Moonlight is a perfectly successful movie that tells its story by indirection

Barry Jenkins's Moonlight is yet another strong and serious American film from 2016, a terrific, sorrowful account of a black child coming of age in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami. The child, called various Little, Chiron, and Black, is from the start - at the outset he is in grammar school, about 10 years old, an outsider, sensitive and unathletic, terribly shy, and bullied. A neighborhood drug dealer befriends him and acts like a "big brother," but the relationship goes off the rails when the child learns that the dealer has been selling to his neglectful and unstable mother. In the 2nd section of the film, the child - Chiron - is an awkward high-school kid, still the subject of taunts and bullying. In this section his homosexuality begins to emerge. There's one terrifically sad and moving scene as Chiron and his only friend gaze out at the ocean (or maybe Bicayne Bay) and reflect on their place in the world and their future. We see their "future" in section 3, with Chiron now buff and dangerous, a drug-dealer himself with a prison background. Another great scene in this section is his attempt at a reconciliation with his mother, now gone straight but seriously damaged by her years of abuse. It's hard to convey the essence of this movie except to say that, where the movie in lesser hands could have been mawkish, sentimental, melodramatic, violent, or didactic, it's none of these things. Jenkins's storytelling is cool and distant, he lets the characters speak for themselves and in their own tongue - street-smart, hesitant, sometimes w/ bursts of insight, sometimes just meandering: Chiron is shy and understated throughout, for example, and many significant scenes and life stages - Chiron's time in prison, for example - are hinted at but not depicted. The cinematography is quite beautiful, contrasting the hard lives of each of the characters with the bright, tropical colors or Miami architecture and commerce. The movie reminded me of the excellent examination of a young white man's life over a long course of time, Boyhood, though Jenkins followed the more conventional path and used 3 actors to play the lead at different life stages. This is a completely successful movie - sure to win major awards for its beauty, insight, and timeliness.

Shocking! Film about Stanley Milram's experiments

The Experimenter, Michael Almereyda's biopic about Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) gives a great depiction of the controversial and disturbing experiments Milgram conducted at Yale in the early 60s: getting a subject to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to another "subject" (who was part of Milgram's team) at the urging of a lab scientist. The first sequence of the film shows re-enacts one of the experiments, and it's as tense and disturbing a scene as you're likely to see. The surprise was that the vast majority of subjects were willing to administer near-lethal doses (or so they thought - in fact, of course, no shocks were administered), even when faced with howls of pain from the adjacent room. With that powerful beginning, the movie is off to a great start, and it's no wonder that it founders a bit from that point. To its credit, the film shows that Milgram's experiment was widely criticized; it brought him fame, but also notoriety. The drama of the film, however, is kind of tepid; an academic's life is rarely filled with excitement (pace A Beautiful Mind, Theory of Everything), and we don't exactly feel sorrow and pity for Milgram: sure, he was denied tenure at Harvard, but he landed a really great job at CUNY; sure, he didn't get full credit for the TV dramatization of his experiments, but how many social-psychology books are adapted anyway? His life, though cut short by a heart attack at 51, looks pretty good to me. I'm glad they took time with some of his other experiments as well, including the "degrees of separation" mailing experiment - who knew that was the same guy who did the electroshock experiment - one showing the depravity of mankind, the other our connectedness and proximity. Almereyda's script is at times whimsical and imaginative - with Sarsgaard often addressing the camera directly and commenting on his own work. Winona Ryder, who seems to be on a comeback trail (see Stranger Things) valiantly plays Milgram's devoted wife (an academic cliche but there you have it; see again A Beautiful Mind); the other secondary characters never seem to emerge.

The farther we are from the target the better? Not necessarily.

