Yet another high-school misfit movie - but this one has some original angles

Is there room for yet another movie about a high-school misfit, loner, weirdo, friendless victim of bullying? Yes, of course, the supply of such movies will apparently never end, the latest being On the Edge of Seventeen, which features a protagonist, Nadine, who is all of the above and, like many such protagonists (see Juno) speaks more like a Hollywood screenwriter than like any teenager, much less a loser-misfit. This film also suffers from the flaw that besets many teenage-loser movies: almost without exception, the lead characters are never convincing as the misfit victim; as in this movie, they are almost always cute, attractive, intelligent, most likely to be widely popular or, at the least, far from friendless. So, OK, with all these flaws acknowledged, let it also be noted that this is a pretty good and entertaining film about Nadine's struggle to find her place. The writing is intelligent, sometimes witty, and the writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig finds a few new angles to explore on this familiar turf: Nadine has had a life-long jealousy of her handsome and popular brother (Darian), and when he starts a relationship with her one and only friend that upsets everything in Nadine's life and in their family of 3. Craig also goes against convention by having Nadine confide regularly in her history teacher (Woody Harrelson) who, against expectation, is acerbic and cynical - the development of his character and his relationship with Nadine is the highlight of this movie. As in all comedies, Nadine grows over the course of the film, learns about the high-school pecking order and learns to live outside of same, and earns her way to social inclusion and a happy ending - orchestrated, yes; believable, not quite; but a feel-good movie that takes some original pathways on this very well-trodden ground.

Is American Crime the best series on network TV?

Through the first 3 episodes of John Ridley's American Crime (Season 3) I'm once again impressed by everything about this series. I'm no expert on this, but it seems to me the best serious crime drama on network TV - on a scale with the smartest HBO, SHO, Amazon, and Netflix dramas. Each of the three seasons is a completely stand-alone miniseries, but many members of the cast appear in two or even all 3 of the seasons, in entirely different roles. So watching characters, notably Felicity Huffman, play 3 different parts to perfection is one of the incidental pleasures of this series. But even more so, the whole crew does a fine job with an intelligent and complex drama about a crime and its rippling and lingering effect on so many people - victims, families, entire communities. Season 3 is about the treatment of migrant laborers on a NC family-owned farm; the crew that subcontracts and manages the labor is corrupt and vicious, and because of neglect 15 laborers die in a fire in a one of the trailers into which they're crammed. (One serious quibble: This would have been a major news story, not something that would slide under the radar.) The owners of the farm wash their hands of responsibility - they're not the ones running the labor operation, they say - but Huffman, the wife of one of the 3 siblings who own the farm, begins to question this hands-off attitude and to push her very reluctant husband to look further into the cause of the fire. A hallmark of this series through all 3 seasons is the intelligent and daring use of close-ups; many of the finest dramatic moments focus full-screen on the fact of one of the characters, in either monologue or dialogue, which really shows the expressive characters of the actors and showcases some truly fine screenwriting as well. Another great strength of each of the seasons is the honest and sometimes daring portrayal of important and complex social issues. In episode 3, Huffman and spouse go to a community meeting on migrant labor, and the words of the speaker hit them, and us, pretty hard: there's a price to pay for the food we eat and the clothes we wear, and most of us are unwilling to take a close look at that price. American Crime is taking that close look, and it's pretty harrowing.

Some reasons to watch Nobel and how it can improve

The Norwegian series Nobel does some things exceptionally well, in particular the action scenes - the attack in the parking garage in Oslo, the military operations in Afghanistan, and, in the final episode, the tense, secret negotiations in Afghanistan among Norwegian, Afghan, and Taliban officials - negotiations that, no surprise here, come to a dreadful end (and leave a Season 2 as a strong possibility). What keeps this series from being great, however, is its extremely complex network of competing forces and interests that are hard, especially for English-language viewers working with subtitles, to keep straight not only from one episode to the next but even within episodes. The personal story, which involves marital strife in the Riiser family, with the husband, Erling, a special forces operative who gets duped into an unauthorized killing, and wife a top official in the Norwegian state dept (it's a small country), never really develops: We don't see or know enough about the personal lives of most of the characters - again, because the series is so plot-heavy that we are overwhelmed with characters and plot strands. Worse, a key element driving the plot, the forces competing for the Nobel Peace Prize, never really gels and feels just tacked on in the final episode. Those are my quibbles, yet there was enough going on here to hold our interest through the whole 8-episode series - a lot of action, smart writing, tense pacing, overall a highly professional show that I hope will continue and will improve, through great plot focus, in future seasons.

