Van der Oest’s The Bay of Silence

An artistic, jet-setting childhood sounds like fun, but it messed up art-photographer Rosalind Pallisher pretty deeply. Unfortunately, Will Walsh did not realize that until after the birth of their infant son. Tragedy will stretch their marriage to the breaking point in Paula van der Oest’s The Bay of Sillence, which releases on VOD this Friday.

It was a whirlwind romance that culminates in the titular Italian body of water. Both are happy when pregnancy quickly follows, but a freak accident precipitates a premature delivery and a persistent case of postpartum depression. Milton Hunter, her gallerist and former step-father, assures Walsh everything is fine until Pallisher suddenly disappears with their infant son and her twin daughters from a previous relationship.

Sadly, when Walsh finally tracks down Pallisher, he finds their son is dead. She is the obvious suspect, but he also harbors suspicions regarding the missing nanny. He also learns his wife had a history of depression and schizophrenia from her mother, who suddenly reappears back in her life.

Presumably, Lisa St. Aubin de Teran’s source novel derives Du Maurier-esque suspense from the family angst and melodrama, but it just doesn’t translate to the screen here. Screenwriter Caroline Goodall and van der Oest spend a full thirty minutes on exposition and set-up, building towards the death of an infant, which they then keeping rubbing in the audience’s nose. Seriously, there is no finesse when it comes to that awkward plot turn.

In fact, Bay holds very few surprises as a thriller, because the supposedly mystery villain practically looks directly into the camera and tells the audience not to trust him. Frankly, there is so much telegraphing in this movie, it should be sponsored by Western Union.

Max Reload and the Nether Blasters

The so-called “Harbinger” has ambitions to subjugate the human race, because that is what super-villains do, but he is also a bit of a game-player, like Death in The Seventh Seal. His latest game of choice is the video game. He is using a notoriously unreleased cartridge game that a hardcore nerd like Max “Reload” Jenkins cannot resist. When his play-through goes viral, so does the virus to end all viruses in Scott Condit & Jeremy Tremp’s Max Reload and the Nether Blasters, which releases today on VOD.

Jenkins is a talented coder and gamer, but he drives his best friends Liz and Reggie crazy, because he can never play like a reliable team-member. Obviously, he is due for a lesson and the Harbinger will provide the impetus. Reload Jenkins is crazy about the ultra-retro Nether Dungeon franchise, so when a mysterious old man drops off a copy of the fabled unreleased sequel, he jumps at the chance to play it. It turns out there is a true Doomsday virus embedded in the code, which his hacker nemesis inconveniently spams out to the world. Those infected by it turn into glowing eyed zombies.

Fortunately, there is someone who understands what is going on. Eugene Wylder, the original creator of the Nether Dungeon game. Of course, he and Reload bicker like cats-and-dogs, because they are so alike. They might mess up the one chance to save the world, by beating the Harbinger at his own game.

Nether Blasters cleverly channels the spirit of 1980s video game movies like The Last Starfighter and WarGames, while bringing the game-play technology up-to-the-minute. For gamers, there is a good mix of old school and contemporary gaming, whereas science fiction fans will dig the 1980s nostalgia. The latter is reinforced by surprisingly endearing performance of Martin Kove (the Cobra Kai sensei in The Karate Kid), as Jenkins’ guardian grandpa.

There is also some 1990s nostalgia in the form of Kevin Smith playing the three friends’ boss at the videogame store, but that isn’t as much fun (yet, its still some of his most endurable work in years). For further geek cred, Wil Wheaton narrates an in-film documentary on the history of the Nether Dungeon game.

Ted Lasso Finally Coaches True Football

Pigskin football evolved out of rugby and association football (a.k.a. soccer) way back when, so a gridiron coach like Lasso out to have soccer deep down in his genes—way, way down there. Regardless, he is a good coach who has a knack for reading his players. At least that is what the former NCAA Division II champion figured when he accepted an offer to coach a professional English football team. However, people are counting on him to fail in co-creators Bill Lawrence & Jason Sudeikis’ Ted Lasso, which premieres this Friday on Apple TV.

Lasso went viral with his goofy white-guy dance moves after his team won the Division II championship, but he is completely inexperienced when it comes to association football. His aw-shucks Kansan persona is completely out-of-place in the English Premiere league, but that is why new AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Welton hired him. She just acquired control of the team as part of a messy tabloid-fodder divorce from her notoriously philandering husband. To get back at him, she wants to sabotage his beloved team. Enter Lasso.

