All Creatures Great and Small(Season Three) – 2022 (3.1). The season begins with the wedding of James and Helen and ends with Triss going off to the War. In between Mrs. Hall has a romance and has a brief visit with her estranged son who is already in the Navy and the doctors cope with ongoing issues in their veterinary practice and personal relationships. The Christmas finale episode is particularly affecting as characters let down their emotional guards to be honest.
Children of Las Brisas – 2022 (3.0). Ten years in the making, this quite watchable honest documentary follows two young Venezuelan boys and a girl who are part of the long time extensive government program of making orchestral instruments and training available to poor children. The boys are teenagers and the girl is just entering her teenage years as we begin following them. All three play the viola. They are dedicated and talented and each sees a musical career as a hopeful opportunity. We meet their immediate families and see them engage with fellow students and teachers. Seamlessly integrated into the movie is an inside look at the impoverished lives these families live and how the politics of Venezuela affects them. As life conditions in Venezuela deteriorate, we see how that affects the three students and their plans.
The Movement and the Madman – 2022 (3.0).Shown on PBS American Experience, this documentary covers the movement against the Vietnam War as Richard Nixon was assuming the Presidency following the 1968 election. Nixon said he had a secret plan to end the war and this movie shows his plan was to get the North Vietnamese to capitulate to his demands either through bullying them or getting the Russians to lean on them. Neither plan worked, but this film shows through now unclassified documents that the plans included the threat to use and possible actual use of nuclear weapons by convincing the Russians and North Vietnamese that Nixon was madman enough to unleash a possible nuclear holocaust. The mass uprisings and demonstrations of 1969 did not end ithe war, but though the war went on for several more years, this film shows that the movement prevented Nixon from using nuclear weapons. Most refreshing about the technique used in this film was that the usual archival footage and photos did not have to share screen time with inserts of people sitting in chairs and talking to the camera about their remembrances; instead the audio of the remembrances was played as narrative to the images with an on screen indication of the identity of the speaker.
The Big Payback -2022 (2.9). Closely following the efforts of a Black woman alderman from Evanston, Illinois to pass a first of its kind local law funding reparations for slavery in America, this documentary comes across as very personal in concentrating on the woman herself and interviewing other community members with varying opinions on the efficacy of such a remedy and the difficulty of crafting the implementation. Without interviewing scholars and historians, this movie cuts to the chase of reconciling public opinion enough to come up with a first actual program to make some form of reparation, establishing the first such government program in the country and prompting other local governments pursue reparations in their domains.
Miss Scarlet & the Duke (Season Three) – 2022 (2.9). The third season of this series scores an uptick as a man running his own detective agency becomes more professionally (and maybe he wonders if possibly personally) involved with Miss Scarlet, her surrogate mother housekeeper has a suitor, and the Duke is smitten by an old school nemesis of Miss Scarlet. The mystery plots seem to be even more tightly drawn also. Enough cliffhangers are left to esaily invite viewers back for another season.
Top Gun: Maverick – 2022 (2.9). Action genre, military macho and Tom Cruise brought back to the screen almost thirty years later turns out to be better than expected. Modern movie technology and enough drama and a touch of pathos blend fairly effectively into the genre. The story of an old Navy fighter pilot being brought in to train the new top guns for a vital and extremely dangerous mission won a best movie award from the AARP Movies for Grownups.
Hidden Letters – 2022 (2.8). This documentary from China tells of two young women who are striving to find their independent place in the modern world while also learning about, teaching and engaging with the history of the highly subjugated women of the past in China some of whom, from the same rural area as the two young women, invented their own secret language Nushu to communicate their thoughts and feelings to each other.
Love in the Time of Fentanyl – 2022 (2.8). This documentary closely follows leaders and volunteers of a safe drug injection site in the east part of downtown Vancouver BC. The members of this community are like a family united in love for one another and for drug addicts, as some of them still are, as they offer loving support for addicts in the midst of a fatal epidemic. There is not much back story telling or excuses for addiction, just the hard work and dedication of those on the front line of compassionately dealing with the consequences. For viewers who are not addicts, simple solutions to eliminate the problem are always in mind, but this movie is not intended to offer answers except showing love for the addicted.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On – 2021 (2.8). YouTube to short to full length animated, the idea like the shell character is cute and the frail story about missing family, and about friendship has heart and it is only 90 minutes long. Clever stop motion techniques is well executed.
No Straight Lines – 2021 (2.8). At first a documentary following five self-proclaimed queer cartoonists talking about their careers and showing some of their work and the process involved in creating their art would seem not to have a broad appeal. But after the first few minutes, their talent, personal stories and sharing of career experiences in a changing America, told through their own actions and words, supported with appropriate archival footage, holds the interest even of a straight viewer.
