Over the course of a
half-year, a lot of good films find their way to Netflix, and this is a report
on the most recent notable arrivals. Notable
at least to someone with my approach to cinema (for which, see here).
Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle
Vague (MC-76) is in
many ways disguised autobiography, or biopic as manifesto. In recreating the production of Jean-Luc
Godard’s Breathless, Linklater celebrates a style of filmmaking –
personal, freeform, direct, spontaneous – that he has practiced himself for
decades. The acting across the board has
great verisimilitude, with many of the key figures of the French New Wave
getting look-alike walk-ons. It
certainly helps to recognize all the names as they are introduced with
captioned portraits, but even without that, the excitement of a transformational
cultural movement and moment shows through.
These guys (and a few gals like Agnes Varda) knew they were changing the
history of cinema and enjoying themselves doing so. I’ve always been a Truffaut partisan and
found Godard arrogant, self-important, and morally suspect, and this film does
nothing to change that, while granting his revolutionary impact. So I gave Breathless another look,
liked it better after Linklater’s retelling, but would still rank Godard well
behind Truffaut, Rohmer, Varda, and other New Wavers in my personal estimation.
Some directors take ten years
between films, but Linklater is the type who can either make a film over the
course of a dozen years (Boyhood) or release two new films at the same
time. Blue Moon (MC-78) came to Netflix only after
it garnered Oscar noms for Ethan Hawke as best actor and Robert Kaplow for
original script, which tells the story of Lorenz Hart on the opening night of Oklahoma!
– for which Rodgers had replaced him with Hammerstein as lyricist. Now I’m on record claiming that both Linklater
and Hawke are the very best of their generation in their respective roles, so
it’s no surprise that I liked this movie.
But even I was surprised by how much I liked it, ranking it with
the best work of both, together and apart.
In contrast to the previous film’s style of filmmaking, Blue Moon is
virtually theatrical, precisely scripted in a one-location, near-real-time
experience. Here Rick travels from
Parisian streets in 1960 to a Broadway bar in 1943. Believably playing a balding man five feet
tall is the least of Hawke’s attainments in the role of “Larry” Hart, as he
utters a nonstop spiel of hopes and lies, barbed opinions and witticisms, savoring
each turn of phrase. He’s well supported by Andrew Scott as Richard Rodgers,
Bobby Cannavale as Sardi’s bartender, Patrick Kennedy as fellow drinker E.B.
White, and Margaret Qualley as Hart’s dream girl, in what can only be called a
Broadway hit show. With the proviso that
I haven’t seen Hamnet yet, this may be my favorite film of 2025.
Train Dreams (MC-88) has gone from Sundance
hit to multiple Oscar nominee. This lovely but sad film follows the life of one
man, quietly but movingly played by Joel Edgerton, from his early days as an
itinerant logger in the Pacific Northwest before the Great War, up into old age
in the Sixties, a stretch of time that is both long and short, beautiful and
horrific. The incursions of technology into
the wilderness and the persistence of racial violence are interwoven into the
story. Over that span, two women break
through the taciturn reserve of Edgerton, Felicity Jones as his adoring wife,
and Kerry Condon as a forest ranger who shares his history of isolation and
loss, and provides a bit of wisdom that resonated with me, “the world needs a
hermit in the woods as much as a preacher in the pulpit.” Clint Bentley is happy to acknowledge Terrence
Malick as an influence (Days of Heaven in particular), but has formed a
close working relationship with Greg Kwedar, working together on scripts (here
adapting a Denis Johnson novella), and swapping seats in the director’s chair. Keep an eye out for this pair.
Netflix has another film with
multiple Oscar noms in Frankenstein (MC-78), but
of course Guillermo del Toro is less to my taste, though I did like Pan’s
Labyrinth. This creature feature was
a chore to watch (over several sessions of stationary cycling), but not without
some admirable attributes. Impressive in
all technical aspects, the film is well-served by Jacob Elordi as the Creature,
and gothicized by Oscar Isaac as the title character and Mia Goth as the woman
between them. Del Toro is both respectful
and committed to this story and to the Victorian period he’s placed it in, but
I have a hard time engaging with creature features and scenery chewing. Give me real life every time.
