Welcome, reader, to the first serving of this series I’m calling ‘Hot Tea,’ a pour of all the new content I’ve taken in during the past week and of my take on it.
Each week {fingers crossed} I’ll prepare you a short list of (typically) newly streaming material, like the list below, and suffix it with one retrospective glimpse at past work.
Each item in the list will feature a quick synopsis of the work before my short review of it as a piece of art and entertainment.
The purpose of this series is to help answer the question friends often ask me, “What are you watching now?,” and its close cousin, perhaps their true intent, “What should I watch now?" To succinctly reply to the latter, each item in the list will be capped with a temperature check referring to this series’ title, like:
“Steaming” for content that carries my sincerest recommendation,
“Hot” for content that is good but not crucial,
“Tepid” for content that is fair but quite missable,
“Cold” for content that is poor but not impossible, or
“Frigid” for content that I watched so that I could warn you not to.
This week our teas on tap include a courtroom tech. drama, a studio sitcom., a social-justice-themed biography, and a rom.-com. classic. Enjoy!
The Billion Dollar Code
Netflix - Historical Fiction - Tech & Legal
Synopsis
In the mid 1990s a team of German tech. workers invents a means by which to view on a computer overhead snapshots of anywhere on Earth and, ten years later, challenges the legality of Google Earth on the grounds of patent infringement.
My take
A cultural descendant of media like AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire (Cantwell & Rogers [creators], 2014-2017) and the film The Fifth Estate (Condon [dir.] & Singer [wri.], 2013), the tech.-steeped drama points a finger at the dubious past of a generally lauded product as a case study belonging to the recent tide of tech. suspicious sentiment, hoping to expose the shady underbelly of what happens when people accredit any entity with ‘too much’ power. A four-episode investment with an extra documentary episode of the real figures dramatized in the story, as a work of art and entertainment the show rides a nice balance between a parable of invention and a courtroom drama, appealing most to those who enjoyed both The Social Network (Fincher [dir.] & Sorkin [wri.], 2010) and The Social Dilemma (Orlowski [dir.], 2020).
Temperature check
Hot
Pretty Smart
Netflix - Sitcom - Relationships & Dating in Your 20s
Synopsis
In present day Los Angeles, a Type-A Ivy-League attachée moves in with her Type-B ‘airhead’ sister and her three similarly minded roommates, from whom she unexpectedly — and often begrudgingly — learns that conventional professional achievement isn’t the entire recipe for happiness.
My take
As if someone at Netflix decided to turn the fictional in-series sitcom. Room & Bored from HBO’s brilliant The Comeback (Kudrow & King [creators], 2005 & 2014) into a real TV show (with a few minor edits), an ingratiatingly attractive squad of young Los Angelenos dresses this deceptively astute comedy, written with such by-the-book precision to sitcom. norms and tropes that I believe its cleverness when it willfully breaks them, most often to discuss with Socratic roots the virtues and vices of (1) personal vs. social achievement and (2) living in the present vs. living in the past or for the future. Though the superficial appeal of this series would catalogue it best alongside mainstream fluff like Friends (Crane & Kauffman [creators], 1994-2004) and Three’s Company (Nicholl, Ross, & West [creators], 1977-1984), the actual pulse of the series feels more substantial, like that of a doctor wearing clown’s clothing but nevertheless ready to administer a cure — see Patch Adams (Shadyac [dir.] & Oedekerk [wri.], 1998) for an example of what I’m thinking of — a ‘cure’ here that may be an antidote to anyone too caught up in one side of the dialogue at the expense of the other.
Temperature check
Hot, if you have the palate for a sugary brew
Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It
Netflix - Biographical Documentary - Social Justice in Entertainment
Synopsis
A look back at the life, career, and choices of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award winner Rita Moreno tells her story as an as yet incompletely sung overcomer of sensitive social obstacles, including misogyny, racism, and xenophobia.
My take
Unsurprisingly in position as a bulwark of Netflix’ offerings during Hispanic Heritage month, this documentary celebrates the struggles of a talented and hard-working actress to find and promote roles that allowed her (and others) to portray more than just stereotypical caricatures of non-White women on the stage and the screen. Finding strength in her strength, the film and the numerous celebrities of color whose interviews are interspliced between the clips of Moreno’s most famous work and the clips of her present-day interview contextualizing that work with her private, behind-the-scenes realities praise that perseverance through external and internalized doubt and criticism with a purposefully deglamorizing sobriety.
