Films by Rohmcer, Bunuel, Bujalski, Malick, Leigh, and season-enders from Succession, Barry, and Mrs. Maisel - plus One in a Billion

 Elliot’s Watching - May 2023

Rohmer, Leigh, Bunuel, Malick, Bujalski, Mrs. Maisel, Succession, and Barry

The second work in Erich Rohmer’s late-life quartet, A Tale of Winter (1992)  is a sweet yet strange love story, centering on an appealing young woman, mother of a young daughter from an early relationship and now faced with choosing a life path w/ two suitors: Mr. Wrong (a beautician, as is she), a potential Mr. Right (a devout intellectual librarian), and Mr. Lost - the love of youth and father of daughter who through some cockamamie mishap involving lost addresses has slipped away from the woman’s life but for whom she still waits - hoping to find him, by chance, in all of Paris or beyond - he may be traveled to America, who knows? What gives this film a bit of a push, as hinted in the title, is the analogous Shakespeare play A Winter’s Tale, which involves the disappearance of a queen who was punished thoughtlessly by her husband. The film even includes the characters viewing the play: the woman (Felicie) and Mr. Potential, Felice in tears, as the king and queen reconcile, through some of S’s most ridiculous contrivances; the scenes as shown are among the worst and most pompous stagings of S. and would more likely bring forth hoots rather than tears but so be it. The film itself is pretty good in that we really get to care about and root for this obviously troubled and confused young woman. 

 A definite two-thumbs-up for Deborah Cahn’s Netflix political drama The Diplomat, with an excellent performance from Keri Russell as the newly appointed American Ambassador to St. James (i.e., the UK) just as a missile attack on a British navy ship kills 41 soldiers and draws in successively Iraq, Russian, and maybe more. Unlike so many shows of this ilk The Diplomat has the sense of accuracy and likely reality - the intrigues and egos and romances and alliances of British, American, Iranian et al agents and diplomats, all struggling to fulfill their divergent agendas - in particular Russell as a dynamic, tough, analytic, and in some odd ways obsessed with her appearance force of nature. Lots of surprises along the way, many moments of intrigue some of which might elude on first viewing, and t’son secret that a 2nd seasons has been green-lit, with makes the dramatic conclusion of season 1 a great stepping-off point. 

So….what’s there to say about Luis Bunuel’s The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955) except to say that Bunuel must have needed the money. The film has none or nearly none of the satiric and imaginative visuals and strange encounters that of any other Bunuel film I’m aware of - ranging from the slice scene in Andalusian Dog to the weird sexual predatory behavior in Tristana to the slings and arrows aimed in Discrete Charm and the list could go on; the list could go on. Criminal Life centers on a chid in a well-to-do Mexican family who watches as his governess is shot to death and he imagines that he is responsible for this shooting and the scene governs the rest of his life as, for unexplained reasons, he plans to kill a series of women: All of them do die, but not at his hand, and he’s puzzled and troubled that the police cannot arrest him for his though-crime. Maybe some potential here, but it’s acted out of conceived in such leaden and preposterous manner that the film is hard to watch and I would have dropped it at some point but for the very few flashes of Bunuelian insight: strange behavior with a lookalike mannequin, for ex. This is not the place to begin watching his movies, however. 

The 3rd in Eric Rohmer’s late-in-life quartet, A Summer’s Tale (1996), is the lightest and most true to life of the series thus far, a love story of sorts that centers on a young man -(Gaspard)  a grad student in mathematics - on summer vacation but quite shy and aimless. We feel sorry for him because of initial isolation and seeming loneliness or at least shyness (this film in the sense of a story of loneliness and wasted youth it brings to mind Rohmer’s Green Ray). A perfectly lovely young summer waitress (Margot) befriends him and is obviously interested in him, but he pushes her off: He has a girlfriend who will visit him later in the summer, and she as well is waiting for a boyfriend who someday will arrive. And this starts the pattern; over the course of the film Gaspard will begin dating 3 young women, but none of the relationships will quite work out; is he a cad or a predator or just morbidly shy and awkward? The film seems to be Rohmer’s look-back at wasted opportunities of youth, but without deep regret or sorrow; it’s a film in which all of the major characters are sweet and longing and trying to figure out their paths in life (Gaspard, played by Melvin Poupaud dreams of becoming a song writers/singer - and he’s pretty good but aimless, not driven it seems to a career in such a competitive field). We can easily imagine him years later reflecting on his youth and wondering at his missed opportunities and broken pathways. 

