(fubo/kanopy/Showtime/VOD) Josephine Decker’s films always take a bit of time for me to come to terms with. I remember seeing MADELINE’S MADELINE as part of a self-imposed triple-feature at the Music Box during a particularly stormy Chicago day, and it left a sour taste in my mouth, as if the characters I’d seen writ large on the screen weren’t being portrayed fairly.
Then, after haunting my memory for a month or so, it clicks. I realize why the actions were made, no matter how selfish, how distasteful, how the film couldn’t be any different.
(Also, it helps that her films are uniquely surrealistically stylized in a way that most indie filmmakers eschew nowadays, and it’s a style I can’t help but love.)
(fubo/Hulu/kanopy/Netflix/tubi/VOD/Vudu)? No, not John Carpenter’s adaptation of Stephen King’s CHRISTINE — a fine horror film, but you hardly need me to tell you that — this is a dramatized depiction of Christine Chubbuck, a local TV news reporter in the 70s who struggled with depression. The film details her personal and professional troubles as she tries to grow her career and realize the life she wants.
There are other facets of Christine’s story that you may or may not be familiar with. I’m not completely sure whether detailing them would improve a viewing, so I’m going to err on the side of caution and intentionally bite my tongue.
If this were a fictional film, I’d feel a lot better about it, and it wouldn’t have the ending it has. Every thing leading up to that is a smart, nuanced portrayal of a complicated woman, bolstered by Rebecca Hall’s amazing performance. It’s fantastically cast film — Michael C. Hall as Christine’s fellow news man, Tracy Letts as her boss, Maria Dizzia as her co-worker, J. Smith-Cameron (from the previously recommended RECTIFY) as her mother, and VEEP’s Timothy Simons as the weatherman — but this film wouldn’t work without Rebecca Hall’s nuanced handling of Christine. She’s a persona we rarely see on-screen: a smart-but-flailing woman, clearly awkward in general, but so goddamn determined to succeed, and to hide from and survive her mental issues.
Again, if it were fictional, it’d be a triumph. While it’s still a stunningly scripted movie, it just feels… dirty. But that’s a matter for tomorrow.
(fubo/Netflix/SyFy/VOD) In the days around SyFy’s rebranding in 2010, they were airing LOST GIRL, an irreverent, pan-sexual Canadian show about a succubus trying to get by in a world full of crazy mythical beasts. LOST GIRL went through a number of showrunners but finally found a constant in Emily Andreas until its end. Once LOST GIRL wrapped up, I knew I’d follow her to whatever she would do next.
Andreas ended up adapting the IDW comic book WYNONNA EARP, a high-concept story about Wyonna Earp (Melanie Scrofano) being a fuckup female hier to the Wyatt Earp legacy in a town of monsters. Andreas turned what could have been a rather routine TV comic book adaptation into the most gleefully slapstick action/comedy queer show ever.
Andreas has been unapologetic about how this is her BUFFY: THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (although there’s a specific turn in the show that I believe marks a pivot to ANGEL) but more importantly, this is a show about family and acceptance. It’s also really fucking funny while also being delightfully filthy. Part of that’s because they severely lean on Melanie Scrofano’s gift for physical and verbal comedy, to the point where the last season of the show has a higher quip count than most network sitcoms.
While the show is unabashedly female-forward, one facet I love about it is that the core men are just as interesting, complicated, and often empathetic, epitomized by the show’s 150+ year-old (but still very handsome) Doc Holiday (Tim Rozon).
If you take a passing glance at Andreas’ Twitter account, or check out any interview with any member of the cast or crew, this was clearly a fun labor of love. Everyone clearly enjoyed showing up to work every day, and you can see the show improve over time because of those bonds.
Sadly, SyFy recently canceled the show, and aired what became the series finale on April 9th. I will miss it, but I can’t wait to see what Emily Andreas does next.
(Discovery+/fubo/Science Channel)? This will definitely date me, but one of my formative memories is of being dragged out of bed by my father in the middle of the night to see Halley’s Comet. See, I loved reading about space, and this was a once-in-a-lifetime event. We drove out to the middle of nowhere — easily done when you live in Vermont — but, when he set up my telescope, I refused to look, scared of peering into the unknown. I was too young to have an existential crisis but, upon finally squinting through the telescope’s lens and seeing the burst of light in my telescope, well, it made me feel very small and very alone and very scared, but also in awe of the universe.
