October 2022: Documentaries: Hostages, Streetwise, Aftershock; Streaming: Bad Sisters; Movies: Touch of Evil, Ludwig, The Photograph

 Elliot’s Watching - October 2022

Pretty much no one will like the ending of Nikos Papatakis’s film The Photograph (1987), and I won’t give away the ending but let’s look at the rest of the film, which follows the course of a young man forced by political opposition to leave his hometown in Greece and heads to Paris where he hopes his well-to-do uncle can help him find a job; thence is far from pleased to have this burden - but then, he sees among the young man’s belongings a photo of a beautiful woman. The young man tells his uncle that the woman is his sister, Joy, and the uncle falls in love with the woman and wants to marry her; problem is, the uncle is illiterate, so the young man becomes the go-between, writing a series of courtship letters. How long can this go on? A # of scenarios play out, some funny, some painfully tragic, and throughout we’re wondering how the young man can get out of the scrape of his own doing. The production of the film is at times amateurish and the subtitles leave much to be desired - but I’d say it’s an obscure film (thanks for saving it, Criterion!) that is crying out for a contemporary, possibly English-language, remake - the plot has much going for it, although the team had no idea how to bring this strangely entertaining film to a conclusion. 

Hostages, an HBO documentary series (2022, 4 episodes, from a team of 5 directors) is a detailed look at the Iranian revolution of the ’70s, the American complicity based on years of support for the brutal Shah, and ultimately the collapse of all social order, a vacuum filled by the charismatic Ayatollah who turns a blind eye on the mob attack of the U.S. embassy, leading to 444 days of imprisonment of embassy staff, a few Marines (or just one?), and other Americans working w/ the embassy. Not only is the documentary footage from the era plentiful and fascinating - but so are the contemporary interviews with several Iranian ex-officials (and one still an official) who participated in the takeover and its brutal aftermath, as well as a few of the hostages as well. Like most, I would think, I had no idea how much footage has survived - and documentarians use the bounty of evidence to give a complete and detailed narration of these scary events. One aspect of the case - hinted at but not fully examined - was with the incoming Reagan administration communicated with the Iranians to hold off on release of the hostages until after RR’s inauguration. Sure looks as if they did, but who will ever fess up? The whole episode was scary and tragic - and harbinger of many other attacks against the US, culminating in 9/11, far, far worse in its death and destruction, but sudden and complete w/in hours rather than months. 

Is Lucino Visconti’s biopic Ludwig (1973) really worth the four-hour commitment? Probably not, but it helps to split the film and watch it in segments. It has the panache and finesse that we expect in late Visconti’s work - extraordinary costumery and regal interior settings - along with a degree of weirdness, and Ludwig himself, aka The Mad King, does exhibit some disturbing behavior, especially dangerous in an absolute ruler. Who could imagine a head of state so removed from reality, so delusional, so cruel and narcissistic? Who can imagine the team of top advisors so troubled by the leader’s erratic behavior that they take steps to remove him from authority? Don’t answer that! If anything, I think the film could be more maddening, as seems almost that LV is enamored of Ludwig’s imperious volatility. Were the advisors wrong to remove him from office? Sure they were - and LV goes lightly on Ludwig’s extravagances (building numerous estates and palaces presumably at pubic expense - and, year, I’ve read that Ludwig got a bad rap and the expenditures were all or mostly from his own wealth - ah, that explains it!). Ditto Ludwig’s obsession with Wagner (whose music constitutes much of the score) - yet not a word, not a hint, about Wagner virulent anti-Semitism. So - despite it’s lavish production - it’s a film about which I’d say proceed w/ caution.

The 3-part documentary Aftershock: Everest and Nepal Earthquake (2022, Netflix) uses some great, terrifying on the spot footage and extensive interviews with survivors to convey the effect of the 2015 quake that killed about 9,000; we follow the course of 3 groups of people to tell the story: Some climbers, including one novice, trapped at Camp One after the avalanche that wipes out base camp and killed many; 3 Israeli travelers who trekked to a remote village and find themselves and some villagers on their own with little or no communication to the outside world, and a Nepalese businessman whose working-class hotel is destroyed - and the fate of those inside - including his family members - is unknown. So, three good story lines, lots of exciting on-the-spot footage (some re-enactment, too, I am pretty sure) - and a good film for those who can’t enough of the myriad films about the hazards of climbing, surfboarding, et al. 

Ira Deutchman’s documentary, Searching for Mr. Rugoff (2019) tells of the acrimonious, volatile eponymous film distributor. well-known if not exactly famous among film-lovers for his 5 NY cinemas that screened many of the greatest art films of the 60s and 70s and were avant-garde in this - his - promotional inventiveness (e.g., putting on body-building exhibitions in the theater lobby when screening a Schwarzenegger film; promoting the films with bold iconography in NYT adverts…). All good, but after an initial montage in which a dozen or more of this former employees spoke briefly of the joy and terror of working for him (as ID had) the film ran out of gas and never quite made me curious to learn any more about Rugoff. OK he once was famous and is now almost forgotten, but truly how many film distributors/promotors are “remembered” decades after their day was done? The film (I watched the first half, about 45 minutes) never really makes the case that the material on hand would or should be of any great interest other than to those who knew the guy. 

Martin Bell’s documentary Streetwise (1984) is a stunning and extraordinary film on the (mostly) teenagers living on the streets of Seattle, then, ironically, known as the “most livable city in America.” This scene is the polar opposite of the Microsoft/Starbucks Seattle culture that we know (of). Bell’s camera follows these children, all of them from broken homes or other terrible and threatening and loveless lives; they’ve made their way to this city and they get by in frightening ways: living in abandoned buildings, scrounging in Dumpsters for food, getting by through begging and through (mostly) petty theft, and most disturbing by soliciting “dates” on the street corners - 14-year-old girls living by prostitution. It’s amazing that Bell and his team had such access to these misdirected lives, and that they could maintain the rigid “I am a camera” conditions - never, apparently, intervening to stop a crime in progress. The film offers no protection to these kids - just exposure of the horrible life that they are in and that they will face; they talk at times about their desires for the future, and we know of course that few are on a path leading anywhere but downwards. Among many incredible sequences, the teenager’s meeting with his father in prison is maybe the strongest and strangest. Also, watching the completely overwhelmed social worker trying against all odds to help these kids get to a better life. There are several follow-up films showing the later lives of some of the key players (available on Criterion); once in, you can’t help but watch these supplementary materials as well. 

You won’t find a more hateful character on screen than Jean Paul (JP) Williams (played by Claes Bang) in the Irish black-comedy thriller (yes, lots of genre crossings) Bad Sisters (based on a Belgian series called Clan) - and we watched the entire 9 episodes waiting for him to get his desserts - and in fact we know that he gets sniffed out in the first episode but it’s a matter of who dunnit. In essence, the series is about 4 sisters you universally despise JP, the 5th sister’s abusive husband, so the 4-some hatch a series of ill-conceived plots to kill JP. No spoilers here - but note that the series cleverly and seamlessly moves back and forth in time, both before JP’s death and after, as we follow two hapless young insurance agents who suspect foul play, which if proven would mean they would not have to pay out on a life-insurance policy. Despite the dark doings, the series his hilarious throughout, thanks largely to the 5 sisters and the loathsome JP. There’s no great meaning or message or thrilling scenes of tension nor bewildering plot twists - just a really good comic story conceived and executed, if that’s the right word?, from the start. 

Wendell B Harris Jr.’s (he wrote it, directed it, starred in it) Chameleon Street (1989) won a top award at Sundance for its ahead-of-its time inventive editing, its unflinching portrayal of a not sympathetic Black lead character, and as a landmark in what today we call “docudrama,” as Harris tells the life story off William Douglas Street, a Black man who talked and charmed his way into several prominent Detroit-area professional careers: posing as a lawyer, a business developer, and, most improbable but tru, as a surgeon - he performed about 50 hysterectomies, with no training (we watch him do his first, horrifying). He also led a troubled family life, at times sweet and romantic but combustible and downright scary (some viewers’ eye closings ((mine)) when he engages in knife play w/ his toddler-aged daughter). The film is perhaps too inventive and unconventional for its own good - choppy, distracting, sometimes hard to follow - which is to say the technique gets in the way of character development; at the end, Street is still an enigma rather than a character as we’re more focused on Harris’s film techniques than on the story at hand. Still - what a loss! How can it be that he never directed another film? One can only guess. 

Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958; wrote - based on a book by What Masterson - directed, steals the show) as a film that’s all about atmosphere and nuance. The plot is particularly difficult to fathom, at least on 1st viewing - something about Mexican gangs and Rs dealers, leading to an attack on an American dealer across the border and into the US territory of Welles’s corrupt sheriff. Her performance is weird and outstanding and the narration show many of the OW quirks, lots of odd angles and shots up from about table height to the looming presences - film could not work and would be long forgotten had he not taken complete control. The opening sequence - a 10-minute or so single take that sets for the entire plot and gives some great footage of life and work on both sides of the Tex-Mex border. The long single take has since then been often eclipsed - thanks mostly to digital - think the coop shot (Goodfellas), that long shot at the opening of the film about an Hollywood agent can’t remember the name, and esp The Russian Ark, the entire film one take! Yet it’s still a great shot because of its scope and its grace and it’s relations to the material to follow. Some of the bit parts are especially well cast and directed - and who  can forget Dennis Weaver as the motel night manager? - but today the film would definitely cast a Mexican actor in the lead role as Vargas - Charlton Heston is fine, but I could never quite see him as a Mexican official. 

John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) gives us just about everything we’d want in a b/w noir film of its era - a plot rich with double-crossings and fatal mistakes, a really good safecracking of a bank vault - maybe not as good as Rififi but good enough, dark streets and many night-time scenes, a despicable self-important evil banker/investor who’s cheating on his wife and (with a 1/3 his age airhead beauty making her major-picture debut, Marilyn Monroe), a really smart and even likable “villain,” the criminal Doctor genius just out of jail and eager for his next heist, the film’s concise length, every scene and every line counts - although I suspect the the police commissioner’s laudatory news conference at which he praises police officers must have pleased the producer and the Code. That aside, the film - directed and co-written by Huston along with co-author Ben Maddow, based on the novel by the prolific W.R. Burnett - definitely holds up after 70+ years - a standard-setter, and not a relic. 

Let’s just say that the 3rd (and final) season of Lisa McGee’s Irish comic drama Derry Girls (2022) is nowhere near as funny as the first 2 seasons, save for an uproar of a comedy in the first 2 episodes (the boring neighbor brings a lot to the show, and the guest appearance of Liam Neeson was great , too ) but then the series kind of wobbled, w/ far too much attention paid to “the troubles” and the ultimate signing of a peace treaty btw N Ireland and GB - obviously important to the makers of this series but much less meaningful to xenophobe Americans (like me). The comedy withered in large part, I think, by almost writing the hilarious Siobhan McSweeney (as Sister Michael) out of show - a big loss (I wondered if her health had been an issue?). Saoirse-Monica Jackson, as the leader of the Girls, is great but not great enough to carry the expectations of this show. 

Suzanne, Suzanne (1982) is a short (25 minutes) documentary in which the members of Suzanne’s family reflect on how their late father brutalized them, S in particular, and the hapless mother, a victim herself of spousal violence, failed to step in and help her daughter in any significant way - a childhood that led almost inevitably to S’s drug abuse and imprisonment. In this film and she her other confront each other and reach a tentative forgiveness and peace. The film is shot in b/w with many darkly lit scenes and noir-ish settings and shadows. The fil holds up well emotionally but what was innovative 40 years ago is, obviously, far less so now - with our so much greater, cheaper, easier, small film equipment creating such a film today would be much easier, and I’m sore about a million film students have done so, w/ varying success. 

Tarr's Damnation, Guilt Season 2, Z, Wanda, The Shooting, The Beatles' Get Back, Visconti's Death in Venice, You Don't Know Me

 Ellliot's Watching - September 2022

Bela Tarr’s 1988 2-hour Hungarian film, Damnation (co-written with Lazslo Krasznahorkai), consists of long, long B&W shots most of which involve extremely slow panning or stasis. There’s a story within this film, though honestly I have no idea what it’s really about: superficially, a man laments that the woman he loves, a nightclub singer, is married to a thug who seems to hang around or manage the club. This fellow tells the protagonist (name?) to leave his wife alone or he’ll break his neck. He doesn’t leave the wife alone - in fact, one of the “stills” is a sex scene - but not much happens in that regard. BT has no evident interest in developing or differentiating the characters - tough going! These remarks, however, do not do the film true justice, as it’s in no way meant to be a thriller or a love story. The film is primarily a visual discourse: Any one of the “stills” would make a great 3-5 minute super-short - but to go to this film seeking plot, character, emotion is wrong. Particularly great scenes are the one in which the chanteuse sings, the celebration (of what?) near the end when, first, couples dance weird Eastern European type of jitterbug (and they’re pretty good!) and, even better, the end of the party when the whole town dances and moves about on the dance floor in so many rings - like a Hora, I think. There’s really no other film quite like this one and it’s not for everybody nor was it meant to be; the best way might be to see it in clips over several sessions rather than straight through for a tough 2 hours. 

The 2nd season of the Scottish crime drama Guilt carries on from season 1 though with somewhat less mordant humor and a lot more dark and foreboding plot threads, as we follow Max on his release from prison (see season 1) and tries to re-establish his working relationship with the Scottish mob boss - a bad decision, especially in that he links his fortunes w/ the dubious private detective, Ken. Can one follow the plot? Maybe not all the way, not without some help and swimming up stream, but enough to feel the tension and too for if not the “good guy” at least the “OK guy.” One things for sure: Most American viewers will want to watch this streaming w/ subtitles - we tried for a wee bit without these intrusive widgets (Do we really need such titles as “file drawer closes”?) but we were left at sea so went back and watched again w/ help. Anyway, it’s a really good series, as good a mixture of dark and light, cries and comedy, as I’ve seen in some time, and the door is left ajar for a Season 3. 

Costa-Gavras’s Academy Award-winning thriller, Z (1969 - based on a novel by Vassilis Vassilikos, based closely on the assassination of a Greek politician (C-G himself an exiled citizen of Greece living at the time in France) is an exciting, dramatic, nail-biter from the top - starting with the combative statement on the opening credits that goes something like: Any similarity to any person or persons living or dead is not coincidental - It is intentional. The film has some of the best and most terrifying depictions of street demonstrations and counter-attacks, and C-G’s management of the flow of action in crowd scenes is the best since Battle of Algiers (perhaps no coincidence that the film shot in part in Algeria). Story line in brief: A politician in the opposition party speaks at a rally - braving early warnings of street violence - when his is attacked and killed - leading to a cover-up that goes to the highest reaches of government (claiming he was hit by a drunken driver) - and is at least in part debunked through the unrelenting and fateful pursuit of truth and justice by one honest, fearless man (w/ help from a witness who tells the truth at his peril) - played well by Jean-Louis Trintagnant. Still worth watching today - in fact, maybe far too close for comfort today; the crowd scenes would inevitably call to mind the attacks of Jan 6 - and a forecast of what violence and cover-ups may be yet to come. 

Barbara Loden’s film (she wrote, directed, plays the lead) Wanda (1970) is something like the anti-Bonnie & Clyde - in this case a troubled, damaged young woman who gets drawn into a bank-robbery scheme that is anything but cool and sexy and glamorized - in that sense far more realistic and gripping than any of its counterparts. Loden, in the title role, plays a woman obviously unfit for family life; the film opens with her divorce proceeding in which her husband testifies that she neglects the children; she does not contest this, and wanders off into life full of danger.  She’s too trusting, and completely incompetent at managing her meager $, and falls into the clutches of the wrong guy, a mean bastard, who puts her in great jeopardy. Honestly, I thought I probably wouldn’t like this film - seemed too dreary and even saccharine from the promos - but it totally held my interest and my pity. The Pennsylvania coal-country backdrop is bleak and evocative, and probably the only wrong note in the film is that Loden - and what every happened too her? - is too pretty for the lead role. 