Inevitably there will be spoilers in any report on Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess (2013) so read no further if you’re about to watch: What makes this film so astonishing is that it appears in all regards - the low-resolution camera work, the awkward cuts and pans, and of course the look of all the actors, most of them classic geek in style, big awkward eyeglasses, huge collars on dress shirts, cheap-looking rugby shirts, etc. - and of course the whole concept of man v machine, very1980, when the most advanced computers were big, heavy devices about the size of large TVs of the era, noisy clunky printouts of all info, and a game of chess took hours. The catch is that this is an entirely enacted and scripted film about an imagined competition some 30 years ago - and I am sure it will take any viewer, including this one, some time to recognize that this is a film set ca 1980 and not a more nearly contemporary film about an imagined competition some 30 years back. What gives it away? I guess the footage of one of the loners knocking doors and asking if he could sleep in their/her room - who’s going to allow this?, I thought, as it came clear that this is a sly comedy we’re watching and it’s a great sendup of the types of personality that would congregate at such a competition - in some ways not so distant from today and in other respects a whole generation or even 2 in the rear view. 

The plot of Terrence Malick’s second film, Days of Heaven (1978) is about as thin as it gets - migrant worker (Richard Gere) on the rails with girlfriend/wife (but posing as his sister) and young daughter derail at site of a vast wheat field run by a handsome and perhaps kindly wealthy farmer (Sam Shepard); as harvest progresses, farmer increasingly attracted to Gere’s partner, and she agrees to marry him, but as part of a robbery scam - which of course goes awry as she falls for her new husband and arouses Gere’s hostility, ending in a chase and shootout - and none of it particularly believable, motivated, or surprising - yet - it’s still a great film to watch, preferably not on a laptop, for the extraordinary photogram, landscape and otherwise, from the incomparable Haskell Wexler and Nestor Almendros - not just the obvious beautiful images on the Texas [supposedly, but film was shot in Alberta] plains or sunsets and so forth but even in the most ordinary settings his eye brings everything to life and continuously surprises - that said the film score is powerful as well from the great Ennio Morricone. So plot, character and credibility are not Mallick’s credentials - for just one example - why does the kid/narrator speak w/ an indelible NY accent? Makes no sense. Who cares?

Not sure what’s left to be said about The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Season 5, 2023), but a few notes here: After a tenuous start, which didn’t really pickup to the great Rachel Brosnahan (as the Eponymous Midge) in the first season until RB stepped into her role as a comic, upending her husband’s future and that of their marriage. But after the first season the series seemed to founder - an asinine visit to Paris, some overwritten passages such as the ferris wheel conversation, and we stopped watching, but, curious, we began 5, the final series, and were pleasantly surprised: Lots of cutting humor, Midge struggles to find her place as a writer for the top late-night show (compared w/ Jack Parr, for ex) - and building toward the inevitable conclusion as she gains her footing first as the “lady” writer for the show and, more important as a stand-up. There was a lot of pressure on the creative team, notably Amy Sherman-Palladino to come up with a killer final season, and she/they succeed where so many have failed: esp Midge’s surprise standup, which had to be hilarious or the show would’ve flopped and they came through perfectly. Overall in this series I found the segments focused on Midge’s parents, particularly her father, to be clumsy and absurd; the more the show was about Midge and her generation, the better. So it was far from a perfect series, though the end was perfect - and Brosnahan’s world is her oyster, so to speak - a great comedic actor who will probably want to stretch to avoid stereotyping. 