Writer-director Rian Johnson
continues his playful but profound engagement with genre in Wake Up Dead
Man (MC-80), the
third of his “Knives Out” series of throwback mystery features. Poker Face, his comic mystery series
with Natasha Lyonne, also falls into that category. So he knows how to entertain with humor,
suspense, and something more. All-star
casts help. Daniel Craig returns as the
Southern gentleman detective, here paired with the very reliable Josh O’Connor as
a junior priest at an upstate NY church where a murder has occurred. Josh Brolin is the head priest and Glenn Close
is the indispensable church lady, with a handful of familiar parishioners as
suspects. The convoluted mystery is
rather a throw-away (or “macguffin”) and the proceedings drag on twenty minutes
too long, but the atheistic detective and the conflicted young priest have some
provocative discussions about faith and fact, conjecture and belief, doubt and
proof.
Cillian Murphy was only one
of the reasons I felt compelled to watch Steve (MC-65). Since
hitting the big time with Oppenheimer, he’s made two small, serious films
about troubled juveniles “in care,” both with director Tim Mielants and co-star
Emily Watson (Small Things Like These reviewed here). Steve heads a school for delinquent and
disturbed boys housed on a derelict rural estate in 1996 Britain. On one given day, with a tv news crew on
hand, all sorts of shit hits the fan, the aggro emotions matched by frenzied
filmmaking; long, long traveling shots through the chaos mix with video news
interviews and surreal interludes. Needless
exposition and excess complication undermine immediacy, and the film doesn’t
really hold together or add up, but with good acting among the youths and staff
(Tracy Ullman a standout) it didn’t wear out its welcome for me. Our man Cillian keeps those uncanny blue eyes
heavily lidded in this outing, as a closet alcoholic coping with his own trauma
while dealing with one crisis after another.
In Jane Austen Wrecked
My Life (MC-73), the main
character played by Camille Rutherford won me over in the credit sequence, as
she dances around the bookstore where she works – the famous Shakespeare &
Co. in Paris, no less. This first
feature from writer-director Laura Piani enters a crowded corner of the
shrinking rom-com ballroom, but emerges on to the dance floor with charm and
distinction, much enhanced by the piquant portrayal of Ms. Rutherford. She’s angular, androgynous, and acerbically
funny, but blocked in life, love, and writing.
A randy coworker submits a sample of her work and wins her a residency
at the posh home of some Austen descendants, including a Darcy-esque literature
professor who has little use for his ancestor.
Will she wind up with one or the other, or neither? The dialogue is not exactly Rohmer-esque, but
does give the familiar interactions a certain Gallic tang. I’m a confirmed Jane-ite, but more from a
writerly Eng-Lit perspective than a romance angle, so this offshoot suited me
fine. Some might find it too Austen-ish,
others might find it not Austen-ish enough, but like Goldilocks I found it just
right.
I’ve never been a fan of the
adept action director Kathryn Bigelow, not even The Hurt Locker or
Zero Dark Thirty, so I didn’t expect much from the divisive House of
Dynamite (MC-75), but
I found myself more in agreement with the raves than the dismissals. This tale of nuclear apocalypse is more a
workplace drama than an explosive disaster movie. We follow an array of government officials on
their way to a normal workday, which takes an unimaginable turn when a missile
is launched from an unknown place but headed for the American Midwest. The credible look of various secret locations
initially made me think the film must have had the cooperation and even endorsement
of the DoD (oh, excuse me, the DoW), designed for military recruitment. But no, you wouldn’t want any of these jobs,
certainly not those of Idris Elba or Tracy Letts or Rebecca Ferguson (new to me
but veteran of many films that I would never see). The clever script by Noah Oppenheim revisits
the 18-minute duration of the missile’s flight from three different but
interlocking vantage points, getting more propulsive in each iteration. We watch game theory and ultra-technology and
human error drive toward apocalypse, in this pulse-pounding “entertainment”
that kept me pumping away on a stationary bike.