When a movie begins with a girl playing with a hula-hoop that her dad fashioned for her, can you guess that things are not likely to go well for said girl? Eye in the Sky, an intense re-creation of a drone attack on a group of terrorists holed up in a small house near Nairobi, is a great examination of the ambiguities and moral dilemmas of contemporary warfare. In this case, the authorities have to decide whether to attack the building and wipe out several terrorists who seemingly are about to don suicide vests and explode in a local, crowded market - even though attacking the terrorists will create "collateral damage," that is, the injury of death of nearby, innocent civilians. The incident becomes personal and emotional (for us) as we focus on young Kenyon girl who is selling goods from a stand near the house that will be attacked: Should they risk killing this girl? If put off the mission to spare this child, hundreds may be killed by the terrorists. We see the decision played out in several venues, as this drone attack involves a team of Kenyan soldiers, two Kenyans who are apparently civilians and are experts in the use of drones, a team of English soldiers in a war room near London (led by the ubiquitous Helen Mirren), a British Cabinet meeting (the late Alan Rickman represents the military), a team of American soldiers in (I think) Nevada, two American drone "pilots" (Aaron Paul is one), and someone in Hawaii - and honestly I have no idea what she was doing. (You can guess who's the most vulnerable and expendable in this plan.) It's never clear to me why so many are involved or why an American drone pilot would take direct orders from the UK military  - and in fact the many locations make the move too diffuse and confusing - it would have been more powerful to focus on a small group intensely involved (and more typical as well of this type of movie, an attack on the ground managed from afar). The catch in this film is the use of drones, and part of the strength is that it helps us understand how these "pilots" suffer trauma and guilt - they can see so closely and vividly their targets and the ruins that their bombing creates. It sort of blows apart the myth that drone attacks are any better or more humane or even more safe (for the pilot) than attacks from fighter jets and bombers. We have always had the sense that the farther removed our soldiers are from the target, the better (for us). Not necessarily, however.

Wilson - one of the greatest American playwrights - and fine adaptation of Fences

Watching the Denzel Washington-directed Fences made me wonder why I've seen and read so little by the great American playwright August Wilson, who won a Pulitzer Prize, deservedly, for this excellent play - he was without doubt on a par with the other great American playwrights of the 20th century - O'Neil, Williams, Miller - as this play, and this terrific film adaptation (Wilson wrote the screenplay - has to have been a long time ago) evidences. In some ways it's a typical motif of American (maybe world) drama: a cruel and domineering patriarch struggles with his son, who wants to break free and find independence and a life of his own; in the process the father's flaws are revealed and lead to his tragic un-doing, and in the process we come to feel by "fear and pity" as we understand the world of this damaged and damaging man. What sets Fences and other Wilson plays apart, however, is the cultural setting; a decade by decade examination of life in the black urban communities of America, specifically in Homestead/Pittsburgh. Despite the breadth of its material, this is really a two-person play, and Washington as Tyler and Viola Davis as his wife give extraordinary performances throughout. Washington's direction is surprisingly deft, as he keeps the word-dense story moving along quickly and opens the scene up so that we feel we're not confined to one household but we're looking at life in an entire community. If there's a flaw in the play, it would have to be the last act, with the characters gathered for Tyler's funeral; with the lead character gone, the energy is drained from the play - it's like having an Act VI to King Lear. And - a quibble - why did they screw up the baseball references? Koufax definitely was not leading the league in strikeouts in 1955.

The 10 Best TV Programs I watched in 2016

Each year, TV seems to provide us with more great dramas, comedies, and documentaries. Can we doubt that if Shakespeare were alive today he'd write for TV? Or at least watch it? Here are the 10 best TV programs I watched in 2016:

American Crime (Season 2). This excellent anthology series uses many of the same actors to tell a completely different crime narrative in each (of the first 2) season. Season 2, about an allegation of homosexual rape at a high-school party, is just as good as Season 1. Kudos to Felicity Huffman for her lead role.

Black Mirror. The totally disturbing and provocative series from England, picked up by Netflix in Season 3, about how technology could further change and disrupt our lives in the near future. Suggestion, skip the first 2 episodes (this is another anthology series; no need to see all or in sequence) and begin with episode 3.

The Crown. Possibly the most expensive TV series ever made, accurate in period detail both at the macro (WWI-era airplanes, cars, and Jeeps) and the micro (the flowers, the chinaware, the clothing), and on top of that a fine personal and political drama about the first years of QEII's reign.

House of Cards (Season 4). The Kevin Spacey-Robin Wright White House psycho-drama continues, with his career (and their marriage?) on the wane and hers on the rise?

Last Chance U. A great and under-the-radar Netflix documentary series about the players at a Mississippi junior-college football powerhouse, with particular focus on the academic counselor who does all she can to keep these young men, who are completely unprepared for (and largely uninterested in) academic work, in the program.

Making a Murderer. The extremely popular series about a man who was unjustly convicted of rape and, on release from prison, runs into deeper, and more suspicious, problems with the law.

The People v O.J. Simpson. I know you think you're already familiar with this story - but believe me you're not. Even if you don't care about football, this is a totally gripping account of the trial and its effect on the involved parties, the LA communities, and the nation. Good idea to see this first and then, if your curiosity is aroused, watch the ESPN documentary.