Monte Hellman’s The Shooting (1966, screenplay by Carole Eastman) was in essence the breakout of Jack Nicholson, following up on Easy Rider and predictive of Nicholson’s Three Easy Pieces (also written by Eastman), though in this film he plays the bad guy with great aplomb. Is it a good film? Depends how you measure that. I’m pretty sure I saw it a million years ago on initial release and followed the plot line with great interest but never figured out exactly what happened at the ending; watched it again this week - same story - but I still feel the fault is in myself; I’d gonna watch it again, hopes high. That’s mainly because the film is so good a long the way, mysterious and economical: a desert prospector and his feckless sidekick are scouted by a young woman bound on some kind of vengeance mission and she hires the 2 men to take her to a small town across the desert; reluctantly, they oblige - but at some point they discern that she’s leading them into a trap (duh), as they cross paths w/ the evil “Billy Spear” (Nicholson), and it’s clear those 2 are in cahoots, as they say. Why or to what end, who knows? Maybe I will after 3rd (and final) viewing - the bleak scenery is both scary and beautiful, that is, desert-like. 

Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back (2021) is a monumental work of documentary and film editing - Jackson and his team built the 6-hour film from hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours of film and recoding of the foursome in studio (and, ultimately, on rooftop) as they spent a month developing what would be their final album, Let It Be. To watch the group at work is to have an even deeper appreciation of their genius - as they start with what seems only fragments, bits and pieces, but nowhere near anything of a completed song - we sense that they will never be ready for their big show (and of course they’re not ready, what began as preparation for either a massive outdoor concert or for a TV spectacle gradually became another album and the brief, famous Rooftop Concert, the first great rock pop-up, in which the Beatles did a few final takes of some of the pieces on Let It Be. Never, ever, have we had better access to artists - to geniuses - at their creative work. And to see these 4 so smart, so difficult, so troubled - what a rarity, a unique, unmatched experience. Songs that start as nothing, a fragment, a core,  become part of the playlist of our lifetime. Of course we see the hostility and tensions play out, as the group was obviously near disintegration - George feeling marginalized, Ringo way out of his league (though each played a vital role over the course of band’s history) - and, especially, the interaction between John and Paul: at times hostile and critical, but at their best it’s almost a romance. It takes weeks to get them to work together - despite Paul’s most valiant efforts - he’s clearly the leader, the musical director, the one who pushed everyone along against all odds. Yet John is clearly the creative genius who moved the group, and Paul especially, beyond simple pop and American blues toward a new, multi-faceted style. Yet he’s a problem, a prima donna so to speak, annoying, probably high most of the time - until they rock together and bring it all home in just 2 or 3 days (after a month of screwing around). Yoko Ono is literally at John’s side throughout the month-long session, a strange vibe for everyone, and the little known pianist, Billy Preston, glowing in his good fortune (the Beatles knew him from Hamburg days), brought in at about the mid-way point when all prospects looked bleak and pulled the group together through his imaginative keyboard backups. 

Luchino Visconti’s late-life film, a (mostly faithful) adaptation of Thomas Mann’s 1914 novella, Death in Venice, strange to watch today - as we follow the last few days in the life of a supposedly famous composer on a lonely stay in the Hotel des Bains on the Lido, in Venice (some of the film allegedly shot in the studio in Rome) in which he is utterly nasty to everyone he comes across in the film, most notably the hotel staff members, who fawn on him (it’s part of the work I guess). His main activity over his few days in Venice is to stalk a young (12?) boy who looks angelic and quite feminine; the composer - named Gustav (as in Mann’s novella) - comes across as a dangerous creep - and the young boy, Tadzio, is ambiguous at best - sometimes returning Gustav’s lingering stares and his engineered close encounters. The repressed homosexuality was perhaps a big deal a century ago - now it mostly seems strange and sad. And in the original, I think we do feel sorry for Gustav - whereas here we just despise him. What was Visconti thinking? He makes much less than Mann of the plague that essentially makes Venice a prison, as all transportation to the city is cut off; he also makes much less than Mann of Gustav’s pathetic attempts to look younger than he is. But Visconti does more than Mann w/ Gustav’s musical prowess Mann’s Gustav is a writer): Visconti uses Mahler symphonies for almost all of the score (good!) but also has Gustav engage in some ludicrous hot-air discussion with a (rival?) musician about art and beauty - and he includes a scene in which one of Gustav’s works is greeted with hooting derision (unclear whether this is a terrifying experience he endured of if it’s a dream from which he wakes in a sweat). It’s hard to imagine such a reaction to any piece of serious music - he must have done something right to attract such outrage, right? All told, in my view, this movie is a misguided failure, despite the gorgeous settings of long-ago luxury; my views may be pedestrian, but a likable protagonist (played by the hapless Dirk Bogarde) would help. 

Sarman Masud’s You Don’t Know Me (2021, BBC/Netflix) is a courtroom drama extraordinaire, as the drama, based on the novel by Imran Mhmood, opens with the prosecution addressing the jury and outlining what seems be an irrefutable conviction, and then the defendant (Samuel Adewunmi as “Hero”) rises to present his own closing arguments, representing himself - always discouraged. Over the course of the 4 episodes he slowly and meticulously lays out the facts as he knows them, along the way telling an exciting and moving tale, over the course of which him admits to several crimes and numerous “mistakes” as he calls them - and the question is, do you, and does the jury, believe in his story - with all the nuances of gangs and race and violence and betrayal he recounts  as well as a wholesome and devout family life, which we know of course only from his testimony, so maybe it’s a scam?— so at first you think, with all the bias in the courtroom (though the jury is mixed-race) that he doesn’t stand a chance. Couldn’t his carefully crafted narration just be a another con’s hoax? Or, do we believe him? Obviously no spoilers here, but I found the conclusion to be powerful and provocative, to say the least. Definitely worth watching this series. 

Varda by Agnes, Lesotho film, Black Bird, Buena Vista Social Club, Belfast, 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days, Thirteen Lives Las Year at Marienbad

 Elliot’s Watching - August 2022

All fans of the work of Agnes Varda - which should mean anyone really interested in European cinema of the past 70 years - should take the time to watch her final film, Varda by Agnes (2019). It’s a tour of (most of) her best films with live narration from Varda herself, addressing various groups of students and filmmakers. She concentrates on her works from late career, with hardly a mention of her earlier, somewhat more conventional films such as her real-time drama Cleo from 5 to 7 or her landmark feminist work One Sings, the Other doesn’t, nor does she dwell on any collaborations with her late husband, Jacques Demy. Rather, these late-career works are more like experiments in participatory, public art - one that describes her work style and her innovation (use of found objects to mark time and space) The Gleaners and I or her harrowing film about the life of an outsider (Vagabond) or the particularly imaginative film Faces, Places, in which she collaborates with an artist, JR, to visit various sites in France to shoot and display a photograph that captures the essence of the community, for example a shot of an enormous baguette sandwich that the villagers eat side by side (if I remember correctly). Her outreach to her subject is touching and inspiring, as is her focus on the marginal and the marginalized. Varda by Agnes should function as an open door to her other films rather than has a summary of her life’s work. A final note: Those lucky enough to watch the film on the Criterion Channel should check some of the commentary, notably the memories of Varda shared at the Telluride Festival, with panelists including her two adult children and her fan and friend Martin Scorsese.  

Lesotho (South Africa) is the setting for the unusual and entirely captivating film from the Lesotho filmmaker Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, This Is not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019). The film merits at least one revisit, as much of it is obscure on the literal level on a first viewing, at least my first viewing, but any obscurities or ambiguities are outweighed by the mysterious beauty of the setting and the community. The plot such as it is, in essence, centers on an octogenarian woman, Mantoa, played by Mary Twala Mhlongo, a well-known Lesotho actor (who died shortly after this film was completed) who anticipates a visit from her son working the SA gold mines, but instead receives word that he has died (we learn nothing more about his death), the latest in a long line or tragedies and losses she has suffered in her small, remote village. Over the course of the film she prepares herself and other villagers for her death - and for her burial in the small family or community cemetery - with this catch: the SA government plans to flood the entire village (and relocate the villagers) as part of a massive dam project; of course Mantoa organizes resistance to the project, with devastating results. What keeps the film alive is the sense of place and setting, the unusual cinematography, and terrific music both from the villagers and from highly dissonant score from Y Miyashita - it’s pretty much unlike any other film you’re likely to see. 