And praise for yet another great Mike Leigh TV drama now released as a feature (Criterion, thank you), Grown-Ups (1980), absit  young couple that move into “council” housing where they try to set up and settle in to their new space (and from her POV, the excellent Leslie Manville, star in many Leigh films, to prepare to have a baby and raise a family), but 2 obstacles impede their potential happiness: LM’s sister has become a real pain - she’s lonely and socially extremely awkward and bossy - and she spends way too much time in their marriage as her own life is so pallid (she still lives at home with Mom), and the adjacent apartment - not Council (ie not Welfare, as we might put it) owned by (their former) h.s. teacher; tensions build among all characters on all sides and all lets loose in an incredibly confrontation among all the characters in a powerful sequence that’s both terrifying and heart-breaking - a good film in the Leigh style of Chekhov of the British working class, that rises to the level of greatness in the brutal confrontation toward the end of the performance. 

Everyone in the world has already written about Succession Season 4 (the finale, 2023) so I might as well jump in w/ a few observations. For one thing, how could it be so much fun to watch the cavorting of a group of people whom we truly despise - selfish, privileged, right-wing, immoral, the list of adjectives could go on, but in the end, or perhaps I should say from the beginning, we lavished in watching their lives of extremity, sometimes with envy, let’s face it who wouldn’t want to travel by private jet?, and most of the time with repulsion. Yes they’re so witty and so credible, that’s what made it work. As to the final season, and there will be spoilers here, I wasn’t as keen on the last episode as most seem to have been - to me the extra 30 minutes was time wasted and too much, and the sharpness and precision of all of the preceding episodes is one factor in the success. Most of the commentary I read today puts it at face value that the show is now over, but I’m not so sure: Doncha think we need a few more episodes, watching Tom’s total failure as ceo and his constant humiliation by his new owner/boss = who will/should torment him about his attraction to Shiv? And Shiv - she cannot stay on as a corporate wife, no way. Shouldn’t we watch her devour Tom? I had said from the outset that the final victor would be the hapless Greg, and I still think that’s possible. And can we end w/ Kendall looking out from Brooklyn Heights? Surely he has a scheme in mind - perhaps relating to the still pending outcome of the presidential race - some Trumpian mischief, yes? That all said, it was a highly intelligent, well conceived, scripted, and performed - including, btw, terrific use of a musical score. Kudos creator Jesse Armstrong + Kieran Culkin, Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, and others + bonus points to Nicholas Britell for the score. 

Another excellent and somewhat overshadowed bowed out this week as Bill Hader’s 4-season run of Barry came to a close. Part of the underachievement medal comes from the nature of this series - 30-minute episodes and billed as a comedy, where in fact it’s a fine, multifaceted drama series, with a lot of twists and turns and strong character development throughout. A one-sentence plot summary has it that Hader/Barry, suffering shell shock froths time in military service, takes on the job of an enforcer for mostly mob conglomerates; he disembarks on assigned to kill a member of an acting troupe, and in the process he steps into acting and finds himself leading a double-life, and many conflicts and dramatic scenes ensue - a sure-handed mixture of a doomed-love romantic drama, a send-up of Hollywood values and the pressures of writing and seeing through to the end of an original script, acting lessons, a murder involving active police officers, and disputes with various at-war drug gangs vying for c control of LA (led ultimately by Anthony Carrigan’s great portrayal of gay Chechen enforces NoHo Hand), a prison drama, and the list could go on - but the riches are plentiful and not the least of which was a wholly satisfying and credible final episode: s rarity. 

Zarna Garg’s hilarious one-hour comedy special. One in a Billion (Prime, 2023), establishes her as a best of all India-born female comics living and performing in the U.S. today - Ok, how many others are there? But that of course is part of her schtick: Women born in India are just not encouraged to enter the entertainment field, and that’s even more so for those who emigrated to the U.S. - and that’s part of her material: the parents who push their kids relentlessly toward success in a few fields, ie engineering, finance, technology. Which leads to a # of laugh lines, notably her take on her beautiful daughter at Stanford who’s taking required arts elective in pottery: $80,000 for this!! Who makes pottery? Old men in villages in India! Because the have to! And so it goes. The show builds as it moves along; her delivery, from a minuscule stage, is flawless, and the show is remarkably clean and good-spirited, with a delightful surprise at the end. 

