The Antenna: The Horror of Turkish Propaganda

Regardless of genre or cultural biases, creeping black slime is always a bad thing. The same is also always true of all-encompassing state propaganda. A dingy Turkish high-rise apartment complex will have to contend with both. Rather logically, they are most likely related in Orcun Behram’s analog dystopian horror film, The Antenna, which releases virtually this Friday.

This is an auspicious day according to Cihan, the bullying building manager, because the installation of the oppressive government’s new communications system will allow residents to receive propaganda bulletins whenever the government wishes. However, the downtrodden look of his nightwatchman-handyman Mehmet is much closer to expressing reality. Most people would consider it a bad sign when the state engineer installing the antenna plunges to his death, but the demoralized and desensitized residents just shrug.

Cihan is suspiciously keen for all residents to listen to the inaugural midnight broadcast, but Mehmet is not particularly curious, especially since he has been so busy with repairs related to the black sludge oozing into the pipes and electrical system. Even though it doesn’t make sense, it seems like it is emanating from the regime’s new ballyhooed antenna.

Behram’s film has the astringent aesthetics of an art film and the gooey grossness of an alien horror movie. Obviously, the film is a not-so veiled allegorical critique of Erdogan’s increasingly Islamist authoritarian rule. However, Behram still takes care of the genre business. There are some truly disgusting scenes in Antenna, but they make an important point, besides grossing the heck out of everyone. The vibe is a lot like The Eyes of My Mother or The Lighthouse, but the stakes are higher, since all the micro-creepiness is most likely a by-product of the dystopian macro-conspiracy.

Music + Film Brazil ’20: Gilberto Gil Anthology Vol. 1

He was there on the Bahia Tropicalia scene with Caetano Veloso, Maria Bethania, and Gal Costa. Gilberto Gil would also join Veloso first in prison and then in exile. Fortunately, it didn’t last forever. Gil even became the Brazilian Minister of Culture, even though he was underwhelmed by what he felt was a paltry salary (by his standards). Now a revered Brazilian musical figure, Gil looks back on his early recordings in Lula Buarque de Hollanda’s Gilberto Gil Anthology Vol. 1, which screens as part of Cinema Tropical’s online 2020 edition of Music + Film: Brazil.

The only commentary we hear during Anthology (the first of three projected volumes, intended to culminate around Gil’s 80^th birthday) is that from Gil himself. His reminiscences are intimate and relaxed. At times, he addresses politics, especially “Lingua do Pe,” the song he wrote in hipster “Pig Latin” as a means of circumventing the military’ censorship (to keep things simple, they banned the entire tune), but he never leans in too deeply. Frankly, the biggest news for real deal Brazilian music fans is the revelation Gil wrote “If I want to Talk to God” for Roberto Carlos, but he declined to perform it. (For those who do not know the Brazilian crooner, this would sort of be like Wayne Newton turning down a song from Prince.)

Music + Film Brazil ’20: Where are You, João Gilberto?

The late João Gilberto was like the J.D. Salinger of Bossa Nova. He was one of the founders of the musical movement and recorded its biggest hit album, the multiple-Grammy-winning Getz/Gilberto, but he had not been seen in public for years. Even his manager and closest family had intermittent contact and only over the phone. Marc Fischer, a German musician, was so fascinated with Gilberto and his music, he wrote a book about his fruitless quest to meet his idol. Georges Gachot, an established documentarian of Brazilian music, retraces Fischer’s steps in Where are You, João Gilberto?, which screens as part of Cinema Tropical’s online 2020 edition of Music + Film: Brazil.

According to legend, Gilberto used to woodshed in his tiny bathroom while he still lived in Minas Gerais, because he thought the acoustics were optimal (both Fischer and Gadot made their pilgrimages there). He recorded some of Bossa Nova’s biggest hits, with Tom Jobim, Stan Getz, and his first wife, Astrud Gilberto. However, as his fame increased, he became increasingly demanding regarding recording and concert conditions, like a Bossa Glenn Gould. Then he disappeared from view. Even his daughter Bebel Gilberto and her mother Miucha (the second wife Gilberto was relatively amicably separated from) only received sporadic calls from the iconic musician.

In a way, that only increased Gilberto’s allure for Fischer. Yet, shortly before the publication of his book, Fischer apparently took his own life. Using Fischer’s book as a road map, Gachot tries to make some sort of connection with Gilberto, for his own fannish satisfaction and as a sort of tribute to Fischer, making the resulting film even more poignant (especially since Gilberto was still alive during its production and initial festival screenings). In fact, Gachot’s journey becomes something like the music writer’s analog to Searching for Sugarman.

Of course, there is plenty of wonderful music to hear along the way, including archival recordings of Gilberto (and maybe, just maybe something more), as well as laidback performances from Miucha, João Donato (Gilberto’s friend and collaborator), Roberto Menschal (friend and colleague), and Marcos Valle (who didn’t really know Gilberto, but was influenced by him and had a memorable conversation with the elusive “O Mito”).

Tar: It Came from La Brea

The La Brea tar pits are like ultimate primordial burial ground and the city of Los Angeles was basically developed right over them (and you know what happens to people who build over ancient remains in horror films). From time to time, the pits have appeared in movies, typically of the disaster variety. In this one, the evicted tenants of a down-market office building will not be lucky enough to have a conventional natural disaster to contend with. Instead, they must fight off something monstrous that has survived below in Aaron Wolf’s Tar, which opens this Friday in drive-ins and a few of those places where they project movies.

Things were strained between Zach Greenwood and his father Barry, even before their scummy landlord Sebastien Stirling terminated their decades-old lease with one day’s notice, forcing them to vacate, clean, and repaint by 6:00 am, or face $100K in penalties. Suddenly, they are scrambling to save the family repair business, as is the neighbor, accountant Diana Dunder of DD Accounting (if you don’t get the joke now, you’ll know it when you see it).

Of course, Greenwood’s slacker pal Ben is too busy not helping Dunder to do anything for him and his dad. At least their palm-reading assistant Marigold is an efficient packer. However, when the power is suddenly cut, it really sets them back—and then the mysterious “Tar Man” creature attacks.