Stranger Things. Yes it's rather preposterous even as sci-fi, but it's effective and moving as a portrait of teenage and preteen life in the U.S. in the 1980s. In the spirit of ET: innocent kids v evil scientists, clueless parents, and the establishment in general.

Transparent. Would have been so easy to make this series lurid and sensational, and it's anything but: It's smart, informative, sensitive, sexy, funny (esp the opening sequence of Season 2), and credible. A must-see.

Veep (Seasons 1 and 2). Really funny, esp but not only Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and an over-the-top but recognizable image of what life is like on the staff of a high-level government agency. Hoping that HBO/Amazon will make subsequent seasons available in Prime.

Almodovar's first international film shows all the traits that will develop throughout his career

Pedro Almodovar's 1988 film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which I think was his first film widely seen outside of Spain, is prototypical of his work: funny, farcical, characters in extreme distress and full of anger and passion (setting a bedroom on fire, hurling telephones through plate-glass windows, jumping off a balcony). It's fast-paced, has some really quirky minor characters (the cab-driver who vehicle includes nearly every amenity - magazines to borrow, snacks, a sign: Thank you for Smoking). As in most farces, everything comes to a head when the various plot strands converse, or perhaps collide, in a big smash-up scene, which Almodovar makes especially funny by having the characters, including police officials there to investigate a terrorist threat, drink from a pitcher of gazpacho that's been laced with a sedative - one by one the characters slump to the floor. Also notable and typical are the garish colors throughout the whole movie: everything, the costumes, decor, outdoor scenes, is filmed in harsh light w/ lots of blue-red color clashing. The plot is intentionally ridiculous and frenetic, a story of love and revenge in essence but with so many peculiar twists and coincidences all you can do is just laugh. Almodovar over the years has developed into a more thoughtful filmmaker with a deep interest in strong female characters (already evident here, with the women completely in control - or out of control, as the case may be - and the men comically feckless); this film is more raucous than insightful, but we see the artist at an early stage in his career - a bright star rising.

A classic Japanese film with the most haunting musical score ever

Mizoguchi's 1953 classic, Ugetsu, is another one of the great post-war Japanese movies that seems extremely old and quaint today - but then of course we realize that it seemed old and quaint even in its day, as it's set in rural 16th-century Japan, during an era of war among various shogun clans. The focus is on two men, and their spouses, who see the ongoing war as an opportunity: one of the men, a potter, recognizes that he can get a high price for his wares and sets off for a nearby city to cash in on the wartime economy; the other man wants to become a samurai warrior and gain social status as well as wealth. Obviously, both fail in their quests, with disastrous, even tragic consequences. The film is great in part because of how well Mizoguchi establishes the sense and feeling of life in this distant era - both in the small village, in the countryside, and in the crowded city, with its bustling outdoor bazaars. Particularly of note: the beautiful scenes in which the two men and their wives (and one child) cross a lake on a foggy night to bring the wares to the city. The film also has by far the strangest, most mysterious score I've ever heard, haunting the movie throughout. And it's also a ghost story - and Mizoguchi weaves the supernatural elements through threads of his realistic narrative, so that we're constantly off-balance, not knowing which elements of the plot are natural, which are supernatural. It's impossible to see this film and not think about life in postwar Japan in the 50s, a society still impoverished and full of ruins - much like the 16th-centural landscapes that Mizoguchi creates, and no doubt full of stories similar to this one, of husbands who abandoned wives in search of wartime profiteering, of would-be warriors who had hoped to be lifted from poverty and whose dreams were ruined, and of soldiers far from home who forgot their families and began new lives.