Of course, the first weeks will be rocky. Yet, Lasso has a few not-so-secret weapons. The first is the loyal Assistant Coach Beard, who is a quick study when it comes to any sport. The other is his genuineness. He truly cares about his players, which even skeptics like cynical sports reporter Trent Crimm will begrudgingly admit. The trick will be winning over bitter past-his-prime team captain Roy Kent and Richmond’s prima donna striker, while Welton secretly schemes to undermine him.

Based on the first three episodes out of embargo, Ted Lasso is a pleasant enough sitcom-style comedy, but real football fans hoping for a lot smart, inside Premiere League satire might be disappointed. Lasso, who was originally created for a series of NBC sports promos before getting the Apple TV call-up, is more of a vehicle for gentle fish-out-of-water comedy than a thinly veiled expose like Armando Bo’s wickedly droll El Presidente.

Still, there are usually one two big laughs in each of the first three episodes, with regular chuckles peppered in between. By sitcom standards, that’s not bad, but it isn’t the stuff of big event, subscription selling streaming TV.

Hard Night Falling, with Dolph Lundgren

Mystery-thriller fans like to think of Interpol as an agency of globe-trotting super-cops, but they have really just been bureaucrats serving as an international clearing house informing member countries of known criminals. Frustratingly, the organization has been corrupted in recent years by China and Russia, who have abused Interpol’s subpoena system to harass dissidents and human rights activists. Honestly, the nation of Spain should be ashamed of itself for arresting Bill Browder at Putin’s behest. Still, it is much more fun to think Interpol as an elite group of crime-fighters. That is definitely the sort of fictional Interpol agent Dolph Lundgren plays in Giorgio Bruno’s Hard Night Falling, which hits regular Prime tomorrow.

Michael Anderson and his three team-mates busted the arms dealers they were tracking, but thanks to the interference of the Italian cops, their latest customers got away. Unfortunately, Anderson will quickly find them again that night, when he joins his daughter Diana and gently-estranged wife Mary at a swanky banquet in fabulous chateau outside Rome. The reunion goes well until a heavily armed gang takes the party hostage. Being a pro, Anderson makes a gunman just in time to hustle his daughter to safety, but he is separated from his wife during the scuffling. Of course, he made the right choice, especially since his wife is a doctor, who will definitely be useful to have around on a night like this.

Things get pretty Die Hard-ish from here on out, but two-thirds of the action comes from Anderson’s team fighting their way in than from the big guy inside. Regardless, the action here is pretty good. Bruno produced Lundgren’s last neo-Poliziotteschi, The Tracker, which was more stylish and probably a better showcase for its star. However, the stunt work and fight choreography are definitely superior in Hard Night.

In fact, most of the best fights feature Natalie Burn, who is quite impressive as Emma, the Black Widow-ish member of Anderson’s team. This is a vast improvement over her last film with Lundgren, the rather grim Acceleration. If it were not for the production shutdown (thanks Xi Jinping), Hard Night could have really given her some momentum.

We Hunt Together, on Showtime

These killers are many things the media loves to champion. He is an immigrant, who was forced to serve as a child soldier in the DRC. She is a genius, who has works in the sex industry after suffering a childhood trauma. The cops on their trail are everything their colleagues resent. He is a former internal affairs investigator and she is a self-medicating addict. Yet, both duos will be surprisingly evenly matched, thanks the dysfunctional chemistry they each share in writer-creator Gaby Hull’s six-part We Hunt Together, which premieres tomorrow on Showtime.

Baba Lenga was working for tips as a washroom attendant while waiting for his asylum application to be granted when he met Freddy Layne. Later that night he saved her from her violent date. He did not kill the creepy yuppie at the time, but they will hatch a plan to finish the job a few days later. At that point, Layne has the emotionally needy Lenga completely ensnared with her charms. She will manipulate the trained killer like a puppet on a string, to do what he does best.

It will be profoundly cynical DS Lola Franks and her gratingly cheerful new senior partner, DI Jackson Reid who are called to the site of their first murder. She resents his anti-corruption background and his lack of homicide experience, but she comes to appreciate his intelligence. She still has trouble with his chipper attempts at comradery, but they both see through Layne’s attempts at deception.

The parallel between the pairings of Layne and Congolese Lenga with that of Franks and the Gambian-born Reid is rather effective, precisely because Hull never overplays it. It gives Reid (and viewers) a vantage point to understand and empathize with Lenga, but that is as far as it goes.

