Months in to the Covid Pandemic and one month away from the opportunity to dump the worst American President in history, the list of movies and shows watched has gotten fairly long. Award winners are starting to come in from the library, but the three list toppers are Great Performances from PBS.
Ann- 2020 (3.0). Taylor Holland absolutely becomes Ann Richards in this witty and appropriately irreverent one woman play about the former Governor of Texas and her life. Holland wrote it also. Shown on PBS Great Performances.
She Loves Me – 2016 (3.0). Great Performances on PBS presented this filmed version of the theatrical musical based on the story first brought to screen as The Shop Around the Corner in 1940. Good film direction and spirited performances make for a fun experience, as yet again we anticipate the lonely heart letter writers finally coming together in person.
Gloria: A Life – 2020 (2.9). Christine Lahti plays Gloria Steinem in this biographical play, ably supported by a cast of women who play various roles as they frequently enter and exit the stage. Gloria herself appears at the end to take audience questions. Shown on PBS Great Performances.
Little Women – 2019 (2.9). Greta Gerwig takes a run at the classic for a new generation. Her script idea is to start when the girls are young adults and then jump back and forth with their late childhood, but the technique is disorienting at first and then settles down. Saorise Ronan plays Jo and is definitely a very good actress, because she never seems to be acting, but rather always seems to be the character. Laura Dern seems miscast as Marmee. Meryl Streep does a bit as Aunt Marsh, once again looking like Meryl acting a character. Florence Pugh does a good job with the troublesome Amy. Rightly, this legitimate classic will never die.
Parasite -2019 (2.9). This multi award winning Korean movie about a family of grifters moving in on an affluent younger family has some funny moments and holds attention as a drama but then takes a turn into thriller territory, which did not stop it from winning prizes, though for some audiences it may be a turn that detracted. As the story unfolded a viewer had to wonder how it would be ended, with some hokey possibilities coming to mind, but none were like the actual film. Maybe that is what appealed to some audiences. Even after watching an interview with the filmmaker, it does not seem that any great depth of meaning was intended.
She Could Be Next – 2020 (2.9). Shown on PBS POV, this two part documentary follows the 2018 primary and general election campaigns of several progressive female candidates of color for Federal, State and local office. The inspiring motivation and tenacity of the women and their diverse army of volunteers in pursuit of elected public office is inspiring. The only talking heads in this documentary are the hard working people on the campaigns and some voters, not academics or political pundits, so the movie captures the emotion and vitality of the pursuit.
Building the American Dream – 2019 (2.8). The Texas construction boom is facilitated by the use of undocumented laborers who are not protected by even the most basic labor laws, as shown in this documentary which follows the stories of a couple families, one whose son died of heat exhaustion on the job and who fight hard to get a Dallas city ordinance passed to require contractors to give their workers a 10 minute break every four hours. The other family are victims of wage theft and even with the help of activists lawyers it takes years to get even a small part of what they are owed.
Honeyland – 2019 (2.8). This Turkish documentary about a fifty something woman who ekes out a living keeping bees and selling their honey is a very intimate portrait of her meager existence living in a hovel in the hills of Macedonia with her 85 year old mother who is basically bedridden. Her life changes a bit when a couple with a herd of cattle and a herd of kids move in nearby and provide socialization. The bee lady particularly bonds with one son who is totally fed up with his dysfunctional parents. She teaches the man how to raise bees to sell honey, but he is too greedy to do it properly and his malpractice disrupts her beekeeping. If only we could have learned more about the back story of this woman. She has appeal in spite of being brutally physically unattractive. If this were a drama, once the screwed up family left the area, the boy would have run away and come back to live with the bee lady.
Succession (Season One) – 2018 (2.8). Another take on the Trump horror of a family dynasty of obnoxiously pathetic people, this HBO series presents a media conglomerate regime. One cannot root for anyone other than for fate, hoping they will all meet the downfalls they deserve – unless you are naïve enough to think someone will see the light and change. Being HBO, there is requisite drugs, vulgar language and sexual degradation, though the sex is more talk than action. One has to wonder why on top of living through such a nasty family trying to destroy our government we need to see a series about more such people. Unfortunately it is well enough done to marginally entice watching the second season. [Update September 2021: After suffering through the last two years of the Trump catastrophe, an attempt to watch the second season of this show was terminated after the first 15 minutes].