The most tenuous, unproven thesis of this work in my eyes is the line of causality the storytelling of the film means to draw between (1) Moreno’s strict refusal after West Side Story (Wise & Robbins [dir.] & Lehman [wri.], 1961) to replay “Latina characters in gang movies” or any character cut from the same cloth as the sexualized and exoticized accessory women from her earlier days and (2) Moreno’s many high-profile accolades. This causal theory, I know, exists for a reason: the desire to motivate especially younger members of the audience to live according to the promise that an indistractable adherence to one’s personal authenticity will bring success. Still, this causal theory’s being at odds with what else the film tries to derive as a lesson from Moreno’s life sticks me: namely, that counteractive social pressures cannot squelch the light of a truly talented individual, especially if that individual remains dedicated to her craft and willing to embrace a diversity of opportunities that may not all look glamorous at first glance. Author and historian Annette Insdorf says it best, “[Moreno’s] career did not take off after West Side Story: rising with bigger and better parts; her career widened to encompass a diversity of roles and media. She won her first Emmy for The Muppet Show?!” This message is far better as a true take-away from this magnificent life when studied than any other.
Temperature check
Tepid. (For a hot cup of the same leaves, check out Be Kind, Rewind’s [2021] video on Moreno here.)
What Happened, Brittany Murphy?
HBOMax - Biographical Documentary - True Crime
Synopsis
A true-crime-themed reöpening of the sudden passing of beloved actress Brittany Murphy implicates the demands of the entertainment industry and the predatory nature of her husband in a reframing of her death from accident to consequence.
My take
As the documentary rightly asserts, anyone who saw Murphy’s début in Heckerling’s brilliant (1995) Clueless couldn’t help themselves not fall in love with her on the screen. Heckerling, who appears as one of several Murphy-collaborator-interviewees in the two-part documentary, recalls finding naturally in Murphy the essence of the character she would then play in the film: an untrammeled ingénue exuding warmth and vulnerability, despite her own very possible hesitancies, to the great charm of everyone around her — and that description is how, I think, Murphy is best remembered (read: ‘not this new documentary’). Far more a wannabe true-crime video podcast than a moving retelling of her circumstances around her death, the film feels the limits of its available source material in its makers’ faint attempts at drumming up drama and suspense, seemingly in order to make their narrative ‘compelling.’ Reserve your time, reader, and rewatch Clueless instead.
Temperature check
Cold
We’re Here (Season 2 Premiere)
HBOMax - Social Documentary - LGBTQIA+
Synopsis
The second season of the HBO documentary series featuring RuPaul’s Drag Race (Charles [host, creator, & producer], 2009-) alumnae Shangela, Eureka O’Hara, and Bob the Drag Queen as hosts who guide three small-town Americans through the process of performing in drag picks up right where the first season was abruptly cut short due to pandemic-related restrictions in March 2020, with a revisit to Spartanburg, SC.
My take
The HBO venture in its first season managed to accomplish presenting better than its hosts’ original series the heart of the art of drag, despite RuPaul’s by now well-known refrains on the subject. That sensitive hand behind the storytelling returns, uniquely in this premiere episode with the opportunity to show change over time — a feat most reality-based TV shows struggle to include. Making the most of what once was its unfortunate serving of pandemic lemons, this start to a new season is a cool and refreshing opening fit just for the reclaimed plantation patio its hosts enjoy as their first performance venue.
Temperature check
Hot
Retrospective
As Good as It Gets (1997)
Currently on Netflix - Romantic Comedy - Complementaries Attract
Synopsis
In late 1990s’ New York City, a misanthropic writer’s battles with a painter neighbor and interest in a local waitress sow the seeds of change in his otherwise obsessively routine life.
My take
As a friend put it, James L. Brooks’ witty and charming (1997) As Good as It Gets is the kind of “movie you have to watch all the way through, if you happen to catch it on TV.” The wonderful, small moments of acting telling a superbly well-written story about three equally troubled people finding beauty and energy in each other’s faults is a great reminder of the wonders of the cinema and made me feel excited again about the upcoming slate of award contenders for this new year in film. Although I have yet to see Afterglow (Rudoplh [dir. & wri.], 1997), I controversially support Helen Hunt’s win of the Best Actress Oscar for this film, definitely worth the autumn revisit.
Temperature check
Steaming, especially if you’ve never sipped this blend before