Focus on a CO as a hero of a war movie is an unusual twist

Say what you will about Mel Gibson and his fascination with violence and machismo, but I have to admit that he can direct an incredibly powerful, harrowing battle scene - as we see in Hacksaw Ridge and its depiction of the three-day assault in 1945 on Okinawa. It's almost too much to watch (and listen to), and I probably wouldn't have done so - except that it's an unusual (and based on fact) story of heroism, and to understand it fully you have to see the horror and danger of battle, especially an assault from lower ground. The story is unusual in that the central character, Doss, is a medic and conscientious objector who refuses even to carry a weapon. Of course the movie is too long, that seems inevitable today for almost any film of ambition, and Gibson's footing is much less sure in the early scenes that give us Doss's family background (alcoholic father who lost many friends in the first World War and doesn't want his sons to enlist for the 2nd), clumsy romance with a young nurse, etc. The movie picks up when Doss enters basic and is hounded, humiliated, and beaten for his refusal to fight; the movie needs to lay this groundwork, as the whole point of the movie is to show us how Doss earned the trust and respect of his fellow-soldiers (in fact he was the first and maybe the only CO to win a Medal of Honor). I did wonder if the basic-training scenes were exaggerated; it would seem he could not have been the first medic-CO to appear in the entire division, although maybe they all endured such torment. The movie fully comes into its own in the battle scenes; thought they're assaultive on our nerves and ear drums, they to tell a powerful story and (spoiler coming) and have to give Gibson credit - I was sure throughout that at some point Doss would have the "prove himself" through use of a weapon, but, no, he and Gibson say true to the facts and to his faith, so kudos there. It's not an innovative and groundbreaking movies - hard to see what ground is left to break re WWII films - but the focus on a CO is an unusual twist that kept our interest alive for 2+ hours.

The 10 best classic films I watched in 2016

At least half the films I watched in 2016 were so-called "classics" (thank you, Criterion!, and the Providence Public Library!), most of which lived up to their reputation. Here's the list of the 10 best classic films I watched in 2016:

All About My Mother. Pedro Almodovar's great 1999 film about the complex relationships among a disparate group of Spanish women: actors, prostitutes, transgendered people, addicts, gay, straight, and even Penelope Cruz as a pregnant nun.

Aparajito. Part 2 of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy (1957), this part following the young man from rural India as he earns a scholarship and moves to Calcutta to pursue a college education.

Autumn Sonata. A really dark (even for) Bergman "chamber film" from 1978, in which Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman as troubled daughter and neglectful mother go at one another. 

Coup de Grace. A little-known film from German director Victor Schlondorff (1978) about a group of German aristocratic soldiers holed up on an old estate toward the end of the first World War fighting against the Communist insurgents. Strangely, it reminded me of Seventh Seal.

A Day in the Country. A 1936 film that Renoir never completed but that, even in its truncated form, beautifully evokes the complex relationships among a group of Parisians who set off for the day. Typically Renoir open-air settings.

I Vitelloni. Early Fellini - 1953 - about a group of young men, each with his own ambitions, stuck in a provincial Italian town and dreaming of getting away.

Jeanne Dielman. Chantal Akerman's feminist classic from 1975, a close-up of the life and pent-up rage of a seemingly conventional young widow who is anything but conventional.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. Tony Richardson's 1962 British b-w classic about a  working-class teenager sent to reform school where he earns some renown as a runner and makes a courageous decision.

Loves of a Blonde. Milos Forman's 1965 Czech film about a group of women working in a factory and dreaming of a better life - with some great comic scenes when a troupe of older reservists come to town and try to strike it up w/ the much younger women.

Through a Glass Darkly. Another Bergman chamber film, this one from 1961: Put 4 people, one of whom is a severely disturbed young woman and another of whom is a sensitive aspiring artist, and see what ensues.

The best (relatively new) films I watched in 2016

This might be my own personal anti-Oscar list, as the best films that I watched in 2016 are, with maybe one or two exceptions, unlikely to turn up on any list for major award nominations (some of the "new" films I saw in 2016 were of course released in 2015 or earlier). So here are the 10 best relatively new films I watched in 2016 - five English-language films, five world-language films:

English-language films:

The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer's sequel to his great documentary The Act of Killing; an Indonesian optometrist sets off to interview those who killed his older brother.

Love & Friendship. If you read the source book - Jane Austen's Lady Susan - you'll wonder how anyone could adapt this material (an epistolary novel) into a movie, but Whit Stillman does so brilliantly.

Manchester by the Sea. This Kenneth Lonergan film will be on many awards lists, and deservedly, as it's a smart, understated, and often moving study of a troubled personality in a time of personal crisis.

OJ: Made in America. Another documentary on the list, a terrific examination from ESPN on the rise and fall of a great American athlete and public figure, making excellent use of a vast range of archival footage.

Youth. Paolo Sorrentino's examination of love and fame, a darker, older English-language follow-up to his Italian-language masterpiece, The Great Beauty.

World-language films:

Aferim!, a Romanian film modeled closely on American Westerns, with a harrowing conclusion.

Jafar Panahi's Taxi, a terrific and brave film about life in contemporary Tehran.

