What to Watch and What to Read, in September 2024
What to Watch...
This is a 2010 version of Carlos you can watch on Kanopy. It is certainly suspenseful, rich in irony, so-so acting and good dramatic action. Carlos would not pass the Bechdel test!! As some of you know, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, a Marxist from Venezuelan, adopted the name "Carlos" early in his career as an assassin, bomber and abductor all across Europe and the Middle East. He saw his crimes as political, today he would be a terrorist. From 1973 to 1994 (when he was caught) he was one of the most wanted men in the world. Carlos, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) fighter, is a grim and elusive Venezuelan Marxist terrorist whose life is tracked as he executes dozens of assassination plots, abductions, and bombings across Europe and the Middle East in the cause of Palestinian liberation. For two decades, he is one of the world's most wanted men. The film begins in Paris in 1973, where the young Ramírez Sánchez is trying to prove himself as a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) fighter for a free Palestine. Few of us can remember the 70s, the plane hijackings, the storming and kidnappings at OPEC headquarters in Vienna, and many other actions. This is a French-German production (way better than what the Americans usually turn out) yet the key character, Carlos, is a bit wooden and prone to lecturing about the Palestinian cause. Definitely worth watching! Here's the trailer.
Hit Man is a gem – It’s on Amazon Prime. A bespectacled college philosophy professor finds his calling as a phoney a hit man. He tells police he’s a cool actor and he needs the extra money. So the New Orleans police set him up as a fake hit man who “busts” people trying to hire a killer. His life becomes more complicated when the person who “hires” him is a lonely woman who wants him to off her no-good husband. The action is fast and we don’t know how but the plot becomes more intricate, and pretty soon the police suspect the prof of arranging the hit on his new girlfriend’s ex-husband. It’s great. Here is the trailer.
Clickbait is pretty good. Dad, husband, “good guy”, Nick Brewer disappears one day. He shows up on social media holding a hand-printed sign that says he abuses women. The next time his sign says after 5 million views he will die. Brewer’s wife and sister push the cops to find him, to find out is he a liar, is he really going to die—or be killed? What do Brewer’s teen Sons think about this. The whole series is a race against time – who will find him, or kill him and why. This is on Netflix and here’s the trailer.
Documentaries to Watch...
An excellent 25-minute documentary is The Palestine Exception on Al Jazeera’s Faultlines. Made in March 2024, the documentary looks at the suppression of Palestinian voices in the US in the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza. The doc investigates the terminations, the firings, the hate mail, the blacklists and the death threats as well as the rampant accusation of antisemitism levelled at supporters of the people in Gaza. Very much worth watching here. The filmmakers note,
“This a McCarthy-era moment for speech, suppression, and university campuses are on the front lines.”
I watched another documentary on Netflix from MSNBC called XCLD: The Story of Cancel Culture. While the doc is in good fun and fast moving, the message of Cancel Culture is clear. It warns us that CC is affecting us all as those in authority use it to restrict free speech – especially I’ll note free speech on Palestine. It’s good. Here’s the trailer
More to stream...
Baby Reindeer is excellent. Someone told me it was about fat-shaming; someone else told me it’s about a drunk comedian -- but neither is true. A 25-year-old man from Scotland works at a bar in London so he can pursue his dream of being a comedian. One afternoon, a 40-year-old woman comes into the bar and asks for a Coke; she says she is broke, and the comic offers to buy her the soft drink. The two engage in some clever banter. Suddenly the woman starts a stalking the comic. Months tick by, he goes to the police, to visit his parents, and tells his girlfriend about the woman. But strangely, the barman and the woman’s relationship deepens. And it is the deepening of it that profounding scares the comic. The film is fast paced, with great dialogue and humour. I don’t want to say more but you should watch it on Netflix. Here’s the trailer.
Call Jane is worth watching. The film takes place in Chicago prior to Roe vs Wade. In the late 60’s, abortion requests had to go before a hospital abortion committee before the procedure could be done; most requests were rejected. Backstreet abortions and all the inherent risks happened all the time. In Call Jane, an upper middle-class homemaker needs an abortion. Part of the film is about her experience—but most of the film hinges on the work of a dedicated committee of women that secretly accompanied women to private abortion providers. This is taken from a true story – you can read about it here. The women were sworn to secrecy; they accepted little to no money and then began to teach each other how to provide safe terminations. The script is tight; the story is believable, as is the acting, and it’s well worth watching. See it on Netflix, and here is the trailer.
The four-part series Capital is wonderful. Taken from a novel of the same name by British writer John Lanchester, this 2015-16 series is about a Victorian street in London that has risen used to cater to lower middle class owners prior to the year 2000, to one in which houses sell into the millions. It is delightful. The dialogue is fast, with a hard edge. The film features a family from Pakistan trying to eke out a living in the newspaper shop on the corner, to a financier’s fabulous home and falling apart family, to the life of a traffic warden issues tickets to drivers who are illegally parked. I really liked Lanchester’s book because it was full of humour and empathy. The series less so – but it’s still delightful and you will love it. Here is the trailer.
