What Are We Watching on TV in April?

What are you Watching on TV in April?

Jerry and Marge Go Large - What a fun film based on a true story about a couple who start playing the lottery to jump start the economy in their small town. Bryan Cranston, Rainn Wilson and Annette Bening star in this film. On DVD.

Via TCM. Travels with my Aunt (1972). 1 hr. 48 min. Director, George Cukor. Screenplay, Jay Presson Allen & Hugh Wheeler, from the novel by Graham Greene. I read the novel earlier this year & enjoyed it; the first half reminded me of an Ernst Lubitsch movie. Perhaps it made the same impression on Greene in the negative sense, who had Aunt Augusta, Henry, & Visconti in a weird menage in Mexico at the end of the novel to make it as un-Lubitschean as possible. Like Maggie Smith as Aunt A., the film has not aged well. The film makes explicit what the book only suggests: Augusta has held a torch for Visconti over the years, a pimp who seduced schoolgirls into his string of brothels & in his old age convinces the gullible woman to raise large sums through illicit means to pay a ransom to the hostage takers in his employ. Wordsworth (Louis Gossett Jr.), Aunt A.’s Sierra Leonean lover at the start of Henry’s journey, is also a pimp as well as a drug dealer, a younger version of Visconti. The surface of the film (and the theme of the book) is to show how the free spirited septuagenarian liberates the staid, dahlia-cultivating bank manager Henry (Alec McCowen) from his inhibited respectable English ways (Greene’s caricatured characterization was not subtle but funny) so that he is able to canoodle & smoke pot with a barely legal hippie (the recently deceased Cindy Williams as Tooley) on the Orient Express. A lot of cringe in this one. Prefer Auntie Mame.

Netflix. Kill Boksoon (2023) 2 hr. 17 min. Korean w/subtitles. Writer/director: Sung-hyun Byun. If John Wick was a single mom with a moody teenage daughter with lesbian inclinations. More blade action & martial arts than guns, & I suspect written to appeal to younger feminist cultural critics. Gil Boksoon (Jeon Do-yeon) is the top gun/blade of an assassination corporation MK ent., run by boss Cha Min Kyu (Sol Kyung-gu) & chaired by his sister Cha Min Hee (Esom); Boksoon’s troubled daughter is Gil Jae Yeong (Si Ah Kim) and she is also followed around by her assassination intern, Kim Yeong-ji (Lee Yeon). Some of the set pieces include a one on one with a yakuza in the opener, boss Cha’s single handed massacre of a crowd of Russians trapped by a blizzard in a bar (strong allusions to the Wick films), & the attack on Boksoon in a “neutral” bar by ambitious non-corporate assassins when Cha Min Hee puts a sub rosa price on her head. If you like the Wick flicks, you’ll probably like this one as well.

Watched a wonderful Irish movie on SBS TV 'The Quiet Girl' 2022, for me oh so special, wonderful casting and location. Tender and heart wrenching, especially the closing scene. Great reviews.

The Big Door Prize (Apple TV+; 4 episodes of 10 have been released; new episodes on Wednesday) is set in a small town where a mysterious machine suddenly appears in the general store. The "Morpho" machine promises to reveal your life potential for only $2 (plus your Social Security number and your fingerprints; the general lack of discomfort at those requests is perhaps the most fantastic thing in the show).

Each episode (so far, at least) focuses on one member of the community and their reaction to their Morpho card. History teacher Dusty (Chris O'Dowd) is the closest thing the show has to a protagonist, but everyone gets their moment to shine. The excellent cast includes Gabrielle Dennis as Dusty's wife; Crystal R. Fox, spectacular as her mother, the mayor; Damon Gupton as the local priest; and Ally Maki as the local bartender. There are also several teenage characters who feel far more real and complicated than the average TV teen.

The shifting perspectives give the show something of an anthology feel; there's room for a variety of styles and tones as we switch central characters in each episodes. I was reminded very much of the Machine of Death books, short story collections in which a similar machine tells people how they will die.

The fact that Morpho is identifying potential rather than destiny alters the way people react. If you're falling short of your potential, after all, that's on you in a way that not yet meeting your inevitable destiny isn't. And which is worse: being told that you have vast unmet potential, or being told that you've already reached your full potential?