The American miniseries developed by David E. Kelley and Melissa James Gibson - which strangely is set in London and seems entirely British, who knew? - Anatomy of a Scandal (2022; based on a Sarah Vaughan novel) is worth seeing just to watch the courtroom drama, as the completely despicable MP James Whitehouse (our RI Senator oughta sue!), played by Rupert Friend, endures days in the dock after he’s accused of raping a much younger aide. It’s a he said/she said, which, unfortunately for James requires that he fess up to a 5-month consensual affair, and his lovely wife, played by Sienna Miller, endures the whole ordeal - and gives hubby some much-deserved grief after each court session. The series is engrossing, up to a point - as we watch the smarmy, self-satisfied James get skewered, but unfortunately the writers were stuck with a crappy plot that runs out of gas by about the half-way point and, if you keep watching (which we did) you’ll see one of the most ridiculous and preposterous resolutions (no spoilers) I’ve ever seen in an otherwise reasonably good crime/courtroom drama. Caveat emptor. 

Dennis Lehane’s Black Bird miniseries (2022, Apple) is one of the most successful dramatizations “based on a true story”- terrific and harrowing look at the life of a 20-something straight-arrow seeming guy (Taron Egerton as James Keene), nabbed as an Rx dealer and sentenced to 6 years - but the FBI makes him an offer: They will have his sentence commuted if he’ll go undercover into the prison for the “criminally insane” to get info and and wrench a information from a scary guy (Paul Walter Hauser as Larry Hall) who’s in jail for the murder of a young woman - and he’s suspected of killing about 20 other young women, whose bodies had never been found, leaving their families in grief. The series gives a brutal and uncompromising account of life in that Midwest prison, including various gangs inside the prison and a corrupt guard and the fear that at any moment Keene will be identified as an FBI plan (and the son of a retired police officer (Ray Liotta, in his final film). The series is tense all the way through - right to the final credits. 

Wim Wenders’s music-documentary Buena Vista Social Club (1999) is a totally enjoyable start to finish look at Cuban music - a project that began when the great American guitarist Ry Cooder, who’s been for many years a proponent of world music, travels to Cuba to try to connect with the great stars of traditional Cuban dance music, much of which had been performed by members of the eponymous club. Cooder soon learns that the club itself has long since passed away, but he and his team assiduously track down many of the great Cuban performers - men and women who at that time, inter 70s or older, had largely given up performing. Cooder et al brought these performers into an impromptu studio, recorded their work, and released a hugely successful compilation disk in the late ‘90s. Wenders joined the project and did on-camera interviews w/most of the singers - plus many fascinating location shots in Havana: worth seeing for the old American cars and the weathered grand boulevards and back by-ways - as well as the musicians themselves. The project culminated in a great concert in Amsterdam and then a find, triumphant performance before an enthusiastic crowd at Carnegie Hall. Totally fun for the great music and the strong, quirky personalities of the many artists. 

Stanley Donen’s spy-caper film Arabesque (1966, based on a novel by Gordon Cotlar) ) broke no new ground - familiar femme fatale plot with lots of twists - low-income Uni prof Gregory Peck, American England is called upon for his expertise in ancient languages to translate a small piece of parchment that for some reason has become of great interest to the PM of an Arab nation and a weird crime syndicate - don’t even try to follow the plot because who cares anyway?, it’s all about the exciting and imaginative chases (through Regents Park zoo, and aquarium, chases on horseback, pursued by a chopper, at the Ascot races, buildings blown up and demolished, Peck drugged and stumbling at night through English traffic, and more! - plus Sophia Loren in a sexy/comic/secret-agent role. Lot’s of fun - filmgoers in the 60s got the money’s worth even if, in the end, it amounts to not much but a Hitcirhcock homage: right down to the scene in which Peck and Loren are pursed by a harvester in a field of grain (North by Northwest anyone?) and, in Hitchcock fashion, the bit of cypher turns out to be a bit of nothing - just the “maguffin”that sets this madcap romp romping. Lots of fun; zero depth. 

Kenneth Branagh’s film Belfast (2021) is a portrait of the then-troubled city in the 1960s (with some framing shots of a Belfast as a peaceable, bustling city today) as experienced by a young boy - obviously a depiction of Branagh in his childhood - in a Protestant family living in the midst of the struggles; the film opens w/ a frightening street riot aimed at driving newly arrived Catholic families from the neighborhood. Some of the film is idyllic, as the young protagonist enjoys a life of close family ties - esp to the older generation - w/ lots of Irish humor, and much of the adolescent struggle (a crush on a classmate, whom we later learn is from a Catholic family) plus pressures on the family itself, of which the young boy is beginning to get a glimpse and a dawning appreciation, brought on by the father’s gambling habits and need for a more stable, unthreatened life - notably a move to London, which of course upsets the young boy deeply. There’s a lot of humor, much pathos, lots of street fighting and thuggish bullying of those - including the boy’s father - who refuse to take up arms - plus a good musical track with some fine selections from Van Morrison. Though the film ends with some sanctimonious moments, it’s overall a fine work that depicts a difficult childhood predictive of a culturally rich career in the arts - cf 400 Blows or Cinema Paradiso; will there be a sequel? 

But not for me … two completely different series about workplace culture: Industry, about a cohort of new temporary hires at a highly aggressive financial-services company, all vying to be retained come RIF (reduction in force) day, but (most of) the cohort are dislikable or amoral or both and there’s way too much totally gratuitous sex, drinking, smoking - without the counterweight of strong characters, interesting relationships, crises and resolutions. Ditto the much-praised surreal and enigmatic workplace of Severance, which for me was just far too creepy and arbitrary and I probably didn’t give it enough of a chance (2 episodes) but why would I want to visit by evening the fears of my nights? 

Catching up on recent watching of two productions, first the Skye Borgman’s 2022 3-part series, I Just Killed My Dad, is a good program (Netflix) for those like me who are true-crime buffs, and this has a twist in that it opens with the confession that you can see in the title - a young man calling the police to report on his own actions - and it seems the young man gets terrible treatment as ;aw enforcement assume thesis a murder or at least manslaughter face that they have to pin on the kid - but over the course of the drama we see how horrendously he was treated by his father and the misery of his life of near torture and of course we recognize before the cops and the DA’s team do that this kid is guilty of nothing. No spoilers. Second, I re-watched the terrific Romanian 2007 film 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days from Cristian Mungiu - and it’s a film everyone in an abortion-banning state should be forced to watch’ over the 2 hours or so, through a series of mostly long stills, and sometimes long tracking shots in which Mungiu conveys the struggle over few days of two college roommates in Romania, w/ its ridiculously strict anti-abortion laws (couldn’t happen here, could it?), and compromise, the suffering, the expense, the humiliation, the fear these 2 women brave together because of their friendship and commitment to women’s rights. The writing is wise and insightful, and the star s Anamaria Marinca as the fearless loyal friend. Topical, I’m sad to say, and enduring drama. 

Prolific, polished professional Ron Howard, who’s done about a movie a year, almost all of them big-budget and highly successful, since 1982, despite some wavering reviews comes through once more with the dramatic and technically challenging Thirteen Lives (2022), based (closely) on the rescue of 12 Thai kids and their soccer coach from a flooded dave in mountainous Thailand. Though most viewers will be familiar with the rescue, which received much international daily coverage, it still takes your breath to watch the rescue team in action against all odds and expectations. It had to be a huge technical challenge to do this film - many complex crowd scenes, re-creation of the terrifying mountain cave, re-enactment of the treacherous rescue process - you’ve with them all the way what seems an impossible task. If there’s a flaw to the movie it would be that no central character emerges - though that would be the “Hollywood” way the group effort with no individual hero is in keeping w/ the facts so, so be it. Also unfortunate - the Thai Seal rescue team and other local experts seem shunted aside and dependent on the expertise of a few British amateurs - a patronizing structure and not in keeping with current screen mores - but that’s the way it played out, and I think Howard and his team would have been lambasted had they restructured to story include a Thai hero, so more credit to them for staying with the facts of the docudrama. 

