This Month's Best Streaming Gems
Here at Digg we try to keep you up-to-date with review roundups on the latest big-item TV and movie premieres. Of course, not everything gets the pre-launch buzz it deserves. In the age of streaming services there's more good stuff than ever, but some of it takes a little time to find an audience and champions amongst critics. Here are some recent gems you might've missed and some good takes on them — if anything here catches your eye, it's just a click away:
'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' (Amazon Prime, 8 episodes)
While the Netflix "Gilmore Girls" run might belong to the growing pile of misguided revivals, creator Amy Sherman-Palladino has a brand new hit with "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." Set in 1958, the show stars Rachel Brosnahan ("House of Cards") as Miriam "Midge" Maisel, a New York City-dwelling housewife stuck in a dead-end marriage to a hack stand-up comic. A sudden life change prompts Midge to get on stage and deliver her own routine, a choice that sets her on a path to self-made artistic and personal success in spite of all the fragile '50s male egos standing in her way.
A period piece about a funny woman in the big city would fall apart if couldn't deliver on all the sights and snickers, but a big Amazon budget and Palladino's "Gilmore"-honed wit shore up the essentials. Best of all is Brosnahan, who gives an all-in performance as Midge whether she's on the stage, confronting her dummy husband Joel (Michael Zegen, "Boardwalk Empire") or her hardass father Abe (Tony Shaloub). Amazon already greenlit a second season, so it's a good thing these eight episodes hit the mark.
From the minute it starts, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is pure Amy Sherman-Palladino. Who else has such an affinity for self-possessed brunette women, the kind that talk a mile a minute and have a secret desire to stir shit? Who else crafts these ladies that are equal parts vanity and unfettered braininess? These gals who can chatter their way into just about anything they want? If Sherman-Palladino's Gilmore girls weren't so WASP-y, it might be possible to envision one Miriam "Midge" Maisel, who resides in 1958 New York, as their ancestor. Only Midge is an Upper West Side Jewish American Princess, not a member of the Connecticut branch of the Daughters Of the American Revolution. This is all to say that if you buy what Sherman-Palladino is selling, you will eat up Mrs. Maisel.
Whether Midge is making reflexively neurotic jokes, being devastated by betrayal or slaying people at the club, Brosnahan makes us believe that here is a woman able to shed her conventional life and discover her truest self being funny behind a microphone.
[NPR]
Brosnahan, best known as the victimized Rachel in House of Cards, ignites every fire inside as Miriam, a woman who may value domestic life but is, at heart, an opinionated whirlwind who's finally liberated when she's running her mouth off in front of a roomful of New Yorkers. Once she makes up her mind to start pursuing stand-up herself, with an assist from the wise-ass manager at the Gaslight, Susie (Sherman-Palladino regular Alex Borstein), Miriam begins the transformation from traditional lady into outspoken rebel.
[Vulture]
Watch it if: your recent visit to Stars Hollow left you cold or if you wish you could sock every jabroni who insists women aren't funny in the eye.
'Nathan For You' — Finding Frances (Comedy Central, feature length)
Nathan Fielder's ability to continually up the ante on his show has kept things interesting since its debut in 2013. If the series only stuck to its main premise, Nathan "helping" real small business owners with absurd, fully realized schemes, it'd still be a must-watch for stunts like "Dumb Starbucks" or Fielder's price-match war with Best Buy. That said, "Nathan For You" shines brightest when it expands on Nathan's awkward, Kaufman-esque persona. The fourth season finale, "Finding Frances," places Nathan at the center of a feature-length docudrama.
The episodes starts with the plight of William Heath, a strange LA-based Bill Gates impersonator who can't get his mind off his long-lost love, Frances. Nathan and Heath travel across America in search of Frances, faking a film production and a high school reunion along the way to help generate leads. As they draw closer to their goal, a parallel story focused on Nathan's wants and needs blossoms, and the episode — let's call it a film, actually — goes from entertaining and funny to engrossing and sublime.
This being an episode of Nathan For You, there are of course shenanigans along the way (one particularly strong sequence finds Fielder and company pretending to be a film crew in order to pull off a heist at a small town high school), but for the most part, "Finding Frances" is a profoundly moving meditation on loss and regret. It's also very short on the sort of material some viewers have interpreted as mean-spirited; if that's been a concern for you in the past, allow me to assure you that it probably won't be an issue here.
Mistrust is woven into the fabric of the show's universe, and the possibility that we're watching a piece of carefully scripted, stage-managed wish fulfillment — for Nathan Fielder the character, or Nathan Fielder the artist, or some combination of the two — hovers over the end credits. If "Finding Frances" does turn out to be a series finale, it will send Nathan for You off into the sunset on its own shady terms, casting a longer, darker shadow on the television landscape than any other comedy.
What's the difference between a bad impersonator and a meta-impersonator? Or between true love and delusion? What makes something real? That we believe in it? That we can convince others to? These questions all come to a head in Fielder's season finale. Maybe we are all poseurs pretending to be real people. Or possibly the other way around. The series, and this episode especially, is a perfect imitation of life. I mean, a perfect imitation of an imitation of life. However you want to describe it, it is some of the most interesting "reality"-based work yet made.
