(Not the) Best and Worst of Streaming Series, July-December 2022

 

This is the first in a series of posts looking back at film and television in 2022.

Remember those glorious days of old when you could count the number of existing television networks on one hand, and premium cable was limited to HBO, Showtime and Cinemax? How quaint and long ago those days now seem... and how much easier it was then for one person to compile an authoritative list of the best series of the year. 

With the explosive proliferation of streaming channels and series nowadays, it's impossible for me to watch it all and supremely challenging to get to even a significant percentage of it. I can't honestly do much but pass on my recommendations and admonitions regarding the small subset of programs I actually managed to watch. 

Not that I don't make an effort. I've already published my thoughts about a number of streaming series that aired in the first half of 2022. (You can read them here.) What follows are my thoughts about programs that have aired since July 1. 

One other thing..

If there's an overriding theme here, it's that almost all the really good shows aired in the first half of the year. It was slim picking's from July on, but I did my best...

A Little Better than Expected: Welcome to Chippendale's (Hulu)

I fully expected a series about the infamous male strip club franchise to be good, campy fun and not much else. And  Welcome to Chippendale's does intermittently provide that kind of bawdy amusement. But there's a bit more, including a 'true crime' element of which I was completely ignorant when coming to the series.

Kumail Nanjiani turns in a stellar performance as Steve Banerjee, the Indian immigrant who went from managing a small gas station to owning the Chippendale's franchise to arranging the murder of his business partner. Nanjiami has described the visual image that guided his portrayal as "a block of ice with a tiny flame inside it," and he impressively plays to that idea. His Banerjee is a buttoned-up, calculating, humorless pillar of repressed rage, sensitive to the slights and prejudice he endures as a brown-skinned man in America but all too ready to inflict the same slights on black employees and customers he believes will make Chippendales "less classy" in the eyes of his predominantly white clientele. 

Murray Bartlett's hilarious, irrepressible performance as Nick DeNoia (the club-choreographer-turned-face-of-Chippendale's) is the perfect foil to Nanjiani's grumpy number-cruncher. The "Dr. Hunkenstein" production number his character stages is just about Broadway-worthy. Anna Leigh Ashford, Juliette Lewis, Andrew Rannells, Robin De Jesus and Quentin Plair round out an excellent cast of supporting players.

But despite that cast, Welcome to Chippendales ultimately offers little more in the way of story or revelations that you could find in a television documentary on the subject - and most of those are on Hulu, too. In fact, you might want to skip the series finale altogether and just Google the details of Banerjee's downfall. That is, unless you'd really rather watch the hokey scene where Banerjee is visited in prison by the Jacob Marley-esque ghost of his dead colleague.

Less Bad Than I Expected: Harry and Meghan (Netflix)

Yes I watched all six hours. And yes, I cringed and rolled my eyes more that a few times.

Unfortunately I can't un-see these two doing their affirming guided meditation together, their eyes shut and brows photogenically furrowed as they remind themselves that all the negativity coming at them isn't about who they really are,. (For the record, I have nothing against self-affirming guided meditations - I've done them myself to great personal benefit. But nothing on heaven or earth would induce me to film myself in the act and then put it on Netflix.)

Then there is the scene where Meghan demonstrates the exaggerated, bizarrely theatrical curtsy she made to the Queen on their first meeting. Even Harry looks embarrassed. And that's before we get a glimpse of the fabulous California mansion that Tyler Perry loaned them. 

But here's the most important takeaway: this series makes some legitimate, well-documented, and extremely damning claims of racism against both the British press AND the monarchy. The media references to Harry's "gangsta" girlfriend who's "almost straight out of Compton" are only the tip of the iceberg. There's a segment in which news stories about the former Duchesses of Cambridge and Sussex are shown side by side.  Where Kate is praised and celebrated for certain innocuous behaviors (eating avocados while pregnant, fondling her baby bump in public), Meghan is mocked and excoriated for doing exactly the same things! "If  you can't see the racism... then I can't help you," Harry tells us. He's absolutely right.

When Meghan's naivete and over-earnestness morph into entitled whining, it's tempting to tune her out entirely. But in other moments she speaks convincingly uncomfortable truths about the coldness and prejudices of the British ruling class and its many slavishly sycophantic enablers.  Harry's late mother did virtually the same thing in her time, and we effectively beatified her for that. But she was an aristocratic white woman. When an American woman of color speaks out, it's a whole different ballgame. 

Sophomore Slump: Only Murders in the Building (Hulu); 

You know what depresses me the most about writing this entry? It's that I can still remember specific details, lines and scenes from this show's first season (and with great pleasure, I might add), while all I can recall of the second season is that it was a convoluted muddle of new characters and plot complications, including some kerfuffle about whether Martin Short's son was really his son.  Also there was a guest appearance by Shirley MacLaine. It gives me no pleasure to report that the sophomore season of Only Murders in the Building was entirely too much of a formerly good thing; however I have high hopes for the third season as teased in the final episode. Paul Rudd is joining the cast! That can't not be a good thing.

Fifth-season Fumble, Part 1: The Handmaid's Tale (Hulu)

I'm so freaking tired of seeing Elizabeth Moss make this face...

A little refresher: The Handmaid's Tale is based on a Margaret Atwood novel. The first season, which debuted in 2017, covered that novel in its entirety, and if they'd ended the series there, it would be forever remembered as a classic. But the intervening seasons have been made up from scratch in a room full of television writers who tend to fall back on torture porn or scenes of visually stunning, Nazi-esque public ceremonies when they can't come up with a plausible plot development. The show definitively jumped the shark in Season 3, right around the time that Atwood published her acclaimed sequel, The Testaments. By the end of season 4, with June's escape to Canada and the cathartic murder of Commander Waterford by a gang of former handmaids, we seemed to be back on track. And this season started strong enough, but then...

While it's been satisfying to see Serena reduced to handmaid status in the household of a Gilead-loving Canadian couple, this season has mostly been just another exhausting round of repeated physical and emotional torture for its major players. (With lots more opportunities for Elizabeth Moss to make her Righteous Fury Face; see above.) I still don't know whether Bradley Whitford's Commander Lawrence is an evil man, a savior, or just a straight-up lunatic; whichever is the case, his crazy-ass line readings are the highlights of every episode.  I'm thankful that next season will be the last, and that the story is finally transitioning towards the plot  of The Testaments (to which Hulu also bought the rights). But Season 6 has a long way to go to redeem itself and take us out on a hopeful note.