Elliot's Watching February 2022: Some I'd recommend (Scenes from a Marriage, As We See It, Coda, Crit Camp); others, not

 Elliot’s Watching Feb 2022

West Side Story - barely watchable. Spielberg and Co. decided to expand and narrative aspect of the story, which is by far the worst part - if anything it should be trimmed and just get us to the music and even to the dancing. Overall, the two gangs looked like a ballet corp (or corpse for that matter) and it was hard not to laugh when the gangs get tough, so-called, with each other. Ditto when the do flying leaps, jete’s, pirouettes, whatever on the mean streets of NYC. The 1960s v wasn’t great and probably has not aged well (not as well as Rita Moreno) but it was far, far, better than this mess of a film. 

Somebody, Somewhere - speaking of musicals - didn’t do much for me in the first 2 episodes, despite its good hear and good intentions. Just not funny (or sad) enough. As We See It, about a group home for adults on the “spectrum” was much more moving and credible for me, though my viewing partners were not in agreement so I probably won’t see much more of this one, either.

On the other hand…there’s Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander, which I first saw around its release date (1982) and I think I was too young to understand or appreciate this work. Or maybe it’s that I saw the movie version and have just finished watching, for the first time, the “theatrical” v., at 5 hours or saw and 5 episodes. I suspect that the film version included all of the emotional highlights, most notably the horrendous interrogations that the evil bishop/stepfather inflicts on the intelligent and sensitive Alexander (young Bergman) - in other words, the movie version was almost unrelenting horror whereas the theatrical presents a broader social canvas - esp in the amazing first episode that intro’s us to the Ekdahl (Bergman) family, which at first seems fun-loving the boisterous in their lavish xmas celebration - and we recognize, over the course of the episode, one night, we see that the family is deeply flawed by infidelity and failure. In any event, the series is breathtaking, and the Bishop has to be about the most noxious and hateful character in any dramatic film of the century. 

Other shows I will not finish include: The After Party, juvenile and preposterous; Red Notice (feature film) thinks it’s another James Bond except the characters are bits of fluff and the plot is absurd without being funny, charming, or devious; South Side, yes I did laugh a few times at this series about the Black community and its denizens in Southside Chicago - but not funny enough to hold my attention over a full season; Gilded Age, paper thin and completely unengaging in first episode, not even close to the standards that the BBC has - can anyone not see where this is headed? - so why not just adapt one of the great novels or stories?of the era rather than try to write something anew? And adding more to this list: What went wrong for Julia Garner/Shonda Rhymes on the interminable series Inventing Anna, which seemed phony and strange and just plain uninteresting from the outset, despite the all-star lineup. Do they have any idea how a newspaper/magazine office manages? Do they have any sense of how to create dramatic tension as reporter tries to convince her editors that this story, of a woman who faked her way into the upper crust of NY society, would be interesting or tense in the least? No, no, and no. Sorry

However, what a nice surprise to come across the under-the-radar Best Pic nominee Coda; it won’t win the Oscar, for obvious reasons (sorry, Apple TV), but it sure could attract a wider audience - a terrific, heart-warming, never soporific or gratuitous, of a teenager girl who works on her family fishing boat out of Gloucester while a full-time h.s. student with dreams of becoming a pro singer, with the catch that her family member all have complete deafness. The film gives us unusual insight into the world of those without hearing and is full of surprises and twists of fate as the young woman breaks free, to a degree, from her family - but finds a way to bridge the gap between her aspirations, which her parents and bro can obviously only partially appreciate if that, and the need and desire to be close to those who love her no matter what. 

Hagai Levi’s re-take on Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage doesn’t quite measure up against the original, but it’s still a powerful and sometimes frightening intense, close look at a youngish (30+) Boston-area couple and who they deal directly and painfully with issues that arise over the course of their endangered marriage: pregnancy and medical abortion, infidelity, separation, sexual longing, and, in the episode closest the Bergman original, heart-felt reparation. The series reads like 5 intense two-person plays, and the leads, Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac give it their all. Probably not a show for everyone, but in an age of too much streaming drivel and lackluster comedy, this series wins props for intensity and credibility.