There are few laughs in this Dr. Strangelove, it’s too breathless
for that.
I felt I owed it to Kate
Winslet to watch her first directorial effort Goodbye June (MC-54), a family affair in
which she gathered a sterling cast to film a script written by her son. Helen Mirren is exceptional as the dying
matriarch June; her husband Timothy Spall, her daughters Winslet, Toni
Collette, and Andrea Riseborough, and son Johnny Flynn all live up to their
accomplished past work. Watching an old
lady die over the course of a few weeks, while her family visits in different
groupings, is probably not your idea of entertainment, but watching such a troupe
of performers elevate the material of a young man’s memories of his
grandmother’s passing, as captured by the daughter/mother in-between, has an
authenticity that overcomes any schmaltz or obviousness (such as a nurse named
Angel). The Metacritic rating seems
prejudiciously low.
Jay Kelly (MC-67) looks (and sounds) just like George Clooney, likewise
an aging megastar but more of a hollow shell, just a string of popular movies
and adoring fans, underappreciated assistants and neglected family. But he is George Clooney, so in this
Hollywood self-satire Noah Baumbach goes a lot easier on him than many of the
director’s troubled protagonists. But the
film’s sympathies are with Adam Sandler as the star’s enabling manager, who
neglects his own family in selfless and thankless service to his client and
friend. The New Wave insider vibe is
enhanced by all sorts of film references, and an incredible series of cameos by
the likes of Greta Gerwig (Baumbach’s wife, and a superstar herself by now), Billy
Crudup, Laura Dern, Jim Broadbent, Riley Keough, Emily Mortimer (who also
collaborated on the script), and more. Less
acerbic than usual (and less harsh in satire than, say, The Studio),
Baumbach is the cinemaniac he’s always been, and always of interest to me;
after all, he named his first-born son Rohmer.
Actors, subject, and a NYT
critic’s pick overcame the substandard Metacritic rating for me to watch The
Lesson (MC-62). I didn’t regret that, but wouldn’t turn
around and recommend it, unless you are similarly drawn in. Daryl McCormack is a young writer who gets a
lucky (?) gig as tutor to the son of one of his favorite authors (Richard E.
Grant), on a posh British estate. The
family, including the art dealer mother (Julie Delpy), is under the pall of an
older son’s death. Nothing is quite as
it seems, but the suspense and surprises are nothing special, so you would need
your own hook to make it worth watching.
Perhaps the estate’s Monet-worthy gardens might do it for you.
Since The Bear, I’ve
had a bit of a thing for Molly Gordon, so Oh, Hi! (MC-62) surmounted less than glowing reviews to earn my
attention. Ms. Gordon stars and also
gets story credit with writer-director Sophie Brooks. We join her on a weekend excursion Upstate
with recent boyfriend Logan Lerman. They
seem well-matched in humor and romance, until it comes out that for her it’s a relationship
and for him it’s a situation. The story
then takes a quasi-Misery turn as she tries to keep him captive long
enough for him to realize how desirable she really is. As you can imagine, that is not the best way
to win his heart. Or maybe it is after
all. I’m not telling, but am saying that
I quite enjoyed this rom-com with a thriller twist.
Shih-Ching Tsou has been
working with multiple-Oscar-winning filmmaker Sean Baker for more than twenty
years in various roles, and with Left-Handed Girl (MC-77) takes
the director’s chair solo for the first time (with Baker garnering three other
credits himself), telling a personal story of three (or four) generations of
women. A single mother with two
daughters, one around 20 and one about 5, returns to Taipei after some years
away. She opens a noodle shop in a night
market, and one of the film’s considerable virtues is following the
five-year-old running through the vibrant, almost-kaleidoscopic market. There’s a grandmother, and two aunties as well,
with all kinds of feminine interaction amongst them. Men are mostly beside the point, whether
they’re dealing out damage or decency. Like
Tangerine this was shot on iPhones for extraordinary immediacy, and like
The Florida Project it centers on an amazing performance from a young
girl. As usual with this pair of
collaborators, this is an intimate, sympathetic street-level look at underclass
lives, which finds shards of hope and joy in the rough and tumble of life.