Fifth-season Fumble, Part 2: The Crown (Netflix)

After four spectacular seasons, The Crown has hit a bump in the road.

That's partly due to the extreme overfamiliarity of its story lines around Charles and Diana. That icky phone call where Charles told Camilla he'd like to be her tampon takes up about half of one episode. Or Diana's infamous interview with Martin Bashir, which effectively ended her marriage and ensured her exile from the royal family - that's another whole episode. We've seen it all before (repeatedly, in near-nauseating detail) and there's precious little in the way of new insight or thoughtful re-interpretation to be found here. Dominic West neither looks nor sounds like Charles, although Elizabeth Debicki gives last season's Emma Corrin very strong competition for Best Ever Impersonation of  Princess Diana. Like Corrin, both her physical resemblance to the late princess and her meticulous recreation of Diana's mannerisms are uncanny.

But the worst thing that could have happened to The Crown was the death of Elizabeth II, just weeks before the new season debuted. By unfortunate coincidence, Season 5 is all about the scandal-ridden decline of the monarchy in the mid 1990s and carries with it an elegiac sense of  glory days passing into oblivion.  It all too neatly parallels with the current day feeling that the end of Elizabeth's reign  signals a similar passing away of glory. The son who ascended to the throne at her death is far less beloved, thought to be whiny, self-centered and out of touch by many Britons. Not to mention there's been a fresh round of family scandals with Harry and Meghan's departure, plus Andrew's disgraceful connection to Jeffrey Epstein. With Elizabeth gone, the events of  The Crown - even those that don't directly involve Charles or Diana - feel like very old, entirely irrelevant news.

Nevertheless, Peter Morgan  dutifully trots out a new set of metaphors for monarchical decline, finally eschewing his overreliance on dying stags as symbols for doomed royals. They've been replaced by both the disintegrating royal yacht Britannia (whose repairs will not be paid for by British taxpayers, the Prime Minister insists) and the ancient, unfixable television in Buckingham Palace. "Even the televisions are metaphors," the Queen actually says out loud at one point, apparently for the ten or so viewers who haven't already figured that out.

The production values, of course, remain high, and the acting is predictably impeccable. This season gives us no less than Imelda Staunton, Jonathan Pryce and Leslie Manville in the cast, plus the aforementioned West and Debicki. (Not to be forgotten: Johnny Lee Miller's John Major and Olivia Williams' Camilla, both superb portrayals that haven't received their fair share of the kudos.). But at this point, the show's momentum is irretrievably slowed. It's pretty obvious that the final season is going to kick off with Diana's death, which is a low point from which it may not recover.  

The Ones I Didn't Finish: Mammals (Amazon Prime), Dahmer (Netflix)

In Mammals, James Corden is a chef married to a beautiful French woman whom he discovers is cheating on him with several other men.  The fact that  the couple's "meet cute" scene involves Corden letting off a particularly foul-smelling fart in a small elevator probably goes a long towards explaining how he ended up in that predicament. The Guardian accurately described Corden's character as a "loutish, shouty man-baby," and there's only so much you can stand to watch of a character like that. The brilliant Sally Hawkins is totally wasted in a supporting role as his eccentric, Coco Chanel-obsessed sister.

The one and only reason I ever tried to watch Dahmer was for Richard Jenkins who plays the notorious cannibal's father. And Jenkins did deliver one masterfully heartbreaking scene in the first episode, but that wasn't reason enough for me to stick around past the next one. Dahmer is an oppressively sick and creepy drama, despite its not showing us a single second of gore (in those first two episodes anyway.) And that's not entirely surprising given that it comes to us from Ryan Murphy, a man unacquainted with the concepts of subtlety or restraint.  I know true crime dramas are all the rage these days, but this particular story is just too sad and lurid to bear close examination.  Kudos to Even Peters for really nailing that Milwaukee accent in the title role, but that's not a reason to watch.

The One I Wish I Hadn't Finished: Inside Man (Netflix)

Speaking of lurid..

In this one, David Tenant plays a seemingly nice, intelligent vicar. One Sunday after worship service, his assistant rushes into his office, brandishing a flash drive and (literally!) crying  "Vicar, can you hide my porn?!" Seems the assistant has a problem and his nosy mother is all up in it. So the vicar takes the flash drive and agrees to stash it somewhere safe. But unbeknownst to him, that flash drive is loaded with pictures of children being sexually abused. 

There's a quick and careless kerfuffle when the vicar's son gives his math tutor the flash drive to copy some files from her laptop. The math tutor finds the pictures, the vicar can't explain them without exposing his assistant, and so he does the only thing a nice, reasonable man of the cloth could do in such a moment: he knocks the math tutor down the stairs to his basement and locks her in. And things get MUCH worse from there...

Meanwhile, in a parallel plot thread, Stanley Tucci plays a death row murderer with the deductive powers of Sherlock Holmes. We see people visiting him in prison to ask for his insights into unsolved crimes. Tucci listens impassively, then doles out cryptic crumbs of guidance with an inscrutable calm. He's like the Dalai Lama of cold cases. Or maybe just an emotionally dead sociopath. Honestly, it's hard to tell. I'm not entirely sure that even Tucci knew what he was playing here, and I'm one of the actor's biggest fans. 

Eventually, of course, Tucci and Tenant's story lines cross and let's just say, Tucci's character delivers the show's defining message: "Everyone's a murderer. You just need a good reason and a bad day." Eek! Lots of great talent here, both in front of the camera and behind it (the series was created by Steven Moffat, who also created Sherlock), but I felt like I needed a long shower afterwards.

Can't Decide if I Liked It or Hated It: Fleishman is in Trouble (Hulu)

This series (adapted by Taffy Brodesser-Akner from her own novel) consists of five decreasingly satisfying episodes, followed by one absolutely brilliant episode, which is then followed by a not entirely satisfying conclusion. 

 

I cant' imagine I've enticed anyone to watch this, based on that description. But if you do, I think you'll find the alternative title (suggested by a commenter on a Vulture recap) to be painfully appropriate: The Jesse Eisenberg Misery Hour.

Eisenberg here is at his absolute Jesse Eisenberg-iest as Dr. Toby Fleishman, whose high-powered executive wife, Rachel (Clare Danes) walks out on him and their two kids without no explanation and no forwarding address. He leans into every one of his trademark mannerisms: deeply furrowed brow, hunched shoulders, stammering and sputtering through his lines with a palpable anxiety he's desperately trying to contain. His character gets less and less sympathetic as the weeks pass, and by the final episode, I'd written him off as a clueless, self-absorbed prick. 

