Tangerines or Black, it’s time to add TV colour
The Blacklist, Season 3
Available Now TO the uninitiated you might say that Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington is a bit like Breaking Bad’s Walter White. He was once a good man, a patriot who fell down on his luck. Then he broke bad, becoming a high-profile criminal. He eventually voluntarily surrendered to the FBI after eluding capture for decades. He tells the FBI that he has a list of the most dangerous criminals in the world that he has compiled over the years and is willing to inform on their operations in exchange for immunity. However, he insists on working exclusively with a rookie FBI profiler Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone). Even though Red (James Spader) now helps the FBI snare shadowy monsters like himself, the feds suspect he’s running a long con. The Blacklist represents a provocative post-Breaking Bad artistic endeavour. And like that series, it plays to our cynicism about “heroism” and turns redemption into a paranoid conspiracy thriller.
Jaws, Jaws 2, Jaws 3, and Jaws: The Revenge
Available Now If you haven’t revisited Jaws recently, consider this a golden opportunity. And if you’ve somehow managed to not see it, consider this the moment you finally ran out of excuses. Steven Spielberg’s third feature (after the TV movie Duel and the much underrated Sugarland Express) is still a masterpiece, still one of the best movies ever made, and quite possibly still the finest example of a brilliant filmmaker being handed lemons (an awful source novel for one thing) and making lemonade. It’s required viewing. And re-viewing. The sequels are not, but they do deserve a glance. Jaws 2 is a decent enough thriller, an alright killer shark movie that lives in the shadow of the best killer shark movie of all time. Jaws 3 essentially has the same plot as Jurassic World and it’s yuck, full of shots composed for the 3D theatrical release that look exceedingly ridiculous on home televisions. The upside it that it’s is almost bad enough to enjoy.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Available Now Steven Spielberg’s 1998 World War II drama has its detractors (the bits where it moves suddenly into the present are jarring), but this remains one of the best movies of its kind. War movies are, by default, action movies and that doesn’t mean they are always inherently thrilling. Spielberg makes the gruesome poetic, by piling on horror after horror, focusing on the pain of every wound, the suddenness and brutality of so many deaths, and the crippling fear that can overcome even the bravest man. Even when Saving Private Ryan enters a more typical WWII men-ona-mission formula after the opening half hour, the focus remains on the ground. And, like Jaws, it’s pretty much a must see.
Tangerine (2015)
Available now This day-in-the-life portrait of two transgender prostitutes is an energetic, funny and superbly-acted tour de force of lowbudget film making, with surprises and invention emanating from every frame. Incredibly this movie was shot entirely on an iPhone. The stars of this vibrant, surreal LA street documentary are SinDee and Alexandra, two hookers who recklessly roam a seedy area off and on Santa Monica Boulevard. Both women are loud, dysfunctional and not exactly heart-warming types, but director Sean Baker never lets us forget that they’re human, flaws and all. It’s clear that he loves his characters, and we laugh at some of their pathetic predicaments, even as we feel sadness that a hostile society has put them in this position in the first place. The two ladies never become caricatures and the beautifully saturated colours of the iPhone lend a strange pathos to proceedings: The camera work is dazzling and makes us feel that we are right there with them. To focus on that technical achievement is to distract from the people, places, and emotions it captures so brilliantly. This is unlike anything else out there at the moment and in a more equitable world this would certainly take its rightful place in the canon of much-love yuletide comedies.