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.

Best Things I Watched in 2019

This year I started watching movies on Amazon Prime and a few on library streaming via Hoopla and Kanopy, in addition to the regular routine of catching up with award nominees via DVDs from the library and catching some interesting TV shows mostly on PBS.

The list below includes shows I watched and rated 3 or above. Only three on the list were released in 2019. I watched a little over 100 shows during the year. My blog lists of movies rated alphabetically and in ratings order have been updated and now include about 3700.

Capernaum	2018	3.3
42nd Street: The Musical	2019	3.3
One Mississippi (Season One)	2015	3.2
One Mississippi (Season Two)	2017	3.2
This is Us (Season Three)	2018	3.2
Durrells in Corfu, The (Season Four)	2019	3.2
College Behind Bars	2019	3.2
Justified (Season Two)	2011	3.1
Green Book	2018	3.1
My Brilliant Friend (Season One)	2018	3.1
Justified (Season One)	2010	3
Justified (Season Three)	2012	3
Justified (Season Four)	2013	3
Justified (Season Six)	2015	3
Nicky's Family	2011	3
Good Wife, The (Season One)	2009	3
Guilty, The	2018	3

Last List of the Decade

Without further fanfare, here is the last list of the decade. And by way of fanfare, check out this rousing trailer for 42Street: The Musical.

42^ndStreet: The Musical – 2019 (3.3). This delightfully exuberant production is a filming of a performance at the Drury Lane Theater in London. The sets, lighting, costumes and other aspects are great, but it is the music and accompanying dance numbers that are knockouts. The 1933 movie was the genesis and the movie was first brought to the stage in 1980 and has been revived here and there since, but this latest production is spectacular and this filming of it does it deserved justice.

College Behind Bars – 2019 (3.2). Lynn Novick, collaborator of Ken Burns, spent four years making this documentary as her first solo work, telling the story of inmates given the opportunity to obtain a college education. How refreshing to find this movie is not a polemic against prisons or a political advocacy piece. Following two groups of NY prisoners in maximum security prisons, one men and one women, the film concentrates its attention intensely on the prisoners as individuals, then gets input from the professors from Bard College who teach them and eventually works in some of the family of the offenders and finally gives some back story on the crimes for which they are incarcerated. The college provides the education for free and to the same standards and expectations it holds for students who attend on the college campus. The inmates are selectively screened and are highly motivated to learn about a vast array of subjects and in the process about themselves and the society against which they have offended. How to fund a college education quickly becomes secondary to the primary focus of the movie, which is how valuable the education is to a highly motivated student and how such an educated student can contribute to society after graduation.

The Durrells in Corfu (Season Four) – 2018 (3.2). The final season of the series finds the family facing the threat of WWII on their doorstep. The mother has a rocky time in her relationship with her local heartthrob, while two of the children head overseas for personal growth efforts. The second son tries to become dependable confidant to his mother while the youngest son splashes through into puberty. The series ends as the family realize return to England is probably inevitable. Viewers will likely miss Corfu as much as the characters do. Though a future series about the family during the war could be in the cards, the most tantalizing prospect would be for a return to Corfu after the war. There is a 90 minute follow up special titled “What the Durrells Did Next”.

Afghan Cycles– 2018 (2.8). Cycling in Afghanistan is a particularly dangerous sport for young women. In fact just living in Afghanistan in areas under Taliban rule can be extremely dangerous for young women. This documentary follows several young women members of the Afghan cycling team, showing their passion for cycling and telling us something about their personal stories. Thee are strong young women, but it is when they share their fears and show the strength to overcome them that the movie touches and inspires.

The Black Stallion – 1979 (2.8). More of a fantasy than a drama, the strength of this movie is the bond between the horse and the young rider, Kelly Reno. The scenes of the boy bareback riding the stallion at full gallop through the shallow waters of the seashore still impress, though the rest of the movie does not hold up as well over time.

For Sama– 2019 (2.8). Recorded home movie style over several years, this documentary is told as a story from a young Syrian mother to her newborn daughter who is raised in Aleppo during the years of uprising against Assad. She intimately tells the story of immediate family and friends and shows the violence of being under siege, but because it is intended for a young child, there is nothing by way of political context presented.

Poldark(Season Five) – 2018 (2.8). This second rendering of the Winston Graham novels concludes its run in a swirling mush with the final episode definitely disappointing as it takes off in eccentric directions barely tying in to what has come before. Apparently there are so many novels with so many potential story episodes that it would not be surprising to see the characters resurrected sooner or later.