There is a lot of seductive game-playing going on between Layne and Lenga that is sure to be featured prominently in promo clips, but the best stuff in Hunt is Reid and Franks’ procedural work and odd couple bantering. They make a great on-screen team, who could easily carry further seasons tracking different killers.

Out Stealing Horses

Norway and Sweden have a close but complicated relationship, as Trond Sander’s family perfectly illustrates. He now lives in a remote cabin in Sweden, but in some ways, he never left the northern Norwegian logging country where he spent a formative summer in his early teens. Grieving a recent loss, Sander looks back on his last summer with his father in Hans Petter Moland’s adaptation of Per Petterson’s novel, Out Stealing Horses, which releases today on demand and in limited theaters.

After the death of his beloved wife, late-middle-aged Sander moved to rural Sweden (just before Y2K), where his thoughts often turn to his father. He was a manly, taciturn man, who spent long stretches away from his family. Back in 1948, his son assumes it was due to curmudgeonly chauvinism, but he will come to doubt that conclusion during the course of the summer.

The drama starts for Sander on the morning he and his friend Jon Haug go “out stealing horses.” By that, they mean joy-riding wild horses they corral in the woods. Unbeknownst to Sander, Haug is in a dark mood, because of a recent family tragedy. Sander is not particularly sensitive, but he still notices how the unfortunate events expose fissures in the Haug family that also seem to involve his father. Yes, Sweden will also factor into the events that unfold.

Since Out Stealing is set during the immediate post-war era, it rather logically follows that the Sanders and Haugs are still carrying baggage from the occupation. Yet, it is a relatively minor, but important element, in Sander’s coming of age story. There is a whirlwind of love unrequited, love not-so-secretly requited, simmering jealousy, and bitter regret swirling about him. We can certainly understand why this summer interlude had such a profound psychological impact on him. However, the 1999 sequences are not merely tacked on buffers, but actually hold quite a bit of significance of their own.

Twilight Zone: The Howling Man

It was sort of horror and sometimes science fiction, but The Twilight Zone was really a genre unto itself. Still, it is somewhat strange to think how few of the old school horror movie stars turned up in guest-starring roles (of course, Karloff had his own competing shows at the time, Thriller and The Veil). However, not only did the great John Carradine take a detour through the “dimension of sight, sound, and mind,” his episode also happens to be one of the most gothic of the series. Yet, it remains a perennial fan and critic favorite. Celebrating its 60^th anniversary this year, “The Howling Man” (S2E5) airs this Monday morning on Syfy.

Charles Beaumont, the third great Zone writer after Rod Serling and Richard Matheson, adapted “Howling Man” from his own short story—and he has been ripped off several times since (most notably by I Trapped the Devil). During the aftermath of WWI, David Ellington commenced a walking tour of southern Europe in search of meaning. Caught in a freak deluge, he tries to take refuge in an austere abbey, but the rustic brothers try to turn him away. It is only when he collapses from weakness that they relent. However, when he comes to, he confronts Brother Jerome, demanding to know why they imprisoned the bearded man wailing in a dungeon cell. Of course, the monk tries to convince him that is not a man, but rather someone much more sinister.

Tightly helmed by veteran TV director Douglas Heyes, “The Howling Man” has lost none of its power in sixty years. It is scary, but it is even more disturbing on a philosophical and metaphysical level. It is easy for viewers to place themselves in Ellington’s position and imagine the resulting guilt and torment. Technically, it is also a great TV production, featuring sets worthy of the old Universal monster movies and cinematographer George T. Clemens’ surprisingly dramatic angles and framing.

A Thousand Cuts: Duterte’s War on Journalists

Why is Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte still popular in his own country? Despite the lost livelihoods of Filipino fishermen, he has basically conceded China’s claims of sovereignty of the entire South China Sea. Even though he presides over large Catholic and Muslim populations, he continues to cozy up to Xi’s regime, while it razes churches, persecutes believers of all faiths, and wages a campaign of cultural genocide and mass incarceration against the Muslim Uyghurs. It certainly helps that Duterte shares the CCP’s hostility towards a free press. Ramona S. Diaz follows one of his leading journalistic gadflies as she deals with trolling, death threats, and specious criminal charges in A Thousand Cuts, which releases virtually tomorrow.

