Powerful and moving film adaptation of 3 short stories: Certain Women

Kelly Reichardt's smart, introspective, and moving film Certain Women (2016) is a series of three short narratives about female protagonists (played really well in turn by Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart) linked only by their shared setting (contemporary South Central Montana), time, and mood. This is not a series of interlocked narratives a la, for ex., Crash, but somewhat of an anthology piece: cf Altman's film based on Raymond Carver stories - and unsurprisingly Certain Women is based on a set of short stories by Maile Meloy (I've read some of her stories in the NYer though I don't remember those adapted for this movie). I've seen some though not all of KR's previous films - written and directed by - and you can see here the continuity of interest, a focus on young women (though Dern's role here is of a more mature woman), lonely, generally in sparsely populated Western settings, trying to get by and to come to terms with who they are in life, often using an "open" ending rather than a climactic, dramatic conclusion, with the women maybe at a wiser point than at the outset but still with decisions, pain, and life before them. (If any filmmaker could tackle Chekhov, I think KR could do great adaptations of a series of his stories.) This is not the movie for those who want high drama and lots of action, but for those moved by introspection, mood, ambiguity, and sense of place (he captures the look and feel of small Western cities really well, with the ever-present whistle of passing freights, esp in the first of the 3 narratives) - in other words, qualities salient in serious literature - this film adds to KR's formidable body of work and is well worth your watching.

Mindhunter gets better as it goes along; looking forward to Season 2

The Netflix series Mindhunter is a classic example of a series that grows on you or perhaps just gets better as it moves along and the team finds its footing. What seemed like a slow and awkward start as the young FBI agent Holden begins - inspired by his new girlfriend - to get interested in the psychological makeup and social background of the most heinous criminals. In the first episodes, as he tussles w/ various conservative elements in the FBI bureaucracy trying to get the OK to move ahead w/ his research, the series seemed a little unfocused (so many different antagonists) and low-key (did we really care so much about his research?). But as the plot settles in the the small team of agents and outside experts begin interviewing some of the most notorious killers in custody - are they all based on real people? at least one - Richard Speck - obviously is - the series picks up in intensity and the stakes are raised. The interviews - in which Holden really pushes the subjects to the breaking point - are incredibly intense and highly consequential, as the team is gradually learning more about how to use the info they're gathering in order to solve on-going cases - not all of which turn out perfectly, to the great credit of the series (we're so used to seeing everything solved and tied up neatly in 60 minutes). There is some back story on each of the characters (troubled marriages, "secret" life as a lesbian, paranoia and anxiety attacks) - just the right amount, I think, to keep us engaged w/ them and to build tensions w/in the team, without overwhelming the plot and submerging into personal psychodramas. Looking forward to Season 2.

A series that lets us in on the ambiguity of crime investigations - cases aren't always solved in 60 minutes or less

We're about halfway through the new Netflix series Mindhunters, and after a slow start the series does build in intensity and hold our attention. At first, the series seemed terribly meandering: focused on a 29-year-old FBI agent, Holden, who gets transferred out of his first assignment - hostage negotiating - and assigned to training of agents and police officers. Partly because of a young woman, a sociology grad student, whom he meets and begins dating, he becomes increasingly interested in learning about the psychology of pathological criminals, esp serial killers (those who attack women in particular). What's troubling about the first several episodes is that Holden has no real antagonist: there are passing efforts to make it seem that the FBI was resistant to pursing this new line of research, that there would be conflicts between H and various traditional forensic agents who focus on physical evidence, not mental states of being. But these antagonisms seem to vanish in thin air, and by episode 4 or so Holden and his somewhat crusty, older partner, Bill, seem to have the go-ahead to pursue their research (they are soon joined by a BU criminology professor, a woman, who seems at first a potential love interest but has her own back story). By this point, we're in for the ride and what this troika take on a few cases: interviewing a confessed serial killer to learn his story and his pathology, getting involved in a couple of local investigations of brutal murders. Although it's hard to accept that, even in the setting of this series (1977) the idea of looking at a killer's mental make-up was such a radical idea, what's good about the series is its ambiguity: In most such shows, and there are thousands, the cops/agents/specialists step in and solve the case (in 60 minutes or less). Here, the resolutions of the case are not always so clear, and may even end in failure or in a truculent DA refusing to recognize the "psychological" evidence and working out a plea deal w/ the wrong guy. So there's a lot of potential here, as we watch the 3 investigators in the inchoate stages of their work and watch them get better over time.

A Japanese film about real people and their struggles, a little wordy but totally believable