Mustang. This film from Turkey is a disturbing indictment of the sexist, repressive culture that still exists throughout the world, and not only in the Third World.

Timbuktu. A truly scary film about how radical Islamic forces can sweep into a village a seize control.

A War. Tobias Lindholm's terrific film about a Danish platoon engaged in peacekeeping in a remote part of Afghanistan; a great follow-up to his previous film, A Hijacking

And some honorable mentions: 45 Years (a fine British film about an aging couple and their endangered love), Love & Mercy (Brian Wilson biopic), and The Story of the Weeping Camel (an unusual documentary about Mongolian villagers who face a crisis when one of their camels rejects its young).

Next post will be on the best classic movies I watched in 2016. Stay tuned.

One of the best treatments of character development in any recent American film - Manchester by the Sea

It's anything but a feel-good movie but the Kenneth Lonergan film Manchester-by-the-Sea is one of the best treatments of character establishment and development in any recent American film. Over the course of the totally gripping 2+ hours we come meet Lee Chandler (Casey Afflek, a lock for an Oscar nomination) and get a real sense of his life at a dead-end as a handyman for a small, low-rent apartment complex in Quincy, Mass., and then we see his life take a start as he learns of the death of his older brother, the more successful (a little) and ebullient Joe (a surprising stretch for Kyle Chandler). Through alternating sequence in present time and in flashback, we learn about failure of the marriages of both brothers, about the tragedy that sent Lee into isolation and misanthropy, and about why he dreads coming back to the posh coastal home town (you will pick up the mood of several New England writers who have described the caste relationships between the wealthy and the working - Eliz Strout, Richard Russo, Anthony Dubus, et al.). To Lee's surprise he's entrusted w/ the responsibility for his teenage nephew, and their touchy, strained relationship and is development over the course of a few months is the heart of the movie - full of surprising twists, a lot of humor much of it dark, and true development and maturation of both characters. There is not a moment of false sentimentality in this movie and not a missed note (well, a few "goofs" - like the snow that mysterious appears and disappears from shot to shot, and the claim to be on the hockey team and the basketball team - really? at the same time?). It's by no means an action-packed movie, the pace is sometimes slow and deliberate (though the film editing is not - a lot of back and forth cuts during slow dialogue, which can be enlivening or distracting, depending on your preference), a beautiful score, and a fine star turn by Michelle Williams as Lee's ex, in a beautiful scene of a strained attempt at reconciliation toward the end. A work of art.

A shameful chapter in American history exposed in Loving

I know Loving had received great reviews but I feared it would be too schmaltzy, too self-righteous, and perhaps too violent, but in fact I was wrong and found the movie - none of whose lead players were familiar to me at all - to be engaging, well-paced, moving, and informative. The writer-director (looking this up), Jeff Nichols, balances all the elements well: developing the relationship of the two lead characters - Richard Loving, a Southern working-class white man from impoverished rural Virginia, and his wife, Mildred, a Southern working-class black woman. He creates a palpable sense of their constant state of danger once the marry and he also creates strong, nuanced, and complex relationships among the Lovings and their two families - some real family bonds and warmth, some cross-racial acceptance, but also significant anger, resentment (and the torment they are putting the family through), jealousy (why would Richard forsake his white privilege, one of the black men wonders in powerful scene late in the film). The Lovings are exiled from Virginia, where inter-racial marriages were illegal - in 1958!, this is not a Civil War drama! - and move to D.C., but they want to be able to return and settle near their families, and here's where the movie enters the public sphere, as the ACLU takes up their cause in brings the matter up to the Supreme Court. Mildred throughout is more comfortable with challenging the system and with the attendant media obligations; Richard, more stolid and conservative in many ways, just wants to be left alone. They are not crusaders and political advocates - just a family (3 kids, eventually), ordinary and typical in most ways, brought unwillingly into the spotlight and brave enough to stand their ground. Without histrionics, the film exposes a shameful chapter in American history, and does so through dramatization and character development rather than through polemics. Could earn Oscar nods for the leads (Ruth Negga, Joel Edgerton) and for Nichols.