Why it's worth seeing Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures, a late 2016 release that got lost in the shuffle of so many fine movies on themes of racism, black lives, and black history, tells the important and little known history of black women working on the NASA space-launch initiatives in the Virginia facility in the 1950s and 60s; the movie is "based on true events" and also adapted from a nonfiction book of the same title - props to the author of the book [Morgot Lee Shetterly] for truly uncovering this great story. By "based on" I take it to mean that, though the three central women characters are all based on real people who broke through many barriers of law and of hatred to contribute to the space program, the narrative brings the women together as three buddies and orchestrates their domestic lives in ways that are probably no historically accurate - though that doesn't matter. We see in the working conditions at NASA the horrible racism and sexism that these women had to encounter just to do their jobs - and these women were among the smartest and most talented and bravest, and by the way NASA was probably among the best employers in the South: NASA needed talent and was willing to hire black women if they could do the job. Over the course of the movie, we see the women gradually win respect, recognition, and, to a degree, equal treatment. This is all to the good, but I have to say that the screenplay itself and even the art direction and costuming were so programmatic, so predictable, so devoid of surprise or genuine emotion (with perhaps the exception of one scene, when the supervisor, Kevin Costner, takes a sledgehammer to the "colored rest room" sign) that movie feels as if it could have been written by the IBM computer that's at the center of the plot. The movie is so obvious and at times heavy handed - this will be good for you to see and to know, and we're all so much better and more enlightened today! - it's like the greens one of the dads insists that the little kids eat with their cookout dinner.

A perverse male fantasy and a waste of a great performance by Huppert

I have seldom, maybe never, seen a movie with such a cast of totally unlikable characters as we see in the recent Elle. Yes, Isabel Huppert is terrific and deserved her Oscar nomination (and maybe she should have won the award), as she totally dominates the movie with the force of her character for the entire 2+ hours: Is she in every single scene? I think so. But that said, what a horrible movie this is: The characters are universally despicable: sexist, faithless, crude, mocking, foolish, feckless, narcissist - and that doesn't even cover the serial rapist and stalker, who is just plain sick. In fact, the only character don't despise is Huppert's father (he has no speaking role), a serial killer serving a life term for 27 murders. The movie opens with Huppert enduring brutal rape and attack. Afterwards, she cleans up the broken cutlery, takes a bath, goes to work. She never reports the rape, and mentions in passing to a group of her friends/co-workers. She continues her life, even though the rapist continues to stalk her and leave her threatening messages - she just doesn't seem to care. She and her best friend run a videogame company, and the game they're marketing is full of violent rape scenes - she prods her staff to make the scenes even more gruesome. When we're not w/ her we're with her super-botxed mother who's living w/ a gigolo about 1/3 her age, with her son who leeches money off her and can't even hold down a fast-food job, his fiancee who's a harridan of the worst order, her partner's husband who comes on to her right in her office in the middle of the work day - I can't go on with this list, it's so ridiculous. And - spoiler coming - once Huppert is aware of who her attacker is, she pursues him - not for vengeance but to continue the attacks. Despite whatever intentions the direct (Verhoeven, known for his action films) may have had, this is not a movie about a powerful, independent woman who is frank about her sexual desires; it's a perverse male fantasy that goes so far as to suggest that some women actually enjoy assault and rape and would come back for more if they could. This is move is wrong on so many counts - what a waste of a great acting performance.