Press – 2018 (2.8). This first entry in Masterpiece Contemporary from the Brits is a six part miniseries about two competing newspapers in London, one a cass tabloid and he other a more traditional practitioner of journalism facing financial pressures. The characters are an interesting mix of professionals with assorted colorful personal lives. Journalism ethics and different ways to investigate and tell stories are explored. This is a series that cries out for a longer run, perhaps several years if the quality could be maintained, but the short run feels compromised and truncated.

Bridge of Spies– 2015 (2.7). Inspired by the 1957 U-2 spy plane incident and the ensuing spy swap negotiation, Spielberg overproduces and applies the old Hollywood treatment to what could have been a much better script and movie.

Don't Quit: The Joe Roth Story – 2014 (2.6). This earnest documentary tells the story of Cal Bear quarterback Joe Roth who came to the football program from junior college and quickly won the love and admiration of his teammates and coaches with his football skills and his sterling personality. He also won lots of football games, gaining national attention. But what he kept quiet was that he had melanoma and it could not be cured, As his performances began to suffer, he gallantly hung on and attended all the all star games of his final season and died in his apartment on campus where he wanted to finish school and graduate. The movie is conventional in approach using archival footage and interviews with teammates, coaches, former opponents, a girlfriend and his surviving family members.

The King and I – 2018 (2.7). This filmed performance of the musical performed at the Lincoln Center has it's good points, but the material is dated and there is not much excitement for a contemporary audience. The method of filming seems quite conventional also.

TheMarvelous Mrs. Maisel (SeasonsTwo and Three) – 2018 and 2019 (2.7). Season Two was watched without a note posted here, so both seasons two and three are being covered now. Two got a 2.8 and three gets a 2.6, for an average of 2,7. The series does a great job of production value presentation of the look of the 1950s into 1960, but misses the mark in details that are noticeable by people who actually experienced those times as young adults. The lead character is just not very appealing as a person and her humor is hard to see as something that actually have been popular back then. The language is also much more vulgar in the series than it was in fact in those days. The older generation are more interesting than their grown children. The coarse lesbian agent pretty hard to take although they are softening her role a little. Though there is a bit of a story arc the series seems to bounce around a lot. Fortunately there were only eight episodes to season three, so there a marginal appeal to trying a season four.

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.

Keep 'em Rolling

This list is mostly the result of scrounging through Amazon Prime for marginal possibilities, as well as a checking out some PBS and a couple from the library. 

Nicky's Family – 2011 (3.0). In 1938 a young Englishman stumbled into the problem of Jewish families in Czechoslovakia fearing the rise of Hitler and wanting to get their children sent out of the country to safety. He soon put his natural problem solving skills to the task and did his own version of Schindler's list, a story which remained untold for fifty years. This well made documentary uses archival footage, interviews with the rescuer and some of the rescued children in their senior years and some dramatic reconstructions. Individual stories are told directly to the camera and also presented to student groups. The resulting movie is moving and inspirational.

Camp Hollywood– 2004 (2.8). A young Canadian stand up comic decides to try the LA scene and stay at a somewhat seedy hotel with a history of celebrity guests on the way up or on the way down as he sees if he can land some profitable gigs. He has enough money for a 60 day stay and decides to shoot a home movie style documentary about the place and its current residents. T first he thinks he may have made a mistake, but then the place and people start to grow on him. The trust level he establishes is evident in the cooperation he elicits from the residents he interviews. Ambition buoyed by hubris and most likely unreasonable hope could be depressing, but the overall sense is a community of kindred spirits.

Catastrophe (Seasons One through Four) -2015-2019 (2.8). This dramedy series from the UK is steadily profane but also has a dramatic heart as an American businessman and an Irish teacher inadvertently make a baby in London and decide to try marriage. Season one sets it up in six episodes through the actual wedding. Two jumps ahead to a second kid and career and financial stress on top of ongoing family and friend issues. In three, problems intensify. Things seem to reconcile a bit in four, which is apparently going to be the final season. The two leads developed the series. Carrie Fisher played an American mother-in-law from hell and was beginning to play a bigger part but sadly died after season three.