The 2017 Japanese film After the Storm may not be a great film - perhaps a little too long, a little too talky, a little too much at times like a stage drama - but it has a lot of strengths and is worth a look. The story in brief concerns an elderly Japanese woman living in a low-rent housing project in an unnamed, small city, and her difficult relationship with her adult son, Ryoko, who as we gradually learn has a serious gambling problem. Ryoko, oddly enough, is a successful crime writer - had at least 1 novel published to some acclaim - now struggling w/ the followup, and who has taken a job as a private detective - he says it's to get material for his book, but obviously he needs the money, and in fact he engages in some really underhanded practices, blackmailing his own clients for example. In other words, he's a sleazy and disreputable guy - but w/ some winning qualities to be sure. He keeps trying to make good - hoping against hope to restore money he's lifted from his mother, promising to keep up on his child-support payments - and he truly wants to be involved in the life of his 10-year-old son, but he's on a downward course (with the ominous note that the son seems fascinated by lottery tickets - picking up on the malady of his dad and, as we also learn, his grandfather). All told, he's a truly believable character, and by the way one of the very few writers depicted in film in a realistic and credible manner: One look at his apartment and his desk and you know he's a real writer (unlike the typical romanticized view of the suffering writer who composes in flashes of brilliant insight or suffers through "writer's block" in ecstasy - see the Pitt-Jolie ridiculous movie on this them, or rather, don't). In fact, that's the great strength of this film: all of the characters seem real, true-to-life, struggling with life's problems as we all do; there's not a moment of melodrama or cinematic gaucherie, with one exception: the odd scene in which mom, dad, and son go out onto a playground in the midst of a typhoon, and, worse, the son "loses" some lottery tickets and they go into a park and find them one by one - they would have been blown to Seattle by that time!

Two quick hits, or not, from Netflix

Two quick hits or, rather, nonhits, as we started Our Souls at Night, starring Redford and Fonda, as a 60-something couple, both widowed, small town in midwest, she's somewhat of a misfit, cultured, drinks wine, he's a fit, taciturn, drinks Coors from a can. They apparently know each other in passing. She rings his doorbell one night and says she wants to ask him something; awkwardly, he invites her in. She says: Would you like to sleep w/ me? Well, this is ridiculous on so many levels but start w/ the fact that no normal, sane person would try to start a relationship thus. But this movie is not a comic romp among eccentrics. They're both totally centric. Nothing about the first 30 minutes seemed in any way believable or interesting to either of us. After abandoning the movie I read the NYer review, which found the "would you like to sleep w/ me" scene the best in the movie, so I can only imagine what came next. NYer said Redford teaches Fonda's troubled grandson to give up his iPhone and learn to enjoy fishing - so if that's where this movie was headed, I'm glad I bailed. We moved on to Suburro, a new Italian miniseries about the mafia, the Vatican, the gypsy population, drug dealers, crooked developers, et al. in present-day Rome. Great street photography, and a snappy though very complex first episodes w/ many characters and plot strands introduced, and cleverly brought together in a surprising twist at the end of the episode. All that said this falls into the category of miniseries I kind of like, M doesn't like (too much graphic violence and heavy-handed score), and I won't be motivated to watch the next 10 or so episodes on my own. Arivaderci.

Despite initial resistance, captivated by the Burns-Novic Vietnam series

At first I didn't want to watch the Burns-Novick series, The Vietnam War, having lived through that era - it was too painful to re-create and revisit, and I was pretty sure I knew all the ground this documentary series would cover. But as the first few episodes played on the TV in the adjacent room, couldn't help it - they drew me in and I was captivated. Yes, it was painful to watch - to see the suffering not only of US soldiers but also the Vietnamese soldiers (and civilians), to see the hypocrisy and dissembling of US leaders, notably Nixon and Kissinger, to see once again how pointless this war was, what a waste of lives and fortunes, for nothing, in the end, but ego and macho. Though I was pretty familiar w/ the history of the war and of the war resistance in the US and elsewhere, it was still powerful and moving to see these many news clips, war photography, plus contemporary interviews with those involved in many facets of the war, including several North Vietnamese veterans. I had no idea so much on-the-ground footage existed. Burns has outdone himself; there is nothing in this series of the saccharine tone in his famous Civil War series - this is much more dynamic, nuanced, and provocative, worth anyone's time - everyone's.

Season 4 of Transparent picks up in 2nd half, but will this be the end?

Transparent Season 4 does pickup in the 2nd half, as the plot lines focus more on the central character, Maura - which is completely appropriate. She's the one driving this narrative, and the various plot threads about the sexual transgressions and repressions and expressions of everyone else in her family are only of interest, at least to me, insofar as we can see the connection to the unusual but completely credible and sympathetic family dynamic: a father successful in career and by all other external measures but torn apart since youth because he has identified himself as a woman. So among the things we learn in the 2nd half of season 2: there is a history of gender transition in his family (and this plays a role in youngest child Aly's beginning to question her own gender), she has a burgeoning and mature relationship with a man of her age (Donald), she meets her father, whom she thought had died when she was a young child, and has an awkward conversation with him about his desertion of the family and about her sexuality. We get some excellent flashbacks o Maura in the early stages of her marriage, in therapy, trying without success to articulate a distinction between homosexuality and gender identity - the psychoanalytic practice of the day didn't really have the vocabulary for this kind of discussion. To me, this season could successfully call itself the conclusion to the series, as we see pretty much all the lead characters on the verge of breakthrough or change; I suspect, though, that it will continue until it totally runs out of gas. I could do w/ less of the story line on Sarah's (oldest child's) sex addiction and with Josh's torment over his relationship in youth w/ the family babysitter. The visit to Israel, to me, seemed a little stagey - let's all take a trip! - kind of like the cruise that concluded season 3., though I did like the image of Aly alone in the now-deserted West Bank commune farm, her dreams of peace and camaraderie shattered. All told, though, season 4 doesn't measure of to the series at its very best, it's worth watching to stay up to date on these characters and this important topic.