Toby's story is narrated throughout by a college friend (Lizzy Caplan) whose dreams of becoming a great writer have been subsumed by suburban marriage and motherhood. She's an infinitely more sympathetic character, although her own denouement is similarly unsatisfying.

For five weeks, I tuned into new episodes out of habit, with an ever decreasing investment in the story. But in the penultimate episode, it took a sudden U-turn, showing us the previously related events from the women's point of view. Suddenly, a modestly engrossing series became electrifying.  And the credit for that goes to Danes, whose breathtakingly brave performance saves the day. To this point, Rachel had been the villainess, conveniently kept mostly offscreen so Toby could wallow in self-pitying speculation about her motives. When the truth of her character is finally revealed, it's heartbreaking and devastating. If Danes doesn't get an Emmy for this, then an Emmy is not worth having. Even so, it's kind of a long slog to get to this payoff, and I'm only intermittently convinced it was worth it.

The Best Streaming Series of 2022: The White Lotus, Season 2 (HBO Max)

It's been at least twenty years since anyone used the phrase "watercooler show," but this season of The While Lotus was far and away the 21st century equivalent of that kind of popularity behemoth.  (Note to youngsters: Google that phrase if you're not familiar with it.) Recap on New York Magazine's culture website, Vulture, each received close to 600 comments, as viewers swapped their feverish speculation on how the season would end.

Here's the already well-established template for a season of The White Lotus: the initial episode opens with the discovery of dead body whose identity we don't get to see. Then we immediately flash back one week to the arrival of a new group of guests to a luxury resort in the fictional White Lotus chain (this time in Sicily, shot on location and absolutely gorgeous.) Over the subsequent episodes, we get to explore the shifting, complex personal relationships among those guests while building to the revelation of who died and how.

On its face, that template sounds like a cheesy mash-up of Fantasy Island and Agatha Christie - and it could be if anyone other than Mike White had written and directed. But White is the master of cringey, class-conflict comedy. (apologies for the excessive alliteration) And, as he did in films like Beatriz at Dinner and Brad's Status, White uses this setup to eviscerate the moneyed class while subtly but unsparingly examining their relationship to the people who serve them.  In Season 2, however, the class conflict mostly simmers around the edges while White digs into the problematic marriages and romances of all its characters. In another departure from the first season, the buildup to the demise of the guest who's found floating in the sea as the story opens is skillfully and tantalizingly executed in almost Hitchcockian style. 

The resort guest with the worst marriage here is, unquestionably, Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge) the pathologically needy heiress who is the only character held over from Season 1. She's now married to her season one fling, Greg, who appears to be on the verge of leaving her.  For my tastes, Coolidge's slurred and sleepy line readings here don't so much suggest a desperate, lonely and easily deluded woman as they do an actress who popped a full dose of Ambien before arriving on set. But she manages to be spectacular in the season finale, and I'm betting she'll get an Emmy.

For me the series standout is Meghan Fahy as the wife of a philandering tech bro. Determined to be satisfied with her marriage, she's created her own intricate web of happy talk and self-deception to keep her doubts and sadness at bay. It's an endlessly fascinating performance; the character could all too easily been a one-note, one-joke caricature, but Fahy finds hidden nuances in every line of dialogue.

I'm deliberately skimming the surface of the plot and many other characters here (played by the likes of Audrey Plaza, Michael Imperioli, Haley Lu Richardson and F. Murray Abraham, among others) because I think some shows are best experienced without too much explanation. Sometimes you just need to tune in and 'ride the wave.'  You'll get some benefit from watching the first season before this one, but not enough to be strictly necessary.

Quick Take: TAR

 

It tickles me silly to see TAR playing in virtually every suburban multiplex in the Chicago area (albeit in small, cozy auditoriums sandwiched between the mammoth ones where mainstream darlings like Black Adam and Ticket to Paradise will play to sold-out crowds this weekend.) TAR is anything but multiplex fare: an esoteric, intellectually demanding, two-hour-and-forty minute roller coaster ride of an art film anchored by Cate Blanchett's triumphant performance.in the title role.

Todd Field, who wrote and directed (and who hasn't made a film since Little Children in 2006), sets high expectations for the audience’s attention span from the get-go. He opens with  Lydia Tar (Blanchett), the celebrated conductor of Berlin's symphony orchestra, being interviewed before an adoring audience by Adam Gopnik (a staff writer for the New Yorker, playing himself). The conversation is rarefied and dense as it delves into the finer points of conducting Mahler symphonies, and I defy the average moviegoer to understand or even care about the discussion. From there, she goes on to have lunch with a colleague where wait staff appear regularly in servile silence to fill water glasses and deliver bread baskets as she coldly discusses her plan to 'rotate' an aging colleague to a lesser orchestra. And then she's off to teach a class at Julliard where she's particularly pedantic and brutal towards a young, queer person of color who "can't get on board with Bach as a while cisgender male." It's a lot to follow...

The character's emotional life, if a bit easier to get our heads around, is just as complicated. She has a long-term partner (the orchestra's first violinist, played with simmering, dwindling patience by Nina Hoss), a stalker who commits suicide in the wake of Tar's coldness, an almost predatory flirtation with a young Russian cellist, and an implied romantic history with her quietly disgruntled personal assistant. By contrast, she’s also a loving, doting mother to her young daughter.

Lydia Tar, in the end, is the sort of complicated, fiercely talented -- and just as fiercely arrogant - artist that men were allowed to be (even indulged in being) for centuries. But Field doesn't take an obvious stand on whether Tar's persecution is excessive due to her gender. Instead he depicts her decline with a cool, detached lack of escalating intensity, an emotional temperature which suits and complement's Tar's own chilly, cerebral personality. (And one which is echoed and underlined by the production design, particularly in Tar's spacious but hard-edged Berlin apartment.)  The film concludes in an extended coda showing us Tar's life in professional exile. Some reviewers have deemed this section superfluous, but I found it not only a perfect denouement, but one laced with welcome comic relief as well. The final scene of TAR is a startling and funny metaphor for Lydia Tar's new start in an unfamiliar and far less privileged life.

