Possibly the best recent movie you've never heard of, and Mare of Eastown

Possibly the best recent movie you’ve never heard of - why it’s gone so unrecognized is beyond me - is the Sarah Gavron’s British film (on Netflix), Rocks (2019), about a group of h.s. girls attending an all-girls school in London, which seems to have a pretty broad, multi-racial enrollment. The film focuses on the eponymous Rocks (her nickname, and not a very good movie title, I think) played beautifully by Bukky Bakray. After some reasonably jovial scenes among her friends and in her council housing w/ mom and grade-school-age brother, she learns via a brief and unfeeling note that her mother has gone away - not the first time this has happened - leaving her suddenly in care of young brother, maybe for a few days, maybe forever, we just don’t know. The film follows their odyssey through a # of painful and quite credible encounters (a note at the end off the film informs us that many street children in London helped w/ the development of the plot and the dialog) as Rocks seeks the basics, food, clothing, shelter, while keeping her spirits up and keep her and her brother in school. There are no villains in the film and no heroes either, but there are many painful, sorrowful encounters as well as many scenes that show the resilience and spirit of the Rocks and others in her clique. The film resolves, sort of, with a lot of ambiguity, much like another great film about a lonely child fending for himself, 400 Blows. Some may opt for subtitles on this film, which would be essential esp for Americans if you want to get every word of every exchange, but in my view a better way to appreciate and experience this film is to get what you can from the dialog, which is hardly Shakespearean, and just focus on the mood and impact and general import of all of the exchanges, which you can easily do. 

The Kate Winslet vehicle Mare of Easttown (Brad Ingelsby) on HBO is a good police-procedural murder mystery that has many strands and involves multiple families and in a broader sense the whole eponymous town, modeled I would say on Easton, Pa., and in fact all shot in Pa (I’m guessing in Harrisburg?) with a real sense of verisimilitude. Unlike most such series, this one actually wraps, tying up all the loose ends and not leaving us with teasers that carry on to a 2nd season; this one seems to be a one-and-done. The extremely complex plot does not quite stand up to close inspection - I won’t give anything away here, but will say that there’s an awful lot of luck, or screenwriters’ heavy hand, in the resolution of some of the story lines, but that’s made up for by the true sense of an ending achieved in the final episode of this series that’s worth watching and will lead to many discussions as to who dunnit; the resolution is plausible if not obvious, though I did find the resolution a bit strange and unlikely and will say no more here on that. One completely separate quibble, though: How come so many movies and TV series seem to have absolutely no sense as to how the college-admissions process works  in the real world? Mare’s daughter’s college-ap process is ludicrous and could so easily have been done right; writes care so much about the accuracy of police and court procedures - why can’t they get this simple stuff right?