Now that I’ve technically grown up, practically every night I reinstill that cosmic feeling by letting this show lull me to sleep.
HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS features an assortment of cosmologists, astrophysicists, theoretical physicists, and other scientists (including Michio Kaku) who discuss the theme of the episode, say, about new discoveries regarding the moons of Saturn, or expound on neutron stars, but more often than not it’s concerned with black holes. While they’re excitedly chatting away about their life’s work, or while Mike Rowe is narrating some connective tissue to help viewers understand the concepts, the show throws a bevy of impressive space CGI at you.
It’s been running for nine seasons now, although a fair amount of the recent seasons consist of three pre-existing hour-long episodes wrapped into one, which makes it perfect for half-awake background viewing.
It’s worth nothing that there are a ton of smaller clips from the show available via YouTube. Science Channel has even conveniently assembled an entire playlist of them, which should make for quality background viewing for you, too.
(AMC+/fubo/VOD) RECTIFY is leaving Netflix on March 3rd, when I imagine it’ll pop up on AMC+, so you have less than a week to watch this heartfelt exploration of a man — Daniel Holden (Aden Young) — found guilty of killing a girl, sentenced to death, acquitted of murder, and his re-entry into society.
Rather than RECTIFY being about society re-embracing him, it darts the other way. This is not about whether Daniel Holden is guilty, but is about him trying to find peace with his community, family (including TIMELESS’ Abigail Spencer), and himself. It’s a singularly human drama from DEADWOOD’s Ray McKinnon that had a surprisingly long life thanks to the Sundance Channel, and is well-worth making time for before it leaves Netflix.
(fubo/VOD) Yes, this is a direct-to-DVD sequel to the classic Mary Harron adaptation. Yes, it has little-to-nothing to do with the American excess/toxic masculinity of original film. Yes, it features pre-BLACK SWAN Mila Kunis as well as an unlikely William Shatner playing a teacher that students swoon over. Yes, it’s cheap, trashy — 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, just so you know what you’re getting into — and tries to have its cake and eat it too by toeing the line between earnest satirical genre work and self-aware camp. That doesn’t mean that it is not a whole lot of fun, especially the last third of the film.
(fubo/hoopla/kanopy/Showtime/VOD) EXTRA ORDINARY is an extremely charming and winsome Irish horror-comedy about a woman named Rose (comedian Maeve Higgins) who has been bestowed with paranormal talents, which include the ability to see ghosts. Unfortunately, those powers backfired on her, resulting in the death of her father, so she swore them off and instead became a driving instructor. Unfortunately, local man Martin Martin (Barry Ward, THE END OF THE F***ING WORD) and washed up musician Christian Winter (Will Forte, MACGRUBER, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, clearly having fun playing a villain) will severely test that resolution.
EXTRA ORDINARY could coast along on the quality of its low-key goofs and gags and be a fun hangout horror rom-com, but the overarching story (penned by the directors Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman, with contributions from Higgins) jauntily moves along and escalates into one very fun but very odd climax. Literally.
It also features several finely produced video segments that recall GARTH MERENGHI’S DARKPLACE and LOOK AROUND YOU, fully rounding out the film into a terrifically satisfying film. Sadly, it was released in the US right before lockdown, but hopefully it’ll find an audience sooner rather than later.
(Fubo/hoopla/kanopy/VOD) Kathy, a struggling Asian-American single mom travels with Cody, her pre-teen son, to settle the affairs of her dead sister’s estate. While there, the son befriends an aging-but-able Vietnam veteran, who welcomes them into his small town.
While it’s a standard indie film premise, DRIVEWAYS excels in a number of ways, first and foremost by having Brian Dennehy (RIP, Brian — I’ll never forget you in THE BELLY OF AN ARCHITECT) as the neighbor, secondly by having a simple human story play out simply and, lastly, how it’s visually framed — lots of tight shots instead of expository shots, which are disarming for the first half of the film until it settles into a familiar sort of comfort.
While Dennehy is fantastic, I’d be remiss to neglect both Hong Chau (WATCHMEN’s Lady Trieu) and Lucas Jaye as the mother-and-son pair, who have an exquisitely honest mother/son relationship. Chau is especially brilliant as she tries to compose herself as everything around her is falling apart.
All of that said, my favorite part of the film is how much everyone swears around this kid.
It’s a film filled with melancholy, but is also a very sweet slice of life.