Blanchett's portrayal of a brilliant, difficult artist brought low by the potent combination of cancel culture and her own obstinate hubris, is not so much dazzling as it is flawlessly committed. It's a masterful performance that doesn't draw attention to itself; you're never aware that you're watching Cate Blanchett act. Instead you're captivated by the character herself - by her intellect and her passion, but also by her self-destructive blindness to the cultural and emotional  tectonic shifts taking place just under her feet. It's a stunningly executed tale of a fall from grace.

A Little Bit About a Lot of Movies

 I'm back!

Since I last posted (over 3 months ago), I've spent more time travelling and checking sites off my bucket list than I have spent watching movies. I could tell you more, but that's for another time....This is a movie blog, not a travel blog. (Although someday, I may need to start writing one of those too...) So today's post is about the movies I've squeezed in, both before and after those trips.

(Note: in the 'where to stream' information below, "the usual platforms" refers to Apple, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and Redbox.)

The Princess (director: Ed Perkins)

Did we really need yet another documentary about Princess Diana? Is there anything left to say about the most over-analyzed, over-documented, over-worshipped woman of our times?

With The Princess, the answer to those questions turns out to be "Maybe." What this documentary has to say isn't entirely new, but it's packaged and presented in a singularly incisive fashion. 

Director Ed Perkins has made a revelatory and provocative film about the late princess by eschewing both narration and the usual round of talking head commentary by royal watchers like Penny Junor, Ingrid Seward and Tina Brown. (Missing too, blessedly, is Diana's former personal assistant, the nauseatingly unctuous Paul Burrell.) Instead, Perkins assembles news coverage of Diana, chronologically from her courtship with Prince Charles through her funeral, and alternates it with the reactions of both the news media and ordinary Britons to every development along the way. It feels almost like a standard narrative film rather than a documentary. 

Ultimately, The Princess is the story of a mismatched couple who were never really happy together, but whose relationship was transfigured - both by an adoring public starving for happy endings and a craven news media - to comply with the mythos of fairy tales.  As that fairy tale devolved, the public unflinchingly projected their own issues onto the royal couple while the British news media happily stirred the pot. That's not necessarily an original point of view, but the thoughtful and compelling way that Perkins has assembled his material makes this point with stinging clarity. The clips of Diana and Charles together are painfully revealing; in a pre-wedding interview, Diana's body language is so tortured - her shoulders hunched so high and tense - that she looks like a turtle trying to disappear into its shell. Charles looks unmistakably glum as the couple exit St. Paul's Cathedral after the wedding. These signs were overlooked by everyone in those early hopeful days, but it's still startling to hear so many Brits let fly with nasty and ugly comments once the fairy tale is exposed for the sham it always was.

I'm not sure whether Perkins means to imply that we are complicit in Diana's tragedy (being an American. it's easy - or at least convenient - for me to exempt myself from that implication). But he's unsparing in exposing the public's overinvestment in her life.

(The Princess is available to stream only on HBO Max.)

Amsterdam (director: David O. Russell)

The first adjective that comes to mind when I think of Amsterdam is 'overstuffed.' It's got some great performances (mainly by its central trio of Christian Bale, John David Washington and Margot Robbie), while other, elsewhere wonderful actors barely make an impression (Andrea Riseborough, Anna Taylor-Joy). There's too much plot to keep track off - too many tossed off subplots that deserve more weight and consideration - while the overall tone of non-stop zaniness and comic caricature overwhelms the sadder and more serious elements of the story (the rise of fascism and the tragedy of discarded World War I veterans chief among them). These are weaknesses shared with Russell's earlier star-studded hit American Hustle,  but are even more problematic and glaring here. Sometimes, I long for the simple, highly enjoyable goofiness of Russell's early, low-budget efforts like Flirting with Disaster, which was much tighter and funnier than this film, although much less ambitious. Amsterdam, however, might have worked better as a television mini-series. Given some time to better develop the plot and the supporting characters, it could have been a helluva ride.

(Amsterdam is now playing in theaters. A streaming date has not yet been announced.)

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (director: Anthony Fabian)

This is a perfectly sweet and charming little movie version of a Paul Gallico novel that hit the best seller list in 1957. Lesley Manville plays the widowed British charwoman who wins the lottery and decides to splurge on a Christian Dior dress.  Her ability to pay cash for her dress gets her into the snooty but struggling post-war House of Dior, and she manages to charm and endear herself to the elegant Parisians. (Even, ultimately, to the snooty Dior administrator, played with full 'good sport about playing a French cliché' energy by Isabelle Huppert.) The movie sparkles and shines, both literally (Paris and Dior look suitably glamorous) and emotionally. Manville is warm and brisk at the same moment, and there are happy endings for all. 

(Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is available to stream or purchase on the usual platforms.)

Blonde (director: Andrew Dominik)

At a time when the lives of so many famous women (from Emily Dickinson to Catherine the Great to Joan Crawford and Bette Davis)  are being reconsidered and reframed in films and television series, here comes a visually lovely but emotionally ugly film that shackles poor Marilyn Monroe to the same old tired cliches of degradation and exploitation. The film is stunning to look at (the cinematography is exceptional) but painful to watch. Ana de Armas gives her all in the title role. Unfortunately, writer/director Andrew Dominik is committed to pushing aside all suggestions that Monroe had any real agency in her own life, let alone any friends or allies. There is no evidence, anywhere, that Monroe had an abortion in real life, yet it becomes a major plot point and recurring theme here, with Monroe shown to be haunted by her decision for the rest of her life. (The unborn child she conceives with husband Arthur Miller even shames her about it, speaking to her in a squeaky, cartoon child's voice from inside her womb -  only one of many such bizarre scenes. Fetal imagery is heavily used throughout to sledgehammer home the point that Marilyn was devastated by her inability to bear a child.)

In fairness to Dominik, Blonde is based on a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, which I've not read. So perhaps he's just being faithful to Oates' own fictional take on the events of Monroe's life.  But either way, it's a tough and infuriating viewing experience.

(Blonde is available to stream only on Netflix.)

Emily the Criminal  (director: John Patton Ford)

A great performance from Aubrey Plaza makes this film an especially compelling experience. Plaza plays a restaurant delivery worker who's struggling - and failing - to pay off student loans while making the rent. Given the opportunity to make fast cash as part a credit card fraud ring, she's at first hesitant, then all in. Emily the Criminal subverts expectations; at first glance, it appears to be an almost Ken Loach-esque tale about the impossibility of getting by in the gig economy, but it evolves into something darker and more particular. Plaza's Emily is a complex and not altogether sympathetic character. At some point, it becomes difficult to tell which characters are criminals and which are victims.

