By: Henry J. Fromage –
This week was largely a streaming TV week, but I got in some classic flicks as a change of pace as well.
144. Murder in Big Horn
This Showtime miniseries just debuted at Sundance last month, and hopefully gained some viewers like me off of that heat. It concerns missing and murdered Native women from a couple of adjacent reservations in Oklahoma where this is all too common, and despite the favorite explanation of the local (non-Native, predominantly) police, clearly not a death by exposure or frostbite phenomenon. Intrepid community members, most women themselves, refuse to let the crimes fade away without the justice the demand. Two Beers.
145. Killing County
This Hulu miniseries runs examines why San Bernardino County, California has suffered from a disproportionate number of police shootings of unarmed civilians, without the officers involved every seeing a punishment for their deeds that have injured, maimed, and killed the citizenry they’re supposed to protect. A portrait of a small power structure that’s been able to cover up truly awful systemic issues. Three Beers.
146. The Anarchists
This HBO series dives into the Anarchapulco community, which is, yes, a group of purported anarchists who’ve left the big bad United States to live in the relative supposed lawlessness of Acapulco, Mexico. Turns out Anarchism isn’t exactly the basis for a society, even a fake one comfortably ensconced in a real society with taxes and laws and all that. It also turns out that it’s a lot easier to live out your Anarchist fantasies when you have a whole bunch of money earned in, you guessed it, a functioning government-run society. Fascinating stuff, if only the the kind of deluded personalities this kind of movement attracts. Three Beers.
147. Dirty Money
This Alex Gibney-produced series, which sprung out of his proud Volkswagen-driving family’s sense of betrayal at that company’s emissions scandal (when it turns out they not only weren’t as green as they said they were, but also were spending more money engineering ways to get around those standards), delves into similar stories of business greed spanning from payday loan sharks to the less than kosher stories behind the Trump and Kushner fortunes. Three Beers.
148. Physical 100
I don’t know what is so goddamn addictive about this Korean game show dedicated to finding “the perfect physique” via a series of games testing strength, stamina, and sheer willpower, but man, I couldn’t stop watching once I started. Maybe it’s just something about the very Squid Game aesthetics, or the relentless rush from 100 extremely fit individuals to 1 winner, or how genuinely pleasant everyone largely is to each other, which feels like would never happen in a Western gameshow and/or sports competition. Two Beers.
149. Gunther’s Millions
This Netflix series is about Gunther, the dog (or rather, generations of dogs) with a seemingly undepletable trust fund thanks to an eccentric Countess, but perhaps even more about his Italian caretaker who buys all the private jets and private islands that the dog totally is asking for. It’s a bizarre logline that at first appears to be about a man who’s just the luckiest bastard alive (and behaves in about as depraved a manner as anyone with a 400 million dollar windfall), but when things start going bona fide sex cult/ubermensch breeding program and we start to doubt that the Countess is even real, we find it’s something rather more bizarre than we thought. Rich people crazy. Three Beers.
150. Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence
This disturbing docuseries delves into ex-con Svengali Larry Ray’s years-long psychological imprisonment of a group of young people he met through posting up in his daughter’s college dorm after getting out of prison the first time. What ensues is a hard to believe if it wasn’t so well-documented descent into darkness for these young people as Ray turns him into mentally dependent slaves to his every whim. Harrowing and shocking stuff. Two Beers.
151. Murder Mountain
This Netflix docuseries examines another angle of the subject covered in last year’s excellent Bigfoot- the dangerous backwoods of Humbolt County, long the center of the illicit marijuana trade in the United States and an awfully dangerous place to wander where you may not be welcome. Murder Mountain is the name for a particularly lawless part of the county, where missing persons are often last seen and vigilante justice may be the only kind in the offing. Three Beers.
152. George & Tammy
Jessica Chastain continues her sprint to EGOT by playing famous singing Tammys with this miniseries in which she portrays rising country singer Tammy Wynette and her relationship with hard-living country legend George Jones (Michael Shannon, also displaying some surprisingly quality singing chops). This probably could just as easily have been a standard runtime movie as a lot of their relationship ups and downs spring from the same issues, but it’s beautifully acted and quite full of both stars’ music. That Grammy may not even be too far off for Chastain- call it blasphemy, but I actually prefer her version of the hits over Tammy’s herself. Three Beers.
153. Rhubarb
We watched this Criterion title because a movie about a tabby cat who inherits a baseball team could not be more relevant to my wife’s interests (it helps that said cat is played by legendary feline thespian Orangey the Cat, an irresistible proposition if there ever was one). This is a farcical comedy that knows exactly the register and tone such a film should played in, and does so joyously. Three Beers.
154. Somebody I Used to Know
This new Amazon romdramedy is directed by Dave Franco and stars his wife Allison Brie, playing her umpteenth directionless and quirky young woman who makes questionable romantic decisions and then learns life lessons. She keeps doing it because she’s damn good at it, though, and she is here as a reality show emcee who returns to her scenic hometown of Leavenworth, Colorado (going there in the Spring!) and reconnects with an old boyfriend, with there just being one complication- he’s set to get married within the week. Just a solid all around example of its form. Three Beers.
155. Kiss of the Spider Woman
The recently and too soon late William Hurt won his Oscar playing a homosexual imprisoned during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in a cell with a revolutionary played by Raul Julia. Both are superb as they come to understand and appreciate their very different ways of looking at life and their circumstances, and Hurt’s recounting of some old Noir film interweaves with their own circumstances in interesting ways. I expect this will have worked even better on the page of the celebrated novel it’s an adaptation of, but as a performance piece it’s superb. Three Beers.
156. The Innocent Man
This series examines a series of shocking murders in the small Oklahoma town of Ada, and the subsequent investigations that appear to have gotten the wrong man. The decades-long struggles to find the truth and free Ron Williamson was the source of John Grisham’s only non-fiction work, and he appears here to explain what fascinated him about this case in particular. For my money, it’s a (disturbingly unfortunately) commonplace tale in the end. Three Beers.
157. White Boy
This fascinating documentary tells the story behind the story of White Boy Rick, subject of the Matthew McConaughey-starring film of the same name. Beyond what is covered in that film, in which a very white Detroit teenager goes from FBI informant to drug kingpin to life imprisonment, this documentary doubles down on how insanely unfair that sentence is, as we see actual drug lords (his drug kingpin exploits were much overhyped) and terrifying real-life hitmen talk about where their stories crossed paths… all having long-since completed their own sentences. Two Beers.
158. Trial by Media
This docuseries tells stories of trials that were defined by and it many cases skewed by the media coverage they received, starting with the story of the man who learned his buddy was his secret crush on an episode of the Jenny Jones talk show and then proceeded to murder him. It’s a unifying conceit that doesn’t necessarily hold strongly across the series, but every trial is undeniably an interesting one. Three Beers.