Initially, Wolf creates a terrific group dynamic for the hodge-podge office mates and effectively establishes the tar-thing’s back-story through the legends told by “Carl,” the homeless La Brea story-teller. However, he relies a little too heavily on Greenwood family flashbacks and lets the attitude dissipate somewhat during the second half, as the monster-stalking-his-prey business overshadows the characters’ snarky arguments and horny double-entendre. In fact, viewers will probably be surprised how upset they get when supporting characters start to meet their genre-mandated fate.

Indeed, Tar has an unusually strong ensemble for a tongue-in-cheek monster movie half-spoof. Tiffany Shepis, Nicole Alexandra Shipley, and Dani Fernandez all earn big laughs as Marigold, Dunder, and her assistant, Carmenia. Stuart Stone oozes slime as Stirling, while Max Perlich projects flinty grit and wiry strength as Greenwood’s flashback grandpa. Similarly, Timothy Bottoms personifies world-weary regret as Barry Greenwood.

Wives of the Skies (short)

It is a cardinal law of publishing that ghost-writers should never call attention to themselves. Yet, the true author of the 1967 smash bestseller Coffee, Tea or Me? did just that when he took credit for it in his memoir. Yes, it turns out the sexy flight attendants’ tell-all really was an airline guerilla marketing campaign. Exploitation masters like Roger Corman and Al Adamson rode the resulting wave with the air-bound sex comedies. There is still a weird fetishistic interest in 1960s stewardesses (as they were then called) that inspired and gets lampooned in Honey Lauren’s short film, Wives of the Skies, which releases Tuesday on VOD.

Clearly, bottom-feeding British journalist Derrick Wooder has ogled stewardesses in airports and consumed media like “Trudy Baker & Rachel Jones’” Coffee, Tea or Me. Having completed an assignment in America (circa 1965), he hatches a plan to shoot a brief documentary about the women who work as “wives of the skies.” As luck would have it, two women staying in his hotel look like they would be perfect subjects: Fran Baxter and Marcy Carter, who both work for Fine Air. Baxter and Carter have a way of acting simultaneously innocent and saucy that quite stimulates his imagination. However, his mind will be completely blown when he arrives at their room for his first interview session.

Although Lauren obviously set out to subvert the male-gaze-blah-blah-blah, she does so in a way that is refreshingly gentle and endearing. Rather than setting up Wooder as an object of contempt and scorn, she makes us rather like the fellow. Ironically, he turns out to be the most naïve character of the film. In fact, she gives us unlikely but genuine feel-good resolution to her naughty tale.

The Price of Fear: Theater of Blood

Among his many talents, Vincent Price was quite renowned as a chef. He must have enjoyed the chance to employ his culinary skills in this film. Admittedly, it is for a macabre meal inspired by Titus Andronicus, but it is still cooking. Reportedly, this was one of Price’s favorite films and also a favorite of his co-star, the late, great Diana Rigg. Fittingly, Douglas Hickox’s Theater of Blood is one of five films coming to Shudder as part of their “Price of Fear” collection.

The late Edward Lionheart was a classically trained traditionalist, but he was also terribly corny, at least according to the dismissive London drama critics. They panned his performances and then humiliated him when he inexplicably got the idea in his head that he was due to win their annual award. That would make him the logical suspect when someone starts murdering members of the drama circle in grisly ways inspired by Shakespeare’s bloodiest scenes, except Lionheart is dead—or rather presumed dead.

For a while, plodding Inspector Boot focuses on Lionheart’s loyal daughter Edwina, but she has no intention of cooperating and no sympathy for the fools who belittled her father. Despite their police protection, Lionheart and his accomplices, a gang of homeless crazies and a creepy hippy, keep cutting through the critics. It rather alarms Peregrine Devlin, the arrogant chair of the critics’ association, who was the first to suspect Lionheart.

Theater is a wonderfully macabre but erudite film that offered Price a chance to perform some of the greatest Shakespearean speeches, while still giving people what they wanted from a Vincent Price movie. It is easy to see why the film was adapted for the legit London stage in 2005, with Rigg’s daughter Rachael Stirling taking on her role as Lionheart’s daughter. It certainly worked out for Price too, since he met his third wife Coral Browne while she was playing one of the ill-fated critics.

In fact, Price and Rigg were right. Theater is a very distinctive horror film that combines the baroqueness of The Abominable Dr. Phibes with the tragic heft of Shakespeare and the grittiness of Death Line (a.k.a. Raw Meat). Lionheart’s Shakespearean death traps are wonderfully theatrical, but Price’s performance is often surprisingly poignant, especially his ostensive suicide scene, involving Hamlet’s soliloquy. He and Rigg are terrific together. Frankly, fans had never seen Rigg as she appeared in Theater—you sort of need to see it to understand why.

Utopia, from Gillian Flynn & Amazon

So many people are asked “where is Utopia” in this series. At least one of them should have said Utopia doesn’t exist. It is a false temptation that inevitably leads to totalitarianism. Seriously, “Erewhon” is nowhere spelled backwards (almost). However, in this case, Utopia is a thing and maybe something more. It is the sequel to an underground graphic novel titled Dystopia that many geeky conspiracy theorists believe holds portents of an impending apocalypse. Unfortunately, these motley nerds are more right than wrong in the eight-episode Utopia, created by Gillian “Gone Girl” Flynn (adapting Dennis Kelly’s UK series of the same name), which premieres today on Amazon Prime.

A young couple finds what looks like page proofs of a bizarrely baroque allegorical dystopian comic book. Through a little bit of internet research, they determine it is the mysterious, long-awaited sequel to Dystopia, a cult phenomenon with a rabid fanbase—so it is probably worth something. They decide to auction it off at a local comic convention. Wilson Wilson and his fellow Utopia chatroom friends will have to be there, so they can bid, pooling their resources. It will also be there first opportunity to meet in real life.

The last part will be the part for the fellow fans. There is definitely a budding romantically attraction between the sweet-tempered (but ailing) Becky and the nebbish Ian. Wilson is also duly impressed to discover Samantha’s obsessive interpretations of Dystopia rival his own in their wild paranoia. However, they have yet to discover their fifth member, Grant is actually a tough street kid.

Unfortunately, the get-together takes a dark turn when a creepy duo of killers starts snuffing out everyone at the convention who had contact with the pages of Utopia. Suddenly, the fans are on the run from a shadowy cabal, very much like the one in the pages of Dystopia/Utopia. Things really get surreal when they are forced to make an alliance with an unstable but highly lethal young woman who claims to be Jessica Hyde, the hero of the fateful comics, who has her own reasons for wanting Utopia.