That calls to mind another
Taiwanese-American director, Alice Wu, whose The Half of It (MC-74) missed my last Netflix
round-up. As with her earlier Saving
Face (MC-65), I
enjoyed the rom-com perspective of a young Asian-American lesbian. In a takeoff on Cyrano, a brainy highschooler
writes love letters for a lunky football-playing neighbor to the girl she has a
genuine crush on. Pleasantly personal.
Before I go on hiatus with
Netflix again, I will include several of their programs in a round-up of
documentaries, but sooner I’ll another make another “Stray viewing” post
to cover programs on PBS, Kanopy, MUBI, and HBO Max.
No longer as devoted to
Netflix as I was for two decades or more, it’s been six months since my last round-up, and I have plenty to catch up with.
Buckle up, this is going to be a long two-part post that will remain
open till I pause my subscription again next month, after squeezing all the
latest juice out of Netflix – but still rooting for them to overcome Ellison
and Trump in the acquisition of WarnerDiscovery.
One of the new Netflix shows
I was eager to come back for was Death by Lightning (MC-80). I grew up a few miles from President James
Garfield’s memorial tomb, and followed him from Ohio to Williams College – one
of my favorite bits of historical trivia is that his intended destination when
he was shot in the DC train station was a meeting of Williams alumni in
NYC. My own obsession with American
history runs from 1840 to 1860, so I knew relatively little about the election
of 1880, and how Garfield was drafted for the Republican nomination after
giving a rousing nominating speech for someone else, eventually emerging as a
compromise candidate between deadlocked factions. The convention takes up most of the first of
four episodes and was one of the more convincing depictions of politics on film
that I have ever seen. Acting is
excellent across the board: as Garfield, Michael Shannon gives his most
sympathetic portrayal, Matthew McFadyen plays his deranged assassin Guiteau
(reminiscent of his role in Succession), Nick Offerman plays roistering
VP Chester Arthur, and Betty Gilpin is Mrs. Garfield. Other familiar faces don flamboyant beards
and believably inhabit Gilded Age pols.
Sets and costumes also evince authenticity, which the dialogue sorely
lacks. Sometimes it pushes contemporary
parallels, which is allowable and even welcome, but often it lacks any sense of
period speech, hitting a low point when the demure First Lady screams the
F-word. One thing I do know about the
era is the Oneida Community, and I took umbrage at a flashback that reduced it
to slapstick, as a fuckfest where Guiteau alone couldn’t get laid. But my viewing partner was on Wikipedia
through much of the series, confirming most of the salient details, so the
whole is far from braindead.
Suranne Jones and Julie Delpy
are actresses who have earned my admiration over multiple projects, so their
presence overcame the lackluster reception of Hostage (MC-62) to earn my viewing attention – and managed to
sustain it through five episodes. They
play British PM and French Prez respectively, who approach as adversaries but
act together when an international crisis develops. I have a hard time distinguishing this from
the other British political thrillers (esp. Slow Horses) I’ve been
watching lately, but despite the leads it’s relatively lacking in plausibility
and humor. (Neither lady leader is a
patch on Denmark’s PM in Borgen, also on Netflix, among the very best tv
series ever, with the kicker that the postscript fourth season is all about an
international crisis over Greenland.)
Steven Knight is a busy man,
churning out captivating historical dramas, best known for Peaky Blinders (which
has a feature-length follow-up coming in March) and more recently, A
Thousand Blows. House of Guinness (MC-72) is of a piece, featuring
impressively atmospheric period recreations of Dublin and Connacht in the
post-famine era and solid acting all round, with an anachronistic punk rock
soundtrack. Like an Irish Succession,
it follows four siblings vying for control of the legendary brewery after the
patriarch’s death. Anthony Boyle is the
eldest and most familiar, with the ubiquitous James Norton as the
establishment’s heavy-handed enforcer.
There’s a mix of fine ladies and Fenian Pre-Raphaelite beauties, as the
family business navigates between Protestant evangelicals and Catholic
revolutionaries. I was satisfied with
the cliffhanger conclusion after eight propulsive episodes, but would welcome a
sequel.