Terrific new play at Ars Nova in NYC: Sundown, Yellow Moon

3 of us yesterday saw Rachel Bonds's new play Sundown, Yellow Moon at Ars Nova/WP Theater, Anne Kauffman directing, and we universally loved this one-act play: funny, moving, powerful, true to life. The story concerns twin sisters who return to their small Southern town to visit their father, a prep-school teacher, who is facing a crisis in his life (he's been suspended from his job because of a violent outburst at a school assembly, and he's been ordered into anger-management counseling). Over the course of the play, we recognize that each of the major characters is at a point of crisis in life, each is struggling with failure and disappointment and unfulfilled dreams and aspirations. Bonds's writing is sharp and beautiful and, especially in the night-time dialogue between dad and one of the daughters, Rae, as they wrestle w/ sleeplessness, it's moving and emotional. Those in the know will recognize the title as a Dylan lyric, which gives you a sense of Bonds's literary milieu. In fact, music is hugely important to this play, as two of the main characters are wrestling with frustrated yet unrelenting musical ambitions - and many of the scenes involve musical performance: it's by no means a "musical" play but Bonds incorporates music in a natural way (e.g., the characters get together w/ two neighbors for an evening of music, and the songs and performance anxieties tell us much about the characters and their relationships). Bonds also leaves some elements open at the end of the play, which actually gives it a feeling of great completion and realism - for ex., we never learn the outcome of the dad's suspension; the girls' difficult mom (at least from dad's POV) is mentioned but never seen or heard from. As a note: Rachel Bonds's dad was one of my very best friends in youth (college roommates) though we lost touch later in life; Rachel and I have communicated via email. In some ways this play is a tribute to her dad - and I saw some elements of him in this play's Ton - though I'm sure she would agree that it's by no means a direct portrayal of her wonderful father.

Promising Norwegian miniseries on a troop in Afghanistan and complications on the home front

Three episodes in and the Norwegian miniseries Nobel seems to be moving along very well; it's well-paced and complicated and engaging, with a focus on a political crisis, this one involving a Norwegian platoon on duty in Afghanistan that gets tangled up in a fight with a local strongman leading to repercussions back in the Norwegian central government. It's a tangled web and frnakly, and perhaps intentionally, it's a little difficult to follow in the first episodes, as the style of the series seems to be to present dramatic action - e.g., a fight and a stabbing in an Oslo parking garage - without a lot of clarity as to who's involved or why, and then jumping to a flashback to what took place in Afghanistan a few months back, which will fill in some but not all of the pieces. Three episodes in I'm still not sure why it's called Nobel, though there are suggestions that the fight between the state department and military will will involved a detente operation underway to smooth relationships w/ China -leading to major Chinese investments in Norway - all of which could be derailed if the Nobel committee tilts toward a visiting Chinese dissident. Wow, a lot of threads to tie together - but fortunately the writing is clear and straightforward (oh those taciturn Scandinavians) and the main characters - Erling, the acting platoon leader now home on leave, and his wife, who is like a Chief of Staff to the Foreign Minister - are strong, well-delineated characters - facing major issues as their two agencies come into direct conflict. Definitely worth following this Netflix offering, and you can't help but think that it may lead to an American rewrite, as with Homeland, as the same forces could well be in play in a U.S. drama. (Also reminded me of the excellent Danish film about a troop on the front lines in Afghanistan, with no clear mission in sight.)

Another great (early) film from Iranian director Fahradi

There's no doubt that Asghar Fahradi, the Irania filmmaker (writer and director) who made headlines by refusing to travel to the U.S. for the Academy Awards, is also making his mark as one of the finest fimmakers of our time. His films are as thoughtful and dynamic as great stage dramas - Ibsen or Pinter come to mind, with tremendous family antagonisms against a background of life in a complex urban community, stress in both family and society interacting - and we can see an early phase of his career, one of the films that I think established him internationally, in Fireworks Wednesday, from 2006 . The movie follows the Aristotelian principles of unity (time, place, action), all taking place in one day, in Teheran (various locations, but mostly in a middle-class apartment high rise), and all concerning a young woman, a few days before her marriage, who goes to an employment bureau and is assigned to a day job as a cleaning woman in a unit in the high rise, and she finds herself in the midst of a domestic drama, involving infidelity, very harsh disputes between husband and wife, some bizarre and paranoid (yet maybe justified) behavior by the wife, and shifting sympathies throughout. Fahradi must be aware of the repressive regime in which he lives and works, obviously, but he subtly makes us aware as well of the conditions of repression that pervade the city and the culture - the long hooded black capes that the women must wear are ever-present - although shed immediately once indoors - but we're always aware of the possibility at any moment of a woman's being stopped, questioned, berated, or worse. The film editing is excellent - sometimes with a hand-held documentary feel to it (especially the interiors) and at other times beautiful staging and lighting on the street scenes, particularly the drive at night as the city celebrates the new year with fireworks and bonfires. We get the sense of contemporary Tehran as in some ways a vibrant, modern, urban environment and in other ways almost medieval. It's a difficult and sometimes challenging movie - as in lots of great art, we're put right into the midst of events, seeing things through eyes of the bewildered young woman, and the relationships among the characters are not entirely clear at first, but the movie comes together and builds in power and impact as it moves inexorably toward a difficult conclusion (not a resolution).