Dr. Thorne – 2016 (2.8). Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame adapted a Trollope novel for a pleasant mini-series set in the 1850 English country estate turf. The bumbling estate Lord is in hock up to his neck and the Lady of the house schemes to marry her daughters and son to money. The good doctor protects niece ward. The mortgage holder on the estate dies and is succeeded by his drunken son. The good are good and the bad have at least a smidgen of good and we can expect all to end well. Trollope wrote 47 novels in spite of having a full time job as a Postal executive.

Ekaterina (Season One) – 2014 (2.8). The first season of this Russian series tells how an arranged marriage that goes bad leads to the rise of Catherine the Great in Russia. Effective production values and decent acting blend with a serviceable script to hold viewer interest. It also helps that the actress playing Catherine is quite good looking. The second season will tell about some of the things Catherine did as Russian Empress the win the Great appellation.

Inventing Tomorrow – 2018 (2.8). Following six teams of high school age competitors in an international science competition, this documentary continues attention on issues of environmental concern but also gives hope in the enthusiastic energy of committed young people world wide. These kids are bright and engaging and give hope to us as we follow them in their research and home lives and then to the competition in Los Angeles where they meet their peers from around the world. If adequate resources were applied to providing scholarships and ongoing international collaborations and mentoring to such students around the world, imagine the good that could result.

Louisa May Alcott – 2009 (2.8). This American Masters bio documentary combines interviews with scholars and dramatic reconstructions read by actors with an actress reading from the authorized biography of Louisa May Alcott to effectively tell her life story and the story of her family which she used with artistic liberties in writing Little Women.

Chasing Happiness– 2019 (2.7). The Jonas Brothers of music fame are the subjects of this documentary about their upbringing, rise to music heights, breakup and reconciliation. Home movies, interviews of family members and business colleagues and archival footage are the vehicles of the story, which is surely more meaningful to their fans, most of whom are still fairly young.

Going West– 2017 (2.7). The only child of a recently widowed transvestite dad with whom he has a frosty relationship just got fired from his job as a music teacher, so he agrees to take a road trip with dad to take his mother's last quilt to a quilting contest on a remote island. As expected, they have some quirky adventures and do a bit of bonding. There are a few funny segments but not really much depth of communication and bonding. Because it is short, this Norwegian movie is pleasantly watchable.

Plastic China - 2016 (2.7). This documentary follows two families in China, one led by a young man without education who strives to make economic gain by as thousands of others strive in his area by running a makeshift plastic recycling business. The other family comes from elsewhere in China looking for work and has for several years worked in the business of the first family. Both families have small children and they all live and work midst the heaps of plastic on which they work, play and eat. The movie follows them all intensely without any interviews, commentary or other footage. The result is discouragingly captivating but the absence of a look at the larger picture is disconcerting.

The Yellow Handkerchief– 2008 (2.7). An older man newly released from prison in Louisiana accepts a ride with a young man with wanderlust and a younger girl who seems emotionally lost. They are heading for New Orleans in an old convertible during rainy weather. On their road trip they learn a little more about each other and we learn by flashback the back story of the convict. Script has some weak points, but acting is good and roadside places are authentic looking.

Ekaterina (Season Two) – 2017 (2.6). The second season loses appeal as the computer generated wide establishing shots become more noticeably fake, the palace intrigue and romances of Catherine become more tedious and hard to follow, the accomplishments of Catherine as Empresses are given short shrift and the actress playing the role does not seem to age yet becomes less attractive personally and by extension physically. The serfs are nobly persevering while the actual nobles are a mess, which reminds us this series had to have the approval of Putin. There may be a third season coming.

Howard's End – 2017 (2.6). This mini-series has the look of the classic movie, but the four episode script seems disorganized and hard to follow, the characters have relatively little depth and Matthew Macfadyen is definitely no substitute for Anthony Hopkins.

Rush Hour – 2018 (2.6). Work commute times can be horrendous in large cities worldwide and this documentary chose three examples to show: a woman working in a clothing store in Istanbul, a hairdresser in Mexico City and a construction engineer on projects in the Los Angeles area. We see their actual commute and meet their families at home who are impacted by the commute, but we do not actually learn anything we should not already know – long work commutes are a big pain.

Dancer in the Dark– 2000 (2.4). Lars von Trier is an eccentric filmmaker and Bjork is an eccentric singer. Let him write the script and direct the movie and let her write the songs and act the lead role and you end up with a doubly eccentric film, an awkward drama with even more awkward musical interludes. Nevertheless her performance was effective enough to win the best actress award at Cannes and it was sufficiently draining for her that she intends never to act in another movie. Sounds like Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc.