Meanwhile, Bill Gates-like Big Pharma tycoon Dr. Kevin Christie is bedeviled by media speculation his new synthetic meat has caused a deadly viral outbreak among school children. Mild-mannered academic Dr. Michael Stearns suspects it might be the rare bat virus he discovered in Peru. What do these characters have in common? Surely, it is all explained in the pages of Utopia.

So, who’s in the mood for an apocalyptic viral thriller? Obviously, there are plenty parallels between the crisis facing the world in Utopia and the real-life pandemic that is still persistently hanging around. However, the real point of the show is its geeky meta-ness. The in-film reality blends and overlaps with the comic duology’s mythology in ways that are often quite clever. Flynn relentlessly raises the stakes with each episode, which she invariably ends with a wicked cliffhanger.

It is easy to get hooked by Utopia, even though you might not always enjoy watching it. This series and its characters have some serious mean streaks. Frankly, there is more stone-cold cruelty depicted in Utopia than nine out of ten randomly selected slasher horror movies. The violence can be overwhelming and counter-productive. Early in the series, a major character does something so egregious, it is hard to sympathize with them later, even though we are clearly intended to.

OVID.tv: Akerman’s From the East

It was Chantal Akerman’s “End of Communism” Rock & Roll-All-You-Can-Drink-Late-Night-Road-Trip-Party. Actually, it is an experimental non-narrative 16mm docu-essay, but the precipitating event is the same. Inspired to document the Communist East while it still existed (or at least before the old way of life changed for average citizens), Akerman essentially filmed whatever caught her eye during her journey through East Germany, Poland, and Russia. There are no talking heads to provide context. Instead, Akerman takes us to the cold, damp streets behind the former Iron Curtain in From the East (D’Est), which premieres tomorrow on OVID.tv.

Although D’Est was originally conceived as a stand-alone film, Akerman later incorporated it into a special installation. Frankly, that might be the best forum for it. It is rather hypnotic to watch her restless camera scan the weary faces of the innumerable by-standers queueing around street corners and packed into train stations, staring out blankly at the audience. It would probably be even more so as part of an immersive destination exhibit. However, casual viewers should be forgiven if they lose patience with it at home.

Regardless, D’Est is very much a time capsule that transports us to a very specific place, at a very specific time. Of course, much has changed in Germany and Poland since Akerman shot her footage in 1992. Russia—maybe not so much. The babushkas are different (presumably), but the crumbling edifices are the same (if not worse).

Frankly, if you took a similar journey east today, you would suddenly find yourself in the West when you hit the Baltic Republics, where they uphold democratic values and observe their NATO commitments. Poland has made great strides, but recently they have taken a bit of a detour through populism—it happens to the best of countries. However, Russia is practically back to where it started, passively standing in line, waiting for change, but acquiescing to the status quo, out of fear things could get worse.

LX 2048: A Dystopian Future We Already Sort-of Recognize

It is a work-from-home future, for those who still work. Productivity has nose-dived, because most people are heavily medicated (on Lithium x) and largely live in a virtual entertainment network called “the Realm.” Adam Bird is literally last person who still physically commutes to his brick-and-mortar office. That adds unexpectedly eerie echoes to director-screenwriter-editor Guy Moshe’s LX 2048, which releases on-demand tomorrow.

Bird does things the hard way, much to the constant frustration of his estranged wife Reena. He is one of the few people who still does business during daylight hours, despite the heavy hazmat suits required by the sun’s heightened radiation. He is dying and so is his soon to be obsolete gaming company. As a result, he is quite concerned for his family’s future.

Thanks to their insurance, Bird will be replaced by a clone once his heart finally gives out. However, he is more than a little concerned his replacement will find himself unemployed. Of course, he is not too thrilled about by the prospect of a clone taking his place. Increasingly desperate, Bird tracks down Donald Stein a brilliant but disgraced inventor. He might be able to help, but not in the way Bird originally anticipated.

Moshe’s screenplay swings wildly back and forth from fascinating and inspired examinations of the nature of humanity to some rather awkwardly over-melodramatic family angst. It is like the best parts of The Matrix mixed with the worst parts of Kramer vs. Kramer. However, when Delroy Lindo enters the picture as Stein, all bets are off. He gives the film a blast of hip, snarky energy, while also expressing many of the film’s philosophical insights.

Presumably, Moshe conceived of LX 2048 long before Covid-19 was a glimmer in some Wuhan bat’s eye (or whatever), but it is impossible not to see parallels when Bird drives through empty freeways to reach his lonely office. Such scenes are eerily executed and they gain in resonance, since they are suddenly so much more believable. However, some of the drama involving Bird and his wife feels over-blown. Frankly, it seems hard to believe the scrupulously off-line Bird could get so caught up in a relationship with an online avatar.

Tehran: Apple TV’s Israeli Pick-Up

For an Israeli Mossad agent, Tehran is one of the most dangerous assignments to expect. Given the Iranian regime’s insanity and deep-seated anti-Semitic hatred, it is also one of the most likely, especially for a recruit of Persian descent. Such is the case for Tamar Rabinyan, whose parents immigrated to Israel so she could grow-up with a future. Now she is back in her homeland and running for her life in the eight-episode Tehran, created by Moshe Zonder, Dana Eden & Maor Kohn, which premieres this Friday on Apple TV.

The first phase of the operation went pretty smoothly. The Jordanian airliner bound for India was forced to land in Tehran for emergency repairs. During the layover, Rabinyan was able to trade places with an Iranian who was desperate to leave the country and had an identity that would be helpful to her mission. However, an Israeli couple who booked last minute tickets unexpectedly complicated the mission. While understandably freaking out, she recognized Rabinyan from their military service and Iranian counter-intelligence officer Faraz Kamali noticed her noticing.

Assuming Jila Gorbanifar’s identity, Rabinyan gains entry to Tehran’s power station, where she intends to tap to the air defense system, through a back-door. However, her hacking excursion quickly goes sideways. Soon, Rabinyan is in the wind, with her identity burned. Going off the gird and way underground, Rabinyan contacts Milad, a.k.a. “Sick-Boy,” a dissident Iranian hacker, whom she had established a flirtatious relationship over the dark web. To accomplish her objective, she needs Milad’s help, but she will be constantly conflicted regarding how much she can trust him and how much information she should withhold.