Yes, it’s pretentious; yes, it’s enigmatic; yes, it’s preposterous; yes, it’s French - but Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad (1961), screenplay by the equally pretentious/French Alain Robbe-Grillet - and yet, it’s still worth watching for pure weirdness. YOLO. The film - in which to my knowledge none of the characters have names - takes place in what looks to be one of the great chateaus now a grand hotel at the eponymous resort/recovery clinic; the characters wander through the innumerable long hallways and ballrooms, sometimes engaging in small gambling, at one point seeming to watch a play about the movie in which they’re participating, who knows? The story line such as it is involves a man who seems a woman whom he recognizes reminds her of their affair (her hawkish husband plays some kind of gambling or card trick on many of the guests) that began a year ago at this very hotel - and the woman insists that no, it never happened, she has no such recollection. So who’s right in this? What kind of sense does it all make? To me, not much - still fun to wander through these over-the-top decor - 2nd empire style? - and to walk in the garden that is done in extreme French style with all the greenery cut into rigid geometric patterns that look nothing like nature, guided throughout by dissonant organ music (I think that for a few moments some stringed instruments join in?). Obviously a lot of commentary exists on this sometimes incomprehensible film and maybe some of it will clarify Resnais’s intention, aside from bafflement, but many films that were startling and evocative in their time today look like curiosities - Godard and Truffault drove a stake into the heart this type of moody, languorous film with their new-wave cinema built upon by psychology, memoir, character, engagement, history, style, and commitment. 

Two films about boxin including the great Raging Bull, a great road movie from France, and a great documentary series on a small-town murder

 Elliot's Watching - July 2022

Chloe, Il Sorpasso, Raging Bull, Cobra, Mind Over Murder, The Harder They Fall 

I guess the Amazon Prime film Chloe (2022) is worth watching, in that it kept us interested enough to watch it to the end (8 episodes, I think), thanks largely to the portrayal by Erin Doherty, but really how stupid are the characters in this drama? Anyhow likely are its events. Zero and zero - stranger comes to town (a good narrative trope at the outset) and immediately assimilates into a crowd of Bristol (England) artists and politicians. We know, and they don’t, that part of her raison d’etre is to get at the truth about the apparent suicidal death of a friend from her youth - but the cover story is so flimsy, the recklessness of the guy she begins to live with (on the rebound recovering from the death of his wife, running for office … - come on, he’s too smart to fall from this erratic and peculiar woman from out of nowhere). So, no, I didn’t believe it for a second, but it was act least fun to watch the plot unfold and to try to figure out what drives this woman, is she evil or dangerous or unbalanced or a loyal friend on a mission?, that it kept us going. Can’t say it was a great series by any measure tho.

On the other hand, Dino Risi’s Italian road movie, Il Sorpasso (1962), is totally watchable and fun and sad and touching. “Road Movie” doesn’t to it justice; it’s a comedy w/ much pathos, w/ two guys, strangers essentially, taking a weekend drive away from Rome and along the Coast - with Vittorio Gassman as the extrovert, risk-taking, domineering personality and the recently gone Jean-Louis Trintagnant as the timid, cautious, nerdy guy. So many funny scenes and incidents throughout, but it’s not Animal House or Easy Rider - everything that occurs along this jaunt develops the characters and examines their unexpected friendship: many laughs, perhaps some tears as well. 

Clark (2022)? No, sorry, after a clever and jaunty intro to the life of a Swedish bank robber and ne’er do well, the series devolved into much material about how cute and charming the eponymous Clark with his seductions and unlikely escapes - hared to believe in the reality and hard to care about such a dislikable characters - couldn’t carry me through 2 episodes let alone or 10 or whatever. 

Martin Scorsese’s decidedly non-adulatory biopic Raging Bull (1980) stands even a half-century) later as a great film in its own right and as a seminal work of American noir, a passageway that extends from the Cagney gangster films of the 30s/40s through the Godfather then on to Scorcese’s own work e.g., Mean Streets and Goodfellas, and then all the way toward the Sopranos and beyond. (Some claim this film is not “noir” but I disagree.) The heart of the film is De Niro’s portrayal of middleweight boxer Jake LaMotta (a sad forewarning that there’s no glory in the life of a fighter post-career) based on his autobio/memoir in which he must hold nothing back. The film moves from balletic beauty to frightening ferocity, esp in the boxing sequences - but the greatest agony for viewers are the tense family sessions, marked by silence, seething, and fury. Some of the dialog is incredibly revealing (as I suspected and later learned was the case, much of the dialog was improvised over the course of many long takes) even with or maybe especially with the awkward brute language of Jake, his bro. (Joe Pesci), his “moll” - the guys are not Rhodes Scholars, but they make their point. The nightclub fight is probably more tense and seething than any of the fight scenes - ditto De Niro’s trashing of his apartment or bashing his fists and forehead into a wall upon his imprisonment. Greatest sorrow is probably his pathetic attempt in a parking garage to reconcile w/ his brother, Joey. And then there’s the demise - Jake’s painful attempt to do a routine in one of his nightclubs - let’s just say he’s not a natural jokester - (and De Niro must have tortured himself to put on all that weight!), scenes that reveal all about the afterlife of a man once a star. An incredible movie that definitely does not glamorize brutality, infidelity, or organized crime. 

The somewhat under-the-radar British series Cobra (season 2) gives a good and frightening account of a country under siege and held hostage by cyber warfare - disrupting all financial transactions, threatening the water supply, and others. The series feels plausible and realistic, for the most part - although I had to wonder why the Brits were taking this attack completely on their own (there were some snide portrayals of ugly Americans - not likely, I hope, at least in current admin.); at times the series reminded me of Borgen, with lots of insider dope about the by-elections, but, this being a British show, all or most all came together at the outcome. The acerbic conservative MP played David Haig steals the show. A mostly good, watchable series - too bad there are some cheesy elements such as the breakdown of the PM’s wife and the revelation that the PM had a long-time crush on his Chief of Staff - those being avenues I wouldn’t want to pursue any further in a 3rd season. 

Nanfu Wang’s terrific 6-part documentary series, Mind Over Murder (2022, HBO) tells of the conviction of a six people known as the Beatrice Six. This gives nothing away as you will learn in the first 60 seconds of so of the first episode that the 6 were later exonerated and released from prison after some 20 years after their conviction. The series shows us the brutality of the crime, a rape and killing of an elderly woman who lived alone in an apartment building in downtown Beatrice, Nebraska - a town so typical of rural life in the Midwest, or so it would seem. We see the efforts to determine who committed the crime, the questionable police tactics, the inability of most of the 6 to make any sort of defense - it appears that some of the accused suffered from some developmental disabilities; others had poor counsel or none - the efforts of some lawyers to reverse the verdict and, more important, to follow ignored clues to reveal a more likely criminal, the sanguine and self-confident police officer who pushed most of the 6 into false confessions, and most of all the effect in the small community  of the crime, the trial, the imprisonment, and eventual release six people - who knew one another only slightly if at all. Capping all this, and holding the series together, was the enterprise of the local community theater to tell the story in a one-act play in which the dialog consisted only of on-the-record statements from the police, the accused, and others involved in the case and the trial - and the effect that this drama had on the community and in particular on the descendants of the murder victim - a truly engrossing and perhaps unique documentary (itself comprised entirely of interviews). 