(Emily the Criminal is available to stream or purchase on the usual platforms.)

Where the Crawdads Sing (director: Olivia Newman)

I'll cut to the chase here. I hated the book - didn't even finish reading it, in fact - and only saw the movie because my friends had chosen it.  But the film version of Delia Owens' best-selling novel is an amazing example of how good casting and good direction can elevate mediocre material.

(Please don't tell me how much you loved the book. If it worked for you, I'm glad. Myself, I could not get past the ludicrous implausibility of a six-year-old girl raising herself alone in a crumbling house out on a lonely bayou - let alone the fact that the friendly adult shopkeepers who know all about what's going on wouldn't call child protective services to get the child into a real home and into school.)

But I digress...

Daisy Edgar-Jones, playing the grown-up version of that girl on the bayou, brings emotional authenticity to her problematic character, capturing the character's innocence and raw naivete with a total lack of apparent calculation. David Strathhairn, who plays her defense lawyer (she's charged with the murder of a local rich boy) is, well.... perfectly David Strathhairn-y (which means he's as good and fascinating to watch as he is in every other movie. He's a reliable rock of character actor greatness.) Director Olivia Newman finds a rhythm and a vibe for this film that allowed my brain to stop clicking off each unbelievable plot development and just get immersed in the story and characters. In spite of every curmudgeonly impulse I brought with me to the theater that evening, I wound up invested in and transported by the story from start to finish. And isn't that what movies are supposed to do?

(Where the Crawdads Sing is available to stream or purchase on the usual platforms.)

The Best and Worst of Streaming Series: Mid-Year Report

 

We're just halfway through 2022, and I've already spent more time stretched out on my sofa, binging new streaming series, than I should probably admit. I haven't watched everything, by any means, but I've seen enough that I feel confident in passing on some recommendations. 

It's going to be a long, hot summer. Here's what to watch - and what NOT to watch - when you're hiding out in the AC over the next couple of sweltering months.

Or you can do what I'm going to do and turn the TV off for most of the next two months!  All these shows will be waiting for you on your streaming apps when the leaves start to fall and you're ready to stay in and curl up with a hot beverage.

(All thoughts here are COMPLETELY subjective, of course. As a blogger friend of years back used to say, "Your mileage may vary..)

THE BEST

A Very British Scandal (Amazon)

Not be confused with the earlier Amazon series, A Very English Scandal,. But, much like that darkly comic Hugh Grant series from a few years back, this is a true story of upper-class Brits behaving badly. Only this time, the tone is deadly serious, brittle and sad. Clare Foy and Paul Bettany play the very unhappily married Duchess and Duke of Argyll. The Duke is cruel and vicious; the Duchess seeks solace in the beds of other men. Their scandalous divorce proceedings, depicted in the final chapter, are a masterfully staged and acted pageant of hypocrisy and slut-shaming that, sadly, doesn't feel entirely removed from our own era. Foy and Bettany are electrifying in their roles, and the three-part series is an irresistibly easy binge, if not quite a feel-good experience.

Barry (HBO Max)

I've watched many, many black comedies, but Barry is simultaneously the blackest and the funniest of them all. Bill Hader's deeply conflicted Afghanistan-vet-turned-mob-hit-man-turned-actor continues to be the most radically complex character on television.  Hader also writes the series, and directs some of its most accomplished episodes.  There are two particularly brilliant set pieces from him this season. First, a delicious, deadpan scene in which Barry seeks help from a ridiculously cheerful customer service rep when the phone app he's using to detonate a bomb fails to get the job done. The second is a stunningly filmed motorcycle chase that comprises several shootings, but from which Barry emerges unscathed; it takes place in a single, breathtaking tracking shot. 

 The supporting cast (which includes Henry Winkler, Stephen Root, Sarah Goldberg and Anthony Carrigan) is consistently brilliant. And some of the happier surprises of season 3 are guest performances by actresses who haven't been onscreen nearly enough in recent years. It's

wonderful to see Elizabeth Perkins and Laura San Giacomo tearing fearlessly into their meaty featured roles.

The Dropout (Hulu)

I haven't ranked these series, but if I had to pick a number one favorite, The Droupout would be it.

I assume you are familiar with Elizabeth Holmes, the almost comically wide-eyed, baritone-voiced  CEO of Theranos, maker of instant blood-test machines that were installed in Walgreens stores around the country, but never actually worked. Holmes' downfall from celebrated entrepreneur to convicted corporate fraudster has already been the subject of documentaries and podcasts, but this eight-part drama gives Holmes' story greater nuance and context. 

Having worked in technology myself, I can assure you that committing to delivery dates for new systems without being entirely sure how you'll get there is part of the job.  You're encouraged to set difficult goals and expected to achieve them - or to be absolutely transparent about the reasons why you can't.. Unfortunately Holmes never learned that last part.  The Dropout shows, with impressive and authentic clarity, the dangers of covering up your over-ambitious goal setting with endless piles of deflective bullshit. Big-name investors and media outlets fell for Holmes' wide-eyed idealism and bogus 'girl power' vibe, and her employees enjoyed the pep rally atmosphere of the Theranos workplace. But her product, based entirely on faulty science, was always doomed to fail. 

The Dropout effectively juggles and integrates a whole lot of serious themes here, including the significance of a woman leading a Silicon Valley enterprise and the way our work culture has come to overvalue speed and hyperbole over diligence and thorough research. It steadily escalates the dramatic tension as the supporting character's lives are upended by Holmes' carelessness, while the uniformly excellent cast gives their personal tragedies genuine impact. Amanda Seyfried (a no-brainer casting choice based on her looks alone) gives a stunning lead performance, capturing not only Holmes' shameless overconfidence, but also her fear and an almost Asperger's-like inability to understand how her negligence hurt the people who worked for her.

Ozark (Netflix)

Ozark is a very, very dark series about amoral (and often violent) people who stop at nothing to get want they want. And although it's very hard to watch at times, I couldn't stop. (In fact, I binged the first three seasons in under two weeks to get to the final season which aired this year.) Maybe we chalk that up to the exceptional acting, particularly by Jason Bateman, Laura Linney and Julia Garner.  Or maybe because it reflects some of what we see n our own world. In Ozark, the most privileged of the villians  - the ones who don't really understand or appreciate the culture they've infiltrated and made money from - walk away unscathed, never taking responsibility for how their actions destroy the people around them.  Any of that sound familiar from real life?