Time to Binge Watch

As the last award nominee DVDs trickle in and PBS is on summer break, it is time to try some Amazon Prime binge watching. Up first, Justified via FX. Then after so much violence, time to look for something more upbeat for the next list.

Justified (Season Two) – 2011 (3.1). This entertaining crime series manages to improve in the second year as we become more familiar with the continuing characters, wave goodbye to some old ones and meet new folks. The romance between the Deputy US Marshall and his ex-wife heats up and the turf battle between two old time local crime families becomes central to the story arc. People are shot to death so often that it seems nobody bothers much with investigating the circumstances. The Eastern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce must not be happy with this series because it seems to indicate all the residents of that area are either crooks or law enforcement or sometimes both. The second season ended with a couple central characters meeting their maker, but I expect some new ones will come along in season three.

Justified (Season Three) – 2012 (3.0). The pregnant ex-wife is not around this season, replaced in bed by a female bartender. With one local crime family almost totally annihilated, the other, led by nemesis Boyd Crowder is challenged by an outside mob wanting to fill the void and gain complete dominance. The criminal father of the Marshall aligns with Crowder. Characters come and go, but the bad ones usually end up on the receiving end of a bullet, often at the hands of other bad ones. Sadly a beloved State Trooper goes down and the two contending gangs go on, but it is surprisingly enjoyable to laugh when smart ass crooks meet their end. Bring on the fourth year.

Justified (Season Four) – 2013 (3.0). The female bartender turned out to be a con artist. The baby arrival is getting closer. Crooked old Dad gets even nastier and deserves what he gets. Bad guys come and go quickly, but a few stay round like Boyd who has now hooked up with Ava, the widow of his brother and the two are aligned in crime. The Black community up one holler are centrally involved even as they guard their privacy and some real hillbillies and the local stuffed shirts all play roles. The Detroit mob continues to try to take over in Harlan County and is quite interested in finding a hiding witness who could finger the kingpin. As enjoyable as last year, but reportedly season five takes a dip before a strong finish in six.

Justified (Season Six) – 2015 (3.0). Now Sam Elliott shows up so we know the end is near as Ava and Boyd are destined to prove to be star crossed lovers even as they plot to steal 10 mil from old Sam. The other desperadoes including crooked cops meet their maker and the series finale ends on a wistful note with a four year later afterward. Here is a farewell song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjvD3Y6IiVw .

Justified (Season Five) – 2014 (2.9)). Detroit almost destroys itself, Harlan tries getting into Mexican heroin, Ava fights to survive in prison, Florida cousins come to Harlan to take over the crime business bringing a troubled teenage boy and his hot sister who is really his Mom, and the boy has a social worker who is briefly a love interest for the Deputy. Near the end of the season Mary Steenburgen turns up as an old gangster widow, a sign the series needs to wind it down.

Pick of the Litter– 2018 (2.9). In this affecting documentary, five predictably cute puppies bred by Guide Dogs for the Blind to be trained as possible helper dogs are followed through the various stages of their upbringing by foster parents and ultimately by professional trainers as they encounter various assessments to see if they can continue the process or need to be “career changed”. We also meet a couple of prospective blind recipients waiting for a dog. This is a thoroughly likable movie.

Ben Is Back – 2018 (2.8). Julia Roberts does a good job of portraying the mother of a teen age son struggling to recover from addiction to drugs, as she smothers him with love while trying to be realistic about what is actually happening in his life. The boy has unexpectedly shown up on Christmas Eve, supposedly with permission to leave his treatment facility. We do not see any of the backstory even by flashbacks, as the whole movie takes place on one night. But we still get exposed to the dynamics between mother and son and between the other characters such as his sister, stepfather, younger half siblings, other addicts, a counselor and families of addicts. This film was not written to be preachy or to give a full biography, and some have criticized it for half way through turning from a dram to more of a thriller, but it chose what it wanted to do and did a pretty good job of it.

The Captain – 2018 (2.8). Based on a true story, this German drama tells of a young German soldier in the last couple weeks of WWII who is running on his own, perhaps as one of the many deserters, and comes into the uniform of a Captain. He soon acquires other probable deserters who say they were separated from their units and want to be attached to him. The young man then embarks on an impostor scheme claiming to be a personal emissary sent by Hitler to assess the situation behind the lines. As other officers try to follow protocol, the impostor is able to dupe them into letting him escalate the violent way in which he treats prisoners. Probing the mentality on the losing side as a war is ending is always a fascinating subject, but this particular story is so unique it misses some of the bigger points it might have been trying to score.