With enormous suspension of disbelief, you can enjoy Arrival

The Villeneuve/Amy Adams vehicle, Arrival, treads familiar ground - invasion of space aliens puzzles scientists and diplomats around the world and stirs fear in the hearts of millions excepting the select enlightened few who make a sincere effort to communicate with the invasive force (think ET, for ex.) - but admittedly the movie has some good twists of plot especially toward the end, which is perhaps needlessly complex but does tie the strands together. One of the nice twists is that Adams plays an academic linguist whom the Army dragoons as they need someone who can possibly learn the language of the aliens or teach them (one of) ours. So it's a movie, in some ways, about language and communication. Yes, it requires an enormous suspension of disbelief to go with this movie, but that's what much of sci-fi is about: not just a "what if" but more of an "imagine this." So, yes, there's something automatically creepy and disturbing when we enter into the world of this film: huge alien space ships hovering over 12 seemingly randomly selected spots across the planet. And the use of news clips of rioting and chaos across the world are too close for comfort. And, like all invasion movies (I think), human life will prevail - and in this movie with, in some ways, an upbeat, feel-good ending. You don't have to buy into the whole show; probably best not to think about the unlikelihoods and the improbabilities and just enjoy the ride and Adams's fine performance in the lead role.

The power of and the problems with the Netflix doc 13th

The Netflix documentary 13th, an examination of the unforeseen consequences of the 13th amendment, which abolished slavery except as servitude for punishment for a crime. The argues, and the filmmakers document the argument in detail, that the South needed slave labor after the Civil War so they created draconian laws that enabled long prison terms for crimes such as "loitering," which brought blacks back into involuntary servitude via the prison system. This led to the image of all blacks as dangerous criminals, particularly threatening, first, to white women of the South and, generations later, threatening to life and property and civic order. We follow the treatment of black prisoners from the lynch mobs and the rise of the Klan to law-and-order candidates for office such as Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. (remember Willie Horton?), and Trump - leading us to the current state in which 1 of 3 black men is likely to spend part of his life in prison. The 2nd half of the film documents how the prison industry needs a steady supply of prisoners to meet its profit goals - and how prisoners work for free for many major corporations, whose best interests are also served by building up incarceration levels. All this is appalling and frighteningly true on both levels: the psychological fear mongering that stirs up white masses and the cold economics, America driving toward short-term profit and cheap or free labor. It's a powerful and necessary message though, unfortunately, unlike other recent polemical documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth, the filmmakers offer no obvious solutions. On the plus side, the filmmakers have a tremendous archive of news and film footage and stills going back a century or more and they have a huge # of top-line experts and analysts contributing their views: Henry Louis Gates, Angela Davis, Corey Booker, Newt Gingrich (surprisingly progressive on this issue), and many more. On the downside, the entire film is archive footage and talking heads - there's no real documentary footage, nothing within a prison, no interviews w/ prisoners or the unjustly accused, all of which would have made 13th more powerful emotionally and viscerally - as it is, it's well meaning and persuasive but a little dry.

A template for Almodovar movies

No doubt Pedro Almodovar is a great cinematic story-teller and, more than any other male director, he's the writer-director with the most enduring and intense interest in the lives and inter-relationships of women, and his early (1999) breakthrough, All About My Mother, is a template for Almodovar movies. Central figure is a nurse on a transplant team, a single mom whose son, an aspiring writer, has just turned 17. To celebrate his bd they go to a show of Streetcar, and after the show, as he's trying to get an autograph from the star who played Blanche, he's struck by a car and killed. One would think this would be a story examining how a transplant nurse faces the world differently once her son is killed. Does she donate organs as she's encouraged to many to do? (She does.) Does she follow the man who's received her son's heart? (She starts to.) But there's nothing conventional about this film or about Almodovar's narrative style. This is anything but a Lifetime movie; the nurse heads off (from Madrid) to Barcelona where she begins hanging around at a remote traffic circle where people go for hook-ups or worse and she finds a trans woman prostitute w/ whom she'd been close about 20 years ago, and thus she embarks on a completely new life, involving several prostitutes, some of them trans, a young nun (Penelope Cruz) who strays from her vows, the Streetcar theater troupe, wracked by drugs and jealousy, and ultimately the man who was the father of her late son. Lots of complicated and relationships here, many of which bend of break stereotype; lots of struggle and heartache, but all told in a jaunty style carried along by the confident personalities of these strong women - and lifted by humor and by Almodovar's rapid narrative pace and by some beautiful cinematography, especially in Barcelona by night.