Then there’s Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959); in my admittedly fading memory the 1934 v was more powerful and moving, but the Sirk remake (both based oh Fannie Hurst’s novel) is far the more lush and operatic - too much so, by today’s standards, which tend to favor minimalism and subtlety rather than over-the-top melodrama. So much depends on the score! As you watch it try to imagine it w/out the scare and it would be laughable. The story, groundbreaking in its day for its honesty about race relations, today looks too condescending at best and puzzling in ways that really aren’t so great: It’s a “passing” story, with the young girl, a light-skinned Black child who identifies even from an early age as “white” and as she gets older she rejects her Black mother and is embarrassed any time her mother is on the scene. Despite its strengths as a mother-daughter drama, the film doesn’t really give voice to the Black girl’s struggle: She’s right, in a way; to ID as black in the 1950s was to cut oneself off from most opportunities for success. The overacting, the schmalz, make the film laughable at ties, but it’s best to accept it as a product of its era and ponder: How would a director/writer take on this theme today? 

The much anticipated season 4 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, at least based on the first episode, is a crashing bore with almost no good laugh lines and some long passages that are painful to watch, notably the long ride on the ferris wheel; yes, Rachel Brosnahan can still bring it - and Susie Myerson commands the screen at times, but something’s missing here and I think it’s comedy. I can’t be the only on who thinks Tony Shaloub is just plain not funny. But what about Brosnahan? In this season so far, which is as far as I’ll get, she just seems angry and deranged. Anger is not necessarily humor. This show has drifted far from its roots. And btw the same holds true for Ali Wong, whose 3rd Netflix comedy special is, based on the first half-hour, just a rant - provocative, sure, but not really funny, just gross and indecourous. Loved her previous special - which has real insight into relationships, class, ethnicity - but this one just was going nowhere good, despite the hilarity from the audience (much good-will laughing and cheering, as with so many comedy audiences - handpicked?).

First noting that we have returned to As We See It, a moving and provocative series about a group home for 3 young adults with severe autism and their medical aide, a terrific series that gives us insight into a world and a malady about which most of us know little, plus it’s comic without being condescending and dramatic without being melodramatic or, for that matter, predictable.

Over past couple of days have watching Max Ophuls’s late (last?) film, The Earrings of Madame de… (1953), which unlike above series (in every way) is melodramatic and romantic and an evocation of a long-gone era - Gilded Age Paris - with a distinct focus on the world of the aristocratic and privileged, though not without several snide remarks and actions throughout that, if we absorb these moments, show us privilege, cruelty, and obduracy of the aristocracy on its last breath. The main reason to watch the film is a technical one: the astonishing camera work of Ophuls, the camera moving so much as it follows the characters through and across various settings, most of them interiors of a belle-epoch mansion somehow brought to life and re-created by MO’s design team. The camera work - esp in the ballroom-dancing sequences - is literally dizzying. And how can you get enough of the performances of the 3 leads, Charles Boyer, Danie;le Darrieux, and especially famous director Vittorio DeSica? The plot - based on a then-current novel set ca 1900 - is almost incidental; the eponymous earrings figure in several white lies and social upheavals and by the end I couldn’t keep the earring-story clear in my muddled head - but there’s no need for that, just watch what’s before you and it’s amazing and unlike that of any filmmaker since (and few previous, Welles being one). BTW we never learn Madame’s name - every time its uttered some intrusion - the noise of a passing carriage, for example - blurs it out. 

I had it completely wrong about the Netflix doc Crit Camp, for some reason expecting this doc to be a heart-warming visit to a camp for children with disabilities, much like Paul Newman’s much-touted camp, but it happens that Crit Camp is so much more and so different from my expectations. It begins as a focus on a camp called Jen Ed, but always by the participants called Crip Camp, using much documentary, low-quality video footage from the 70s or so (not sure of precise dates) of a left-wing, counterculture camp for these admirable and brave young people; the spirit of the camp led to the formation of an advocacy group by some of the campers, who over the years built a national, even an international, recognition of the rights of those w/ disabilities and fought some valiant battles against authority, many of whom - even in the Carter administration - were reluctant to sponsor legislation guaranteeing most basic right: access, transportation, housing, schooling that was not “separate but equal” - a tremendous example of the power of advocacy and peaceful demonstration. The world has changed radically, thanks in this regard to the brave souls who found their voices in youth in this “special” camp - a powerful documentary that will bring you near tears and make you proud of what can be and has been accomplished. 

