit
understanding rather than sympathy. Marianne
Jean-Baptiste (from Secrets & Lies) adds another memorable character portrait to his sardonic gallery. She’s a cyclone
of anxiety and rage, as likely to take it out on people in the grocery store as
her husband and layabout grown son. A
hairdresser sister is her polar opposite, friendly and outgoing, as are her two
daughters. Our Pansy is irascible, vituperative,
and misanthropic – the flip-side of Poppy in Happy-Go-Lucky – but funny
enough that labeling this film a comedy is not entirely risible. The hard truths of mental anguish for some
people is compounded in the lives that surround them.
Juliette Binoche as Penelope was
enough to draw me to The Return (MC-66), but
Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus, returning to Ithaca after the Trojan War, certainly
adds value to this retelling of the classic tale. The pair team up three decades after The
English Patient and continue to burn up the screen. This remake of the conclusion of the Homeric
tale starts with Odysseus washing up naked on the shores of his island kingdom,
where belligerent suitors vie for the hand of his supposedly-widowed wife. Suffering prehistoric PTSD and survivor guilt,
he hides his identity until he can avenge himself and reclaim wife, son, and
realm. In addition to the two lead
performances, this film has a feel for period and landscape that makes yet
another retelling worth a look.
For some time I’d been
looking to watch The Godfather films again and couldn’t find them
on streaming till they reappeared on P+, looking very good indeed. I was thinking about my father’s firm resolve
never to see the original, and what it would have been like to sit down and
watch with him at some later date (he died before Part II was even released). Even with shot-by-shot memories of the films,
they still have the power to surprise and enchant, certainly a feather in
Paramount’s cap. And what Coppola now
calls The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone was
substantially new to me, and a not-bad conclusion to the saga. So I got my money’s worth from P+, if not the
massive payoff that Il Dunce exacted. [Update: The CBS cancellation of Stephen Colbert
– at the unspoken behest of Trump – makes this the last time I’ll ever have
anything positive to say about Paramount programming.]
Speaking of the dirty bastard,
let’s say a good word for PBS as he eviscerates it. They had their comeback ready for him, in the
well-made “American Masters” episode Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny (PBS), which
follows her career through an early affair with Heidegger, her flight from the
Nazis, and her writings from The Origins of Totalitarianism to Eichmann
in Jerusalem, with many lessons for our present moment.
Free for All: The
Public Library (IMDB, PBS)
appeared on “Independent Lens” and far exceeded my expectations, a history of American
public libraries that captured the noble spirit of the enterprise through its
changing history. As a lifelong
librarian/bookseller (my career started at 16, as a page in my local public
library), I found it immensely informative and inspiring.
Union (MC-80, PBS) appeared on “POV,” the third of public television’s
outstanding documentary series that will be sorely missed if they don’t find
another home or another means of funding.
Union organizing is literally in my blood, from my father’s life-long
struggle, so I was absorbed by this effort to unionize an Amazon facility on
Staten Island, a first and formidable task led by a self-described NWA. The organizers deal not just with their
monolithic opponent, but their own differences and debates about strategy and conflict. The film itself is loosely organized and
observational, but powerful nonetheless.
[Late update] PBS has a lot of foreign mystery series that
I just ignore, but a tip from a friend who had read my recent essay on autism
recommended Astrid (properly Astrid et Raphaëlle, IMDB). I sampled the show as a courtesy, and was
soon hooked, since the characterizations far exceeded each episode’s mystery,
which tended to have an interesting setting and motive in addition to the
essential puzzle. Astrid (Sara Mortensen)
is an autistic criminal records archivist who’s enlisted by disorganized
detective Raphaëlle (Lola Delawaere) to help solve puzzling Parisian murders. The mutually incomprehensible personalities
come to comprehend each other quite touchingly, and the excellent acting is
supplemented in flashbacks by a child actress who is a dead ringer for the
older Astrid. When starting, I found it
unlikely that I would make it through one season of eight episodes, but now I
think I may wind up watching all four.
I would have liked Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (MC-84) more if I’d seen it in IMAX for the full effect, but it never would have been my sort of cinema. Impressive in parts, the movie did not hang together for me. Like Get Out, it was an engaging film that lost me when it went in the direction of the horror genre. Outside of Buffy’s comedic slayings, I never had a thing for vampires. On the other hand, I’ve liked Michael B. Jordan ever since The Wire and Friday Night Lights, but here I never really figured out which of the identical twins Smoke and Stack he was playing at any given time. They’re vets of WWI and Al Capone’s gang in Chicago who return to Mississippi in 1932 to open a juke joint. The rest of the cast is quite good, the design and execution admirable, and the scenes of singing and dancing, from blues music to Irish jigs, are inspired and layered, but incidents of blood geysering or dripping down chins do not inspire me at all.
Hard to figure how something like On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (MC-87) wound up on Max. Writer-director Rungano Nyoni was born in Zambia but grew up in Wales, and like her protagonist Shula (an arresting Susan Chardy) returns to her native roots. Driving home late from a costume party, she sees a body lying in the road and recognizes her abusive uncle. She’s impassive about the corpse, but a drunken cousin who also passes by is quite exhilarated. It eventually emerges that both of them, another cousin, and several other young girls have been abused by the malefactor, but his behavior was hushed up to preserve the family veneer of respectability, in a conspiracy of ignoring and forgetting that is both matrilineal and patriarchal, in the same way the culture is both modern and traditional, the film realistic and hallucinatory. We come to understand that the guinea fowl is the bird that warns other animals of danger in their midst.
Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print (MC-tbd) is in the proud tradition of HBO Documentaries, as three different directors approach the same material about the creation of Ms. magazine, and some of the same interviews with founders like Gloria Steinem, from the perspective of three different themes, delineating issues of the women’s movement from the Seventies till now, in a way that helps illuminate the past and the present.
In Marc Maron: Panicked
(MC-84),
Maron continues to make stand-up comedy out of his sardonic and anxious
personality, and the “intrusive catastrophic thinking” that his therapist
diagnoses. He’s certainly an interesting
character with many interesting observations, but I still prefer his acting roles
to his solo performances.
After scrounging around on these
secondary streaming channels, I’ll be returning to bedrock and catching up with
new and old offerings on the Criterion Channel.
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