[Errol Morris for The New Yorker]
Watch it if: you believe that documentaries, reality TV and gonzo comedy are all best if they're centered on the "truth."
'The Punisher' (Netflix, 13 episodes)
Arguably, "The Punisher" couldn't have come out at a worse time (its release was even delayed in response to the shooting in Las Vegas). In a year where mounting evidence and routine tragedies suggest America's mass shooting problem is at its worst, there's plenty of reason to be skeptical about the appeal of a show dedicated to a character that's often celebrated by edgelords and firearms aficionados just because he has lots of guns at his disposal.
While it might not be at the level of "Jessica Jones," Netflix's version of "The Punisher" has a lot going for it — and a lot going against the notion that it's just a grim celebration of bullets and blood. First, there's the show's choice of lead: Jon Bernthal ("The Walking Dead") portrays Frank Castle with depth and emotion, expanding on his already great performance in "Daredevil." Second, the show places Frank and his allies in a situation that's as close to weighty real world issues as it can be while still sporting the "Marvel" label. Castle might not be a Defender, but this season proves The Punisher's more than a spin-off.
Castle wasn't always rough and damaged; war changed him. Bernthal understands this, making Castle's prewar life seem idyllic and his post-war trauma suffocating. Seeing a man who was previously a violent, vengeful brute involuntary crumple into a messy heap of emotions is a downright uncomfortable sight, but somehow Bernthal manages to find the humanity in such a moment. The Punisher is bleak and uncompromising, but Bernthal infuses its title character with the dignity the show needs to pull off its antihero story.
[Vox]
This is incredibly serious material, and it's a testament to the ambition of The Punisher that the show's creator, Steve Lightfoot, does not shy away from the isolationism and inner torment that veterans live with on a daily basis. One soldier that attends the same discussion group that Castle drops in on, run by fellow soldier Curtis Hoyle (Jason R. Moore), is found digging a ditch in his backyard in the hopes that it will help cure his anxiety and insomnia. Another, much older veteran talks cynically about a careless government and the need for an armed uprising. Stolen valor and high-end private security firms also factor into the narrative along the way. The series is nothing if not timely, and when the focus is on these matters, The Punisher is more challenging and captivating than anything the MCU or Marvel TV programs have produced thus far.
[Collider]
The show feels a bit like Homeland with its dizzying conspiracies but it's also the anti-Homeland. Amber Rose Revah portrays a Persian-American woman working for Homeland Security who's great at her job, despite being distrusted by colleagues. It's a three-dimensional character replete with a mother she can have tough conversations with, a sex life, and a ferocious personality at work. It shows that The Punisher is about more than adapting comic book characters—it's about fleshing out humans.
Watch it if: you're a Marvel fan who can't get Bernthal's electrifying performance in "Baby Driver" out of your head.
Mudbound (Netflix, feature length)
Based off Hillary Jordan's 2008 novel by the same name, "Mudbound" is Netflix's frontrunner contender for the 2017 Oscars. It's directed by Dee Rees ("Pariah") and has a impressive ensemble cast including Carey Mulligan ("Drive"), Jason Mitchell ("Straight Outta Compton"), Jason Clarke ("Brotherhood"), Jonathan Banks ("Breaking Bad") and Mary J. Blige. It's a period piece that's being praised for deftly avoiding typical awards-bait treatments of its core subjects: war and racism.
The film follows two families in 1940s Mississippi: the white, landowning McAllans and the Jacksons, a black tenant farmer family who works the land. The McAllans and Jacksons each send a son off to World War II — when the two young men return, they strike up a friendship that flies in the face of racist norms while other members of the families grow closer to one another (albeit in a way that's far from equitable). A racist patriarch named Pappy and the Ku Klux Klan rear their heads, but "Mudbound" is more concerned with examining racist systems than stock villains.
Rees notably avoids the blinkered perspective such traditional stories often have; in doing so, she captures the racism of the period in ways both routine and heartbreaking. Mudbound never feels like it's driving at one particular message, or identifying one villain to blame. A character like Pappy would be the cartoon nemesis of a simpler tale, a problem to be dealt with or ignored, but to Rees he's a symptom, a festering boil that nobler characters like Jamie (or Henry, who quietly agrees with much of his father's way of thinking) can't lance. The bigotry of the time undergirds the film, but Mudbound doesn't let us forget just how thoroughly it also permeated American life.
Even when the pace flounders, Rees is never too far from a scene of tremendous beauty, whether it involves a rousing gospel performance or the haunting image of a furious housewife from a neighboring farm, wandering across the mud fields in a maniacal attempt to seek justice against her philandering husband. Above all else, Rees excels at conveying the poetry of this mournful landscape, which allows its central conflict to develop an emotional foundation as dark events lurk on the horizon.
Mudbound is a thoughtful treatise on who we're willing to empathize with, and when, and why. It may feel like it's trying to catch its breath as it struggles to vocalize its point, but as soon as it does – in a silent moment of mutual understanding between soldiers suffering from trauma – it begins to truly breathe. When it finally hits its climax, one that's as hard to watch as it is necessary in order to round out its examination of white perspective, it soars.
Watch it if: you have a beating heart and care one bit about the Oscars or the future of films produced by streaming services.