Mary Queen of Scots – 2018 (2.7). Slow starting and a bit confusing regarding the quickly introduced male characters, this movie eventually settles in to tell the story of the contest between Mary, niece of Henry VIII and a young Catholic widow of the heir to the French Throne, and Elizabeth I of England, her first cousin once removed. The film portrays two strong women who were constantly ill advised and undermined by their male advisers and implies that if allowed they might have achieved an agreement to bring their domains together peacefully. The movie takes a few historical liberties, such as casting black actors to play roles that were in fact white persons and a penultimate scene where the two Queens meet face to face for which there is no confirmation in the historical record.

Oscar and Cannes

More Oscar nominees and some Cannes favorites are included in this list, but only Capernaum is good, while two others are marginally effective and several are not good at all. When the Oscar best picture nominee list was doubled to ten, it only confirmed how slim the pickings have become. Gleaning past Cannes awards shows the films that win there are usually somewhat exotic and a bit experimental which too often results in a pretentious mishmash

Capernaum – 2018 (3.3). This is a powerful Oscar nominee and Cannes Jury winning Lebanese movie about the problems of poverty and immigration, intimately presented through the story of a 12 year old Lebanese boy who sues his parents for having given birth to him. The back story is told through flashbacks from the trial. The acting by the boy and by a young half Ethiopian boy less than two years old is remarkable and a credit to the female director.

Justified(Season One) - 2010 (3.0) This action and crime series based in current times manages to make violence and killing satisfying when the Deputy US Marshall dispatches of bad people in justified shootings. But his shootings can prompt institutional concerns, such as those in the opening episode when he is transferred from the Miami office to his old roots in Harlan County, Kentucky, where he finds crime and corruption involving people he grew up around, including his own father. Because he is good looking and charming he attracts female attention, including from a young widow who killed her own crime involved husband in yet another justified shooting, and also from the ex-wife of the Marshall, in spite of her re-marriage. Some of the bad guys are really dumb and some are quite sharp, but they all are prone to double crossing and sometimes conveniently dispatch of each other. The adult comic book tone makes the series enjoyable. There are about six seasons, so it will be interesting to see how it progresses.

Call the Midwife (Season Eight) – 2018 (2.9). The dominant issue in this season set in the early 60s is illegal abortion and the problems driving women to seek them, the problems by botched ones and the problem of addressing the underlying laws. The character comings and goings and developments seem secondary. The series is likely to continue through the 60s at least.

First Man – 2018 (2.9). Neil Armstrong is portrayed in this movie as a sensitive man grieving over the death of his two year old daughter while at the same time dedicating himself to his job as a test pilot, astronaut and ultimately the first man to walk on the moon. The contrast between the inner challenges and strength of Armstrong and the outer magnitude of the challenge of navigating space to land and walk on the moon is well captured by the script, cinematography, acting and direction. This should probably be seen in Imax for the scale of the enterprise.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? – 2018 (2.8). Based on the true story of a female biographer, well played by Melissa McCarthy, whose career hits a low point where she cannot meet her NYC living expenses in the early 1990s, this drama efficiently catches the sarcastic wit of the woman and the joyful decadence of her gay English friend as she stumbles across the idea of faking letters from famous deceased writers and selling them to dealers. Eventually the fraud comes to the attention of the FBI who quickly turns her accomplice into a witness and gets her to plead guilty. Since the victims were questionable dealers and presumably wealthy collectors, the movie is ultimately concerned only with the individual at the center of it.

Dheepan– 2015 (2.8). Dheepan is a Tamil warrior who has given up on the revolution and become a refugee. In order to get out of the refugee camp he obtains a family passport of deceased persons and pretends with a Tamil woman and a nine year old orphan girl that they are the family shown in the passport. They end up on the outskirts of Paris in a high rise housing project where Dheepan serves as the handyman and his pretend wife becomes caregiver to a disabled older resident. The French director wanted to make a movie about a culture and language he did not understand and in the course of the film to have it change genres, which endeared him to Cannes. The film is very good dealing with the refugee pretend family struggling to get along with each other and with their new place of living, but it suffers when the genre changes near the end to get the family trapped in the middle of some sort of gang warfare in the housing complex.