Severance (Apple)

Severance is a smart, visually stunning sci-fi drama that's about three parts dystopian nightmare to one part satire of meaningless corporate work incentives. The "macrodata refinement' team at Lumon Industries strives to meet work quotas in order to earn prizes like an "egg buffet" or the eagerly coveted '"waffle party." They also have chips installed in their brains which allow them to lose of all memory of their home lives while they're at work - and, conversely, to have no memory of work while they're at home. Over the course of the first season, the disadvantages and dark intentions of this odd work situation are gradually exposed.  The masterfully sustained vibe is both eerie and melancholy. The raft of great actors who bring their A-game  (among them John Turturro, Adam Scott, Christopher Walken and an over-the-top Patricia Arquette) are just the icing on the cake. Ben Stiller directed the first four episodes.

Somebody Somewhere (HBO Max)

Somebody Somewhere gave me a whole new appreciation for singer/comic Bridget Everett, whose off-color, in-your-face performance style has never been my cup of tea.  In this autobiographical series, Everett returns to her roots in a small, conservative Kansas town. After months of self-isolating, following a beloved sister's death, she succeeds in finding her tribe - a mutually supportive and loving group of oddballs, gay men and trans people who gather for a weekly 'church choir practice,' (in reality, a free-wheeling, open-mike cabaret). Everett is uncharacteristically vulnerable and touching here. If the idea of finding this kind of community within a small, uptight farm town is a bit far-fetched, I don't really care. I loved the show's good heart and optimistic spirit too much to quibble.

The Staircase (HBO Max)

I came to The Staircase at a distinct advantage, having never watched the very popular Netflix docudrama on which it is based.  Here the 'true crime' angle is muted, and the focus is on the complicated marital and family dynamics of the purported killer, his wife, and their large blended family of young adult children. Any time you've got a cast that includes Colin Firth, Toni Collette, Juliette Binoche, Michael Stuhlbarg and Parker Posey, you're more than halfway to a great viewing experience before you even start.  And these actors do not disappoint. Assuming that you haven't seen the Netflix docudrama either, I'm going to let you go in go into this one with no more information. Going in cold is the best way to experience its unexpected twists and turns.

MIXED BLESSINGS.

Hacks (HBO Max)

In Season Two, the stand-up comedy act of Deborah Vance evolves and becomes more personal, but still never made me laugh. (A weakness this show shares with The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; see below). But Jean Smart continues to deliver a beautifully modulated performance as the Joan Rivers-esque comedienne undergoing a personal transformation. There's more fine work as well from Hannah Einbinder, playing her much younger gag writer, Ava. The season opens with Deborah suing Ava for slander over an explosive email written when Ava was pissed off and over it.  Over the course of eight episodes and many well-crafted two-hander scenes, they find rapprochement  But the season is marred by the poor use of the usually delightful Laurie Metcalf as an eccentric tour bus driver and a whole subplot about the extremely annoying assistant to Deborah's manager.  It's not without its pleasures, but it's a bit more uneven than Season One.

The Gilded Age (HBO Max)

Julian Fellowes, the creator of wildly popular Downton Abbey, now turns his focus to the socially prominent families of l9th century New York, just at the time when they're about to be invaded by the social climbing nouveau riche. It's a milieu well documented by novelist Edith Wharton in her day; I strongly prefer Wharton's take, but this show is not without its pleasures. Chief among them are the performances of Christine Ebersole as an old money doyenne, Cynthia Nixon as her sweet-tempered spinster sister, and Carrie Coon as the vulgar, newly rich lady across the street. A veritable plethora of Broadway musical stars pop in regularly in non-musical roles (Kelli O'Hara, Donna Murphy, Debra Monk and Nathan Lane, among others). 

The weakest link, I'm sad to say,  is Louisa Jacobson in the ingenue role. Much of the story revolves around her, but she's merely as sweet and bland as vanilla pudding - and frankly her character doesn't seem to be worth all the fuss.. I'm holding out hope for some complications in season two that will give Jacobson a chance to shine.

Julia (HBO Max)

I'm not sure why we we needed a six-part biographical series about Julia Child when Nora Ephron's beautiful 2008 film, Julie and Julia, told her story so well and so completely. As much I love Sara Lancashire in the title role and enjoy learning about the challenges of creating a cooking show, I'm equally troubled by the characters and situations that were invented out of thin air for this show. For starters, Julia Child never had a female producer on her show, let alone a black female producer whose presence in a story set in the early 1960s introduces a whole new set of entirely fictional complications. The notion of Child creating a cooking show out of menopausal sadness over never having children seems a bit far-fetched, too.  Every biographical film or television series is tweaked here and there to heighten the drama, but Julia goes to lengths of speculation and invention that don't seem entirely conscionable.  

Man vs. Bee (Netflix)

What if Mr. Bean was a sad sack single dad with a normal speaking voice? And what if a pesky, persistent bee invaded the high-tech mansion where he works as a housesitter?  Ponder those questions and you'll get a good idea of what you're in for here. Rowan Atkinson remains, at 67, a master of physical comedy, and there are a lot of laugh-out-loud moments in the first half.  But, thanks to unnecessary plot complications, the series runs out of gas well before its finale. (On a side note, I have NO idea why this was a series and not a movie; it's comprised of eight chapters, each of which clocks in at under 12 minutes, and each of which seamlessly segues, mid-scene, into the next.)

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon)

This series has repeatedly made a lot of noise about how much Midge Maisel will have to sacrifice to achieve stand-up comedy stardom. But we haven't actually seen her give up much.  Despite being fired from Shy Baldwin's tour and reduced to making jokes between strippers' acts in a burlesque house, Midge still gets to live in a swanky Upper West Side apartment, wear cute clothes and generally make everything about herself. Enough already!  I get that, in real life, it can take a performer many years to achieve their career goals. But we're four seasons into a five-season series, and our heroine doesn't seem to be anywhere near wised up.  And her stand-up still really isn't that funny, although the audiences she plays to seem to eat it all up.  

The best reason to watch this season?  The continuing friendship - and tantalizing chemistry - between Rachel Brosnahan's Midge and Luke Kirby's Lenny Bruce. The final episode feels like one we've waited years for..

