Viewer's Discretion: 'Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy,' 'Nice Coloured Girls,' and 'The Victim'
‘NIGHT CRIES: A RURAL TRAGEDY’ AND ‘NICE COLOURED GIRLS’ (OVIDTV) Australian artist Tracy Moffatt is best known for her photography that relates to her own…
Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Latest News from the Cosmos’ and ‘Black Work’
‘LATEST NEWS FROM THE COSMOS’ (OVIDTV) French poet Babouillec isn’t well known outside her home country — I don’t see that her works have ever been translated…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘The Biggest Little Farm’ and ‘Island’
‘THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM’ (AMAZON, APPLE, GOOGLE PLAY, VUDU, YOUTUBE) The most recent, as of this writing, in an apparently endless string of breakout documentaries,…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Herrens Veje’ and ‘First Reformed’
‘HERRENS VEJE’ (‘RIDE UPON THE STORM’) (NETFLIX) Series creator Adam Price previously gave the world the infectious and intelligent show “Borgen,” which portrayed the fictional…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Deutschland 83,’ ‘Deutschland 86,’ and ‘Skyggenes Dal’
‘DEUTSCHLAND 83,’ ‘DEUTSCHLAND 86’ (SUNDANCE) The final years of East Germany — or, more properly, the German Democratic Republic — have proven fertile ground for German television, partially, it…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘After Life’ and ‘Bathtubs Over Broadway’
‘AFTER LIFE’ (NETFLIX) Appreciating the work of Ricky Gervais has always hinged on your taste, and even then, some of his efforts over the years…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘The Devil and Daniel Johnston’
“THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON” (AMAZON, APPLE, IMDBTV, GOOGLE PLAY, VUDU, YOUTUBE) Given the death last week of Austin, Texas-based singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston at the…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Alena’ and ‘Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle’
‘ALENA’ (AMAZON, OVIDTV, SHUDDER) Things aren’t right in a private boarding school for girls, but when are they ever? In this Swedish film, a disadvantaged…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘A Very Secret Service’ and ‘Now He’s Out in Public’
‘A VERY SECRET SERVICE’ (NETFLIX) The words “spy comedy” evoke something very specific, but this French period comedy delivers something deliciously outside of those restrictions.…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Gentleman Jack’ and ‘Victor’s History’
‘Gentleman Jack’ (HBO) One of the reasons masculinity has done so well hanging on so long beyond any point of positive usability is that we…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Hail Satan?’
“ Hail Satan?” (Amazon, Apple, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play) Regardless of where you fall on the spiritual or political spectrum, it’s probable that you will…
Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Chernobyl’ and ‘Braguino’
CHERNOBYL’ (HBO) It might be surprising that a mini-series dramatizing a devastating nuclear power plant accident in the Soviet Union in 1986 has met success,…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Ministry of Evil’ and ‘The Nightmare’
‘MINISTRY OF EVIL: THE TWISTED CULT OF TONY ALAMO’ (SUNDANCE) We live in a golden age of documentaries about cults and one of the unavoidable…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Leila’ and ‘Sarah Plays a Werewolf’
‘LEILA’ (NETFLIX) This dystopian series from India has been compared to “The Handmaid’s Tale” and though on first glance that seems fair, a closer look…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘The Restaurant’ and ‘Elvis: Strung Out’
The Restaurant (Sundance) This new addition to the pantheon of dysfunctional Scandinavian family nightmares, “The Restaurant” (“Var tid ar nu, also known as “Our Time…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘The Act’ and ‘Granny’s Dancing on the Table’
‘THE ACT’ (HULU) Based on a 2015 homicide case in Missouri that saw a woman murdered by her daughter, reported as stricken with leukemia and…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Woman At War’ and ‘Black Lake’
‘WOMAN AT WAR’ (APPLE, GOOGLE PLAY, YOUTUBE) Talk about unexpected achievements, “Woman At War” manages the near-impossible by offering up a feel-good movie about climate…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘I Am Another You’ and ‘Rellik
‘I AM ANOTHER YOU’ (AMAZON, APPLE, GOOGLE PLAY, VUDU, YOUTUBE) In this haunting documentary, Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang heads down to Florida after moving to…
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Viewer’s Discretion: “Quicksand” and “Rillington Place”
‘QUICKSAND’ (NETFLIX) School mass shootings aren’t quite a daily occurrence here in the U.S., but it’s sadly gotten to a point where you could imagine…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Akta Manniskor’ and ‘A Harlot’s Progress’
‘Akta Manniskor (Real Humans)’ (Hulu) Mainly known as the inspiration for the series “Humans” rather than for any details of its own, Swedish writer Lars Lundstr…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘51 Birch Street’ and ‘Making A Murderer’
’51 BIRCH STREET’ (APPLE, SUNDANCE) Thank goodness for people who like to work out their problems in public, because they have single-handedly enlivened the dysfunctional…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Mole Man’
‘MOLE MAN’ (AMAZON, SUNDANCE) Focusing on autistic 66-year-old Ron Heist, “Mole Man” presents a manifestation of compulsive creativity on a grand scale seldom witnessed. Heist…
Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Bodyguard’ and ‘Nico 1988’
‘BODYGUARD’ (NETFLIX) If you want tense, exciting, hard-to-predict crime conspiracy stories that keep you on the edge of your seat, British television writer Jed Mercurio…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘At Eternity’s Gate’ and ‘Requiem’
‘AT ETERNITY’S GATE’ (AMAZON, APPLE, GOOGLE PLAY, VUDU, YOUTUBE) It seems obvious from the moment he appears on the screen that Willem Dafoe was meant…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere’ and ‘Trust Me’
‘LOVE & TERROR ON THE HOWLING PLAINS OF NOWHERE’ (AMAZON, APPLE, GOOGLE PLAY, SUNDANCE, VUDU, YOUTUBE) In the winter of 2006, a college professor in…
Viewer’s Discretion: ‘This is England ‘86’
THIS IS ENGLAND ’86 (AMAZON) Imagine living in a dystopian society. If you lived in England in the 1980s, and you weren’t of a…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Transferts’ and ‘Vox Lux’
TRANSFERTS (NETFLIX) There are two behaviors in science fiction that humans will never disappoint with. One is that if there is an advance in technology…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ’54 Hours’ and ‘The Weissensee Saga’
‘54 HOURS’ (SUNDANCE) This tense four-episode German series recounts the events of the Gladbeck Hostage Crisis, which unfolded in 1988 when two bank robbers fled…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Border’ and ‘Watership Down’
‘BORDER’ (AMAZON, APPLE, GOOGLE PLAY, VUDU, YOUTUBE) There’s something about “Border” that made me think of the current DNA craze, the impulse by people to…
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Viewer’s Discretion: ‘Abducted in Plain Sight’ and ‘The Cry’
‘ABDUCTED IN PLAIN SIGHT’ (NETFLIX) Much has been made of this true-crime documentary in regards to the victim and her parents, with the idea that…
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