Last of the Awards

This list is another hodgepodge including the last DVDs from the past awards season.

The Good Wife (Season One) – 2009 (3.0). Married couple Peter and Alicia went to law school together and now have two teenagers. He became a DA and then got caught up with a sex and bribe scandal and is doing time while he appeals for a new trial. He and the DA who took over are in battle, and the long term goal for Peter is to clear his name and maybe run again for DA. Alicia, who is struggling with forgiving Peter and seeing what is going to happen, had to get an attorney job after 13 years off in order to pay bills, and ended up working for a firm with senior partner Will who still has the hots for her from law school days. The firm is struggling to stay afloat since the founding partner has taken a sabbatical and the third partner Diane is working with Will to figure out if and how the firm can survive. At work Alicia is in competition with a young male lawyer for the only available permanent position. Lisa is very good on details and works well with a young investigator for the firm. Peter's mom helps look after the kids while Alicia is at work. At 23 episodes, the season is long for the times, buu things move along well as the story arcs are progressed and each episode deals with a new case which is efficiently consummated by the writers in one episode. Legal and ethical issues are constantly coming up and being quickly addressed. Shortcuts in technical legalities are appreciated as the problem and the resolution are the main interest.

The Guilty– 2018 (3.0). This Danish drama proves that a tight script can support a very watchable movie with just one set and one main actor, supported by voice actors heard over the phone. A police officer is due in court tomorrow with his partner over the shooting of a man by the police officer. He has been assigned to desk duty in an emergency call center and is not happy with the assignment. Some of the calls that come in are ridiculous to him, but one turns out to be riveting, involving a woman kidnapped by the father of her young children. The officer applies all his skills and becomes emotionally invested as the kidnapper is fleeing in a motor van with hi vitim. The officer first talks to the woman who has called clandestinely under the pretext she is calling the young daughter. He then calls to get police units involved in the search and he also talks to the young girl, his partner and the kidnapper. The experience includes unexpected twists and makes the officer rethink what he will say in court tomorrow.

Maudie – 2016 (2.9).Crippled physically and emotionally Maud is a young woman who needs to escape living with her aunt in a small town in Nova Scotia and start living on her own. She answers an ad for a housekeeping job only to find the employer is even more emotionally messed up than she is. He also lives in an unheated 12 by 12 shack with a sleeping loft. With an “any port in a storm” attitude she takes the job and indulges her love of making primitive paintings. This dramatized true story arcs over 30 years during which the couple marry and overcome their odd couple conflicts as best they can. Meanwhile her art is discovered and Maud Lewis chooses to continue to live in the shack with her husband. This could have been schamltzed up but thankfully it is done in such a way as to retain the rough edges.

Olive Kitteridge – 2014 (2.9). Excellent acting from Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins anchors this story of 25 years in the lives of a mismatched Maine couple who somehow manage to make it work, in its own way. She is a blunt depressive and he is a male Pollyanna. Damaged people can be strong on the surface. Saintly people can be vulnerable to temptation. Everyone could benefit by personal counseling, but few actually take the risk. Sad.

Stan & Ollie – 2018 (2.9). Rather than attempt a biopic of the entire lives of Laurel and Hardy, this drama wisely chose to focus on the end years of their careers when they were hurting for money and had to take to the road on a nostalgic and somewhat humiliating vaudeville tour. Fine portrayals capture the ultimate realization by the men that they really did love each other in spite of th fact they were fundamentally quite diffferent from each other.

The Americans (Season One) – 2013 (2.8). The premise of this series set in the early years of the Reagan administration is that the Russians have trained two spies to pose as an American married couple and carry out spy missions for the motherland. The cover goes so far that the couple have actually had two children together who are now entering their teen years. By coincidence an FBI agent working in counterintelligence moves in across the street from the spies. The plots loosely intertwine with actual historic events in the relation between the two countries, but the couple seems to get involved in an inordinate amount of missions and all the time they spend on espionage somehow is only marginally hampered by their lives as parents. Good acting and an ensemble cast of Russians and Americans, some of whom are “useful idiots”, some corrupt and some conflicted combine with personal relationship issues to make a watchable series. At times the espionage seems useful to defuse tensions between the countries, but the use of violence and heartless deception is morally questionable.