Also on Apple TV+, and also releasing new episodes on Wednesdays, is season 2 of the musical parody Schmigadoon! Two episodes of six are currently available.

In season one, Melissa and Josh (Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key) found themselves magically transported to the wholesome mid-century small town Schmigadoon, where everyone is perpetually breaking into song, all of them in the style of classic 40s/50s musicals. They aren't allowed to leave until they resolve their relationship issues and find True Love.

Season two finds them in yet another magical land, but this time it's the dark urban landscape of Schmicago, and the musical inspirations come from the darker, more complex musicals of the late 1960s and 1970s.

Just about everyone in the tremendous supporting cast is back (Kristin Chenoweth! Alan Cumming! Jane Krakowski!), but playing dramatically different types from their first-season role. Ariana DeBose, for instance, has gone from small-town schoolmarm in S1 to playing a riff on the Emcee from Cabaret this time; and Aaron Tveitt, previously playing a Billy Bigelow analogue, is now a clean-cut hippie drawing simultaneously from Pippin, Godspell, and Hair. There's a barfly whose role seems limited to periodically bellowing "I'll drink to that!" a la Elaine Stritch, and Tituss Burgess joins the cast as the Narrator, doing variations on Ben Vereen. (Melissa explains to Josh: "A lot of musicals in this era had narrators. You know, instead of a story.")

I don't think that Cinco Paul's song parodies are quite at the level they were in the first season, but they're still very good, and the Broadway references and in-jokes are densely packed. I think the show is funny enough to be enjoyed even if you don't catch all of those references, and I'm finding the whole thing delightful.

Via Showtime, but use any means -- library, rental, or purchase, to view this. Can’t believe I missed this until now. Amazing Grace (2018) 1 hr. 29 min. Great viewing for the Easter holidays. A documentary of Aretha Franklin & her Atlantic studio band doing a live gospel recording over 2 nights at the New Bethel Baptist Church, Watts, Los Angeles, 1972, backed up by the Southern California Community Choir directed by Alexander Hamilton, with the Rev. James Cleveland hosting & doing much of the piano accompaniment (Franklin also accompanies herself on the piano when she isn’t singing directly from the pulpit). The recording was one of, if not the, most successful gospel albums of all time, but the original director (Sydney Pollack) botched the synchronization of film & audio, so the film was never released with the album. It took nearly 50 years to resolve the technical difficulties & release this glorious film. Aretha Franklin’s singing is one of the joys of my life, and there are times in this film when her voice seems to have a direct line to eternity. Will try to watch it again tomorrow. Do try to catch this one at some point!

Noticed that HBOMax is cycling off a big library of movies at the end of April (maybe part of the cost-cutting result of the merger with Discovery+?), among them Christopher Nolan's Tenet. Hadn't seen it for some time & much enjoyed the re-watch; the film could be described as a James Bond blockbuster about the act/art of re-watching. Elizabeth Debicki (so good in Widows) in there to tug the motherhood heartstrings; some Hollywood nepotism with Protagonist John David Washington (son of Denzel), but he gets the job done. Robert Pattinson has a major role, & Kenneth Branagh in the somewhat hammy role as the supervillain Sator. Crazy stuff.

Where The Crawdads Sing 2022
A young girl is left to fend for herself after her family leaves her. She is later accused of murdering a former boy friend. I enjoyed this film and I really thought that Daisy Edgar-Jones did a great job portraying the main character.

Ghosts and Animal Control, I recommend both

Loved a rewatch of Moonstruck 1987, wonderful casting, just loved Cher.

Via Prime Video. Devil’s Island (2021) Anyone else catch this? Oddest movie I’ve seen. Young woman inherits a cottage (fully furnished) & island from her grandparents. Opening scene suggests either they came to a bad end or their bodies were in an advanced state of decay due to isolation. Anyways, the woman clearly enjoys the Robinson Crusoe life in a beautiful setting, so the place has been deodorized by the time she moves in.

From the NY State tourist website: “The 1000 Islands (pronounced “Thousand Islands,” not “One Thousand Islands”) is a sightseer’s paradise and a popular destination for those looking for an authentic outdoor vacation. Located along the peaceful border between northern New York State (USA) and southeastern Ontario (Canada), the 1000 Islands is a region of endless shorelines, rich history and unique culture. ... To be considered an island, it has to stay above water 365 days a year and support a living tree."

