The Shadow of Violence 

Released Jul. 31, 2020

Available on various streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime

I found this one by flicking. I must have been in a dark mood, for it was the title that prompted me to click on the trailer. And it was the trailer (see below), with its shadowy cinematography, that persuaded me to hit the Play button.

I’m glad I did. The Shadow of Violence is a good movie. Probably a very good movie. It may be one of the best movies I’ve seen all year.

It’s the story of a former boxer that goes to work as an enforcer for a local crime family, while trying to maintain a good relationship with his autistic son. What I liked best about it were the amazingly good performances by the three lead actors: Cosmo Jarvis as Arm, Niamh Algar as Ursula, and Barry Koeghan as Dymphna.

Jarvis, in particular, is astonishingly good. There is a scene in which we see him speaking on the phone for what must be two or three solid minutes. It is absolutely mesmerizing. It’s like watching Marlon Brando in Streetcar.

It’s interesting to note that The Shadow of Violence was previously titled Calm with Horses, a reference to the lead character’s relationship with horses. And, as one reviewer said, it is also a reference to “his sensitive soul.” That original title is far better than the new one. Why did they change it? They must have thought it would do a better job of attracting attention. Did it work? I don’t know. But it worked on me.

You can watch the trailer here.

Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story 

A 10-episode docudrama on Netflix

First episode: Sept. 21, 2022

Directed by Ryan Murphy

Starring Evan Peters, Niecy Nash, Molly Ringwald, and Richard Jenkins

I’ve always been curious about serial killers and mass murderers. Jack the Ripper. Charlie Manson. John Wayne Gacy. Jeffrey Dahmer.

My curiosity isn’t morbid. I have no interest in hearing about the bloody details. I’m just curious to know what so many people want to know about these people: Why?

Monster: the Jeffrey Dahmer Story attempts to answer that question. And although it doesn’t arrive at a clear or certain answer, it reveals all sorts of fascinating possibilities. It shows Dahmer in his development from an awkward child to a sensitive teenager to a quiet and lonely young man, and then to a serial killer who kept and sometimes ate his victims’ body parts.

Critical Reception 

It’s gotten mixed reviews. The primary criticism has been that it’s exploitative.

I didn’t think so. I thought it did an earnest job of trying to answer the “why” question. That includes the many whys that relate to how Dahmer was able to get away with his repeated killings despite many leads given to the Milwaukee police.

Interesting 

Netflix originally had the series tagged under its LGBTQ category but pulled the tag after receiving many complaints. As one person on TikTok wrote: “This is not the representation we are looking for.”

You can watch the trailer here.

And here is an Inside Edition interview with Dahmer. 

Two Recommended Netflix Series: The Extraordinary Attorney Woo and Atypical

Extraordinary Attorney Woo 

16 episodes

Original release: June 29 to Aug. 18, 2022

Developed by Kim Chul-yeon

Available only on Netflix

Have you seen Extraordinary Attorney Woo? Several people have recommended it to me recently. It’s a South Korean TV series about Woo Young-woo, a female rookie attorney with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who gets a job with an upscale law firm. Despite her handicap, she employs her high intelligence and photographic memory to win seemingly impossible cases.

I’ve watched several episodes and can understand why it’s getting so much attention. It is topical. It is charming. The lead actor is pretty. And it follows the standard protocol for a short, dramatic series.

It’s good, but I don’t think it’s nearly as good as Atypical, a US-based series about Sam, a teenager on the spectrum, and his life as he moves from high school to college.

Atypical 

Original release: Aug. 11, 2017 to July 9, 2021

4 seasons, 38 episodes

Created by Robia Rashid for Netflix

Starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Keir Gilchrist, and Brigette Lundy-Paine

Available on various streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime

Although I’d define Extraordinary Attorney Woo as a lawyer drama and Atypical as a family comedy, there are many similarities between the two. In fact, since it was produced five years after Atypical debuted, it’s hard to believe that Woois NOT a knockoff of the American series.

As I said, Atypical is better. It covers more ground (topically, emotionally, and drastically) than Woo, while maintaining the same level of charm. The characters are more nuanced, too. Sam, for example, isn’t solving problems in every episode. In some episodes, he succeeds. In others, he fails. Plus, the secondary characters in Atypical have their own relationships with one another, which are in themselves interesting.

If you’ve seen neither series, you can get a hint of what I’m saying by looking at their trailers.

For Extraordinary Attorney Woo, click here.

For Atypical, click here.

On the importance of being at least a little bit contrarian:

“Let’s start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers? If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you’re supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn’t. Odds are you just think whatever you’re told.” – Paul Graham

Uncle Tom: An Oral History of the American Black Conservative 

Release Date: June 19, 2020

Directed by Justin Malone

Written by Ryder Ansell, Larry Elder, and Justin Malone

Available on various streaming services, including Amazon Prime

“If you don’t vote for me, you ain’t Black,” Biden famously said in an interview with radio host Charlamagne Tha God prior to the election.

That represents the view that most liberals and the mainstream media have of Black and Hispanic Americans: The Democratic Party, and only the Democratic Party, represents them.

But that wasn’t always the case. In fact, for most of our country’s history, the Republican Party was the one that was supportive of African Americans. It was the party that brought about abolition, fought against Jim Crow, and established the policies that advanced African Americans economically to a degree that was unthinkable 50 years earlier.