A futuristic series that is more about the people than about high-tech

Season 2 of of the Netflix series Black Mirror is strong start to finish, each of the narratives standing up well as intense interpersonal dramas as well as staying with the theme of the series: the potential effect of technology on life in the future. The world of these dramas is recognizable and familiar in every way except that, in each, there have been significant and at present almost incomprehensible advances in technology: virtual reality in particular but also social media, spyware, robotics. The final episode in the season, for example, has John Hamm running a live dating-advice service (through some kind of cranial implant he speaks to a young man guiding him - like "Bogart" in Play it Again, Sam" as he tries to pick up a woman at an office party, with tragic results) and also as an expert in downloading brains: through some sort of operation scientists and doctors are able to download an reproduce the entire electrical code of a human brain and make a copy, so the person is actually leading two simultaneous lives. It sounds cumbersome and kind of hoaky, and it could be, except that the technology an scifi elements are never what the show is about - they are accepting aspects, part of the fabric of future life. In another episode a virtual figure, a cartoon character seen only on a video screen, runs for Parliament. Hm. Could happen. A theme that runs through most of the episodes is martial infidelity - the technology plays a role in the discovery of the infidelity, but again the story is about the people their difficult, sometimes violent, often confused inter-relations and not about the wonders of high-tech.

Why it's worth seeing even a few minutes of The Jungle Book

Disney's The Jungle Book (2016) is what it is - a highly entertaining movie for kids that will hold the interest of adults as well; from what I remember of the original this update does little to add to or update the plot and characters, but why should it? Even though it's not the kind of movie we'd usually be drawn to, I have to say we were completely blown away by the graphics and animation - in look, pacing, realization it is as far beyond the old animated cartoons of the 80s and earlier as, say, an iphone is far from a Univac. It's truly astonishing to see how everything in the jungle, the flora and fauna and landscape - all seems not just vivid but real: if there weren't talking animals you could truly think this was a nature doc - and then how the seamlessly built in the live action of Mowgli, played apparently by a real kid (Seethi?). If nothing else watch the opening sequences as he runs through the jungle pursued by a pack of wolves - it's so real it's unreal (and I hate the fake realism of the zombie-like creatures in films like Polar Express).

The most honest film about mental illness, creativity, and bipolar disorder

There have been many films about young people confined, sometimes against their will, to mental hospitals - from David & Lisa to Cuckoo's Nest to Girl Interrupted to Silver Linings Playbook and many more - but I have to say Paul Dalio's Touched with Fire treats the mental illness more directly, accurately, and honestly that any film in this genre that I've seen. The temptation in all of these films is to romanticize mental illness and demonize the mental-health workers, and, from the title - which is also the title of a book by a psychiatrist about the link between creativity and mental illness (Dr. Jameson, and she actually appears in this film as herself, explaining some of her findings to the lead characters), we see starkly in this film how bipolar disorder is tragic and can ruin the lives of those it touches (including family members of the sufferers). The film is about two 30-somethings, each a poet afflicted with severe bipolar, who meet in the hospital and try to make a life together upon their release. They're good writers, at times - serious poets, not amateurs - but they push each other to extremes, their relationship see-saws as they together go on and off medications. Their family members try, with varying degrees of success and comprehension, to help but they are off on their own dangerous course, seemingly beyond help - although at the end one is doing somewhat better -  I won't give anything away - yet we sense that both are always in danger. There are many fine scenes, but among the very best are the group therapy session in the hospital and the first get-together of the couple and their well-meaning but uncertain parents. Despite romantic claims and associations, despite the lengthy list at the end of this film of great artists who have suffered from mental illness (not sure the list is accurate), despite quotes from Byron and Shakespeare, bipolar is not a blessing, as this film makes abundantly clear.

Not profound, not trying to be profound, totally worth it - Hell or High Water

It isn't Bergman or Renoir but (David) Mackenzie's Hell or High Water is about as entertaining a movie as you can find in the well-worn genre of sympathetic (to a degree) bank-robbers slash buddy movies - in this case the buddies are brothers, one a generally good guy who's never been in trouble w/ the law and the other his older brother just out of prison and a hothead trouble-maker. They begin a string of low-stakes bank robberies in north Texas, and it first we have no idea why they're taking such risks for such small payouts, but they have a pretty clever scheme going that we piece together as the movie slips along; meanwhile, on the side of the law, Jeff Bridges plays a down-and-out Ranger on the verge of retirement, and in a very sleepy way he and his partner, a part-Mexican part Comanche sidekick, and yes, obviously there are Lone Ranger echoes, though these rangers are in a fallen world. Part of the beauty of this film is the outstanding cinematography - we really get a sense of the desolation of the North Texas land, the dull open spaces, the lonely small towns, and cheap restaurants and motels and casinos along the highway, the beautiful sky. The movie also has a terrific soundtrack, thanks to Nick Cave. And the script is sharp and witty - though at times I lost some of the dialogue in the mumbled, low-key delivery by Bridges et al. I don't like films that glorify crime and violence, and this film comes close but withholds moral judgment. And - as with so many crime movies - some elements don't quite ring true when you think about them the next day, but it sure takes you along for the ride. There are surprises along the route, leading right up to a very interesting conclusion - not profound, not trying to be profound, totally worth watching.