However, the film implies the habitants don’t particularly go for newcomers. We learn, by the way, that Samantha (Elaine Alexander) is from “Vegas,” and that her father was estranged from her grandparents & took his daughter out west to get away from the insular lifestyle. But Samantha’s memories of visiting her grandparents at age nine were pleasant & after moving in she appears in a number of solo scenes living her best life; she has a fascinating collection of vintage tee-shirts, & likes to dance a la Elaine Bennis to songs I suspect were written by friends of the producers. (The songs might have something to do with the story line but I wasn’t in the mood to parse them.) Living on an island means one has to use a motorboat to go food shopping, though. On an excursion she encounters a motorboat repairman who doesn’t seem to be in the usual standoffish mode, though he seems to be a bit taken aback by her vegetarian preferences (“rabbit food”). But later he saves her bacon, as it were, when she runs out of gas for her motorboat engine – turns out someone has siphoned the gas out of her tank. In addition a secret admirer has been leaving her presents (a box of worms, a dead rabbit –hmmm). Also Samantha finds a wolf-head charm in the cottage. The motorboat guy promises to explain what’s going on but gets stabbed by someone wearing a wolf mask. Samantha finds the abandoned boat of the dude who picked her up when she arrived, with a semiautomatic pistol on board, which she wisely keeps. Sheriff explains that the dude is OK (in a sense) & didn’t realize his boat had drifted off. But the dude then turns up in the middle of the night with a hammer (to reclaim his firearm?) but Samantha puts a number of rounds in him. Sheriff explains that Michael (Kristjan Sokoli) –any chance last name was Myers?—had a Samantha shrine in one of his rooms. Given the creepy experience, he wonders if Samantha might want to return to Vegas. She asks the Sheriff whether he has ever visited Vegas. Sheriff: no, I like it here. Samantha: me too. End title frame. Short epilogue with Samantha emerging from her cottage on a bright morning, with a shotgun, blood, presumably not hers, in her hair & on her arms. Don't mess with vegetarians, mate. Roll credits. Despite the lengthy song credits, credits still shorter than the outraged comments on IMdB & Amazon. That the movie is 1 hr. 11 min. suggests that a reel or two got lost or damaged; the loose ends might be at the bottom of the St. Lawrence with maybe some of the missing bodies. Shoestring budget ran out?

Started a pair of new streaming series last night. Not entirely sold on either after the first episode, but there's enough to keep me watching a little longer.

The Diplomat (Netflix; all eight episodes have been released) is the more conventional of the two. Keri Russell is a career diplomat who is usually sent to the world's crisis spots, and is therefore surprised to be appointed as ambassador to the UK, normally a calm and cushy job given to wealthy donors. Rufus Sewell is her husband, also a former ambassador to various places; he's smug and vain, but somehow seems to be well regarded in the international diplomatic community. The US president (Michael McKean) has a deeper agenda in appointing her, which everyone except her seems to be aware of. The show's created by a veteran TV writer whose credits include The West Wing, Homeland, and Grey's Anatomy. Not clear yet whether it's going to land closer to Borgen or Scandal on the soap-opera-meets-politics scale.

Mrs. Davis (Peacock; four of eight episodes released, with the rest coming weekly on Thursdays) is unafraid to take massive swings; even the most basic description of the plot setup is a bit "WTF?!?" The titular Mrs. Davis is an app/algorithm that the world turns to for advice and guidance; Mrs. Davis has ended global war, poverty, famine, and unemployment, and is almost universally beloved. Our protagonist is Sister Simone (Betty Gilpin), a nun who refuses to speak to Mrs. Davis and believes Her (it's capitalized in the show's subtitles) to be evil and untrustworthy. But whatever Mrs. Davis wants, Mrs. Davis gets, and by the end of the first episode, She has maneuvered Simone into going on a quest for Her: Find the Holy Grail. And I haven't even mentioned the motorcycle gang that appears to be working against Mrs. Davis, Margo Martindale as the Mother Superior, or the shipwrecked Dr. Schrodinger (yes, he has a cat) whose connection to everything has yet to be revealed. The show spends every moment on a tightrope from which it is likely to fall at any second, but it's never boring.