Maria Ressa interviewed Duterte several times during his rise to power. As we can see from the clips Diaz incorporates, she was tough, but always respectful. She clearly was not “out to get him” from the start. Nonetheless, her online news outlet Rappler aggressively covered his “war on drugs” and the extralegal killings it inspired, which inevitably brought her into conflict with his government.

Diaz also follows Mocha Uson, a former pop idol who now serves as the field marshal of Duterte’s social media army, as well as his hand-picked senate candidate and a long-shot opposition rival. Frankly, Diaz is so fair in her approach, she shows Uson’s human side, even while capturing all the slimy trolling she facilitates.

Thousand Cuts is all observation, with no talking head interviews to tell us what to think. Nevertheless, what she records is undeniably damning. After watching Duterte’s orchestrated harassment of Ressa and Rappler reporters, it is clear the free press in the Philippines faces dire, existential threats—and consequently, so does its democracy. Diaz even managed to affix an up-to-the-moment post-script that is impressive in its nimbleness, but chilling in its implications.

Waiting for the Barbarians

In this far desert country, the temperature is hot, the air is dry, and the allegories run heavy. This is the distant frontier of an unnamed European empire. The uniforms look French, but the geography resembles Eurasia. During his tenire, the unassuming Magistrate has largely maintained a climate of laissez-faire tolerance with the locals. Of course, when an inquisitor from the capitol comes looking for trouble, he will inevitably find it in Ciro Guerra’s Waiting for the Barbarians, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

We know by now nothing good comes from a visit by the Inspector General. That would be Colonel Joll, who is conducting a fact-finding mission along the frontier. Much to the Magistrate’s surprise, he is bizarrely interested in two rather pathetic sheep thieves he is holding in custody. After a ferocious interrogation session, Joll and his troops tear off after the suspects the broken men named.

The world-weary Magistrate fully understands the Colonel’s campaign is a self-fulfilling prophecy (as does the audience), but Joll is a power unto himself. Despite the precariousness of his situation, the old bureaucrat will do his best to make things right for at least one of Joll’s victims, a nomadic woman, who stirs feelings of both pity and longing within him.

The very title of Barbarians conspicuously evokes a Pogo-esque response, along the lines of: “but we were the barbarians.” There is absolutely no subtlety here whatsoever. Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee adapted his own novel, but the dreaminess of the book becomes the broad strokes and bombast of propaganda theater.

Nevertheless, Mark Rylance (the king of nebbish angst) does his best to portray the Magistrate with tragic sensitivity. He also develops an intriguingly complicated relationship with the Woman, played by Mongolian thesp Gana Bayarsaikhan, but the narrative surrounding it is awkward and clunky.

Frankly, Johnny Depp seems rather bored going through the motions of Joll’s villainy. On the other hand, Robert Pattinson mostly engages as bursts of inexplicable anger as Officer Mandel, like he knew his part would be consigned to the film’s margins (while still looming large over the one-sheet).

Oskouei’s Sunless Shadows

It is tricky to prosecute, but domestic violence is definitely a crime in the West, whereas in Iran there is no legal recourse against an abusive husband or father. Consequently, many desperate young women take matters into their own hands. The criminal justice system should hardly be surprised, but is still coldly unforgiving. Acclaimed Iranian documentarian Mehrdad Oskouei returns to the Centre for the Correction and Rehabilitation of Young Adults to document a group of girls convicted of killing their predatory husbands and fathers in Sunless Shadows, which screens virtually as part of MoMI’s film series, Bound Unbound: Four by Mehrdad Oskouei.

If you have already seen Oskouei’s Starless Dreams, you know the girls at the detention facility really are just girls. Yet, many of them were already married—and they have all been convicted of murder. Most of them really were not thinking clearly when they committed their crimes. They were just wanted to make the violence stop. Those who acted together with their mothers are now tormented with maternal concern. Yet, ironically, for most of the incarcerated women, the Centre is unlikely shelter from the exploitative men in their families and society at large.

The irony further compounds when they are visited by a recently released fellow prisoner, who admits she returns often. While there are advantages to the relative freedom of contemporary Iranian society, she misses her friends and the protective environment the shelter offers.

Just when you think Starless cannot get any sadder, Oskouei finds something even more poignant. He focuses on the personal rather than the political, but it is impossible to miss the profound misogyny and inequity of Iranian society reflected in each of the women’s stories.