Remember This – 2022 (2.8). David Strathairn plays polish diplomat and Holocaust witness Jan Karski in this filming of the one man stage play. Karski tried to warn Churchill and Roosevelt early about the horrors, but they did not heed him. He settled in the USA and had a many decades career as an international studies professor at Georgetown University. The PBS presentation includes a video about how sound effects, lighting and cinematic techniques such as varied camera positions and different lenses were used to film the performance. The PBS supplement also includes some biographical info and footage of Karski.
Storming Caesars Palace – 2022 (2.8). This documentary tells the story of Ruby Duncan, a Las Vegas mother who became frustrated with the dysfunctional welfare system supposedly set up to help single mothers like herself. Styled with a bit of a funkadelic look, the movie is a little confusing at first but soon comes together to tell a coherent story of the activism of Ruby and other women who took on the system, ultimately leading to the forming of the National Welfare Rights Organization which attracted celebrity supporters to the movement. Interviews with the women (a couple of whom died before the film was released) are combined with archival footage. The title of the movie comes from a highly successful eat in the woman conducted at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in order to get Nevada to join in the Federal Food Stamps program, which every other state had already done.
Wildcat – 2022 (2.8). Viewed on Amazon Prime, this documentary shows a young British soldier released from the army due to depression and PTSD who goes to the Amazon jungle and works with a young American woman scientist who runs an animal rescue shelter. Among the animals she rescues are orphaned ocelots and the man helps her work with the cats on an 18 month program of preparing them to live in the wild. The first ocelot effort does not end well but the second one is more successful. During the time of the movie, the man and women become personally involved, his parents and younger brother come for a visit, the woman returns to the US for a visit with her family, the man has serious emotional ups and down and the relationship between the man and the woman deteriorates. The jungle setting is rather claustrophobic and the man is not shown getting any serious training for his job. The relationship also conflicts with the professional endeavor in some ways. But through it all the ocelots are beautiful animals and the young kitten stage is irresistible.
Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space– 2022 (2.8). Shown on American Experience on PBS, this documentary uses archival footage and interviews with literary and other academic scholars to give a biography of the unique black American anthropologist and novelist. Her life was in fact somewhat disjointed and the biography comes across the same way, but she was such an interesting woman that the movie is worth watching.
I Didn't See You There
– 2022 (2.7). A disabled man in a wheelchair shot this movie to
show what life is like from his perspective, literally using a
handheld and wheelchair mounted camera without including himself in
any shots other than some window reflections and shadows. A premise
is the erection of a circus tent near his apartment, causing him to
ruminate on freak shows and historical ways disabled people are
viewed. Involving himself a little more in the movie would have been
helpful to viewers wanting to understand the nature and extent of his
limitations. It was encouraging to see that, even though some people
are unaware of the problems they cause people in wheelchairs such as
mindlessly blocking ramps, most are very respectful including those
who politely ask if he would like navigational assistance. For those
of us not in wheelchairs determining the line between being an
interested potential helper and an insensitive gawker can be
difficult. This movie offered no help, though in fairness it was not
intended as such an aid.
Roberta Flack – 2022 (2.7). With concert pianist training and gifted singing talent, Roberta Flack found success back in the day, but who knew she remained active in the business, doing duets, solos and mentoring young artists until her medical retirement a couple years ago. This documentary shown on the PBS American Masters series is short on the non-professional side of her life but follows her career extensively. Lots of archival footage of performances and many interviews are included, but the technique of having the interviewee voice used as narration while the screen shows shots of them that do not match their voice is a bit jarring,
Everything Everywhere All at Once – 2022 (2.6). In an era of an expanding number of award shows and not much competition, this movie has earned more major film awards than any movie in history. Two guys named Daniel thought it up and somehow brought it into being after many years. The technique of the varied special effects is an accomplishment and it certainly moves along at a fast clip, jumping all around in time and space. Action, adventure and comedy are some of the genre terms it has been given, but Wikipedia uses “absurdist” which seems most accurate. The only parts that seemed funny were the phony looking fight sequences and Jamie Lee Curtis turning into a stalking monster. Absent true drama or emotion beyond comic book status, the awards for acting are confusing and the one for Jamie Lee seems more like a lifetime achievement award. And since it moved so fast, one wonders why the movie had to last 139 minutes.
Outta the Muck – 2022 (2.6). A man returns to his small town home on the east shore of Lake Okeechobee in Florida, an area known for its dark black soil and local name of The Muck. He has been gone thirty plus years and makes this documentary about the area and his extended family and friends. High school football is the local obsession. The film comes across as a home movie of people talking and acting up and playing football. Some history of the area is mentioned. Out of the way and forgotten places do not just exist in the middle of the country; they are also in coastal states.