Mark Robson’s 1956 film The Harder They Fall (other films have also used this title), based on a Budd Schulberg novel, stars Humphrey Bogart in his last film - and though Bogart performa well as an out-of-work boxing writer who’s recruited by a sketchy syndicate to run a massive publicity campaign for their newly discovered boxing phenom, the S. American “champ” Toro Moreno, a gigantic man who can’t fight a lick. Strangely, Bogart was cast against a woman who played the part of his long-suffering wife - who looks about a third his age, which makes the whole domestic angle look absurd or even perverse. The film is funnier that the other boxing film I watched recently, Raging Bull, in that the lead boxer is a comic misfit; it’s meant to be in part an indictment of the boxing industry, in particular that every lead-up fight toward the championship bout was thrown - and the boxers just seem to go along with this fraudulence - whereas in RB the lead was tormented and wracked with pain being forced to hit the floor - it called his whole being into question, whereas here it’s all part of the night’s work. In that regard, the film is less credible than it ought to be - although it goes give us a glimpse into the world of pro boxing in its heyday - the negotiation of crooked contracts, the sense that boxers were just chattel rather than skilled athletes, the machinations of fight promotion, the incompetence of the working sports press. Worth a look, esp for Bogarts’s last gasp, but not a profound study in the boxing mentality. 

June 2022: Rothaniel, Barry, TheAscent, Borgen, Tehran, BlackMother and Double Indemnity

 Elliot’s Watching - June 2022: Double Indemnity, The Ascent, plus Borgen, Barry, Rothaniel, any others 

Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel (2022) - the title will become evident a few bits into this 60-minute program, directed by Bo Burnham - is an absolutely unique (and excellent) piece of cinema. It’s something like an hour-long comedy sketch, sure, but also like a 60-minute one-man play and like an hour-long discussion unrehearsed and like an hour-long therapy session - all of these elements, and I would add only that it can never be staged more than once (without significant changes in the material) - it’s bold, brash, funny, and moving, and even a little scary, as JC opines on race, queerness, family, friends, and on the audience itself (I’ve read it was performed at the Blue Note, not sure if it was by invite). JC is a totally likable stage persona, completely open - well, almost completely - about his life and his struggles with family and w/ relationships; impossible to watch this film without thinking you could be friends w/ this guy. But could you? Or is he all an act? Definitely worth watching. 

I should have better discipline when watching a series from HBOmax or Apple+ but I can’t help it; they do us no favor by their stretching out the premier one episode per week. And that works just fine for a traditional comic series, esp of 30 minutes, such as Curb Your Enthusiasm, for ex., or Veep - episodes connected in spirit but only loosely bound by plot and it would be, and is, very funny even with long time gaps or mixed order for that matter. But for a comedy such as the weirdly entangled series Barry - that’s when I wish I had the patience to wait till all episodes are releases and then watch in consecutive nights. The plot of Barry, hilarious as it is, is just too byzantine to expect that we remember all of the necessary details - at least, I can’t do so. That said, this Bill Hader and Sarah Goldberg (who increasingly takes on the star role with her terrific outbursts and her what feels like an authentic look at the idiocy of much of the TV/media entertainment industry from the POV of a groundling) is fully of laughs and surprises and delightfully off-center characters from Hader’s struggle between his role as violent hit man and his yearning for an acing career, or Anthony Carrigan’s portrayal of a homosexual Chechen assassin or Henry Winkler as an acting savant. Watch it, but watch out - it gets really complicated (maybe that doesn’t matter?). The final episode of the season (2?) is somewhat more straightforward, with each of the 3 main plot strands culminating in great violence and potential for further explication in an on-coming season, one assumes. 

Larisa Shepitko’s Russian-language film The Ascent (1977), adapted from a (little known?) novel by Basil Bykau, tells a harrowing tale of two Soviet “partisan” soldiers during WWII who depart from the unit, in the midst of terrible blizzard conditions, to find food from any source, a journey that ultimately leads them into the hand of Nazi soldiers who horribly abuse their captives, leaving each of the two to decide his fate - one of whom becomes a martyr and the other who betrays his fellow prisoners: the religious allegory here is really evident. The film is shot in stunning b/w with many extremely long takes, and the suffering endured by the Russians, soldiers and others, is nearly unbearable to watch - a beautiful but harrowing film whose stark images - the mother calling to her children as she’s abducted by the Germans, the torture devices in the German camp, the 5 dangling nooses, to cite just a few - will stay w/ any viewer for a long time. 

This series is for adults only. It has no sex, no violence, no swearing, no smoking (I think) - but it’s adults only because it’s about politics and media and ecology and economics - all set in Copenhagen and, for this season, in Greenland. Borgen: Power & Glory (2022 Netflix) has an unusual history: 3 years to the original series, ending about 10 years ago, and now the characters are back for not a 4th season but a “new” series, which picks up 10 years after the predecessor bid adieu as Brigitta, the Danish PM, bids adieu. Now we have most of the same characters and all of them are portrayed by the original cast members, to it has a feeling of verisimilitude unlike most other reprises. This series centered on a discovery of a massive oil field in Greenland, enough potential revenue to lift the colony into prosperity and trend dependence on grants from Denmark; but - is it OK for the super-liberal Danes to support an oil terminal on their territory? The discover draws into the fray not on the US but also China and Russia, with all sorts of complications, which unfold with novel-like precision. That said, it’s almost amusing for an American viewer to see how seriously the Danes take their politics (if this is accurate) - the media focused on every facet of domestic policy in a way we never see with the crime/mayhem-obsessed American media (TV mostly). And the moral standards in Denmark compared w/ US are laughably high; for one example, the main character, Birgitta Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen), is once again terrific in her ministerial role, gets chewed out for responding “no comment” to media - this is evidently not the expected behavior of a Danish cabinet member. Ditto for her equivocations about comments she made at a Cabinet meeting - which in the US would be a big who-cares. Any, it’s a serious, thoughtful, entertaining, non-exploitative drama, one of the few (sadly). 

Kenji Mizoguchi had many great films to his credit, notably Ugrestsu and Sansho the Bailiff, but as for his monumental 47 Ronin (1941), come on, today it’s mostly unwatchable (I stood with it for an hour, passed on watching the next 3 hours): slow, static, almost completely unfathomable to non-initiates - how some obscure breaking of protocol led to years of civil war - none of which was dramatized or depicted in the first long hour. The film is based on historical events and has been mined by other directors since ’41 but today it’s at best a historical curiosity. 

Tehran Season Two doesn’t have quite the suspense of the first season, in which time was compressed and life was on the line every moment and the Israel and Iran were on the verge of all-out war but it’s still a good adventure, with plenty of tension and surprising twists. Niv Sultan is a great lead, playing an Israeli agent under cover in Tehran and assigned to a dangerous mission before the Israelis pull her out safely - if they do. OK, there are many highly unlikely twists of fate and some preposterous hair-raising escapes, but it’s still pretty good entertainment without too much violence and without vulgarity or exploitative sex. The characters are largely believable - with the exception of badly miscast Glenn Close who seems lost in her roll as an undercover agent in Tehran. Definitely  leaves the plot open for a likely 3rd season. 

There is no way I’m going to watch beyond the first episode of the HBO series Irma Vep, about an American actress who goes to France to star in a remake of a famous French vampire film from the silent era. Nothing about this show appealed to me, nor was it really meant to - you’d have to ID with the lead (admittedly, a charming actress) and her sexual trials and tribulations and to care in the least about her director, who suffers from some kind of mood disorder. I didn’t. If you wanna see a better film about the making of a movie try Day for Night (Trufault) or, for a more personal and idiosyncratic version try Fellini’s classic 8 1/2. 

Khalik Allah’s documentary Black Mother (2018) provides us with a rate and painfully honest look at urban black street life in Jamaica, mostly in or around Kingston, I think, much of which, I think, must have been footage of KA’s family (he is American, his mother is Jamaican), particularly his elderly grandfather. There are some beautiful passages, many of which involve music and prayer, some philosophizing among the elderly, and, most striking, straightforward footage of the street prostitutes at work. Nothing in the film glamorizes life on the streets - life is tough and sometimes scary, housing and living conditions are terrible, education of the young seems to be sporadic. We see nothing about prosperity in Jamaica, nor anything at all about tourism or the wealth of Jamaica in the colonial era. Few filmmakers would have access to the material that KA uses. He frames the film with a check-in on a woman (part of his family?) who is pregnant, and at the end we see the birth in close-up - like every other birth, it seems a miracle! There’s no obvious proselytism here - just an unflinching look at the reality of life in this community.  