Coma: A Russian Dreamscape

Prepare to plumb the collective unconscious, but it is deeper and more real than Yung ever imagined. It is a shared-dream world inhabited by coma patients, shaped by everyone’s aggregated memories. This is indeed a trippy place to suddenly awaken, but it holds even greater secrets that will eventually be revealed in Nikita Argunov’s Coma, which releases today on DVD and VOD.

When you wake up in “Coma,” you do not remember who you are (so come up with a nickname you can live with), but there are flashes of memory regarding what you were. It is an unstable world, populated with shadowy monsters called reapers, so “the Architect” is lucky someone expected him and dispatched a team of soldiers to collect him. He is pretty clueless at first, but eventually his ability to build things with mind surfaces under stress. “The Architect” (there was one in The Matrix too, but he was very different) is a lot like Neo, “the Chosen One,” but there is something nagging him in his repressed memory about how he went into his coma in the first place.

Coma boasts some legitimately eye-popping visuals. Previous Russian special effects-heavy genre films have been decidedly hit-or-miss (take The Guardians, please!). However, Coma is legit. As an added bonus, the twists and turns in the screenplay (credited to Argunov, Timofei Dekin, and Aleksey Gravitskiy) hold together surprisingly well. The only real drawback is the cold fish ensemble, but fortunately they are often dwarfed by the spectacle of the fantastical world. Also, they have been dubbed, which admittedly could rob their original performances of some of their texture and nuance.

Rinal Mukhametov is okay as the bewildered Architect and Anton Pampushnyy is sufficiently thuggish as Phantom, the hard-charging squad leader who arranges his initial reception. Probably Lyubov Aksonova fares best as Fly, the woman they are both interested in, but the big villain arouses our suspicions right from his initial entrance.

Skin Walker, Co-Starring Udo Kier

You could definitely say Regine has family issues. She thought her deformed half-brother Isaac died in child-birth, but he might have survived to become the monster killing people in the woods. Either way, her father is still Udo Kier, so she certainly did not have it easy growing up. She has returned for her unbeloved grandmother’s funeral, but stays to uncover her family secrets in Christian Neuman’s Skin Walker, which releases today on VOD and DVD.

Regine had a traumatic childhood, as her fractured memories and flashbacks cannot attest. Just when she is poised to start a new life with her grungy boyfriend, she returns home to the family chateau. Claus, her old pops is not exactly welcoming. Instead, it is her mother’s old lover Robert who wants to talk to her. Partly, he wants to warn her about Isaac, but sees her as a means to reconnect with her mother. In fact, things get a little weird between them. Unless, Regine is just plain nuts.

Buckle up sports fans, because Neuman’s jarring narrative shifts could cause whiplash. Honestly, Skin Walker plays like a film that had two or three cast-members die during production and was subsequently cobbled together by the producers, as best they could. Logic goes out the window, but it almost takes on the up-and-down thrills of a roller coaster—almost but not quite.

Red Penguins: The Pittsburgh Penguins Russian Co-Venture

Who knew documentaries about Russian hockey would become a sub-genre in themselves, but here is the third getting serious distribution. They have the obvious advantage of a sports topic, but they also use athletics as a proxy to examine larger geo-political developments. In this case, when the Pittsburgh Penguins looked for opportunities in Russia, they found excitement and danger instead. Gabe Polsky chronicles their short but eventful venture in Red Penguins, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

Quick history lesson for Millennials: we won the Cold War, the Socialist USSR lost, and it was a good thing for the world. Consequently, the Red Army hockey team, the pride of Soviet propaganda, was in danger of financial collapse. Their “Ice Palace” had fallen into disrepair and the team could not even afford new jerseys. Seeing an opportunity, Howard Baldwin, of the Pittsburgh Penguins ownership group, negotiated a financial-management arrangement with the Red Army team.

The Penguin group gave them an infusion of cash, with the expectation the team redubbed The Russian Penguin would start generating merchandising revenue and serve as a pipeline of Russian talent to the Pittsburgh team. Steven Warshaw was the young, crazy marketing kid who was supposed to make it happen.

Somewhat logically, the history of the Russian Penguins parallels that of Russia’s political history. The Yeltsin years were wild and rather dangerous, but also a good deal of fun. However, the fun came to a stop when the mobbed-up oligarchs solidified their holdings under Putin. The Pittsburghers’ Russian adventure parallels that storyline.