Under the Banner of Heaven (Hulu)

A true crime series about the investigation of murders committed by a Fundamentalist Mormon cult.  Andrew Garfield gives a standout performance as the investigating detective who is himself a devout Mormon and whose faith is severely tested by what he finds.  It's well made, but the finer points of Mormonism that are key to the developing plot are often difficult to comprehend, let alone follow.  (Reading the recaps on Vulture, which are written by a ex-Mormon, will help.)

WeCrashed (Apple)

Yet another 'true scandal' drama, this one about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of WeWork, a shared workspace concept that burned bright and fizzled fast thanks to the hubris and empty promises of its founder, Adam Neumann and his pretentious wife, Rebekah. Jared Leto, at his absolute Jared Leto-est, disappears entirely behind a thick Israeli accent and a constant stream of empty corporate-speak, while Anne Hathaway commits fully to Rebekah's narcissistic cluelessness. It's not that the story isn't compelling, nor that the series isn't competently made.  It's that Leto and Hathaway inhabit their characters so completely that they wind up being as annoying and grating as the real people must have been; a little of them goes a lo-o-o-ong way. Had the story been compressed into three or four episodes instead of eight, this might have ended up in the "Best" category.

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Anatomy of a Scandal (Netflix)

Good actors (Sienna Miller, Rupert Friend, Michelle Dockery) wasted in a mildly engrossing courtroom drama with an absolutely preposterous, completely unbelievable 'big reveal' at the end. I won't spoil it, in case you're still curious enough to watch. But don't say I didn't warn you.

The Flight Attendant (HBO Max)

Why on earth was a second season of The Flight Attendant deemed necessary? The initial season was a well-crafted thriller with stylish and skillfully blended elements of suspense, comedy and pathos - and it was enjoyably complete in and of itself.  In season two, the title character (Kaley Cuoco)  has relocated to Los Angeles where she lives in a picture perfect bungalow and dates a nice, dependable guy while struggling to maintain her sobriety.  AA requires her to perform community service as part of her program, so she works as a civilian 'volunteer' for the CIA. Really? Does that even make sense?  The plot in this season is nearly incomprehensible. There's an entirely gratuitous and horrifying suicide scene along the way, and a lot of subplots that aren't particularly well integrated into the main story thread.  The only reason to watch is for Sharon Stone's chilling appearance as Cassie's weary, long-estranged mother.

Gaslit (Starz)

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein recently appeared on the Stephen Colbert show to talk about Watergate.  Bernstein recalled the day when Martha Mitchell called him up at the Washington Post to tell him that her husband, John (Nixon's attorney general) had left her and invited him to come over and go through her husband's diaries and papers. After consulting the Post legal department, he and Woodward did just that. They arrived to find Martha clutching a "birdbath-sized" martini and giving them access to a whole closet of Mitchell's papers. "We got some stories out of it," Bernstein recalled with a grin.

God, how I wish they'd put this incident in Gaslit. 

This series promotes itself heavily on the performance of Julia Roberts as the maligned Mrs. Mitchell. Even the title is a reference to how she was treated by Nixon's henchmen when she dared to tell the truth about Watergate.  And her performance is magnificent, as is Sean Penn's, playing John Mitchell under a shit ton of artfully applied latex and makeup.

But Martha's troubles are teased out in fits and starts, and only occasionally does she get to be the focus of the story. Far too much screen time is given to John and Maureen Dean (the former played by British actor Dan Stevens, affecting a just barely credible American accent.)  Stevens is bland and annoying, and although Dean clearly had a pivotal role in the scandal, Gaslit gets really boring every time the focus is on him. Every time I was forced to watch the newlywed Deans making out, I found myself wondering what Martha was up to. (There's also a lot of sensationalistic hoo-hah about G. Gordon Liddy, who really was more than a little nuts. But those were just more scenes I wanted to fast- forward through to get back to the Mitchells.)

Like the recent Hulu series, Mrs. America, this series about a major political event of the 1970s is written and directed by people who weren't even born (or, at best, were toddlers) when it took place. And it shows.  C_SPAN actually aired a far more engrossing docuseries on Watergate a few weeks later, in which the appearance of the real John Dean managed to be a highlight.

Ten Percent (Amazon. Sundance Now)

It must have seemed like a good idea to make an English language version of the popular French Netflix series Call My Agent, but this remake is nothing special.  The first few episodes, in fact, are just scrupulously faithful remakes of the French episodes, except transferred to a London talent agency and cast with British stars like Helena Bonham Carter and Dominic West.  Once they leave the French story lines behind, the show gets a little better, but it's still hard to care about any of the characters … with one notable exception in the show's only entirely original character, Simon Gould. Once a promising actor, his career was derailed by his heavy drinking and crippling anxiety. One of the older agents takes Simon under her wing to find him the kind of role he's always deserved. He's played by Tim McInnerny, my favorite British actor that hardly anyone in America knows. (He was Hugh Grant's best friend in Notting Hill and was briefly on Game of Thrones, among many other roles.) He's the best thing in Ten Percent.

The Thing About Pam (Peacock)

The thing about Renee Zellweger is that she's in a fat suit for the first few episodes, and her latex jowls are so unconvincing (on my UHD television anyway) that she looks more like Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers movies than a murderous housewife with a taste for Cherry Coke Big Gulps.  This is yet another true crime drama in which Zellweger portrays the sociopathic woman who murders her best friend and then just keeps getting into more trouble. I normally like Zellweger, but this is not a good role for her. Other good actors (among them, Judy Geer and Josh Duhamel) are wasted here, too.

My Cranky Last-Minute Oscar Post

 "It's Oscar time again. Pardon my asterisks, but I am completely out of f*cks to give."

That's how I opened my annual Oscar post five years ago.  And with each successive year, I have felt less and less enthusiasm for this annual pageant of the film industry's self-congratulation. In fact, I haven't even bothered to write an Oscar post since 2018.

It was not always thus. For most of my life - since the age of 11, in fact  - the Oscars have been to me what the Super Bowl is to die hard football fans. And while I still look forward to gathering with my friends - eating, drinking, and dishing the red carpet looks and awkward acceptance speeches - there is a very big part of me that just doesn't care anymore.  I don't know that my apathy is necessarily related to the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the embarrassing spectacle of this week's Ketanji Jackson confirmation hearing... all the things that matter so much more. It's just that, with every passing year, it becomes more obvious to me that these awards have only an ephemeral and tenuous connection to enduring artistic achievement. 