I’m no big fan of ballet - in fact I don’t understand it at all and I skip any story in the arts section that’s about dance - but the 1948 weepy The Red Shoes (Powell and Pressburger) is a good entertainment in so many ways: start w/ the highly stylized Red Shoes dance full of illusion magic, something not able to re-create in a live performance but that lifts the performance to another level in film; also, Red Shoes gets as well as any other film I’ve seen at the real tensions and emotions of the cast - stars, extras, business interests - all the love and jealousy and camaraderie and exploitation and irascibility, all there and seeming to this viewer on the money, nothing romanticized. The end of the show is operatic and over the top, but it’s earned the right to that - stepping out of the real world of dance/the arts and all of the attendant struggles for success and balancing stage life with personal life; a beautiful film just to watch, right up the the conclusion which is a cornball. Reminded me altogether of Children of Paradise - which was made at roughly the same time, but Red Shoes feels much more contemporary (of course it was a present-day setting, unlike CofP) and also of Day for Night. Fun to watch, and, as the Criterion Channel notes, beautiful use of technicolor. 

 

Season 3 of Mrs. Maisel picks up the slack and has some great scenes and routines

Season 3 of Amy Sherman-Palladino's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Prime, 2019) is a definite step up from Season 2, which seemed to drift away from what gives the series its strength and its life: Rachel Brosnahan's portrayal of the eponymous rising-star standup comedian. RB in all but 1 (of the 8) episodes gives a hilarious shtick that is well-integrated into the plot line. Man will watch and enjoy this series from he performances alone - and she's funny even when not delivering lines, just watching her walk through a crowded room is funny enough. That said, the series is by no means perfect, with every episode having its highlights and dead spots. For example, the Weisman, particularly Tony Shaloub's character, are always annoying and ridiculously over-the-top whiners who are strain credibility at every turn. On the other hand, MM's manager, Susie (Alex Borstein) is more nuanced and funnier in this season than in either of the first 2, as she begins to develop her own career, notably by managing the career of comic Jane Lynch in her weird attempt to play serious drama (Miss Julie, of all things). Most of all, some of the scenes in Season 3 are beautifully conceived, filmed, and edited; in the 10th episode alone there's a great opening sequence in which we see two parallel scenes of Mrs. M and her ex early in their marriage and 4 years later - same setting, same characters completely different mood. Another great sequence simply shows MM walking through the crowded garment-district amid racks and racks of women's wear being cut out, sewn, prepared for shipping - a simple scene, maybe not even necessary, but good as any documentary on the industry in the 50s. And of course the Harlem barbershop scene in the 10th episode, this one Suzie's, a great and lively scene and probably incredibly difficult to script and plan. All in all, it's a season with its ups and downs, but the series is on the right track heading toward Mrs M's inevitable breakout as a headliner (in this season she's an opening act for a Johnny Mathis lookalike) in Season 4.

Why to watch Season 2 of Mrs. Maisel

There's at least one good reason to stay with The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Prime) through Season 2: Rachel Brosnahan, who has simply made the lead character her own, dominating the show in every scene she's in, which is most scenes. Just to watch her walk with her elbows tucked in and her torso leaning forward, always in a rush, and to hear her in conversation, clipped and sharp and so fast you can't even think straight, to hear her answer the telephone (which opens the season and leads a real payoff in the final episode) is half the fun of the show. The highlight of course is her comic routines, which unfortunately she does not get to do in each episode of Season 2, but when she does it's always surprising and funny: the French nightclub bilingual routine, the "Blue Night" in the Catskills w/ her cantankerous father in the audience, the night she rips into the fellow (male) comedians, when she bombs at the wedding reception. The key is that these aren't pauses in the plot for a shtick - as in say a Seinfeld episode - but are integrated into the on-going plot. Another + in season 2 is that Alex Borstein comes into her own as well, not just as a sidekick: in particular in the fine episode where she wins over a couple of thugs hired to abduct her. Unfortunately, Season 2 is not all great, however;:the Catskills interlude drags on for too long, love interest subplot has little energy or chemistry, it's increasingly disturbing how indifferent Midge Maisel is to her kids, and most of all the ancillary parental dramas, in particular the idiotic behavior of her mother at the outset (flying off to Paris for no reason) and of her father throughout (who can believe for two seconds his vetting of the suitor? - unfunny). So you take the bad or mediocre with the good or really good and hope for even better in Season 3, which the final episode unerringly cues up.