(AMC+/fubo/VOD)? I honestly don’t know how many folks are familiar with WGN as a channel. If you live in the midwest, you know WGN, as it’s a local Chicago network and probably broadcasts to you. (Well, if you have an antennae or cable box.) They went national in the 80s — I have a vague recollection of watching Godzilla marathons on holiday weekends via their NYC affiliate, but I may be misremembering that.
Anyway, a handful of years ago, they decided to branch out into prestige television and produced the amazing, underrated UNDERGROUND series (created by Misha Green, who just wrapped up LOVECRAFT COUNTRY). MANHATTAN was the second of their big dramatic swings.
MANHATTAN is a deep dive into the community created by the US military to develop the first atomic bomb. A nerdy DEADWOOD, if you will. It’s a story of divisive opinions, splintered factions, and tawdry affairs — quintessential historical dramatic prestige TV — and while it had a number of asshole, self-important male protagonists, it also had Katja Herbers (currently on CBS’ underrated EVIL) as Helen Prins, Rachel Brosnahan (MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL), and Olivia Williams (RUSHMORE, DOLLHOUSE) as smart women who refuse to be wallflowers. (Oh, and Mamie Gummer — Meryl Streep’s daughter — shows up in the second season in a role I will not divulge.)
The show occasionally feels a bit overburdened by everything it’s trying to accomplish: domestic drama, espionage thriller, docudrama, scientific intrigue, etc. but ultimately it’s more than the sum of its parts, not just because of the brilliant cast, but the stable of writers (including Lila Byock, who wrote some of the best parts of THE LEFTOVERS -and- WATCHMEN).
Sadly, even if MANHATTAN’s ratings were good (they were not), they still would’ve been canceled as WGN were sold off by Chicago’s Tribune Corp. and purchased by the conservative Sinclair Media Group, which had designs to turn WGN into a right-wing news outlet, and all original programming was shuttered. (WGN is now currently owned by Nexstar, another conservative outlet, but instead of hewing towards news, they’ve basically turned WGN into another TV nostalgia channel. Yay, capitalism.)
(fubo/Hulu/peacock/VOD) SUPERSTORE has always flown under the rader. Often marketed as a big-box retail version of THE OFFICE (US) because it’s comprised of eccentrics and weirdos all trying to get by in their humdrum work environment, it has more in common with the warmness of PARKS & RECREATION, in that the characters are often trying to help one another through each day. It’s also a show that subverts how we imagine work-based sitcoms, how the audience is supposed to suspend disbelief that every employee is treated equal, that each one of them goes home at night to live in a place they can easily afford, and none of them ever have to worry about how they’re going to pay for an unexpected car repair.
While the show would be entertaining enough if these characters were placed in their own universe and the writers blissfully ignored everything happening in the real world, SUPERSTORE often tackles heavier topics, such as unionizing, immigration, and natural disasters. Few sitcoms are able to manage the delicate balance of real-world problems and humor — usually coming across as either overly glib, or as a Very Special Episode — but SUPERSTORE not only manages it, it excels at it.
The season six opener, which aired a handful of weeks ago, deals quite frankly with COVID and we watch as the show barrels through months of COVID prep and paranoia in the expert way only a five-year-old show could juggle. They don’t rely on title cards to relay the day or month, they let you figure it out through visual indicators and character dialogue because they realize you’ll pick up on the major touchstones. Sure, it won’t play the same to viewers in 10 years, but few shows do.
In the second episode of season six, the novelty of safety precautions have faded into the background but still linger as a threatening presence, and the show depicts several characters struggling with their fear and stress. Despite that, they still make it funny without defusing the importance of these characters’ struggles.
I know folks are pretty reluctant to invest in old-school 22-ep season shows — I get it! — but this one is worth it. It’s the full package: heart, humor, and hope. Feel free to skip over the first season, as it’s a bit rocky! If you don’t want to deal with COVID in your TV shows, steer clear of season six! (I know I get a bit squicked out when the show has characters talking close-up and unmasked, just for the sake of trying to wring the most out of a scene.) I don’t know what the future holds for SUPERSTORE — perhaps one more season, at best — but if that’s the case? It’s been a good run.
Season 1 trailer:
Season 4 mid-season trailer:
(The actual tone is really an odd mixture of the two: not as much spectacle as S1 promises, not as preachy as S4 appears.)