Tehran vividly captures a sense of how scary the city could be for a fugitive outsider. It feels a lot like the Vienna of The Third Man, but with the creepy trappings of an Islamist theocracy layered on top. Even though it is Israeli-produced, Tehran is definitely le Carré-esque in the way it depicts both sides ruthless realpolitik machinations. Still, the intrigue and duplicity are fun to follow.

In fact, Shaun Toub is one of the most attention-grabbing cast-members as the shrewdly intelligent Kamali. Even though he faithfully serves an oppressive regime, he is definitely an improvising cowboy-type. Likewise, Navid Negahban (who was the husband in The Stoning of Soraya M) is terrific as Masoud Tabrizi, an Iranian working as a Mossad sleeper agent. He is also a loving family man and an Iranian patriot, who believes his work with the Israelis is the best way he can also serve his country, which probably makes him the series’ most compelling character.

Menashe Noy and Liraz Charhi also bring a lot of grit and nuance to Tehran as Meir Gorev, the Mossad operations commander and Yael Kadosh, Rabinyan’s handler (also Persian). The relative weakness of Niv Sultan and Shervin Alenabi (arguably the leads, playing Rabinyan and Milad) might sound like a significant undermining flaw, but everyone else is so compulsively watchable, we can sit through their hackers-with-sexual-tension melodrama, waiting for the show to switch back to the good espionage stuff.

OVID.tv: Silent Shakespeare

There was a time when playing the piano and reading Shakespeare were a typical evening’s entertainment for average families. A special night out might involve watching a traveling Shakespeare performer. It really wouldn’t have mattered if the earliest Shakespearean films were silent, because most of the audience would be familiar with the stories and a good deal of them would know the dialogue. These days, a lot of viewers don’t just need a soundtrack—they could also use Cliff Notes. At least most film lovers can appreciate the spectacle and inventiveness of the early Shakespeare films the BFI has assembled into an hour-long That’s Entertainment-style program, Silent Shakespeare (a.k.a. Play On!: Shakespeare in Silent Film), which premieres today on OVID.tv.

It seems weird the very first Shakespeare film was King John from 1899. Yet, even though it is not a contemporary favorite, it was one of the Bard’s biggest hits in his lifetime. “Gilding the Lily” sort of comes from it, via a lumped together paraphrase. Originally, it ran four minutes and consisted of four scenes, which was certainly economical filmmaking, but only the King’s death scene survives. Of course, it is grainy, but also rather spooky looking.

In addition, curator Bryony Davis scoured the BFI vaults for probably a dozen or so distinctive-looking Shakespeare silent films that editor Becci Jones stitched together for dramatic effect. Several are still quite striking looking. In fact, the Othello from 1922 looks stylistically and aesthetically similar to Orson Welles’ 1951 Othello. The visual trickery 1908’s The Tempest and 1909’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream are still amusingly mischievous. There is even the star-power of Sir John Gielgud appearing as the young Montague in the surreal one-minute Living Paintings (Romeo and Juliet).

Yet, the most intriguing clips hands-down come from Svend Gade & Heinz Schall’s Hamlet of 1920 (a.k.a. Hamlet: The Drama of Vengeance). Following in the tradition of Sarah Bernhardt, this Hamlet is played by Danish thesp Asta Nielsen as a woman secretly passing for a man, which really was a very Shakespearean twist.

Jay Sebring … Cutting to the Truth

Jay Sebring didn’t just cut men’s hair—he styled it. He should sit next to his friend and admirer Vidal Sassoon in the public consciousness, but instead, he is best known today as one of the people who was murdered with Sharon Tate at the Cielo Drive house. First, he was killed by the Manson cult and then the media assassinated his character. After years of resenting the way pop culture marginalized his uncle, Anthony DiMaria tells his story and sets the record straight in Jay Sebring . . . Cutting to the Truth, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

Whatever preconceptions you might have regarding hairdressers, Sebring was probably something quite different. His imdb credits include Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Bullitt, and The Great Escape, the latter two starring his close friend Steve McQueen, who gave the eulogy at Sebring’s funeral. When he was murdered, Sebring had made his name with a saloon and product line that were poised to take off like Sassoon’s. Yet, he was probably even more established with Hollywood studios and record labels as an image maker.

The divorced Sebring had also been romantically involved with Sharon Tate before her marriage to Polanski. In fact, they had remained close friends and were evidently on the verge of something more, as DiMaria reveals late in the doc, making Cutting to the Truth a newsworthy event.

DiMaria re-establishes his uncle’s identity apart from the Cielo Drive atrocity, chronicling his rebellious youth and Navy service, as well as his rise to prominence in Hollywood. Yes, maybe Sebring enjoyed the party scene, but he still worked hard. He was truly a trailblazer, establishing himself as a name-brand men’s stylist. That is why the specious trash supposedly reputably media outlets like Time and Life Magazine spewed over Sebring after his murder were so painful to DiMaria and his family. Telling, nobody put their names to the hit pieces describing Sebring as a violent, racist pervert—and nobody at Time Warner responded to DiMaria’s inquiries. Everyone who knew Sebring calls such descriptions ridiculous (including Quincy Jones, on-camera), but the mud lingered on his name.

Beyond the sadistic Manson family, two cowardly villains emerge in Cutting to the Truth. One is Vincent Bugliosi, the former Manson prosecutor, who recycled the lurid rumors regarding Sebring in his bestseller, Helter Skelter. Today, Bugliosi loves lecture public figures on ethics, but he declined DiMaria’s interview requests, clearly lacking the courage and character to defend his characterization of Sebring. The other is Polanski, who also declined DiMaria’s interview requests, but is heard happily trashing Sebring under police questioning. Shame on them both.

Back to School: The Loyalist (short)

As more countries belatedly adopt Magnitsky-style sanctions, the question will start to arise regarding how the families of serial human rights abusers should be treated. They might technically be innocent of their parents’ crimes, but they still stood to benefit from their corruption. In most cases, they knew well enough. However, it is not clear just how well a North Korean music student studying in Switzerland understands her father and the regime he serves. He has come to test her loyalty and perhaps vice versa in Minji Kang’s short film, The Loyalist, which is available on Omeleto, as a potential supplement to that curriculum on North Korea you’re whipping up for your kids (like the NY Board of Ed would do it for you).