My Favourite this Month:
Baby Fever – incredible. In Denmark, a doctor at a fertility clinic is toying with the idea of having her own baby. Things get complicated when she tries to snag her former boyfriend as the father. But one drunk night of revelry at the clinic shows us her chosen way forward. The acting is great; the series is funny and smart, and the story is way more involved than I can tell you – without giving you a spoiler. Everyone from her boss, to the other doctors at the clinic, to the clinic secretary, to her mother, to the needy patients are portrayed well – you’ll actually laugh. Wonderful. Watch it on Netflix Here is the trailer.
What NOT to Watch...
19-2. I reviewed this series when it was a Quebecois series about cops in Montreal. It was fantastic. Now it’s been re-scripted in English, and though it still takes place in the same city, it is dull and flat. There is no nod to culture, no nod to corrupt cops, no interest in fleshing out the characters of the police. I’d watch the French version (with subtitles) but not the one in English.
The latest series of Marcella, is violent, unbelievable and boring. Not sure how that much violence can bore, but it does. Marcella is now a beautiful bottled blonde (rather than her former brunette self) living in Belfast. As an undercover cop, she has to infiltrate a wealthy criminal family and sidestep its underworld. It’s on Netflix.
The fourth series of Emily in Paris. I thought the first few seasons were kind of cute. Except, of course, what kind of top flight Paris ad agency hires a 22-year-old American woman who speaks no French, rarely returns to her desk after lunch, manipulates clients, and wears out-of-this-world fashion one-offs with stiletto heels? To watch a synopsis that is cringeworthy, it's here.
What to Read...
I’ve fallen into bad habits. I just finished my second John Grisham novel this month. I don’t know – when 42,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel; when millions of Palestinians are faced with starvation, and monstrous injuries – a bit of sameness is required. That’s where Camino Winds came in. Grisham’s Camino series is about life on an island for the wealthy. In this book, a hurricane destroys much of the island, the restaurants, the beaches, the bars and the hero (a clever bookstore owner) becomes a sleuth in a friend’s murder. I also read A Time for Mercy which was wordy, a bit preachy, and very long. Defence lawyer Jake Brigance Is forced to take on a case of a 16-year-old boy who killed his stepfather. There is no question that he did it – but in rural Mississippi, will he be sentenced to life in prison or death? Not bad. True escapism for me.
I was very impressed with the Ripley series (based on a series of novels written by Patricia Highsmith) on Netflix, so I decided to read a Highsmith book, her 1957 classic whodunnit Deepwater. This is a long and wordy read. But I have to say the characters are well drawn especially that of Vic and Melinda Van Allen who are locked in an unhappy marriage. The prime ongoing drama is that Melinda takes lovers and the couple lives in an “open relationship” – this is in the mid-1950s. But we begin to see how jealous Vic is and what he is planning to do about it. There is the '50s vibe about the book, and pretty good dialogue – but over all it’s way over the top. I see that there is a 2022 film of Deepwater first streamed on Hulu. Have a look at the plot and the actors here.
Le Bloc: An Account of a Squat in Paris is a good piece of longer form journalism by Jacqueline Feldman. Fascinating account of people who live on the edge. Read it here in the Aug. 29 Paris Review.
How to Be Truly Free: Lessons From a Philosopher President, is a good article about the former president of Uruguay. Pepe Mujica, Uruguay’s spartan former president and plain-spoken philosopher, offers wisdom from a rich life as he battles cancer. Quite an amazing man, an 89-year-old Marxist, a humanist and an optimist. Well worth reading. Here.
below -Activists and artists unfurled a massive quilt for Palestine on the front steps of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on March 23, 2024 (photo Maya Pontone/Hyperallergic) Right: Goyette, “To Resist is to Love/There is Love in Resistance” (2024), watercolor pencil on paper, 18 x 24 inches (courtesy the artist). Apartment building in Paris is the Squat, and finally: evening at the three room house of former Uruguayan president and socialist Mujica.
The Globe and Mail had a surprising article – surprising from the Tory-oriented newspaper that is. “The Neighbourhood in which you live may reveal how long you’ll live,” is a bit of a jolt. I think the article about the report is here.
Hyperallergic is a great online arts magazine, which covers politics and the controversial nature of art worldwide. This article My Love Story with a Dentist in Gaza is a warm and witty. In March, artist Rebecca Goyette helped put together a huge quilt about Gaza, which was unfurled on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She explains,
“In April, a man named Mo’min Zahar reached out to me from Gaza to tell me he loved the quilt and the solidarity of the artists with Palestine. We started chatting regularly, instantly feeling a connection. He shared that he was a pediatric dentist whose dental practice and family home were bombed in late October of 2023.”
Their relationship has carried on as Goyette explores what his life is like under bombs, missile attacks and the jarring and painful loss of a career.
Painting at the top: Prudence Heward, At the Theatre (detail), 1928, oil on canvas, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. To read about Canadian artist Heward (1896-1947), read here. (Photo credit: MMFA, Christine Guest)