The Vote – 2020 (2.8). This two part PBS American Experience documentary uses much archival footage and commentary from historians to tell the story of the fight for the vote for US women. It covers the decades long struggle but concentrates on the end with the WWI era crescendo which squeaked the amendment to the Constitution into being. It passed by one vote in the US House and then by 2 votes in the Tennessee State House for ratification. The treatment of women picketers in front of the White House has sad echoes in the gas attack on the Lafayette Park picketers by the Trump administration.
We Are the Radical Monarchs – 2019 (2.8). In Oakland two women organize and lead a troop of young girls of color in an alternative program to the Girl Scouts, emphasizing empowerment and activism built around social issues such as gender, race and poverty. This documentary follows the troop over a few years as the girls develop and the leaders try to obtain funding and start more troops. The leaders met in college and became fast friends. One is African American and the other a child of Central American immigrants. They share the exact same birthday and are both lesbians.
About Love – 2019 (2.7). A female Indian filmmaker trains her camera on her multi generational Mumbai family and is hit in the face with the patriarchal dynasty that is India in general and her family in particular. The men are terrible chauvinists, except perhaps for the soon to be married brother of the filmmaker who she never once asks how he feels about the patriarchy and whether he expects to perpetuate it. The women have succumbed their lives to this, grandma for 68 years of abuse, and Mom for 32. Mom escapes into writing stories of Indian women from the past who time travel to the present. Filmmaker daughter has resisted marriage for 14 years of a relationship because, as she tells her brother, she does not want to end up like Mom.
The Kominsky Method (Season One) – 2018 (2.7). Michael Douglas executive produced and plays the lead in this series about a seventy something acting coach and his eighty something agent played by Alan Arkin. They are best friends in an acerbic relationship. The first season has a wife dying, a daughter addicted, a business in major tax debt and the predicted bedding of a younger woman by Douglas and many cameos by older actors. There are some things here that older audiences can relate to, but it would be more relevant if the lead characters were not in show biz. One season may be all it is worth.
Beecham House – 2019 (2.6). Unfortunately great production values, an exotic locale in India, creative talents in conception and expected great English acting are not enough to make this miniseries come together effectively. The story line never seemed to be headed in a clear direction and the dynamics between the characters often changed for no apparent reason other than change itself. In fact, after the last episode aired one could not be sure the story was supposed to be over.
A Hidden Life – 2019 (2.6). Movies from Terrence Malick have beautiful cinematography especially of expansive natural wonders. They are also way too long. The style of somewhat poetic, but often like an epic created from what should have been a sonnet. This one is about an Austrian man with deeply personal religious beliefs who refuses to take an oath to Hitler and fight in his war which the man believes is immoral. He is so sure of his position that he will not listen to reason or accept sensible compromises for the good of his wife and children. It is true that nobody was likely to know about this “hidden life”, but not really also true that his act of conscience was worthwhile. Hidden martyrdom seems like an oxymoron.
Fosse/Verdon – 2019 (2.5). This miniseries about the dancer choreographer duo jumped around so much in time back and forth through the episodes that I mistakenly watched the final episode, skipping the three before it, and it still seemed to fit together about as jumbled as the first episodes. The dancing scenes are moderately enjoyable but the drama of these two people devoted to their careers is hard to relate to, especially since the womanizing Fosse is a real jerk. At some point we are given a brief view of the difficult teenage lives of these two people, apparently to explain some of their later failings, but it is not enough to make either of them more appealing.
Once Upon a Time in Iraq – 2020 (2.5). Archival footage and interviews with a handful of Iraquis who have lived through the turmoil in Iraq since the US led invasion of 2003 should have made more impact than they did in this documentary. There did not seem to be much organization to the presentation and the individuals selected did not capture the attention one would have expected. Sadly, the resulting movie seems more tedious than informative or affecting.
Yellowstone (Season One) – 2018 (DNF). Kevin Costner tries to blend some sort of Sopranos with the Trump Organization running the biggest ranch in the US, but the resulting hodge-podge of unappealing characters does not whet the appetite for more. The only saving aspect here is the beautiful Montana scenery. A travelogue would be better,
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