3 miniseries that we sampled: Marcella, Sneaky Pete, Chef's Table

Some notes on a couple of miniseries we've dipped into but probably won't pursue any further. First, the Netflix series Marcella - yet another story about a woman who's a supersleuth police detective, in this case the eponymous Marcella who's drawn back into the force after several years on leave to help with an investigation of a series of murders - at the same time that he marriage is breaking up, etc. The writing and acting are OK at best, but this ground feels so familiar, specially after we've just finished with the mostly excellent series The Fall. If a detective is really supposed to be such a great sleuth, at least let them figure things out in a smart way over time - in other words, let them do the work, not the screenwriter. One example: M and another cop are interviewing a potential witness and M. pulls a snapshot from the refrigerator that just happens to be a photo of the prime suspect. That's the kind of stupid writing - and in this case along with a series of cartoon bullies in a family-owned construction company that's trying to cheat the City of London on a project. Nothing in this show feels authentic. Slightly better is the Amazon series Sneaky Pete, about a con man (Gregory Ribasi) who gets out of prison and poses as his former cell mate, visiting the family as the long-lost cousin they haven't seen in 20 years (they seem to accept this); what's better about SP is that it's clearly a comedy and we're not meant to question the probability or likelihood of any of the action. What's not so good is that it really isn't all that funny or interesting - despite Bryan Cranston's best efforts as a mob leader running a gambling operation. One episode was fine, two seemed too much - they maybe should have re-thought this as a movie. In desperation, we reverted to Season 2 of Chef's Table (Netflix), for a fix on exotic and traditional Mexican food - a good show for the visuals if nothing else, but at 60 minutes seemed too long and redundant - these episodes should be 30 minutes (as in Season 1, if I remember correctly) - give us a taste of the food, don't engorge us.

The Fall wraps with a dramatic flourish

The Fall wraps at the end of Season 3 w/ a dramatic flourish and, though Season 3 naturally has less tension than the first 2 seasons in that the serial killer, played by Jamie Dorman, is under arrest, writer-director Allan Cubbitt does a fine job maintaining the drama. The main issue, as the police prepare the case against the killer and as his defense strategy emerges, is whether his amnesia - he claims that he has no memory of the crimes he's charged w/ - is legit., a traumatic reaction following his arrest and shooting, or whether he's faking to escape conviction or at least to get a lighter sentence. We have a lot of long interviews w/ police detectives, including the lead in the series, Jillian Anderson, and interviews with his assigned psychiatrist in the mental hospital for the criminally insane where he's held, at least temporarily. The plot is impressively coherent, albeit a few elements raise eyebrows, such as would an accused serial killer be afforded the freedom to move around almost at will during his hospitalization and during interviews? That said, the series, after a rough start, held our interest throughout with a nice balance of nuance, conflict (between devious killer and shrewd, super-cool though flawed police detective), analysis, and action.

Season 3 of The Fall and how to maintain the dramatic suspense

Credits to writer-director Alan Cubbitt for his series The Fall, but he faces an almost insoluble problem in Season 3: We know the ID of the serial killer (we'd known since the outset, the drama in seasons 1 and 2 was how the Belfast PD would catch him), he's already confessed to the crimes, there's a ton of evidence linking him to the crimes, and there's at least one victim maybe 2 who can testify against him. At the end of season 2 (spoilers, if you haven't seen that season) he gets shot while in police custody. So what's the tension in Season 3? It opens w/ an hour-long show about the medical team saving him from his serious gunshot wounds - and I have to say this was about as realistic and intense as you've seen in any medical show, anywhere. That said, what's the big deal in regard to the plot? Does it matter so much whether he survives and will go on trial? (It does to lead detective played by Gillian Anderson). Tension builds somewhat in the next two episodes, as we learn that the killer has recovered physically but has seemingly lost several years of his memory - so he literally has no recollection about anything regarding the killings and attacks on women. So what will happen at the trial - can they convict a man who has no memory of the crimes w/ which he's charged? All told, the courtroom drama is much less gripping than the crime drama - but there's a potential twist. We can never quite believe the conniving killer (Patrick); there are various hints and suggestions that he may be faking his amnesia, and we keep waiting for the spring the pop - an attack on someone perhaps, most likely his devoted ICU nurse who is very much his "type"? Definitely will watch this season to its finish, but not sure how much Cubbitt can milk out of this narrative - I can't foresee a Season 4, or at least not a credible one.