For years, Gen. Roh’s daughter Shilla has studied at a Swiss boarding school, where her angelic voice has garnered praise and encouragement. Frankly, it might be too angelic, since she has often been featured as a soloist in chorale performances of “Ave Maria.” Being nestled away in Freiburg has protected her from the insanity of her homeland, but it has also raised suspicions. The doctrinaire officer has come to verify she hasn’t shaken off her brainwashing and started to question the Kim dynastic regime and its Communist ideology. Rather awkwardly, she plans to ask permission to follow her musical dreams, no matter where that might take her. Obviously, something or someone will have to give here.

You might want to watch Loyalist before you program it for your teens and pre-teens, because there is a brief but shocking incident of violence. If you are not trying to shelter them from such imagery (rather excessively in our view), the film raises a host of important themes for discussion, first and foremost being the nature of totalitarian regimes. It helps personalize the dehumanizing demands made by collective ideologies for individual sacrifice, through the eyes of a teenaged character most kids should identify with.

Back to School: I Was There—Kate Adie on Tiananmen Square

BBC reporter Kate Adie filed eye-witness reports of the Tiananmen Square Massacre directly from the scene, but she won’t be returning anytime soon, because the CCP has banned her from re-entering the country. You would be correct to take that as a testimonial to the accuracy and integrity of her reports. Decades later Adie remains justifiably proud of her reporting. Now retired from the Beeb, Adie returned to the network to look back at the fateful events of 1989, adding personal and historical context in I Was There: Kate Adie on Tiananmen Square, directed and edited by Andy Webb, which would be a suitable video supplement to your pandemic-home-schooling lesson plans.

Hope was in the air during the year of 1989, unless you were a hardline Communist apparatchik. Gorbachev’s Glasnost reforms had spun out of his control. Ordinary citizens of Eastern Europe were demanding (and taking) greater freedoms. The same seemed poised to happen in China, but Deng and the CCP were more determined to maintain their hold on power and much less concerned with world opinion. Tragically, this became much more obvious in retrospect.

For a step-by-step chronicle of the demonstrations and subsequent brutal crackdown on Tiananmen Square, the definitive Tiananmen: The People vs. the Party is probably your best option. However, I Was There provides a good hour-long overview (the perfect length if you need to play a video for while you take a meeting). Adie also adds the perspective of a journalist who had to work around CCP censorship. Frankly, the mass killings at Tiananmen Square might be considered the stuff of rumor had Adie’s colleague not been able to successfully smuggle her footage out of China (they made five copies, four of which were intercepted at customs).

In fact, I Was There is better than most Tiananmen Square documentaries at covering the wider scope of the pro-democracy protests outside Beijing. Shortly after the massacre, Adie traveled to Xian in Shaanxi Province, where she found lingering physical signs similar protests had met a similarly violent fate, but people were only willing to talk about it in whispers, off camera.

Mambo Man: Scuffling in Cuba

Most films you should want to watch closely, because that is the whole point of the medium. However, sometimes there are films you can enjoy listening to, but you might prefer to give only cursory attention to the events on the screen. This is definitely a “listening movie,” thanks to the wonderful Afro-Cuban soundtrack. The story that goes with it is pretty thin, but you can’t have everything, especially in Cuba. An impresario-farmer-get-rich-quick-schemer probably should just stick to music in Mo Fini & Edesio Alejandro’s Mambo Man, which releases virtually today.

JC (not a very Communist name, is it?) is the beloved godfather of the East Cuban music scene, even though we never see him pick up an instrument. Regardless, he is just wrapping up an album with music producer Mo Fini, playing himself. Thanks to unseasonable weather, he is sweating out his crops, but he still finds time to host shows for European music tourists on his farm. Then one fateful day, his childhood friend Roberto returns from Ecuador, offering JC a golden opportunity. The matriarch of a family he knows needs to sell a fabulous collection of jewelry to pay for her transit to Miami, the promised land—at the low, low price of $50K.

Sadly, because Cuba is a closed, oppressive pariah state, JC has never seen George C. Scott in The Flim-Flam Man or any other scam artist movie that would have warned him any deal too good to be true is precisely that. We can see it coming from way down the Malecon, but screenwriters Fini and Paul Morris stretch out their simplistic cautionary morality tale until the seams practically snap.

No Escape (from Russia’s Sickos)

Modern Russia has only two significant economic sectors: fossil fuels (currently in the dumper) and gangterism. Still, that is two more than they had under Communism. Regardless, an extreme adventure Vlogger should have been a little more suspicious when he was invited to try his luck in a hardcore escape room being produced in a former KGB dungeon. Anything for clicks and likes will not be such a wise policy in director-screenwriter Will Wernick’s No Escape, which releases tomorrow on VOD (like pretty much everything does these days).

Cole Turner is celebrating ten years of shallow internet fame, so his friends arrange for a special trip to romantic and luxurious Moscow. It is all being coordinated by Alexei, who is presumably the privileged scion of a fabulously wealthy oligarch. His obnoxious sidekick Dash vouches for the Russian fuerdai, even though he hardly knows him. After some sight-seeing and a little alone time with his ever-patient girlfriend Erin, Turner’s adventure will culminate in an unusually intense escape room experience, set in an abandoned secret Communist prison. What could go wrong? Oh right, probably everything.

Basically, No Escape starts out as an Escape Room-style thriller and evolves into a Hostel movie. A good deal of this film involves Turner being chased by large, shirtless Russian men wearing S&M masks and leather aprons. Well, when in Moscow.

No Escape is essentially what you expect it to be, but Wernick’s execution is slicker, tenser, and generally better than it needed to be. Just about everyone who knows their way around horror and genre thrillers will be able to guess the big twist, but Wernick puts a little extra English on it that is rather effective.

Departure: Archie Panjabi Wants the Truth

Even before Malaysian Airlines 370, we’ve been fascinated by disappearing airliners. The original Twilight Zone went to this well several times in episodes like “The Arrival,” featuring the mysterious landing of a completely empty plane and “The Odyssey of Flight 33,” involving the mother of all jet-streams. Widowed British Travel Safety investigator Kendra Malley has a Malaysian Air situation on her hands, as well as a hacktivist step-son to corral in the six-part limited series Departure, which premieres today on Peacock.

