Covid 19 Watching

During this time of sheltering in place, with the library closed for DVD pickup, streaming and TV watching provide the fodder, with two previous favorite series topping the list and a couple newcomers as runners-ups. This will probably be the program for at least the next several months.

Call the Midwife (Season Nine) – 2019 (3.0). Creator and writer Heidi Thomas deserves major credit for researching the time and place for each new season of this series and creating new characters from time to time to flow in and augment continuing characters. The dedication of these medical professionals is always moving and inspiring and particularly relevant in this time of corona virus.

This Is Us (Season Four) – 2019 (3.0). The central characters, especially the big three and their mother, continue to hold our attention, even as new characters are tried out and some are not missed when they disappear while others have potential to maybe be more involved. In addition to the usual effective flashbacks, we start to get more flash forwards giving a glimpse of what the future holds, and particularly in the season finale, introducing us to new characters that seem destined to become central players.

Chernobyl– 2019 (2.9). This miniseries about the Soviet nuclear disaster won the Golden Globe for best miniseries with a good script that moved along, good acting and special effects that were quite authentic but never over the top. The parallels between that time of Soviet lies and scientists pushing for the truth to be told, and the way the Trump Administration and its followers in the States is trying to lie away the truth being told by the scientists is quite revealing.

Ramy – 2019 (2.9). Ramy Youssef won the Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy series for his portrayal of an Egyptian American young man in northern NJ living with his parents and sister and running around with three buddies including one with muscular dystrophy confined to a wheelchair. Ramy believes in God and struggles to live up to the standards of Islam, while easily succumbing to his hormones. The humor is a natural part of his personality and his laid back approach to the series issues he confronts as he tries to figure out what is a good life for him to live.

The Loudest Voice – 2019 (2.8). Roger Ailes built the noise machine inaccurately called Fox News and made lots of money for Rupert Murdoch. In addition to the ruthless disregard for the truth and paranoid pseudo conservatism masking underlying pandering to white entitlement angst, Ailes personally mentally and sexually abused many of the women who worked for Fox. This miniseries ably tells that story, considerably enhanced by the Golden Globe winning performance of co-producer Russell Crowe as Ailes.

One Child Nation – 2018 (2.8). Born in Chine near the end of the 35 year one child policy, a woman who has come to the US goes back to her village to get a better understanding of how the policy worked in practice. She interviews family members and villagers including a local man charged with implementing the policy in the village. At first this documentary is slow, but after a while it gets into the issue of forced abortions and sterilizations and seizing of children to sell to orphanages for international adoption. The oppressiveness of the communist regime is manifest in this film.

Rainman Twins – 2011 (2.8). What makes this documentary interesting and fun is the identical twin sisters who are autistic savants. The movie follows them closely as they impress with their memory skills and interrelate with people who love them, including their younger sister who lets them enjoy being who they are and some celebrities like their idol Dick Clark.

The Farewell– 2019 (2.8). In this drama the matriarch of a Chinese family is dying of lung cancer but her family keeps the news from her so that she does not have to live her last months in unhappy fear of death. The burden of sorrow and worry is taken on by the family which is hard for the young granddaughter brought up in the US to understand and accept. The characters are interesting and the Chinese cultural differences from the west are not overplayed even though they are significant.

Pain and Glory – 2019 (2.8). Pedro Almodovar delivers a drama about an aging film director (Antonio Banderas) suffering from many physical ailments as well as writer's block. He experiences reunions and has flashbacks to his childhood and earlier life. Interesting enough in style to hold attention, but has nothing particularly interesting or new to say about life.

World on Fire (Season One) – 2019 (2.8). Expected good production values and acting are present in this Brit series following a few local English characters, some Germans and Poles and a couple American civilians as WWII comes to Europe. The writing has highs and lows but the central dilemma of an appealing young man in love at the same time with two desirable women, one English and one a Pole, maintains a hold. The widowed mother of the young man is so cold that it seems she has at some point to warm up, but she has not done so yet. There has to be a second season since the first ends with what could be called a hilltop hanger.