The Unforgotten (Season Three) – 2018 (2.8). The mystery miniseries continues a third season with solid cast and production values and tight scripting, this time looking for the killer of a teenage girl whose body was found buried under a roadway that was being updated. Four suspects are interlinked as the detectives use their techniques to figure out who the victim was nad who did it. The process and conclusion take their toll on the lady DCI who is getting pretty burned out after 30 years. But the series is set for a fourth year.

Eternity and a Day-1998 (2.7). In this deliberate and longish contemporary Greek drama an old poet with terminal illness spends what he expects to be his last day wandering his port city together with an eight year old solo Albanian refugee boy, looking back on his life and work and reflecting on how his failures in finding the right balance. The DVD includes an intro from a film professor who gives good input on what to watch for in the movie, most notably the long continuous shots including all the surroundings of the scene, as contrasted with the Hollywood style of many short scenes edited together.

If Beale Street Could Talk – 2018 (2.6). The first movie adaptation of a James Baldwin book , this lesser known work is the story of a young couple who grew up as close neighbors in Harlem. Both families were intact, but while hers was happy and loving, his had many frictions. In the early 1970s, the couple get pregnant and he is unexpectedly arrested for a crime he apparently did not commit, which sucks him into the horrors of the criminal justice system. Slow paced and not enough focused on the facts of the criminal case, the movie is more evocative than effective.

L'Enfant -2005 (2.6). In a depressed French industrial city in the early 2000s, a petty thief has just fathered a son with a naive young girl out on her own. His criminality culminates in him selling the infant on the black market without the consent of the mother which causes her to collapse and need hospitalization. He ends up in debt to the black marketers and confessing to a crime to protect his young accomplice, then going to jail where his baby mama visits him. Maybe one has to know the actual time and place to feel sympathy.

Les Miserables -2018 (2.6). This miniseries telling of the story seems like a Cliffs Notes movie version, hitting the main points but with emotion assumed and over portrayed. Brit production values are slightly marginal. There does not seem to be much reason for this series having been made.

Operation Finale – 2018 (2.5). In the early 1960s Israeli intelligence operatives executed a mission to capture Nazi fugitive Adolph Eichmann in Argentina and return him to Israel to stand trial for war crimes. This movie tells a version of that story based on a book written by one of the intelligence agents. Because the view is so from the inside, the script tries to introduce us to the agents and their personal dynamics at the expense of the Eichmann side of the story, who he was and how he came to be and to escape and what his network and plans were in Argentina and whether argentina was somehow complicit in hiding him. We also get no treatment of the legal issues of the rendition and trial in a country that did not even exist when the war crimes were committed. As a caper film, the movie leaves out most of the elements, though it does indulge the dynamics of interrogation of Eichmann by one of the agents, probably the author of the book.

Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His PastLives – 2010 (2.5). This Thai movie was a favorite at Cannes. A dying man is visited by the sister of his wife who died 19 years earlier and by a young man who is to help care for him. He is also visited by the ghost of his deceased wife and by their son who disappeared several years ago and someway became a part monkey man. There are also workers on the farm of the dying man and a scene of a Princess seduced by a catfish. A DVD interview with the filmmaker shows the film to have biographical touches to his rural roots and lots of experiments with homage to various styles of film making. Maybe being Thai or French helps trying to understand and appreciate this mishmash.

Boy Erased– 2018 (2.4). The son of a Baptist preacher was forced by his parents to attend a gay conversion therapy program and wrote a book about it as an indictment of the program and a testament to the power of parental love to overcome the ignorance behind such programs. This is the movie version, which unfortunately drags and in which we get no feeling of depth for any characters, though we do know all along son loves his parents, we see the mom grow from her love and we learn at the end that the father may do the same. We can see that the conversion program is nutty, but that aspect of the movie is a rather tepid critique.

Vice– 2018 (2.4). If a biopic of the notorious VP Dick Cheney overlaid with political commentary by some unknown working man while the movie seems to jump around unevenly in what exactly it is covering at any given time, which is also poorly paced and for some reason thinks it is occasionally funny sounds like a losing bet, it is.

The Tree of Life – 2011 (2.2).The DVD for this Terence Malick ordeal suggests for best sound quality to turn sound up to loud. A good suggestion to coping with the length of this pretentiously incomprehensible conglomeration is to also set the DVD player to three or four power fast forward. You won't miss much in spite of the fact Cannes liked it.