Uncoupled

 

Netflix's latest rom-com, Uncoupled, which was created by Sex and the City's Darren Star and Modern Family's Jeffrey Richman, is not well-served by its elevator-pitch summation -- forty-something gay man in New York finds himself newly single when his longtime companion moves out unexpectedly. While that premise promises some great cringe comedy, the show's quieter moments are where the gold is.

The series stars Neil Patrick Harris, who is approaching 50 and has been acting for 34 years, and Tisha Campbell, who might be best known as Gina on Martin Lawrence's Martin, as partners and besties in a Manhattan real estate brokerage waging battle over palatial condos with terraces and pied-a-terres with views of the park.

Harris's Michael discovers his companion, Colin, played by Tuc Watkins, has moved out of their apartment without explanation on Colin's 50th birthday, just before an elaborate surprise party concocted by Michael.

As the series progresses it becomes apparent to everyone except Michael why Colin left. And it is the slow realization of his own myopic toxicity, that is the show's true revelation -- not how dating has changed in the 17 years Michael has been out of circulation. While that aspect of the series contains most of its humor -- and it can be howlingly funny -- the show's true wisdom is in Michael's discomfiture at being so egregiously lacking in personal awareness.

Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers

 

Reflecting on Kendrick Lamar's recent recording, Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers, put me in mind of George Clinton's work with Funkadelic more than 50 years ago, particularly the group's second album Free Your Mind ... (And Your Ass Will Follow). Lamar's outstanding work descends from Clinton's less disciplined but equally groundbreaking albums of the 70s and 80s.

Both Mr. Morale ... and Free Your Mind ... push musical and cultural boundaries and draw beads on repressive social conventions, including religionism. For example, Lamar takes on sanctimonious transphobia passionately in "Auntie Diaries." The title song from Free Your Mind ... includes the line "freedom is being free of the need to be free. The kingdom of heaven is within."

On its face, the lyric sounds like meaningless double-talk, but I think it actually gets to the "crux of the biscuit," to quote another musical iconoclast, Frank Zappa.

No matter the concern -- physical or spiritual illness -- the goal is to be free of the need for healing. Freedom is having no need of fixing, in other words.

What's especially interesting about this is oftentimes, rather than creating freedom, this pursuit enslaves the person to the remedy -- whether its veganism or Christianity. Freedom exists only as long as the adherrent doesn't stray, which, to my mind, is the opposite of freedom.

What goes along with this is the need to free others from the scourge of their physical or spiritual unwellness. I would argue that this extends to causes like environmentalism, DEI, animal rescue, to name three worthy causes. This seems compassionate, on its face, but I think can drift into areas of control and manipulation with the zealot using shame to get others to live right.

Being inspired by the need for positive societal change is noble but it must be balanced with respect for the individual's right to remain shackled to their habits and insecurities.

Bodies Bodies Bodies

 

Dutch director Halina Reijn's English-language debut, Bodies Bodies Bodies, is not a run-of-the-mill teen slasher feature with all of the predictability the genre delivers. In fact, this viewer found the picture astonishingly fresh.

The septet of bodies referred to in the title is a crew of wealthy scions and a few of their lesser plus-ones (Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Rachel Sennott, Chase Sui Wonders, Pete Davidson, Myha'la Herrold and Lee Pace) who have gathered at one of their remote palatial homes for no apparent reason, as a hurricane bears down on them. Immediately, we're exposed to this group's sharp edges, which only get sharper and bigger as the day progresses.

Yes, the group eventually ends up playing a murder game that, yes, gets real real quick, BUT, nothing, absolutely nothing is as it appears. Amazing sleight of hand at work here.

Screenwriter Sarah DeLappe crafted from a story by Kristen Roupenian an enormously witty narrative in which the most deadly instrument is resentment. Every performance is pitched perfectly, even as passive-aggressives turn aggressive-aggressive, the body count rises and the list of suspects gets reduced to two ... or maybe three.

Day Shift

 

Stuntman J.J. Perry's directorial debut, Day Shift, is a martial-arts / vampire slayer / buddy comedy / family crisis mashup that will be a payday for star Jamie Foxx, who does that vulgar / irritable / lovable thing he does, and his co-stars Dave Franco and Snoop Dogg, doing their respective frantic beta-male and dapper stoner things. The results are bankable but not that memorable.

The picture is set in an alternate universe LA where vampires have descended in hives and are led by chief bloodsucker Audrey (Karla Souza) in taking over valuable real estate (yes, the parallels to immigrant invasion are pretty blatant). We follow the exploits of Foxx's Bud Jablonski, a hair-trigger slayer and fang harvester on the outs with his wife (Megan Good) but doing the dad thing for his daughter (cutie Zion Broadnax).

He's been kicked out of the slayers union for not following protocol but is given a last chance to redeem himself with an assist from Snoop's Big John, on condition he takes Franco's bean counter Seth along on his hunts to make sure he follows the code. Aside from the vampire angle, the set up is pretty familiar as are the close-quarters battles and gun play (think John Wick meets the undead).

Yes, it feels like a franchise pitch and might work with Foxx's considerable cache and the chemistry between the principal players. There is certainly worse fare in the streaming universe.