Notes on Blackkklansman and Mrs. Maisel

Two notes, first on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Season 2. Far too often the 2nd season of a hit series falls way short of the mark. We watched the first episode of Maisel 2 last night and I'm pretty sure we'll stay with the series but  what a mixture of the good and the bad in this season kickoff! As to the good: Once again Rachel Brosnahan is a completely winning presence in every scene she's in. Her standup routine in this first episode is completely clever and surprising and hilarious; her stint on the B.Altman switchboard in the opening segment is great, too. The biggest surprise, though, was the hilarious episode w/ Alex Borstein (playing Susie Myerson), waylaid by a pair of thugs and talking her way out of trouble and winning them over. OK, but on the downside: The trip to Paris to bring back  Midge's mother is just awful, completely nonsensical, never funny, and never helped by the one-note whining of Shalhoub.

Second, on Spike Lee's Blackkklansman, on which I posted yesterday. First, sorry but I got the date of the setting wrong - it must be about 1972 (not 68), though I'm not sure of the exact year. Sorry. Also, I've since learned that Lee took major liberties with the facts and the source material in turning Stallworth's memoir into this movie. For example (possible spoilers), there was no bombing and "Flip" was not Jewish. I don't object to his doing so - and I think any viewer would know that the relationship with the college activist was Lee's invention. Lee's changes made the narrative far more exciting and didn't belie the truth at the heart of the story - the racism of the klan, the bravery of Stallworth (even if somewhat exaggerated), but I do think Lee should have been more forthright, with some kind of cue that some facts and incidents have been changed and that the film is only loosely based on this true episode.

Why to watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Amy Sherman-Palladino's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Season 1, starring the great Rachel Brosnahan in the title role - who knew, from what we saw of her in House of Cards that she had such tremendous comic flair? - and perfect sidekick Alex Borstein is a pleasure to watch start to finish, it's many strengths far outweighing a few clunky performances and plot points. In short, the narrative - which will surely carry on for at least another season on Amazon Prime - involves a young mom living in splendour on the upper West Side in NYC in 1958, living too close to her domineering parents, hangs at comedy clubs w/ her husband, a handsome young businessman (set up by his dominating father) who aspires to be a stand-up comic but who does not have the chops. The marriage breaks up (he goes off with his hilariously dimwitted secretary after he embarrassingly flops at an audition) and, strangely, she finds herself drawn into the comic milieu and finds she has smashing talent. But she has to keep this double life a secret not only from humiliated ex but from her socially ambitious parents. For me, the subplots involving the parents of both she (Midge Maisel) and he (Joel Maisel) are way over-acted and cliched, and I was on the verge of giving up on the series in episode 1 - until Brosnahan did her stand-up routine, at which point I realized there were special talents at work here. Not only to we watch Midge/Brosnahan do some great standup (and improv) routines, but through these we watch not only her development as a character but also as a strong, independent woman; the comedy isn't an add-on schtick - as it often was in Seinfeld, for ex., - but it's completely integrated into the plot: her change and growth is part of the arc of her character and of the narrative (in one clever late episode we see her work variants on a punch line until she gets it just right, as measured by audience reaction). From personal experience I can say that Sherman-Palladino gets the aspiring comic scene down right, at least to a degree - though I would say that aspiring comics are generally quite supportive of one another (laughing generously at one another's lines, regardless of quality) and would note that no comic in his right mind would do an entire Bob Newhart sketch on stage and try to pass it off as his own. All told, though, a really good series that's leaving a lot of people waiting for Season 2.