Despite raves, I could never
get into BoJack Horseman, but was immediately grabbed by Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s
new animated dramedy series Long Story Short (MC-89). It’s a Jewish
family’s collective biography, covering forty years in non-chronological order
(except for the rapid-fire title sequence, which is worth watching repeatedly,
to get the arc of those forty years, with slight changes foreshadowing the
focus of each of ten episodes). The
whole show is fast, furious, funny, and ultimately moving. The very authentic family drama is punctured
and punctuated by an avalanche of laugh-out-loud lines and gestures. To appreciate the humor, it helps to have
grown up surrounded by Jews, but I think many of the family dynamics will ring
bells for all backgrounds. All the voice
acting is spot on, and the animation by Lisa Hanawalt seems simple and
cartoonish but reveals surprising depth and dimension. Thankfully, we won’t have long to wait for
the second season. It will be enough to
bring me back into the Netflix fold, when I have strayed again.
The next three series in this
round-up share an identical Metacritic rating (beneath my benchmark of 80),
which says something about the current state of Netflix programming. The firehose of content is not about offering
the very best but delivering the good enough across a wide range of audiences.
Wayward (MC-71) is the one that appealed to me, based on Mae
Martin’s previous Netflix series, Feel Good, a clearly autobiographical
lesbian rom-com among the stand-up set in London. (Also, her own stand-up special SAP.) Martin has returned to her native Canada, for
a dramatic series that also seems based on personal experience, about a
restrictive school for troubled teens.
This one is set over the border in Tall Pines, VT, with Toni Collette in
fine form as the mercurial headmistress (and leader of a cult modeled on
Synanon, not to give too much away). As
well as writing, Martin plays an androgynous cop named Alex, whose wife is
pregnant, paternity not specified. The
couple moved back to her hometown from Detroit, Alex leaving the police there
for reasons that go unspoken but implied.
Mae/Alex is apparently transitioning (a bit of pillow talk concerns
whether their stubble is coming in), and happy to show off their good-looking
top-surgery. Alex meets and befriends
two girls who’ve been sent to that school by parents who don’t want to deal
with them, and then begins to trace the history of 18 cold cases of youths who ran
away from the school over the years and were never heard from again. Seemingly trying to fill a teen-horror genre
niche, the eight-episode series runs too long and tries too many twists of the
tale, but the personal aspects, and the effective acting that filters down from
the stars to the teens, make it a worthwhile watch for most of its length.
I’m a sucker for shows about
writers, so I gave a look to The Beast in Me (MC-71) despite the title and
the woman-in-jeopardy trailer. Never a
fan of The Americans or Homeland, I didn’t expect much but was
willing to give Claire Danes a chance to convince me. The show met my expectations – and one
episode was plenty. Similarly, I felt no
compulsion to watch more than a couple of episodes of the second season of Man
on the Inside (MC-71). I thought the shift in scene from old folks
home to college campus, and the addition of Ted Danson’s wife Mary Steenburgen
to the cast might revive my interest, but found the shtick had lost its
novelty.
Netflix frequently imports
shows which had success on other channels and a recent one I want to highlight
is This is Going to Hurt (MC-91),
which I reviewed here. Another series that deserves repeated mention
as one of the best of 2025 is Asura (reviewed here),
which led me to an earlier series by Hirokazu Kore-eda, The Makanai:
Cooking for the Maiko House (MC-70). I’m one episode into it, and will report back
here if I get through before this month’s subscription runs out.
With the HBO premium brand sinking
into the muck of Max (and eventually into Netflix or Paramount), AppleTV (sans
+) seems poised to take on the label – “It’s not just tv, it’s Apple.” They don’t try to cater to every taste,
though they do offer portals to other channels, plus pay per view. Never having entered the Apple universe
through computer or phone, I don’t rate the channel in my top tier (my last round-up was a year ago), but as the home of Dickinson and Pachinko
(my personal favorites among other popular Apple hits) it will always have merit
in my eyes. In justifying recent subscription
price increases (though with frequent special offers), their own programs cover
a reasonable range, and even those that don’t click for everyone have plausibility
and polish, and not just the expediency of “content.”
