My first HOT TIP is not a film or a series, but a tool. The number of streaming services available now are, well, too much. To streamline the process there is a great website or app to help – JustWatch.com . Search the film or series you’re looking for and it lists where to find it (Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Crave etc) along with the costs to rent or purchase if there is one (other than a subscription cost), so you can compare it all in one place and find things easily. A must.
Summer of Soul: (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
Summer of Soul is a great music documentary about a series of outdoor concerts in Harlem in 1969 that took place over six Sundays. It was filmed with the intention of making a movie about it at the time but the movie never happened. Why not? Well, that was the same summer of the phenomenon Woodstock which totally upstaged these smaller concerts which featured all black musicians in a black neighbourhood in New York City. The footage sat in a basement collecting dust for 50 years until finally being resurrected, restored and turned into something wonderful by Ahmir (Questlove) Thompson (The Roots) who directed it and served as Executive Producer. Performances by Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, The Fifth Dimension, B.B. King, Staple Singers, along with other stock footage and interviews with some of the performers reminiscing about the event and the times make for a terrific film and a look back at the music and culture of 1969.
Summer of Soul has won all kinds of awards including an Oscar for Best Documentary Film at the recent Academy Awards – yes THOSE Academy Awards. As a matter of fact you could say that this concert film got upstaged once again, with Will Smith’s ridiculous antics that took place immediately before the award was to be given to them.
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
Also in the Academy Awards line up was this nomination for Best Foreign Film – the first ever entry from Bhutan.
This is one of those movies where the setting itself is a major character and the scenery is breathtaking. It’s a story of a young teacher, an urban guy, who is posted to a remote community in the mountains for a school term, a place that is several days’ hike from the nearest town, no cell coverage to his chagrin, and where the school year ends when winter arrives and cuts off the village completely from the rest of the world.
Bhutan has an unexplained place in my heart. I’ve been dreaming of it almost all my life, even before I knew it existed. I had a friend in Manila from Bhutan named Karma and she was with me when I discovered Laos for the first time. The two of us explored the streets of Vientiane together while our spouses were locked up in meetings at the Russian-built high rise hotel, the only high rise and the ugliest building in the country. All kinds of wonderful things happened to us as my love affair with Laos began. We’d sit in an outside bar on the banks of the Mekong, watching the sun set over Thailand on the far shore. We had lunch on a restaurant patio and found ourselves sitting beside two women who coincidentally (?) had just arrived in Vientiane that day from a 3-week visit to Bhutan. Karma ate a plate of rice and a pile of raw hot peppers for lunch and told me about her life. She was a special friend during our years in Manila and on other trips. Later, when I told her about my recurring dreams and that strange sense of deja vu, she just nodded, unsurprised. She said I should return there for a visit. We always meant to do just that, but when it came time to leave Asia after 4 years, we left that behind on the table. It’s probably too late now, so I visit it in films. And dreams.
Pachinko – 2022 Series
Just finished watching the first season of this 8-episode series following a Korean family through three generations from Japanese occupied Korea in the 1920’s to their lives as immigrants in Japan and later to America with the youngest generation grandson. An insight into the history and society of the Korean people during the 20th century told in a very contemporary way. Great characters, acting, sets and costumes, cinematography, plot lines – it has it all and kept my attention every evening for a full week.
NATURE DOCS
Three wonderful nature documentaries worth a visit – each of them quite unusual.
The Year Earth Changed – This shows what happened to wildlife in a number of places around the world when all the humans went into lockdown and travel restrictions during those first months of Covid and how animal behaviour and other things changed in their absence. Narrated by the dulcet tones of David Attenborough.
The Earth at Night in Color – Using specialized super low light cameras, this series follows the nocturnal activities of different animal groups around the world, for the first time showing them completely clearly to the human eye, without that usual grainy, nightvision video that was the best we had until now. What they get up to in the dark is intriguing.
Prehistoric Planet – Move over Jurassic Park, David Attenborough returns to show us what the earth was like and how the dinosaurs behaved when they roamed the planet 66 million years ago. This is a 5-part series with terrific computer generated animation and great story lines.
ESCAPING TO THRILLERS, MYSTERIES, WHODUNITS and MORE
During the dark days (in more ways than one) of this past winter, I watched lots of movies. I like the rogerebert.com site for reviews. Roger Ebert himself is long gone, but the site continues and is a good place for film information. Now these following films for the most part are not recently released movies, but they were new to me, and kept my attention, not an easy thing to do.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – 2019
Quentin Tarantino says that after 10 movies he’s going to retire from making films and turn his creative attention to other kinds of writing. This 2019 film is number 9 and may be (almost) my favourite – loved it. (Jackie Brown still holds first place in my Tarantino film affections.) Brad Pitt and Leonardo diCaprio are, as usual, terrific.
The Lincoln Lawyer 2011
Matthew McConaughey is great in this thriller about a hustling defence lawyer who works out of the back seat of his chauffeur driven big old Lincoln (he’s lost his license after a DUI), defending bad guys of all types, whoever will pay him. His latest client is an entitled rich kid, accused of a brutal attack. He swears he is innocent and is being set up but is he really? Suspenseful and entertaining.
Margin Call 2011
Margin Call is about the last night in an investment firm in 2008 as the realization dawns on the traders and executives that their firm, along with the rest of the financial world, is about to go belly up as the overextended mortgage market they’ve all been playing fast and loose with is about to collapse and the shit is about to hit the fan. The cast is great. A reminder of what a great actor Kevin Spacey was before he got cancelled.
Cleaner 2007
Samuel L. Jackson. What more is there to say? He could read the phone book. He’s great in this murder mystery with police corruption undertones and lots of twists and misdirections.
Dark Waters 2019
This legal drama tells the true story of lawyer Robert Bilott’s investigation of the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont as he discovers how they have contaminated a town in West Virginia by dumping toxic waste from unregulated chemicals in the water and soil and the extreme lengths the company went to to literally get away with murder. A David and Goliath story. Robert Bilott is still at it, bringing lawsuits against this disgusting corporate behaviour. Caution: you may want to check closely the pots and pans in your cupboard after watching this.
Argo 2012
Argo won Best Picture a decade back but I’ve only now got around to it. Based on a true story of how 6 Americans, who had taken refuge in the Canadian Ambassador’s residence during the 1979 hostage crisis in Iran, were spirited out of the country by the CIA in plain sight. It is based on the memoir of the CIA operative who carried out the rescue, Master of Disguise, and the Wired article “The Great Escape: How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran”. It’s a caper movie, that is literally deadly serious with lots of suspense.
Slow Horses – 2022 series
A British spy thriller series about a group of MI5 agent misfits who become embroiled in a domestic terrorist kidnapping where there is lots more to it than meets the eye and they find themselves in danger and up against intrigue within their own organization.
Happy viewing.