Brimstone

 

I don't think it's a coincidence that Amazon Prime is streaming Dutch writer / director Martin Koolhoven's film from 2016 Brimstone.

In it Guy Pearce plays a seemingly invincible pietist preacher in 19th century South Dakota. The preacher menaces and tortures his wife (Carice Van Houten) before she commits suicide in front of the congregation, scourges and rapes his daughter (Emilia Jones), stalks her across miles of wilderness for years and ends up being immolated by the same adult daughter (Dakota Fanning) before she commits suicide by drowning. (All of this is told in four chapters in more or less reverse chronology until the final fateful confrontation.)

I'm leaving out a number of relevant plot points but their inclusion would be as sadistically excessive as this film, which clocks in at 2.5 hours.

Still, the movie is not just about men treating women badly, although it's mainly about that. It is also about how religion is used to empower and to neuter, to elevate and to terrorize.

In one scene, early in the film, Fanning's Liz, a midwife, attempts to deliver a baby but there are complications and to save the life of the mother she excises the fetus using forceps. The woman's husband blames Liz's sinfulness for the failed delivery and demands that she be punished.

It doesn't come to that -- then -- but the scene establishes a shocking, bewildering tone and, chillingly, reflects today's reality, where the divine is used to shore up men's vanity while undermining women's worth.

Brimstone is a punishing, difficult watch that I had to stretch across several days to keep from feeling overwhelmed.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

 

Dean Fleischer-Camp's utterly beguiling Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is disarming in the intricacy of its craftsmanship and the sweetness of its message about existential matters liked connectedness and hopefulness.

Fleischer-Camp plays a filmmaker who takes up residence where Marcel lives with his grandmother and where is born the idea for, first, YouTube shorts about Marcel that become internet phenomena and eventually an interview with 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl. A host of life lessons -- self-reliance, individuation, loss -- are learned along the way. See

The animated creatures and the beautiful scaled-down, jerry-rigged world they inhabit will undoubtedy fascinate children, and the words Marcel (voiced by co-creator Jenny Slate) exchanges with Fleischer-Camp, who plays himself, and Marcel's Nana Connie (voiced by Isabella Rossellini) are infused with brilliant humor and poetry.

Adults will be touched by Marcel's unvarnished innocence and wonder as he and Dean try to find the other members of his family, who were whisked away one day and never seen again.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On delivers the tenderest, and most needed, of messages -- though we are individuals as Marcel affirms in the first minutes of the film -- we are also community and need one another.

Bullet Train

 

Stuntman-turned-director David Leitch's Bullet Train is as bloody and sardonic as 2018's Deadpool 2, which he directed, and 2014's John Wick, which he co-directed, albeit without credit.

His latest film stars Brad Pitt, for whom Leitch has doubled on occasion, as an assassin undergoing a crisis of conscience while he fulfills a contract to intercept a valise carrying God-knows-what to the world's most lethal gang leader, a mysterious Russian called The White Death.

The case is on a high-speed train from Tokyo to Kyoto. A half-dozen other hired killers -- played by Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Andrew Koji, Bad Bunny and Zazie Beetz -- are on board for purposes that become clearer as the train rockets toward its destination, making brief stops along the way.

That the interception does not go smoothly is a given. But how Leitch and writer Zak Olkewicz, Bullet Train being only his second feature film, manage to move the story and chaos forward without repeating elements or motifs will no doubt delight cinephiles who know a thing or two about actioners and Japanese manga.

Everything about this entertaining picture races -- the exposition, the sight gags, the fights. Brilliantly, Leitch manages to keep a screen crowded with outsized personalities from appearing cluttered or messy, despite the bucketfuls of blood running down the walls.

The Monsters are Due on Maple Street (1960)

 

To my mind, Rod Serling's Red Scare classic from 1960, The Monsters are Due on Maple Street, is one of the original Twilight Zone's most potent political allegories.

A quiet neighborhood turns cannibalistic, metaphorically speaking, when the power to everything goes out on the block, the eponymous Maple Street. A creepy, squinty-eyed kid borrows a storyline from a comic book and plants the seed that aliens have invaded and are posing as a family among them.

Everybody laughts it off until that "odd ball" Les Goodman's jalopy starts on its own -- the first crack in the sanity dam. Before the day is done, blood will have been spilt and the neighbors will end up running chaotically from pillar to post in search of the aliens.

As the episode ends, the viewer is taken to a nearby hillside where actual aliens are shown discussing their strategy for taking over the Earth. Put earthlings in the dark, control their access to power and information and watch them destroy themselves. Brilliant, really.

At that time, the aliens were the enemies of civil democracy, manipulating the fearful and the gullible. The applications to modern social and political life remain rich and varied, which makes this episode such entertaining viewing even 60 years after it first aired.

Best line? Les to the madding crowd: You fools. You scared, frightened rabbits, you. You're sick people, do you know that? You're sick people - all of you! And you don't even know what you're starting because let me tell you...let me tell you - this thing you're starting - that should frighten you. As God is my witness...you're letting something begin here that's a nightmare!