A surprisingly moving and pure documentary - or is it?

This movie had been in our Q for a long time and I'd pushed off watching it largely because of its ridiculous title - The Story of the Weeping Camel - but did watch it last night and to my surprise we were very much caught up in this sweet and exotic tale which turns out to be a documentary, at least of sorts. We're with a small outpost - seems to be just 2 extended families - of Mongolian animal herders, with the flock of sheep, maybe goals, and of course camels. The simple narrative line concerns the eponymous camel who, during birthing season, has a traumatic, two-day labor to give birth to a white colt; as a result of the traumatic labor (which we see in vivid detail) the mother camel cannot bond with her child - so the families that raise the camel do all that the can to try to get the mother to allow the colt to nurse. The human nature and the emotions on the very expressive faces of these camels are astounding, and it's impossible not to feel for or toward them: anger at the mother so mean to the colt, sorrow for this infant animal trying so hard to approach the mother and possibly starving to death - and of course we feel for these people struggling to make a living in a culture that has hardly changed for a thousand years - although we see a bit of the changes being wrought as two of the children set off for a nearby village to get some help in their quest. I won't give anything away except to say that the end is extremely moving and touching in ways I would not have anticipated. On one level, this is a pure documentary in the emerging documentary style: no interviews, all filmed live, we never see or hear a word from the film crew. On another level, I'm not so sure: the credits note that this is "written and directed by" a team of 2, based on a "story idea" by another - and I do think, while much of the film is pure documentary footage, other parts are set up by the filmmakers - including the trip to the village and, throughout, the beautiful costuming: it always looks as if the herders and children are dressed for a religious celebration - colorful embroidered silks, even on the children - rather than for a working day of a trans-Gobi camel ride.

Extremely uneven yet extremely provocative series about future-tech: Black Mirror

The British series Black Mirror, picked up by Netflix for season 3, is unlike any other - which in some ways is good but not always. First of all, it's an anthology series rather than a serial drama (I didn't realize this until the end of episode one, when it became clear we would not follow these characters across 13 episodes). I wondered how they could develop a full season with each episode an entirely new concept, but then I saw that "season 1" consists of only 3 episodes - I believe there are 13 altogether over 3 seasons. In any event, what makes it a series is the consistent theme - examination in various forms as to how technology - VR, social media, digital storage, etc. - will change our lives in the future, in a dystopian future, anyway. My opinions about the first 4 episodes vary so widely I can't even say whether I would recommend this series or not, so see for yourself. But the first episode - which is the only one out of the 4 I've seen in which the future has caught up with the futuristic narrative: the premise, in 2011, was that social media would displace mainstream media in news coverage, and that via social media politicians could have instant readings for public moods and views - we're already there! This episode was extremely tense and kept us entirely focused, but it is so bizarre and disturbing that I would recommend extreme caution before you watch. The 2nd episode, about a world in which people, for no clear reason, are confined to an ultramodern fitness center where they earn "merits" by miles cycled - an they can trade these merits for various pleasures. I found this so incredibly boring I couldn't watch more than 25 minutes - I have enough screen time in daily life, thanks. But then, things changed: episode 3 - in which people have implanted devices that capture all experience and can be played again repeatedly via a "re-do" was a terrific drama about marital stress and failure, infidelity, and anxiety - even without the scifi premise it could stand alone as a really good play or drama. Episode 4, which kicked off the 2nd season, is about creation of a virtual life using a superexpansive search engine - in the way the Google anticipates what we're going to type and FB what ads we "want" to see, this is about service that can re-create a dead person to speak to and comfort the surviving, in this case, spouse. Another excellent drama, disturbing and provocative - will remind some of the movie Her, but is stranger in that the VR presence is an uncanny re-creation of the late husband. So, yes, I'm still in.