Flight 716 left New York on-route to London, but disappeared after passing Gander. Initially, all signs point to pilot sabotage-suicide, very definitely including what series writer-creator Vince Shiao initially chooses to show us from that fateful flight. However, Malley suspects there is more to the story. This will be her first investigation since her husband’s suicide by auto-wreck, but her boss Howard Lawson needs the best. He would also prefer to wrap things up quickly and neatly, especially for the major British aviation company sweating out the investigation. Fortunately, Dominic Hayes, the team’s law enforcement liaison (formerly of Scotland Yard) is on her side when it comes to dotting “i’s” and crossing “t’s.”

The UK government would definitely prefer a finding of pilot error. Malley’s obnoxious stepson AJ and his netizen echo chamber immediately suspect Russian aeronautical oligarch Pavel Bartok, who happens to have some contentious history with Malley. Yet, she refuses to eliminate technical causes until she can explain everything that happened, step by step. Of course, the discovery of a sole survivor would greatly help getting at the truth, while also raising a battery of new suspicions.

Departure feels slick but conventionally network, so Peacock is probably the right place for it. Nevertheless, Schiao and series director T.J. Scott maintain a brisk pace a drop enough twists to keep most viewers hooked. Yet, what really works is the chemistry that develops between Archie Panjabi and Kris Holden-Ried as Malley and Hayes, respectively. They keep it strictly business through the initial six episodes of Departure, but there are hints their relationship could develop in subsequent seasons. Regardless, they are certainly a photogenic duo of on-screen investigators.

The Devil All the Time, on Netflix

You can still find Southern Gothic in Southern Ohio. Remember, it borders Kentucky and West Virginia. Indeed, the proximity of Knockemstiff, OH to Coal Creek, WV is clearly established in the early minutes of this decade-spanning thriller. Culture follows geography, but human nature is rotten wherever you find it in Antonio Campos’s adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock’s novel, The Devil All the Time, which premieres today on Netflix.

Willard Russell returned from his WWII service in the Pacific with his faith profoundly shaken. Yet, when he marries kind-hearted Charlotte, he starts to pray again, until tragedy befalls the family. It will be a lot for their young son Arvin to bear on his shoulders, but he trudges on, doing his best to look out for his grandmother and his “half-sister” Lenora Laferty. In this case, “half-sister” is more of an honorary title. Technically, she is the daughter of a family friend and her faith-healer husband, who has lived with the Russells since her parents came to a bad end.

Bringing people to bad ends is the specialty Carl and Sandy Henderson, husband-and-wife serial killers, who specifically target young, male hitchhikers. Sandy also happened to briefly work with Charlotte Russell in the diner, where they both met their future husbands. In the small world of Knockemstiff and Coal Creek, Sandy Henderson also happens to be the sister of Lee Bodecker, the corrupt local sheriff. Whenever someone crosses paths with people like them, bad things surely happen.

If you get past the initial wartime crucifixion and a faith-healing train wreck, the character of Rev. Preston Teagardin, a sexually predatory Elmer Gantry-figure, might lead you to conclude the film is reflexively hostile to Christianity, but that really would not be fair. If you see the film through, it ultimately feels like a dark but profoundly moral thriller, very much in the tradition of Night of the Hunter. One thing is certain—both God and the Devil will try men’s souls dearly as the narrative unfolds.

Unfold it does, with the help of both Pollocks’ words (faithfully adapted by Antonio & Paulo Campos) and his voice, providing the ironic narration. It is actually one of the rare instances when voiceovers really bring something to a picture.

Alone (But Not Alone Enough)

Suddenly, we are witnessing a barrage of single-women-abducted-by-serial-killer-payback movies. Kneejerk critics celebrate them for striking against the “patriarchy,” as if such a thing existed. Instead, they really prove women traveling late at night in sketchy areas really ought to have concealed-carry permits. Psycho-stalkers are definitely not fans of the 2^nd Amendment. Unfortunately, Jessica is completely unprepared for her abductor, but she is more resourceful than he (or even she) expects in John Hyams’ Alone, which releases in drive-ins and on VOD this Friday.

Still reeling from her husband’s unexpected suicide, Jessica has decided to relocate away from her painful memories and intrusive mother. It is just her and a U-Haul being tailed by a black SUV. At one point, the man introduces himself, but she still gets Spider-sense bad vibes of him. Her instincts are vindicated when he runs her off the road and knocks her unconscious. However, unlike his previous victims, Jessica manages to escape from his cabin cellar, out into the Pacific Northwest woods. Once again, it is hunter versus prey, with the unnamed man holding most of the advantages, but the odds are still better for Jessica than they were in his dungeon.

For some reason, numerous genre filmmakers have suddenly had the urge to put their own spin on I Spit on Your Grave. Weirdly, Alone is a remake of Mattias Olsson & Henrik JP Akesson’s Swedish thriller Gone, adapted and Americanized by Olsson, so the film really has little claim to originality. Regardless, even though Gone had very little U.S. festival play, the word on the street is Olsson fixed a lot of credibility issues in his original.

Shudder: Spiral

Aaron has no intuition. Malik has no common sense. That would make them the perfect victims for an insidious small-town cult. However, the film suggests they are really being targeted because of their “otherness” as a gay couple. Maybe so, but they certainly make it easy for the shadowy evil doers in Kurtis David Harder’s Spiral, which premieres exclusively on Shudder this Thursday.

Malik still gets flashbacks of his high school lover getting bashed to death before his eyes—and so do we as the audience. The traumatic event has profoundly shaped his persona and worldview. He even still takes medication for the lingering PTSD. Aaron was once married to a woman, with whom he had his snarky daughter Kayla. The three have just moved into a large house that looks comfortable, but gives off bad vibes. Yet, for some reason, only Malik picks up on them.

He also keeps quiet when someone breaks into the house to spray a slur across their living room wall, quickly painting over it before Aaron or Kayla can see it (to “protect” them, or something). However, when the unwelcoming old man across the street has a late-night freak-out in their lawn, Malik starts to suspect the neighborhood really is out to get them. Nevertheless, Aaron insists everything is fine, except maybe Malik’s paranoia. Of course, Kayla is no help in any of this, because she is a teenager.

Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman really is terrific. He holds viewers’ attention in a vice-like grip with his intense performance as Malik. Unfortunately, the character is so klutzy and self-defeating (dropping things at inopportune times and the like), it undercuts Bowyer-Chapman’s good work. On the other hand, it is hard to buy into the blinkered, slow-on-the-up-take Aaron. Thesp Ari Cohen gamely tries to bluff his way through, but the character’s reactions only make sense from a screenwriters’ perspective, helping to advance the narrative.

