By Juan-Carlos Selznick
A number of smartly entertaining films recently encountered at the Stream & Dream Lounge seem to be flying under the radar even though they’re also streaming in plain sight.
Sunday Best
This Netflix documentary just might be one of the year’s best, and it’s definitely one of the highlights of our recent summer of discontent. It’s an account of Ed Sullivan’s groundbreaking promotion of black music stars on his legendary Sunday night variety show on CBS in the late 50s and early 60s. Part music documentary and part cultural history, this feature-length film includes an abundance of clips of lively musical performances amid its documentation of Sullivan’s efforts at giving black artists their first national television exposure. Battles with networks and sponsors are part of the drama. Interviews with Harry Belafonte, Dionne Warwick, Smokey Robinson, Barry Gordy, and others are also part of the mix. The list of musical performers includes Jackie Wilson, Pearl Bailey, Mahalia Jackson, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Tina Turner, Nina Simone, James Brown, a teenaged Stevie Wonder, the Jackson Five (with an even younger Michael Jackson), as well as Belafonte, Warwick, and others.
Tokyo Cowboy
This charming cross cultural tale of personal transformation begins and ends in Japan but comes most fully to life in and on Montana ranchland. Hideki (Arata Iura) is a young corporate executive who travels to the US with the aim of salvaging a struggling cattle ranch owned by his company.
He is business-minded 24/7, but when his plans for the ranch continue to flounder, he finds himself drawn more and more towards an appreciation of the various ranch folk who resist those plans and who nudge him toward far-reaching changes in his own priorities. The gentle comedy of the nerdy businessman transformed by his clumsy emulations of “the cowboy way” can seem a bit simplistic, but the most meaningful human connections emerge in his encounters at the ranch. The ranch boss is a wry humored woman (Robin Weigert) and Hideki’s most genuine role model is a limping vaquero (Goya Robles) who is both stoic and kindly. Those two (and the Montana landscapes) are what’s best about the movie, for Hideki and for us in the audience. Hideki’s Rabelaisian sidekick Wada (Jun Kunimura) has a couple of appositely rambunctious moments early on.
The Thursday Murder Club
Based on Richard Osman’s series of mystery novels, this sprightly entertaining film makes the most of what may sound merely formulaic at first. Its 118 minutes center on a small group of retirees in a posh retirement home who spend their Thursdays working on unsolved murder cases. There is a whimsical tone to much of their byplay, but a witty seriousness emerges in the actual drama. The comic gravitas of the leading players — Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie — generates a kind of nonchalant earnestness that serves the entire production very nicely. A rookie policewoman (charmingly played by Naomi Ackie) brings something extra to the story and, temporarily, to the club’s work. The distinguished supporting cast includes Jonathan Pryce, David Tennant, and Richard E. Grant. You may sense similarities to the Knives Out series or A Man in the House which is also set in a retirement facility. But with this cast, some brisk pacing, and a smart script, The Thursday Murder Club has a distinctive appeal all its own.
The Amateur
Rami Malek stars in this offbeat, serio-comic thriller. He plays a CIA code breaker who bolts from his desk job when his wife dies in a terrorist bombing. Malek’s high-IQ clerk is no James Bond, but he goes in hot pursuit of the culprits, with his intellect and technical ingenuity as his only weapons. Based on a Robert Littlell novel, it’s fanciful entertainment that maintains a measure of plausibility in all of its twists and turns. A fine supporting cast includes Laurence Fishburne, Rachel Brosnahan, Jon Bernthal, and Michael Stuhlbarg.
A mystery series with film-like qualities
Untamed
For me, this show’s first season (six episodes, streaming on on Netflix) is the latest example of a TV series that has the quality, impact, and dramatic complexity of a first-rate feature film. It’s a richly engaging murder mystery set in Yosemite National Park with Eric Bana, Sam Neill, and Rosemary DeWitt leading a large cast of intricately entangled characters. Bana and Neill are park rangers investigating the growing set of puzzling dangers that ensue after a mysterious young woman falls to her death in uncertain circumstances. The screenplay, written by Elle Smith and Mark L. Smith, nudges multiple mysteries of character into the proceedings, as the initial “whodunnit” expands into a powerful, multi-faceted character drama. And Yosemite itself becomes an integral part of that drama. What was originally billed as a limited series, it’s now expanded with Netflix’s announcement of a second season.
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