That all changed with Lyndon Johnson and The War on Poverty, and then later with The War on Drugs. Those two Democrat-led initiatives destroyed the Black nuclear family and set in motion a culture of victimhood that is, today, the single biggest threat to the advancement of Black and Hispanic progress in the US.

At least that’s the view of the Black conservatives profiled in this very watchable documentary.

Uncle Tom isn’t a film that attempts to prove this thesis or even debate it. Its purpose is to introduce some of the prominent Black conservatives that are trying to bring Black voters back to the Republican Party, and the Republican Party back to Black voters.

You can watch the trailer here.

And you can watch the entire documentary here.

The Outfit 

Released in theaters (US) March 18, 2022

Written and directed by Graham Moore

Starring Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, and Johnny Flynn

Available on various streaming services, including Amazon Prime

The Outfit is a good, solid, crime drama. Well worth the 106 minutes of your time it will take to watch it. I call it a crime drama, but that’s not exactly right. It involves crime and criminals. And there is murder. Two murders. But it doesn’t feel like Goodfellas or Reservoir Dogs or Serpico. In fact, it feels more like a stage play than a film. It takes place almost entirely in one location. It is heavy on dialogue. And the tension of the plot relies strongly on the performances.

And that what makes The Outfit worth recommending. The performances are both good and very good. Top honors go to Mark Rylance as an English tailor with a shop in a Chicago neighborhood run by Irish mobsters. The action is a steady crescendo from mundane to tense to violent, intermixed with an evolving psychological story that ties everything together in the end.

Critical Reception 

* “Rylance can hang another immaculate screen performance in the wardrobe.” (Danny Leigh, Financial Times)

* “The pleasures of writer-director Graham Moore’s intimate little crime thriller The Outfit sneak up on you with the same glissando shiver that you feel when you slip on a silk-lined coat.” (Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine)

* “Movies rarely come as chic as The Outfit, a thrifty, continually unpredictable whodunit, fashioned with the same meticulousness found in the bones of a deceptively simple suit.” (Tomris Laffly, RogerEbert.com)

* “A literate and thrilling gangster picture that brings a fresh touch to a well-worn genre.” (Pete Hammond, Deadline Hollywood)

You can watch the trailer here.

Sir 

Released (France) Dec. 26, 2018

Written, produced, and directed by Rohena Gera

Starring Tillotama Shome and Vivek Gomber

Available on Netflix

During my time in the hospital, I was so distracted that couldn’t bring myself to watch a movie. I spent a lot of time playing solitaire and other mindless digital games. Not healthy or productive, I know.

Since coming home, I’ve been trying to get back to more challenging forms of entertainment. I’m treating my mind the way one would an upset stomach. I began with Jell-O, and then moved on to more substantial things. The other night, when I was at what I would call the “mashed potato” stage, I chose to watch Sir. A romantic comedy, but with a twist.

Sir is an Indian, Hindi-language movie made in 2018. I could tell from the packaging that it was about an Indian woman that goes to work for a wealthy, single man. But since the story is located in Mumbai and not LA, I knew it would be more problematic than the rich-man-poor-girl cliché with a predictable happy ending. I know India. And I know it is a very class-conscious culture. The poor girl-rich-guy story can’t work easily there.

And so, I watched it. And liked it very much. It had some of the elements you want from a rich-boy-poor-girl romantic comedy, but with a serious portrayal of the class consciousness of Indian society.

Critical Reception 

* “A Cinderella tale of sorts, the film nonetheless gains gravity for its insight into Indian social rigidities that tether both impoverished villagers and well-heeled urbanites.” (Maggie Lee, Variety)

* “This is a delicately observed and attractive drama with some great Mumbai cityscapes and an excellent performance from Shome.” (Peter Bradshaw, Guardian)

* “Sir is a delicate and powerful look at human connection.” (Alison Gillmor, Winnipeg Free Press)

You can watch the trailer here.

À Bout de Souffle (Breathless) 

Release date (US): February 7, 1961

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Starring Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo

Available on various streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime

K mentioned in passing that Jean-Luc Godard had died. The following night, I watched À Bout de Souffle (Breathless), Godard’s first feature-length film.

 Breathless is a movie that every film buff is required to see. Not just see, but see many times. That’s because it was a breakthrough for French cinema after WWII. It was a departure from the way French films had been made, and it ushered in a decade of distinctly different filmmaking that became known as the New Wave.

There are several significant innovations in Breathless. One of them is that Godard shot the movie in natural light on the streets of Paris (rather than in studios). Another is that he used hand-held cameras almost throughout the entire length of the movie. Another, the most famous, perhaps, is the introduction of “jump cuts” – an odd way of cutting a scene into static pieces that force the viewer to notice that “this is a film,” as opposed to making the cuts invisible to enhance the “continuity.”

Had I not known that this is considered to be a great, revolutionary film, written and directed by one of the immortals, I might have thought it was just a low-budget, poorly made movie. But with one redeeming quality: the acting.

The story line is thin. (Godard explained his version of it to François Truffaut, who wrote the screenplay, this way: “Roughly speaking, the subject will be the story of a boy who thinks of death and of a girl who doesn’t.”) The production is odd and disturbing. But the movie itself – the images of these two people – that stuck with me.

If you haven’t seen it, check it out and tell me if you agree.

You can watch the trailer here.