And that's still true this year, even with a mournful, slow-moving three-hour Japanese film about grief and loss in the running for Best Picture (Drive My Car, which is beautiful, but demands your full attention. Carve out time on a rainy afternoon and stream in on HBO Max while you can.)

In truth, there are a number of worthy and wonderful films and performances on the ballot this year. But there are others that have been unfairly overlooked, not just by the Academy but by most other awards-giving organizations as well.

So here are my terribly important (and completely subjective) thoughts about who/what will win, who/what should win and who/what was the most unfairly overlooked:

Best Supporting Actress:

Will win: Ariana De Bose for West Side Story 

And I've got no problem with that. DeBose was a joy in a film I liked very much. This win will make history, with DeBose winning for the very same role for which Rita Moreno won the Oscar in 1962.

Should win: Ariana De Bose

Although Jessie Buckley was pretty damn good in The Lost Daughter.

Overlooked; Dakota Johnson for The Lost Daughter, Teresa Saponangelo for The Hand of God

Everyone loves Buckley and Olivia Colman, both terrific actresses who dazzle us in every performance. But Johnson is every bit their equal here, and I can't understand why she hasn't received the same awards love as her co-stars.

Saponangelo was the hilariously volatile mother in Paolo Sorrentino's Best International Film nominee. Frankly I'd like to give a special Oscar to every actor who played a member of the young protagonist's family; watching them was possibly my happiest experience in a movie theater in 2021.

Best Supporting Actor:

Will win; Troy Kotsur for CODA

There's been a groundswell for Kotsur in the weeks since the nominations were announced. He's not my first choice is this category, but I certainlhy won't be outraged if he wins. CODA deserves some Oscar love, and this is the most likely category in which to receive it.

Should win Kodi Smit-McPhee for The Power of the Dog

Smit-McPhee was, quite deservedly, the early front runner in this category. And he could still take home an Oscar this year. But I predict he'll be back before long. He's still quite young and already too good an actor not to be nominated again.

Overlooked: Toni Servillo for The Hand of God, Mark Rylance for Don't Look Up and Simon Helberg for Annette

Three of my favorite 2021 performances haven't received any nominations anywhere. So I'm going to sing their praises here and now.

Servillo is the cheerful, very funny father in the aforementioned Italian film.  A frequent player in the films of Paolo Sorrentino, he is always good - but especially so here.

Rylance's tech mogul manages to send up both Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, yet feels like a very specific but wholly original characterization. He's not in the film much, but when he is, everything feels funnier and more inspired.

Almost no one saw Annette, and most of those who saw it weren't crazy about it. (I, however, loved it.) Still Helberg deserves recognition for being both hilarious and heartbreaking in a sung-through musical, playing the conductor who pines, mostly unrequitedly, for an opera singer (Marion Cottillard.)

Best Actress:

Will win: Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Chastain is going to win, and I am here for it.  She found the the heart and humanity behind the false eyelashes and the startling facial prosthetics. The film is itself was nothing special, but Chastain was great.

Should win: I don't care...

Honestly, in this category it's more about who shouldn't win.

I'm fine with Chastain, Olivia Colman or Penelope Cruz walking off with an Oscar. Just please, God, do NOT let it be Kristen Stewart for that Godawful overrated Spencer. Nicole Kidman shouldn't be here either.

Overlooked:  Michelle Pfeiffer in French Exit

Lady Gaga in House of Gucci is the first and most painfully obvious choice here. Jennifer Hudson, who channeled the late, great Aretha Franklin to spectacular effect in Respect is another glaring omission. But I'm going to champion Pfeiffer, who has been killing it for the last few years, playing hilariously acerbic women in films that don't get enough attention. French Exit is a regrettably flawed adaptation of a very good novel in which Pfeffier's unfiltered, unsentimental, formerly rich widow is the powerful center around which all the other actors orbit.  It's worth seeking out on streaming, and if it works for you at all, it's because of Pfeiffer.

Best Actor

Will win: Will Smith in King Richard

I'm not sure how Smith is getting so much award love in a year which also gave us Benedict Cumberbatch's mesmerizing turn in The Power of the Dog, but Smith is the shoo-in here. A win for Smith feels more like an lifetime achievement/Mr. Congeniality award to me. But I'll admit, if grudgingly, that Smith is pretty damn good in this film.

Should win: Benedict Cumberbatch in The Power of the Dog

Here's what I wrote about Cumberbatch's performance after first seeing The Power of the Dog at the 2021 Chicago International Film Festival: "Cumberbatch is electrifying in every scene, always managing to suggest a vulnerability - or at least some unplumbed complexity - behind every wincingly nasty wisecrack. When I walked out of the theater that night, I was certain That I had seen the next Best Actor Oscar winner at work. But I had not.  This year is Will Smith's year.  And Cumberbatch very likely has more great work ahead of him.

Overlooked: Nicholas Cage for Pig

Critics seems to agree that Cage is phenomenally good in this odd but powerful indie film, and he's received many nominations for low-stakes critics' awards.  But even a single nomination for a major acting award has inexplicably eluded him. I'm mighty disappointed not to see the Oscar nomination that would have signaled the Nicholas Cage comeback. (Reminder: he already has one Oscar, for Leaving Las Vegas.)

Best Picture:

Will Win: CODA

In addition to the support building for Troy Kotsur, the film itself is gaining momentum for the top prize. I'm going out on a limb to predict that voters will find CODA to be the perfect heartwarming, life-affirming film for these troubled times.

Should Win: The Power of the Dog or Belfast

The Power of the Dog (my personal choice for Best Film of 2021) still may pull through to a victory. It's been the front runner in this category ever since the nominations were first announced. 

Belfast is not considered to be a serious contender; however, its blend of gentle comedy, feel-good reminisce and artfully evoked onset of 'the troubles' in Northern Ireland manages to be relatable both to the current state of the world and to our need for the reassurance of family ties.  I'm holding out a little hope for a surprise upset.

Overlooked:  Mass

The best film to be largely ignored by awards-giving bodies is probably the hardest to watch.  A meeting between the parents of a school shooter and the parents of his victim, it's written and acted to perfection. But it's grueling and sad.  In a perfect world, all four actors (Martha Plimpton, Jason Isaacs, Reed Birney and Ann Dowd) would have acting nominations, and Mass would have received nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture. But, of course, we don't live in a perfect world...