The Billy Wilder classic Double Indemnity (1944) is one of the best ever among American films noirs - from the look of LA ca 1938 (the setting for the plot), the fantastic hard-boiled dialog (screenplay by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, based on a novel by JM Cain, so how could you go wrong?), great acting by the 3 leads, each cast against type (McMurry, Stanwyck, EG Robinson), and a fun plot that will have you thinking all the way through - it’s about McM and Stanw concocting a scheme to collect $100k (a fortune, back then) on an insurance claim that they believe is the perfect crime, but we know from the outset it isn’t, as the first scene is the beginning of McM’s confessional, but if so then what went wrong? Can we figure out what they screwed up in their ingenious planning? Lines such as  he’d wring life insurance on a guy who goes to be w/ 4 live rattlesnakes, or, when adding a shot of rum to his iced T: That’s put legs on it!, and many others. Stanw is a particularly intriguing character: naive? smart? dumb? loyal? duplicitous? Figure it out as the story moves along. I remember watching it decades ago, and loving it, and it hasn’t aged a bit (though I have). 

May 2022:Julia, Winning Time, My Brilliant Friend, Pachinko, Chan Is Missing, Very British Scandal, Merrily We Go to Hell, Carlin, Ivan's Childhood

 Elliot’s Watching - May 2022 

The HBO 8-part series Julia, with Sarah Lancashire predominant as the eponymous French Chef Julia Child, is a pleasant, enjoyable, approachable series that has lots of laughs, smiles of recognition from those who recall the original TV series, and its moments of darkness and struggle as well: mush talk about women being pushed aside in the male-dominated world of public (and I would guess commercial) TV, some sharp debate about whether Julia’s role was supportive of or harmful to progressive women of her era (the ‘60s), a few glimpses of a some of the hidden truths in Julia’s life (perhaps some repressed Lesbian sexuality?, the mystery of her husband, Paul/David Hyde Pierce, and his severance from the foreign service) - but mostly it’s a light-hearted nostalgia romp thru most of the 8 episodes before more or less sputtering and running out of gas in episode 8 as the writer, Daniel Goldfarb, casts his net wide with many possibilities for a pick-up in a 2nd season: Julia and co-author Simca in France, the book publisher’s ensuing blindness, Alice’s (BrittanyBradford)  new romance, plus other strands sent aloft to see if they might fly.  

Ditto for Ozark - though I was fully satisfied at the wrap-up of the 5-season series, which concluded all of the plot lines without feeling rushed, bored, or out of gas - in fact, one of the best wrap-ups of any long-running series (think of Sopranos or Mad Men, oh what a falling off was there!), emphasizing the importance family for the Byrdes - it seems almost any other series of this nature and length would somehow involve infidelity of the lead male - though 2 quibbles: what the hell was the purpose of the car crash in the final episode?; and, well, a strand of the plot was still dangling as we wonder whether there will be a series focusing on a different lead character from the next generation, and I’ll say no more on that. The 3 leads - Jason Bateman as Marty, Laura Line as Wendy, and, especially Julia Garner as Ruth - really carried the show: You can’t stop watching, and rooting for, Ruth, and thanks to Wendy I will never again hear a donor pitch from public radio in the same way. All told the series was lively, intelligently written, broad in score, and engaging: You had to think to yourself “I’m so glad that I’m not doing business with a cartel.” 

Franco Russo’s film Babylon (1980) is somewhat difficult to follow as the English language will seem to American viewers doubly removed: a Jamaican v. of British English; the subtitles will help. But for the most part we don’t need to follow the nuances and details of plot; the film is about a culture little-known then and now to most Americans and probably most white Brits: the Jamaican culture of reggae music, Rastafarian religion, and a great deal of “herbs.” So imagine you’re watching not a fictive narrative but a 90 minute documentary, and the film will go down just fine: some terrific scenes of ear-blasting music at various clubs, a great confrontation between as some of the performers try to buy from a questionable producer the rights to use a couple of songs, a long visit to a Rasta religious rite, and lots of street-life in South London, probably not too different today from 40+ years ago. Beneath all the frenzy of the music and club scene is a great deal of racial hatred and intolerance; to his credit, Russo isn’t doctrinaire in his account of the racism. We feel great loathing (and fear) of the British toughs who confront the Jamaican guys, the name-calling, the taunting, and ultimately the physical violence and destruction; on the other hand, though we hate the white racists, they do have a point: the Jamaican lads are blasting away with their music at all hours, almost as if they’re seeking validation through confrontation. We’re headed for an inevitable collision of intractable forces. All parties need some counseling, it seems - but that’s not gonna happen, all of which makes for a sad portrait of social misfits with little chance for prosperity or integration, the news wave of immigrants, confined to the bottom rung of the ladder (housing, pay, tolerance, respect) - unless, and until, other ethnic groups arrive, which of course has happened. 

The HBO series Winning Time (2022) has a strong cast w/ John C.Reilly as Lakers owner ca 1980 Jerry Buss and Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson in his rookie year and I could sum this in one sentence, which would be that you don’t have to be interested in basketball or even in sports to enjoy and appreciate this series; in the mode of Friday Nigh Lights or Last Chance U it uses spots as a vehicle through which to drive personal and family drama and build a great narrative arc as the troubled and under-rated team goes for a championship. Lots of good story lines developed, based closely on fact though it’s more free-wheeling w/ fact than the typical docudrama, at least from what I’ve heard (I had little interest in pro b-ball) - an eccentric, intellectual coach, nearly killed mid-season in a bike accident, the improbable and irascible owner, the likable Magic and the admirable and mysterious Kareem, the ex-coach West fuming in the background, and so on - the only narrative threads that wore a little thin concerned Bus and his family, in particular his relationship w/ the still-beautiful mother Sally Field. Already picked up for season 2.

And a very quick note on a series that we actually didn’t know we’d watched to the end (of season 3), the outstanding series My Brilliant Friend,  which, as I may have noted in previous posts, is actually in my view better than the source novels, which were a little to flat and plot-driven, for me, rather than literary and evocative and interior, and were hard to follow as too many characters and families were just name and hard to distinguish - problems all but eliminated in the series, as we can easily keep the characters straight once we visualize them and the miniseries form is in itself more plot driven and interior - in this one “Lenu” rises to some fame through her publications and thanks to her spoiled and intolerable husband her marriage cracks at the seams - relatively little, sadly, in this season about her brilliant friend. 

Yesterday’s avant garde looks befuddled and confused 30 years down the road. Yvonne Rainer’s 1990 film, Privilege, in its time must have been groundbreaking in subject matter (the film begins as a conventional documentary in which several women discuss their menopause - daring and original then but complacent now - then the narration shifts entirely into what looks like a play rehearsal for an experimental movie in which the topic is female sexuality and the presentation is confusing and pretentious - long quotes from Eldridge Cleaver for some reason) - Honestly couldn’t watch till the end of this movie, for which clearly I am not the target audience; though there’s a wide acceptance and even a commercial appeal for a film in which the protagonists discuss and debate their sexual histories, this film from today’s viewpoint can’t seem to get out of its way, as if YR was never quite sure what kind of film she wanted to make. We see the evolution of a work of art, from idea to actualization, but wouldn’t it have been better had the team stopped everything once the theme and style emerged and start again with a more clear goal and style in mind? Or maybe it’s just me. 