The Emmy haul of The
Studio (MC-80) is
testimony to that. I’ve followed Seth
Rogen since his teenage debut in Freaks & Greeks, but I never
imagined he had this in him, to win Emmys for writing, producing, directing
(with his longtime partner Evan Goldman) and starring in a comedy series. And maybe even deserve them! Goes to prove that being stoned all the time
is no impediment to creativity, or should I say creative insanity? This is a cringe-comedy Hollywood satire that
starts with pedal to the metal and never lets up. Rogen plays a professed cinephile who lucks
into the job of studio head, where he continually must let commerce trump art
in the making of movies, as he oscillates between macher and nebbish. Catherine O’Hara plays his mentor and deposed
predecessor, Bryan Cranston is his corporate boss, and there is a never-ending
string of supporting players and celebrity cameos. Mixing strains of Altman’s The Player and
the HBO series Entourage into a blend all its own, this hybrid series
delivers on both hilarity and authenticity.
And it takes advantage of shrinking cameras to make extended shots that roam
all over the studio lot or other settings (such as Las Vegas in the two-episode
finale of the first season – with another in the works), to a percussive score
that ratchets up the pandemonium. My
enjoyment was certainly enhanced by the witty takes on the business of
filmmaking, but there’s enough wild slapstick to entertain the uninitiated.
And now Apple has Vince
Gilligan, creator of my favorite series of all time, the combo of Breaking
Bad and Better Call Saul. His
new Pluribus (MC-86) returns to Albuquerque and brings back the
delightful Rhea Seehorn, one of the stars of Saul. I wasn’t stoked by Gilligan’s turn toward
sci-fi, but by the third episode I realized that the series was really a
parable about A.I. and became fully engaged.
Still, the series is underpopulated and slow moving, as an encryption
from space makes humans join into a hive mind, with only a dozen exceptions
around the globe. Seehorn is one, a
popular romantasy writer who loses her partner in the transition, and then all
the people of the city depart when she rejects the no-longer-human “peace,
love, and understanding” shared by all the others. Now I’d sign up to watch “Kim Wexler” read
the phone book, but this was a bit languorous for me and I was quite
disappointed that it didn’t end with the 9th episode, but expects to
go on for three more seasons. As with Severance,
I don’t think I’ll have the patience or interest to persist. Still, this has many of virtues of Gilligan’s
two hits, but leans more into his origins on The X-Files (which I never
watched).
Another established favorite
is Slow Horses (MC-79). In the 5th season, some people
missed the shoot-em-up climax but I appreciated the greater emphasis on wit and
humor. This series is one of the most
reliable pleasures on the tube these days.
I wrote about previous seasons here, here, and here, and
it’s all still true. Top-notch writing
derived from Mick Herron’s “Slough House” series of MI5 spy novels, and stellar
acting from Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas, on down through the rest of
the sterling cast list, plus propulsive storytelling (with the inevitable chase
scenes on foot), make for a sure-fire hit series, which shows no sign of
slowing down.
All three of these shows are very
inventive, verbally and visually, with superb acting and high-quality
production.
Apple doubled down on Mick
Herron with Down Cemetery Road (MC-71), from
an earlier series of his books, which shares the combination of humorous
characters, relentless action, and similar plot reliance on government
cover-ups. Not to mention top-flight
acting, here with Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson in the lead. They were enough to make me give a look-see,
and I was immediately hooked when the whole show began at the Ashmolean Museum
and included all sorts of Oxford sights that I could recognize. Later episodes go to London and an island
north of Scotland, but the settings are always of interest. The “mystery” is rather vague and the twists
and turns not particularly worth following.
But performances, wit, and action make the series quite palatable for
anyone who can’t get enough of the writer or stars.
Mr. Scorsese (MC-84) is another top-notch series. Marty is still active, thank goodness, though
with emeritus status among great American directors, but this loving
retrospective, a five-part documentary portrait, transcends the limitations of
the genre, because it’s directed by Rebecca Miller (Arthur’s daughter), another
filmmaker for whom I feel a strong affinity.
