And into the Fall

And here are more.

Red Oaks (Season Two) – 2016 (2.9). The second season maintains the style and approach of the first and thankfully does not bombard us with lots of new characters as it moves through the next year in the lives of the principals. One gets married, one pair of parents divorces, a young pair are sort of on again off again, a father faces possible jail time and at season end pretty much everyone is making changes for the coming year. We shall see what season three has in store for the next year of these lives.

The Dressmaker -2015 (2.8). Sent away from her small Aussie town as a young girl, supposedly for killing a young boy, the woman returns years later as an accomplished dressmaker and quickly acquires the women of the town as customers, even as they continue to gossip about her. Revenge is likely in her cards as she learns the true back story and we are entertained enough to watch it through.

Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood LoveStory – 2015 (2.8). This documentary is surprisingly fun watching. It tells the personal and professional story of a Hollywood couple who rose to the pinnacle of their movie professions ( he a story board artist and production designer and she a research librarian)while raising their three sons (the oldest with autism)and being known to all in Hollywood as the tops in their field and two of the most fun people to spend time around. Interviews with the couple and with many of their professional and personal friends are combined with archival footage from some of the mtriad of Hollywood classics on which they have worked.

The Man in the High Castle (Season Two) -2016 (2.8). This series takes significant liberties with the book on which it is based, but since it is all made up anyway, maybe that is not very important. As the Nazis plot to eliminate the Japanese, all the plots and subplots thicken for the principal characters, but leaving the viewer with the question how long one would want to play along with this fantasy, which started way back in 1962 and has barely moved forward in time.

Nowhere to Hide – 2016 (2.8). When the US led coalition pulled out of Iraq and turned control over to the Iraqui government, a man in central Iraq was give a video camera by a filmmaker who told him to record what happens. This resulting documentary edits five years of videos with written inserts of what is happening in the country as the videos move forward. It is just home movies, but of a dangerous place in a dangerous time.

Red Oaks (Season Three) – 2017 (2.8). The third season is short by a couple episodes as the characters move on another year, some relationships ripen, some are replaced and situations morph. Still a pleasant enough watch as we are invested in the characters. Unfortunately, it has been announced this will be the last season of the series

Training Day - 2001 (2.8). Denzel Washington won the top Oscar playing an LA cop heading a small narc unit practicing its own brand of “street justice”. The movie takes place on the first day of training a new white officer transferring in as a step to becoming a detective. The recruit is shocked by the outrageous way the mentor disregards the rules, but he tries to bend and hang on even as situations quickly escalate and he begins to realize he may be getting setup as a patsy. This is another example of the Oscar going to a portrayal of a mentally unhinged person, but Denzel is such a good actor he deserved to have an addition to his supporting Oscar for Glory (which still holds up on watching anew).

Voices of the Sea -2018 (2.8). In an extremely impoverished Cuban fishing village an older respected fisherman haas married a young widow resulting in a blended family. Though dissatisfied with what the Castro revolution has delivered, the man nevertheless is content to carry on his life in the village. But the woman wants more out of life and dreams of fleeing to the USA. She is not alone in that dream and this documentary shows the lure of the dream and the reality of the difficulty of achieving it and the consequences of failing to complete the quest.

Wonder - 2017 (2.8). A home schooled boy born with major facial abnormalities starts attending a large middle school in this appealing movie. He is strong of character and has supportive parents and older sister, but the kids at the school handle relating to their new schoolmate with mixed success. There are plenty of messages in this well acted film, but it does not get too bogged down until maybe a bit at the end. The DVD special features are disappointing in not telling about the genesis of the book on which the movie was based and on not telling more about the casting, direction and makeup of Jacob Tremblay the excellent young actor who also played the boy in the movie Room.

Mr. Robot (Season One) – 2015 (2.7). This series about an Asperger's type computer hacker who gets involved in taking down an evil global corporate conglomerate started off with lots of promise but by the end of the season it was a bit disappointing as the lead character became more unbalanced and took us with him to the point where we did not quite know what was going on for real and what was just in his head. The prospect of more seasons of such disorientation is not appealing.

Still Tomorrow – 2016 (2.7). A Chinese woman about 40 years old with muscular dystrophy lives in a small village with her parents. She has a husband who works construction in big cities and comes to the village once a year where the couple end up arguing about her wanting a divorce. Though she never finished high school, she has used the Internet and been discovered as a talented poet. Once her work is published she becomes a minor celebrity particularly to young people and she travels to book signings and media interviews. Her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer and the daughter is not much emotional support. The poet and her husband have a young son, but we never see him, possibly because PBS POV once again cut a 88 minute documentary down to fit in a time slot of less than one hour.

All the Money in the World -2017 (2.6). This is the movie that was basically completed with Kevin Spacey in the role of J. Paul Getty when Spacey's scandals came to light. The decision was made to re-shoot all the Spacey scenes with Christopher Plummer in the role. Most likely this disruption did not improve the finished product, but the real problem is the script. It jumps around so much at the start that it threatens to undermine what is certainly a compelling story about the Rome kidnapping of a grandson of the richest man in the world. Things settle down enough by the end of the film to keep viewers watching. Even though we know the boy is going to live, we stay tuned for the details.

Dunkirk – 2017 (2.6). We have become so used to CGI footage in action movies that it is surprising to learn that Christopher Nolan made this movie about the evacuation of trapped British forces in 1940 with only a minimal amount of CGI and movie lot water tank work. A tremendous amount of logistical work went into recreating the time, place and events but the weakness of this movie is in the script. The attempt to tell the massive story from a subjective point of view of a few participants does not come across effectively, because of the lack of back story on the characters and the absence of cohesion from cutting back and forth between the various activities.

Human Flow – 2017 (2.6). The eye of the artist is evident in the beautiful cinematography of this documentary by Ai Wei Wei about the world wide refugee flows. Footage and interviews of refugees, commentaries by government and NGO officials and on screen data facts are the methodology, but there is no in depth analysis or proposals for improvements to dealing with the largest refugee traffic since WWII in spite of the fairly long running time of the movie.

Whose Streets? -2017 (2.5). The story of the police shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson Missouri and the aftermath as the community came together in protest was extensively followed by the media at the time. This documentary was made during the events and included additional interviews in the aftermath. While we did get to meet a few of the activists up close, we did not see or learn anything we did not already know.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: The Murder at Road Hill House– 2011 (2.4). Tell the true story of an 1860 murder of a young boy in a British country estate house from the wrong point of view and the result is an inferior mystery drama. This movie treated it like a whodunit that ended in failure to detect, only to quickly turn to a post scripted denouement that was disconnected from all that preceded it.