About a year ago I posted on Min Jin Lee’s 2017 novel, Pachinko, noting that it wasn’t exactly my type of book - long, multigenerational, multicultural family saga spanning century - but suggested that it might make a really good miniseries, which it does (2022). Koganada and Justin Chon make the most of the material in the novel - diverging from the novel in many significant ways, or so I’m told - but giving us overall a great portrayal of the clash of 3 cultures: Korean, Japanese, and - for segments filmed in the present or near present  the U.S. financial industries. The film looks great, and the many transitions among the several - 8 or so? - plot strands and segments are handled deftly. But there are many, many transitions - each of the 8 episodes will have pieces of several of the narrative paths - dire poverty in Korea, exile to Japan and facing deep racial prejudice, contemporaries dealing with development and overdevelopment, plus more. Those who haven’t yet seen this series now have an advantage, as it will be much easier to follow the many lines of narration through binging or watching on 8 consecutive nights. Yes, it’s still melodramatic, and, yes, there are some rough edges not really explained or worked out (note: 2nd season to come), but overall a series of high quality and high ambition, both textually and thematically and worth watching. 

Wayne Wang's unusual, maybe unique, film Chan is Missing (1982) is a blend of noir detective drama and minimalist documentary as we follow a taxi driver and his nephew around and about San Francisco Chinatown, in b/w and mostly handheld camerawork so that the whole movie has a sense of immediacy and authenticity. The two guys are in search of the missing Chan who seems to have vanished after a minor car accident that he did not wish to report - and the 2 follow a series of leads to try to track down their friend and erstwhile business partner who may have in fact absconded with some shared $ and taken off for his homeland in China. Along the way we meet a # of unusual characters, notably a fast-order chef in a C-town restaurant and a # of dancing couples in a senior center for the Filipino community, police officers and detectives, an the searchers’ ebullient sister/aunt (I think) - all of which - well, I won’t disclose anything about the ending except to say that it comes about rather abruptly and the film, with all its beauty, could have used a little more plot discipline. Definitely, memorable for the look at a vista that I think today has all but succumbed to the ever-rising real-estate values in downtown SF - though maybe a stray restaurant or 2 has survived and still serves the tourists and visitors, if not the long-time residents. 

I used to find W.C. Fields’s films, notably The Bank Dick (1940), to be funny thanks to his irascible character, but coming back to the film after the passing of some decades I found it, at least the 30 minutes I watched, tiresome and at times extremely disturbing (notably for its completely inexcusable portrayal of a Black man. Okay, WCF is good for a few sight-gag laughs, in particular his “smoke-blowing” tricks to amuse some kids - but the gags about his smoking and especially his drinking make for a good 4-minute sketch but not for an entire tiresome movie. Every WCF film has a few good laugh moments, but they’re stretched pretty thin in this picture, perhaps because WCF could play only himself: He had no room to grow or to change. It’s a bit of film history, but watching it today is painful. 

The TV series A Very British Scandal (Season 2 - 2022) continues on the pattern of the 1st season - each a three-episode drama about a scandal that disgraced a public figure, each based (not sure how loosely but obviously including tons of dialog generated or posited for the series) on “true events,” widely published in the British press at the time. This season about a contentious divorce proceeding pitting the Duke v Duchess of Argyle, made particularly salacious by the tidbit that the Duchess kept voluminous records, including photographs, of her sexual encounters. Claire Foy takes the lead, and she’s always great with her clipped British accent - but here so different in character from her famous role of the young QE in The Crown. Yes, this short series held my interest over its duration, though I’m not proud or pleased to say so. The lead characters are to a man, or woman, repulsive and disreputable and seem very much to deserve  one another. Equally guilty: the sensationalist British press and, most of all, the British public as a whole, so interested in this seamy tale that would have no interest whatsoever were it not that the husband  (Ian) was a “Duke” and a “Lord” - and the title itself is at the basis of the dispute - and Foy’s “Duchess Margaret” is equally banal and evil - how or why the Brits have not for centuries risen against the monarchy and the whole system of royalty, as if these people deserve in any way our interest or attention. I cringe every time one or the other is addressed as “your Grace.” Not mine - yours. 

The 1932 film Merrily We Go to Hell is a rarity, one of the few studio films of the era directed by a woman, Dorothy Arzner. Whether a man would have created a film with a different nuance, who knows? Either way, the film starts off as a conventional romance - only child of a wealthy industrialist falls for a guy older, funnier, more brash, a newspaper columnist no less!, not welcomed by the father, but Dad gives in as there’s no sense fighting true love - looks like we’re headed toward light-hearted young couple overcomes obstacles and wins the hearts of doubters - and then the film take a sharp U-turn and it becomes a film about how alcoholism wrecks marriages and lives (the less than credible ending feels tacked on to please the studio). The star of the film clearly is Sylvia Sidney as the daughter of wealth, Joan; the film also includes a bling-and-you’ve missed-it appearance by the then-unknown Cary Grant as friend of Joan’s Charlie Baxter (doubly funny to me as that’s the name of one of my friends). Obviously the film feels dated in many ways but it’s still quite straightforward and watchable if not groundbreaking and heartbreaking. 

I have renewed respect for George Carlin, whom I’d mostly written off as a star who got huge laughs based on his reputation rather than on his material, having watching George Carlin’s American Dream (2022), an excellent though too-long (especially in the 2nd of 2 episodes, filled with talking heads) look at his lifetime work. We see him in his early days as a conventional night-club comic and the big shift as he decided to be himself and began his counterculture period, probably the first to talk so openly about Rx and radical politics in large venues. First of all, he delivery of material was outstanding - enough to get huge laughs from often mediocre insights - but he worked hard and matured his talent to the point where he could rightly consider himself a writer - and his routines were almost dramatic readings of pieces that could be public on their own as comedic essays. His late work, taking on all aspects of of consumer culture - with special targets being God, War, Rx, and Ecology (about this last he was way wrong, which he probably would’ve later recognized. The film also tells a lot about his troubled childhood and difficult family life - as well as by his extreme work ethic and willingness to talk openly about his various struggles. The highlights are clips of him working, esp in late career. A great talent. 

It must have been huge fun to be present at Jocelyn Bioh’s Merry Wives, her adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, in Central Park in 2021, though the same cannot be said, unfortuntely, for the PBS broadcast in Great Performances. The play - word has it that S. wrote it on orders from Queen E.., in any event, the tale of cuckoldry and come-uppance, with the portly Falstaff getting his just desserts, stands as one of S’s worst, though Verdi did make a great opera of it, go figure. The fun is that this MW takes place in Harlem and the whole show has a bright and lively appearances throughout with lots of great West African music (percussion, esp.), and the characters all retain heavy West African accents and the script at times veers far from the Elizabethan. All good - and I’m a huge fan of S adaptations and re-imaginings - but watching the show on screen places it at a great remove whereas the original staging included the audience and setting as part of the milieu. I felt as if I were watching a screening of someone else’s party. For entirely there reasons, the filmed version, on HBO, of Dear Evan Hansen (2021) falls short on many counts (I have not seen the play, but assume it was better than the film), notably how odd it seemed for the characters to burst from the visual/textual realism of the setting into sudden eruptions of song and dance; sure, it works sometimes, e.g., West Side Story (the original), but here I just felt alienated and puzzled by the movie rather than drawn in - though I must say I’m always brought near tears by any depiction of lonely, picked-on, teased high-school kids. But overall, this Stephen Chbosky production just seemed dead wrong - what we should have, I think, would be a film of the staged shows, as w/, for ex., Hamilton. If you haven’t seen the play this film does not seem like the way to do so, and if you saw the play and loved it you’d be wise to poss on this version. 

Andrei Tarkovsky’s first film, Ivan’s Childhood (1962) is a tight, smart, scary account, filmed in beautiful b/w giving the film a look at times of a documentary, recounts a period in the life of the eponymous Ivan, a Russian maybe 12 years old or so who, it seems, has lost his family in an attack from the Germans in midst of WWII and takes on the role of a spy for the Soviet forces, perhaps eluding detection, for a time, because he’s so young. We go with Ivan and two soldiers on a behind-the-lines scouting patrol, and the outcome isn’t great. This film is a prelude for some the great films that Tarkovsky will produce in later years (e.g Andrei Rublev, Solaris), but we can in this early episode the attention to photographic detail, the choice of setting, and the frightening struggle of the heroic individual against forces much larger than he can perceive or combat.