Initially, Red Penguins is a larky doc that reminisces over the strippers who worked in an underground club in the Ice Palace basement, whom Warshaw eventually brought up on the ice to provide mid-period entertainment. Indeed, Warshaw shrewdly fell back on those old marketing standards, sex and booze, which really started to pay dividends when combined with a hammy mascot and improved play on the ice. Unfortunately, the party came to an end when mobsters started circling the team, with the winking encouragement of the team’s Red Army bosses.

Anyone contemplating a joint-venture in Russia or China should watch Red Penguins first. As Baldwin and Warshaw explain, they so expected the Russians to skim a little off the top, they even budgeted for it. Yet, the extent of the Russian stealing was so great, it led to a management crisis.

Ostensibly, the Russians won and the Pittsburghers lost, but in a short-sighted way which illustrates why the Russians are still not a global economic power (unlike China). The open Russian corruption scared away Disney, whom Baldwin was courting for a multimillion-dollar merchandising and programming deal. Apparently, Eisner denies it now, but Polsky pretty well establishes their considerable interest. The Russians might have taken Baldwin and company for several hundred thousand dollars, but the opportunity cost for doing so could well have been tens of millions. You can see this kind of thinking throughout the late Yeltsin and early Putin years. The oligarchs grabbed the natural resource companies, but the manufacturing and service industries remain stuck in the mud. Putin is a dictator who means us harm, but the Russian economy is a sickly dog.

Coroner (Pilot)

In the days of Burke and Hare, anatomists were not held in high regard by the popular press. Times have changed. These days, some of our favorite TV crime fighters are pathologists. The CSI franchises and Da Vinci’s Inquest (also Canadian) are the best examples, but the tradition goes back to Quincy M.E. Dr. Jenny Cooper, Toronto’s freshly appointed coroner, now joins their ranks. The protagonist of M.R. Hall’s mystery novels comes to American television, when the Canadian series Coroner premieres this Wednesday on the CW.

As a former ER doctor, Cooper thought she knew the sort of things people did to each other, but now she sees the patients who do not make it to the hospital. Frankly, she is maybe not in the best mindset for her new gig, since her husband recently died from an aneurism right in front of her eyes. However, she will need the job, when she discovers the mountain of debt her late spouse left her holding.

Det. Donovan “Mac” McAvoy and his partner Det. Taylor Kim are a bit surprised to see her offer what looks like a quick prayer over her first pick-up, but he warms to her relatively quickly. Her dogged pursuit of the truth rather matches his own working methods. He also shares her empathy for the kids incarcerated at the juvy facility where two supposed suicides were found.

The actual mystery Dr. Cooper investigates in the pilot is not particularly complicated and resolves itself surprisingly easily, but the first episode also has to carry a lot of exposition. However, the chemistry developing between her and Det. McAvoy is already quite promising. Plus, Cooper’s foreboding visions of a sinister black dog are quite a distinctive motif. Still, the general level of writing seems pretty conventional, largely on par with shows like Profiler and Crossing Jordan, from about twenty years ago.

Statecraft: The Bush 41 Team, on PBS

If there was a year history went off on the wrong course, it was probably 1992, well before 2016. For the previous twelve years, America was an optimistic nation, where we believed our best years were ahead of us. Clinton won the election by selling pessimism based on an economic recession that looks utterly trivial in retrospect. Years later, Trump and Obama both cynically exploited that lingering pessimism, yet back in 1992, the nation had good reason to stay optimistic. Pres. George H. W. Bush, the so-called “Foreign Policy President” had lived up to his billing, thanks to the help of his team. Top Bush foreign policy officials look back at his administration in Statecraft: The Bush 41 Team (directed by Lori Shinseki and produced in conjunction with the Miller Center of Public Affairs), which premieres this coming Tuesday on PBS.

Fittingly, Statecraft reminds us Bush 41’s involvement in foreign affairs started on a very personal level when he served as teenaged fighter pilot in WWII. He built an impeccable resume, most notably including his tenure as Ronald Reagan’s loyal vice-president. However, he largely brought in his own team when he succeeded Pres. Reagan. They were as experienced as he was, and in many cases they were long-time associates—often even close friends.

We hear from a number of them in substantive talking head interviews, including Defense Secretary (and future VP) Dick Cheney, Vice President Dan Quayle, Chief of Staff John Sununu, Gen. Colin Powell, and advisors like Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates, Stephen Hadley, and Robert Zoellick. It is definitely an impressive cast, who offer some considerable insight on the history they witnessed.