The Secrets We Keep

They were the Holocaust victims who have always been overlooked. It is easy to understand why a Roma survivor would keep silent regarding her tragic past, after building a new life in post-war America. However, the horror of it all comes back when she suddenly hears the voice of the German officer who killed her sister. She sets out to take justice into her own hands, much to her husband’s shock in an unfolding morality play that could be described as an Americanized Death and the Maiden. Above all else, she wants to hear the truth from his lips in Yuval Adler’s The Secrets We Keep, which releases today in some actual theaters.

Maja met her physician husband Lewis Reed in an Allied medical hospital in Greece, but before that, she had escaped from a Romanian concentration camp. Rather cruelly, the horrific incident that still haunts her happened in between. While seeking refuge with the Allies, they were intercepted by a rogue German unit, who did what you might imagine, before killing her sister. Fifteen years later, Reed recognizes the voice of their commanding officer in their sleepy Americana factory town.

He now calls himself Thomas Steinmann and claims to be Swiss, but the creepy tune he still whistles convinces Maja he is the man from her nightmarish past. Rather resourcefully, she kidnaps him and secures him in her basement, with the intention of extracting a confession. Naturally, it is a lot for Dr. Reed to process, especially since this is the first he has heard of his wife’s internment (or her Roma heritage in general). Yet, he is also deeply suspicious of Steinmann (or whoever he might be), so at least he is more sympathetic than Sigourney Weaver’s husband in Maiden.

In point of fact, Secrets is maybe not perfect, but it is still considerably superior to Maiden (which was helmed Roman Polansky, a convicted sex offender and written by a member of the “Duke 88” lynch mob). One of the major reasons is the Reeds’ compelling marriage dynamic. The ways Dr. Reed struggles with the unimaginable situation are highly credible and acutely human. Noomi Rapace does some of her best work since Stockholm as Maja Reed and Chris Messina does the best work we’ve ever seen from him as Dr. Reed. They have several extended scenes together during the third act that really make the film worth seeing.

One Lane Bridge, on Sundance Now

It is sort of like Queenstown’s answer to Nanjing’s Yangtze River Bridge, an infamous spot for suicides, but it is far less urban. It is also a frequent site for accidents and at least one murder. That case will be a trial-by-fire for a go-getting young Maori detective recently transferred from the big city. The case will uncover small town secrets and his own latent second-site abilities in creators Pip Hall & Philip Smith’s One Lane Bridge, which premieres this Thursday on Sundance Now.

Ariki “Ricky” Davis took the transfer to advance his career and to train amid the wide-open natural splendor of Middle Earth, New Zealand. At first, he thinks he will get along just fine with his superior, senior DS Stephen Tremaine, until he starts questioning the local veteran’s handling of their investigation into a prominent farmer’s death. Everyone remembers Grub Ryder as the young teen with enormous potential, but his grown-up years had not been kind. With the 100-year-old Ryder family farm on the brink of bankruptcy, Tremaine is eager to chalk up his death to suicide. However, Davis has good reasons for his doubts.

The Maori detective had not experienced “Matakite” visions since his childhood, but he is suddenly flooded with them after stepping foot on One Lane Bridge, where Ryder presumably plunged to his death. From time to time, he sees Ryder and other apparitions of those who died on the rocks below. For some reason, he is also seeing Tremaine’s wheelchair-bound wife Lois in his waking dreams. As gossip starts to spread, motives surface that force Tremaine to re-open the investigation. Unfortunately, Davis’s increasingly twitchy and erratic behavior might just undermine his career, before he closes his first real case in Queenstown.

OLB looks terrific thanks to the sweeping natural backdrops and stylishly mounted supernatural Matakite sequences. It also boasts a considerable number of highly complex characters. However, the pace is a bit slow at times. Frankly, the six-episode narrative probably could have been boiled down to four installments and been stronger for it.

Back to School: Sweden—Lessons for America

Which is more famous, Ingmar Bergman or Ikea? Whichever the case, they are both Swedish and their history undermines the faulty image many Americans have of Sweden as a socialist paradise. It isn’t socialist. It has a free and open capitalist economy that it balances with a welfare state. If you really want to make America more like Sweden, we can start by abolishing the minimum wage, because Sweden has none, nada, zippo. Swedish economist John Norberg gives Americans a cogent survey of Swedish economic history in Sweden: Lessons for America?, directed by James & Maureen Castle Tusty (who helmed the wonderful Singing Revolution), which is available on Prime and YouTube for your lesson planning consideration.

How could U.S. politicians who garnered disturbingly high vote totals have such an inaccurate impression of Sweden (and Scandinavia in general)? Basically, their information is at least twenty-five years out of date. Norberg gives more exact dates and figures, but essentially Sweden grew at an explosive rate from 1850 to 1960, due to free trade and low regulation, but its economy stagnated from 1960 to 1995, while it experimented with overt socialism. However, aggressive emergency deregulation measures were passed in the mid-1990s that led to a robust economic rebound.

At this point, somebody out there probably wants to make an objection based on Sweden’s renowned “socialized medicine.” Yes, the government pays for universal healthcare, but it mostly provided by the private sector, while a growing segment of the Swedish population is opting for private insurance instead, to avoid long waiting lists. Indeed, most of Sweden’s social service are provided by the private sector, including education. Unlike America, where your school is determined by your zip code, Sweden has a full voucher system. As a result, fifty percent of Swedish high schools are now private.

Back to School: Tell the World

How do you explain to your kids a family decision to boycott Disney’s Mulan? You could show them Frontline: China Undercover or this horrifying report from Australian ABC’s Four Corners. According to both sources, Beijing’s network of work camps and detention centers throughout Xinjiang (or East Turkestan) represents the largest systemic incarceration of a religious group since the Holocaust. Shockingly, it has now been revealed Mulan director Nikki Caro filmed extensively throughout the oppressed region. If you want to understand the extent and severity of Beijing’s campaign against Muslim Turkic minorities, watch Tell the World, directed and hosted by Sophie McNeill, which is available on Prime.