Jacob– 2019 (2.7). This short documentary follows a quirky, humble highly educated man with genius abilities. Interviews with people who know and admire him provide supplement.

Missing Link- 2019 (2.7). Years of skilled craftsmanship and artistry go into making a stop action animated puppet movie. Such films are designed to hold the visual interest of young children (not really hard to do in the age of the smart phone), while at the same time keeping the parents mildly entertained by using the voices of known actors [do kids realy get excited to know that Hugh Jackman is voicing the hero the the story?]and by incorporating humor which adults can relate to and action and violence which play to the short attention span of kids. A better than average story elevates such films, but the story of this opus was only average.

Raise Hell: The Life and Times ofMolly Ivins – 2019 (2.7). Political humorist and columnist Ivins was smart, well-educated and a fearless political critic, especially of the politics of her home State of Texas. This documentary puts a lot of her political performances on display through archival footage and reflects on her impact via interviews with family, friends and contemporaries. But we are left feeling we never quite got to know the woman on a personal level and why she allowed alcoholism to play such a large part in her life.

Sneaky Pete (Season One) – 2015 (2.7). Bryan Cranston co-created this series for Amazon. A con man needs to hide from a bad dude he owes money to and so he steals the identity of his cell mate and goes to the home of his grandparents who have not seen him for twenty years, since he was ten years old. Lots of characters and plot turns keep things moving and it could be passable with sufficient suspension of belief, but it gets too cute for itself and too hung up on impressing the audience with con man terminology, Cranston also made sure he got a couple of tedious monologues. For those who think a second season is worth giving a try, encouragement is offered with a minor spoiler alert – the Cranston character does not return.

East Lake Meadows – 2020 (2.6). From Ken Burns productions, this documentary tells the story of a public housing project in Atlanta with archival footage and with interviews of families who lived there and from experts in related fields. Particularly in the first half, the movie seems scattered. It is not clear whether we are going to be following families or buildings or maybe getting into exploring public housing policy. By the end, we find we did a little of each, without feeling particularly satisfied.

The Windermere Children– 2020 (2.6). The true story of Polish Jewish children who survived the horrors of the holocaust and were granted refugee status by the UK and put in a four month resident program at Lake Windermere in Scotland for counseling, language training and other preparation for their new lives is a fascinating subject. Unfortunately this movie drama does not do it justice. The script is the problem, trying to cover too much ground in a disjointed and uneven treatment. The girls are totally ignored except for one young teenager who is relegated to a minor supporting role for her boyfriend, and one very young street girl who is the leader of her band of urchins, but is only shown in two or three brief scenes which tell us nothing about her. A half dozen or so of the actual boys are shown in their old age at the end of the film and we then realize they are the ones we followed in the movie. There is a one hour documentary that might give better coverage.

Baptiste – 2019 (2.5). The best thing about this Brit crime series is Amsterdam. Under the guise of first looking for a girl sex trafficked by an Eastern European gang, our retired French detective is called in by a former lover who is a police commander in Amsterdam and we embark on too many episodes of wandering around with a swelling cast of characters who come and go with no great rhyme or reason juntil we have killed so many people it is time to surprise us with who is going to be the last main character to die and who is the last to go to jail – as if we cared.

An Elephant Sitting Still– 2018 (2.4). Despite positive reviews from movie critics, four hours of slowly following a handful of characters as they struggle with depressing lives in a contemporary northern Chinese industrial town is a lot to ask of an audience for this Chinese drama. Long tracking shots follow characters closely from behind and then focus on their facial profile as they talk to someone who remains out of focus. These are not happy people and there are a couple suicides along the way. We are being shown over one day the intimate impact of the economy on people at lower levels, though not slum dwellers or the homeless. Hu Bo, the young writer-director received an education in his field and this was his first feature film, after he wrote a few novels. Sadly it was also his last, as he committed at 29.