There is a lot of interesting material here, but Statecraft is at its most illuminating for general audiences when it chronicles the leading role Pres. Bush played to facilitate the reunification of Germany. We now forget both the Soviets (really the Russians at that point) and our Western European allies were dead set against it, but Bush had a prescient vision that a unified Germany, which was still a full military member of NATO, would lead to a more stable and secure Europe.

Fukada’s A Girl Missing

Crime shows always tell us the first 48 hours are the most critical for finding anyone abducted. Saki Oishi returns home after a full week (but it seems much shorter in screen-time). However, that does not mean her family’s troubles are over, whereas they are only getting started for their visiting nurse. It is not the crime, but the lies and betrayals that really cause bad karma in Koji Fukada’s

Ichiko Shirakawa started out as the caregiver for the Oishi grandmother and became a friend of the family. She is particularly close to the eldest daughter, Motoko, who intends to join her in the nursing profession. Of course, Shirakawa is deeply concerned when the younger sister Saki disappears and thankful when she is found. However, her relief turns to shock when she discovers the girl was abducted by her nephew, who most likely happened to see her while she was in Shirakawa’s company.

What does that have to do with Kazumichi Yoneda, the hairdresser Shirakawa is stalking (quite successfully)? That would be telling, but all will be revealed as Fukada toggles between two time-lines. it would certainly be fair to say the unsuspecting nurse does not handle the sudden revelation particularly adroitly. Instead, she responds in a very human way.

There are mysteries in Girl Missing, but they are more about the dark places in people’s hearts than crime scenes and investigations. Regardless, it is gripping stuff, in a slow boiling kind of way. In the process, Fukada offers a withering off-hand critique of drive-by tabloid journalism.

Shudder: Host

Fifteen or twenty years from now, oblivious teenagers will ask us why we watched so many zoom-based movies back in the day. We will have to explain to them it was because the CCP had no regard for human life and because the WHO only cared about pleasing their Chinese pay-masters. The quarantined format will surely get old and tired quickly, but this Shudder original has the advantages of not coming too late for the party and bringing a good gimmick. Doing a Zoom séance sounds like an extremely bad idea, but in the alternate reality of horror movies, sure, we can totally buy it. When Haley invites her friends to a video-conferencing spiritualism session, things go rather badly in Rob Savage’s Host, which premieres today on Shudder.

Haley is the one who really believes in the astral plane stuff and knows Seylan, the psychic. She doesn’t mind her friends incorporating a healthy amount of drinking into their evening, but she would like them to take it seriously. Oh, they will take it seriously alright—deadly so. It will be their own stupid faults for not treating the spirit realm with respect.

Yeah, you get the idea, but the claustrophobic and quarantined settings make it surprisingly creepy. Due to social distancing restrictions, Savage directed the entire ensemble remotely, but that gave him the perfect “laptop” perspective on the action. Host only runs for about an hour, but Savage was wise not to pad it out. He builds up quite a bit of tension, without giving us time to ponder whether or not Zoom windows can constitute proper cinema.

Japan Cuts ’20: Tora-san, Wish You Were Here

Even though he had plenty of heartache, Tora-san never really grew up. However, Japan watched as his family matured and came of age. Twenty-three years after the death of the beloved star, Kiyoshi Atsumi, longtime director Yoji Yamada reunited his surviving cast for the 50^th Tora-san film, the moving tribute, Tora-san, Wish You Were Here, which screens as part of the Japan Society’s Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film (all virtual this year).

Tora-san has been gone for many years now, but he still exerts an influence over his family, especially his beloved nephew, Mitsuo Suwa. The film starts with a memorial service to Suwa’s late wife, but it is really an elegy for Tora-san. For several years, Suwa has cared for his teenaged daughter Yuri, as a single father, but he is also just beginning to realize his ambition to be a novelist. Yet, recently he has been flooded with dream and memories of his high school love, Izumi Bruna. Tora-san knew her pretty well—and most definitely approved.

Of course, he is delighted when she happens to appear at his book signing. As luck would have it, the married Bruna has returned to Japan briefly for the UN and some family business. There is definitely a bit of the old spark between them, but he refuses to burden her with his own tragedies. He is his uncle’s nephew, after all.

Throughout Wish You Were Here, Yamada flashes back to important scenes from the previous Tora-san films. However, this is not a cobbled together clip package, like On the Trail of the Pink Panther or certain disappointing series finales (that means you, Seinfeld). The Kuruma and Suwa families’ lives have gone on, so their stories continue here. In fact, Suwa’s reunion with Bruna is quite touching, in a wistful, Brief Encounter kind of way.