She goes well beyond the standard clip-reel-cum-talking-head-commentary,
not just with archival documentation but by inducing the hyper-analyzed maestro
to “take the couch” throughout, achieving something like a five-act (morality)
play. It helps to have seen all his
films at least once, but I sense this bio-doc could reward some who have seen
few or none. The greatest director of my
generation and background deserves the attention of all viewers. His fifty-year career also spans a lot of
cultural and political history. But what
do I know? – I’m totally infatuated with this program, and eager to revisit
some of Scorsese’s films with this autobiographical background to the thematic
inspirations and proximate circumstances of their making.
In anticipation of Spike
Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest (MC-73) I went back and rewatched High
and Low, one of my favorite Kurosawa films.
Probably not a good idea, because then my appreciation for Spike’s joint
followed the trajectory of his title, from the soaring heights of his aerial
credit sequence to such depths that I couldn’t bear to watch all the way to the
end, as he left behind the inspiration of Kurosawa’s masterpiece to ride his
own hobby horses and in-jokes. He
grabbed me with bird’s eye views of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn over the
bridge, so different from when I lived in the neighborhood a half-century ago,
but tagged on so many undisciplined postscripts that I had to FF to the end. Spike’s self-referential approach is mirrored
in Denzel Washington’s self-importance, but we’re a long way from Malcolm X here,
with this musical entrepreneur known as the “best ears in the business.” The rest of the acting is indifferent at
best, even Jeffrey Wright struggling with an underwritten role. Though Lee begins with some of Kurosawa’s
fluid camerawork, his chase scenes are self-indulgent rather than expressive (e.g.
a subway car full of Yankees fans chanting “Red Sox suck!” or a Puerto Rican street
fair). Not without its pleasures, but
still ultimately a disappointment to high expectations.
Though Paul Greengrass has
descended from the heights of Bloody Sunday and United 93 into franchise
thrillers, he’s a director who is always worth a look, and The Lost Bus (MC-64) fits the bill, in a
docudrama about the Camp Fire that wiped out Paradise CA. To quote some of my previous reviews, “his
style is composed of visual shards in dynamic mosaic,” with “on-the-fly,
you-are-there-in-the-middle-of-a-shitstorm filmmaking.” The Hollywood angle pairs Matthew McConaughey
and America Ferrara (shades of Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in this opposite to Speed) as bus driver and teacher trying lead a bus full of schoolchildren
through a maze of encircling fire to the evacuation center where their parents
wait anxiously. We also watch CalFire
officials making impossible decisions about fighting the fire versus applying
all resources to saving lives. As a
sidelight, McConaughey’ mother and son play those roles in this film. Enveloping describes the film as well as the wildfire,
the experience is edifying even if the dialogue is uninspired.
As for F1 (MC-68), I managed to make it
almost a quarter of the way through this 155-minute barrage of commercials, based on the charm of Brad Pitt and a few other players, but the tired
storytelling and the utter boredom and waste of Formula One racing compelled me
to quit.
I probably would have missed
the documentary Come See Me in the Good Light (MC-81) if my
daughter hadn’t been familiar with the poetry and persona of Andrea Gibson. Filmmaker Ryan White followed them and their
partner and fellow poet Megan Falley from an ovarian cancer diagnosis to the
brink of death and one final sold-out spoken word performance, where it’s no
surprise to see look-alike Tig Notaro introducing them, and also getting a producing
credit. This portrait of a loving creative
genderqueer couple facing a difficult medical journey has many layers, the poetry
and the humor offering relief from the grim progression of the disease. Besides Tig, I’m reminded of a book I just
finished and enjoyed immensely, Alison Bechdel’s Spent: A Comic Novel,
another celebration of gender fluidity, and the emotional bonds between all
kinds of matings. This film about dying
is anything but grim.
It would be a bigger mistake
to skip AppleTV altogether than to subscribe on a year-round basis. Though I’ve squeezed out all the juice, I
look forward to the next show that will drag me back onto the channel.