Confirmation – 2016 (2.8). This movie does an effective job of presenting the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court. There is no back story as we jump right in to the discovery of the claim of Anita Hill that she was sexually harassed by Thomas when she worked as an assistant to him in Federal employment. The acting is very good and the resulting film captures the dynamics of the process that resulted in the “Strange Justice” Thomas.

Hal– 2018 (2.8). Hal Ashby was a talented filmmaker who rose rapidly from an assistant editor and was the maker of many iconic film, especially in the 1970s. He had a fiercely independent streak and was beloved by the actors with whom he worked, many of whom gave testimonials in this documentary. Interviews with other filmmakers and film crew members are included in the movie along with archival clips, movie scenes and reenacted scenes of Ashby writing irate memos and loving letters.

Harold and Maude– 1971 (2.8). Watching the documentary on Hal Ashby prompted a revisit to this offbeat movie he made in 1971. The gallows humor is still funny and the anti-establishment satire rings true. The free wheeling libertarianism will always have proponents, though many outgrow it. Touting this film to young men is probably not a good idea, at least until they have had more exposure to the things this movie satirizes. As viewers age, the reckless endangerment of the driving scenes is more off putting.

The Brandon Teena Story – 1998 (2.7). Looking like a Super 8 home movie, this documentary about a young Nebraska girl confused about whether she should in fact be a boy has an amateurish quality, but the seriousness of the crimes committed against her and her friends is vital and the intimacy of the movie is impressive. The question twenty years later is have we become more informed and enlightened about human sexuality or are we as ignorant as ever.

Game of Thrones (Season Eight) -2019 (2.7). Knowing the story in the script to finish the series is not actually written by the man who created the story from scratch makes for inherent skepticism. This final season does feel like it is written in pretense of having been planned all along. Though the characters are being rushed to the end, the actual episodes seem to drag, especially the way too long battle scenes, the time filling footage following people walk around and the shots of people watching the CGI effects displayed. Maybe Martin should have finished his books before the series was started.

Goliath – 2016 (2.7). A once big shot trial lawyer has fallen on hard times but gets an opportunity to bring a wrongful death case against a defense industry giant represented by his old firm. We get the usual mishmash of legal inaccuracies displayed along with office politics and sexual shenanigans in the firm and involving the client who is engaged in illegal weapons development. Some of the roles have appeal but the overall drama seems contrived. Not much reason to watch the second season which takes on a new case.

In Pursuit of Honor – 1995 (2.7). In the 1930s it was obvious the US Army needed to be updated, including replacing the horse cavalry with mechanized fighting tanks. Because of the economic constraints of the Depression, General MacArthur made the cold blooded decision to just slaughter the cavalry horses. This drama portrays a young Lieutenant and some veteran sergeants who disobey orders and run away with hundreds of horses, heading north with US Army forces pursuing them. The sincerity of the cause is sometimes imperiled by hokey overtones in the script.

A Star is Born– 2018 (2.7). Yet another version of the oft told tale has Lady Gaga as the singing sensation, performing songs she actually wrote herself. Bradley Cooper co-stars and directs, but the movie is definitely about the Lady. The familiar rise of the woman and fall of the man is so old as to seem unimportant. The power of the movie is Gaga singing.

Homecoming– 2018 (2.4). US soldiers returning from combat with PTSD deserve a better telling of their story than this misguided missile. Julia Roberts plays an MSW with limited experience who fronts a conglomerate contractor operating Department of Defense program supposedly interested in preparing the warriors for return to civilian life. In this pretend thriller, whose obsessive overuse of drone shots is reminiscent of the abuse of zoom lenses when they first came on the scene, we eventually learn that the program is a sham cover for pushing memory eliminating drugs that might enable the warriors to return to combat without PTSD. [No spoiler alert was given because the show was already spoiled in concept]. Fifty something Julia really hits it off with a 26 year old soldier and they both fantasize about a road trip to California where they stop in a small mountain town and end up settling there. Though their paths diverge near the end of the movie, by a fantastically hokey coincidence the fantasy materializes as the season mercifully ends. Amazon paid for two years of this and Roberts is stuck as a producer, but reportedly she has wisely chosen not to act in year two.

Twin Peaks (Season One) – 1990 (DNF). A surreal [goofy?] crime series can have its fanatic audience, but if you were not one of them back then, trying it thirty years later won't help. Three episodes is enough of an old life to waste\, and one will know better than to bother with the various sequels.