Tell the World is logically somewhat more Australian-centric than the Frontline report, because the country is home to a relatively large exiled Uyghur community and several Australian universities have collaborated on facial recognition software that racially profiles and tracks Turkic minorities (viewers are advised to watch Red Flags for more on that story). Sadly, nearly every ethnic Uyghur family is a broken home, because nearly every one of them has a family member who has disappeared or is being held incommunicado in a prison camp.

For all practical purposes, every Uyghur is a prisoner, in one way or another. According to MacNeill: “A UN panel says ‘the region resembles a massive internment camp.’” Beyond those who are confined in outright concentration camps (euphemistically called “re-education camps”), there are those working as involuntary laborers in factories and work camps. The children of these prisoners are consigned to orphanages, where they are brainwashed to reject their cultural and religious heritage. That is cultural genocide, plain and simple.

McNeill talks to several Uyghur Australians, whose stories are utterly devastating. However, the program is not simply anecdotal in nature. She also talks to researchers like Adrian Zenz, who has uncovered the vast scale of the oppression in Xinjiang by sleuthing through publicly available CCP government documents. He has found construction bids incorporating watchtowers, surveillance cameras, barbed wire, and containment walls. He also discovered purchases orders for bulk shipments of cattle prods. In addition, McNeill’s experts use satellite photography to document the systematic destruction of mosques.

This is some excellent reporting. Based on Tell the World and Red Flags, it seems safe to say Four Corners puts American network news magazines to shame. It is hard to image Caro and her cast and crew didn’t observe all the barbed wire around their shooting locations. The absence of mosques in a traditionally Muslim region should have also aroused their suspicions. However, there is no way they could have missed the apartheid-like system that forces Turkic minorities to endure regular sidewalk checkpoints, while Han Chinese are allowed freedom of movement.

History’s 9/11: The Final Minutes of Flight 93

It is a sad by-product of Xi’s virus coverup (and our own governments’ blundering responses) that 9/11 memorials have been curtailed or cancelled this year because of social distancing concerns. As a result, the annual ceremony at Ground Zero will be shorter, with fewer in attendance. While it has become an important way for families to reconnect and support each other, it also helped remind us of what happened. People are forgetting, in some cases willfully. Fortunately, History will premiere two in-depth chronicles of those fateful events tomorrow night, including 9/11: The Final Minutes of Flight 93 (which was the one available for press viewing).

The events of Flight 93 are relatively well established in the public consciousness, thanks to the Paul Greengrass Hollywood movie and excellent documentaries, like The Rugby Player, profiling Mark Bingham, one of the leaders of the passenger revolt. With the passage of time and further development of forensic audio technology, this History production can pinpoint who did what when with even greater accuracy.

Of course, the ultimate implications remain the same. It is still chilling to hear the audio recordings of air traffic control struggling with a horrific situation. Wisely though, it is family members who provide the primary voices, particularly those of Bingham’s mother, Alice Hoagland and Thomas Burnett’s wife, Deanna. They bring tremendous grace and dignity to the television report.

Frankly, a lot of the program’s emphasis on new material really isn’t that compelling, like when a voice expert analyzes voice-graphs of the terrorists in the cockpit. It is good that the evidence is still being closely examined, but most viewers will probably agree their time is better spent when the program lets family members tell us about the passengers and crew.

Van der Valk: The Reboot

It can’t be that hard to catch petty street criminals in Amsterdam, since they usually try to escape pedaling away on bikes. It is the murderers hiding in plain sight who are trickier. Police Commissaris Piet van der Valk tangles with three sneaky killers entwined in the worlds of politics, religion, and fashion. His blunt personality is not inclined to be diplomatic, but he has a knack for getting at the truth in the freshly rebooted Van der Valk (still based on Nicholas Freeling’s mystery novels), which premieres this Sunday on PBS.

This time around, there is no Barry Foster or the iconic “Eye Level” opening theme. However, English is conveniently spoken throughout all quarters of Amsterdam, because they apparently collectively realized Dutch is a silly language. Van der Valk is already brooding hard, but he is trying to start dating again, thanks to the prodding of the loyal Inspector Lucienne Hassell. They would be perfect for each other, if their orientations were compatible.

At one point in “Love in Amsterdam,” van der Valk describes his political stance as the belief all politicians should be shot. Events of the first feature-length episode will largely bear him out. Two mysterious thugs, presumed to be connected to the ruling Trumpish party set out to abduct a leftwing minority activist, but they are forced to scoop up two witnesses in the process, whose bodies quickly turn up at dumping sites.

Initially, the “Love” mystery feels like a not-so thinly veiled attack on Geert Wilders and his supporters. However, the vanished activist’s supposedly principled candidate does not exactly conduct himself in a manner van der Valk would describe as forthcoming. Indeed, quite the contrary. Arguably, it is hard to say which extreme looks worse when the Crime Brigade finishes turning over rocks. Whether it was deliberate or not, series writer Chris Murray neatly turns viewers’ expectations in on them. Stephanie Leonidas is also terrific as Eva Meisner, the witness van der Valk rather unprofessionally starts to get involved with.

Similarly surprises pleasantly lie in store for viewers during “Only in Amsterdam,” in which a sexually repressed nun becomes a person-of-interest in the murder of her lesbian lover. The investigation takes van der Valk and his team through a New Agey humanist drug clinic and exposes the intolerance of the victim’s strict Muslim father. Along the way, a fair number of potential suspects call attention to themselves, so the conclusion is not immediately obvious, rather refreshingly. In this case, guest stars Juliet Aubrey and Taj Atwal do a lot to keep viewers off balance as Sister Joan and the victim’s sister.

Van der Valk’s third case, “Death in Amsterdam,” comes at an awkward time for the detective, right when he and his superior officer, Chief Commissaris Julia Dahlman are working under-the radar to keep a corrupt senior copper behind bars. He is also a it out of his depth when it comes to haute couture. However, his naïve junior team member Job Cloovers, a favorite of Dahlman’s, is deeply steeped in fashion news and gossip. Basically, everyone in the industry is petulant and self-centered, so there are a fair number of potential suspects. They also make millennial vloggers and fashionistas look like shallow, slimy jerks.

As van der Valk, Marc Warren’s piercing eyes are really close to the wrong side of creepy. However, he has a talent for delivering caustic dead-pan one-liners. In fact, his ironic attempt at a motivational speech in “Love” constitutes some classic TV. He has some decent buddy chemistry with Maimie McCoy’s Hassell, (but her character is not nearly as fully developed). If nothing else, Warren certainly looks Dutch.