Along the way, characters regularly ask, WWTSD? What would Tora-san do? However, that does not always mean it is the right thing to do—sometimes quite the contrary. Indeed, one of the film’s most heartbreaking moment revisits the time Tora-san was too timid to grab the love he had always yearned for.

Yamada shrewdly selects clips that showcase Atsumi’s flair for comedic delivery, as well as his sensitivity as an actor. He really made Tora-san the insecure but lovable slacker, who became like family to his Japanese fans.

Japan Cuts ’20: The Murders of Oiso

Kazuya Ito and his three goony “friends” are your basic kick-down kind of guys. Their job is basically to do mild thuggery and some occasional hard labor for the construction company owned by Ito’s uncle. He runs the town of Oiso, much the same way he ran their high school when he was the basketball coach. However, they are rather confused by the power vacuum left by the boss’s suspiciously sudden death in Takuya Misawa’s The Murders of Oiso, which screens as part of the Japan Society’s Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film (all virtual this year).

Ito is the one with the family connections and he is not about to let the other three forget it. Eita is the one with the attractive girlfriend. This is also a fact Ito is keenly aware of. The entire town is in for a surprise when Ito’s uncle dies falling on his lawnmower (sounds painful). It turns out he secretly remarried a much younger woman, who now expects the condolence money and her inheritance.

With “Murder” in the title, Misawa’s film sounds more thrillery than it is. It is more of a deconstruction of the thug life than a mystery or crime procedural. It’s about sucking up and doubling-down. Misawa’s elliptical narrative structure is so coy about the actual crimes and sins going on behind closed doors, it is hard to feel much investment. We can respect the rigorous severity of his aesthetic approach, but the net effect is rather cold-blooded.

Likewise, the twenty-ish cast clearly commits whole-heartedly, but they blend in more than stand-out as the mumbling, self-loathing, and embittered toughs. These are honest, but not necessarily showy performances.

The Cuban, Featuring the Music of Hilario Duran

Afro-Cuban jazz exploded in late 1940s New York when Dizzy Gillespie collaborated with musicians like Mario Bauza and Chano Pozo. The fictional Luis Garcia was very much a part of the scene, but he had disappeared by the time of the second Afro-Cuban boom in the 1980s. Sadly, the years were not kind to Garcia, but a young care-giver at his long-term nursing facility reawakens some of his memories through good music and good food in Sergio Navarretta’s The Cuban, featuring the music of Hilario Duran, which opens virtually this Friday.

The Canadian nursing home staff only knows him as “Mr. Garcia,” whom they consider “difficult.” He hardly ever eats and he will lash out from time to time. However, Mina Ayoub notices his Benny More poster, so she starts humming one of the Latin Jazz songs she learned from her grandfather, which seems to get a glimmer of recognition from Garcia. Soon she is sneaking him Cuban food (in violation of the head nurse’s strict rules) and letting him listen to Afro-Cuban jazz during meals.

Ironically, Mina’s sudden deep dive into Cuban culture leads her protective Aunt Bano to suspect she is getting carried away with a man. As it happens, Ayoub has started seeing Kris, a grad student, who has some expertise in vascular dementia and music therapy, but she hasn’t let it get serious yet. Since they still maintain social ties with friends and family from Kabul, it would be difficult for her to pursue a relationship with a non-Muslim, as her cousin’s recent arranged marriage awkwardly illustrates.

Navarretta and screenwriter Alessandra Piccione pull off a tricky balance, allowing Ayoab to make just enough of a connection with Garcia to justify the film’s enthusiasm for music therapy, without raising unrealistic expectations. Sadly, he will never be self-sufficient or even lucid by any meaningful standard, but he might just play again. Of course, Ayoab’s hazy resemblance to his great, lost love is an easy contrivance, but Navarretta and company try their best not to overplay it.

The best part is everyone involves understands the importance of the music itself. Duran composed, adapted, and performed a real-deal Afro-Cuban soundtrack. His opening theme captures the perfect tone of elegant melancholy, while tracks like “El Canonero,” “Mambo Rico,” and “Descarga En Changui” are exuberantly brassy and percussively rhythmic. Duran also puts his stamp on crowd-pleasing standards like “Guantanamera,” (one of the best versions recorded in quite a while, thanks one of several terrific trumpet solos from Alexis Baro). Plus, Alberto Alberto and lead actress Ana Golja contribute some soulful vocals.