Easy viewing with gritty dramas and classics
Easy
From Thursday, 8 episodes Joe Swanberg is only 35 but he’s already put out 18 different feature films (including the minor hit Drinking Buddies in 2013). On Thursday his binge of work meets the binge-watching of Netflix as his series Easy debuts. It deals with a group of adults, in eight loosely connected stories, who are trying to negotiate their way through the tribulations of grown-up life, while still enjoying some of the freedom they had in their early 20s. Swanberg’s reputation has this time around enabled him to land talent like Orlando Bloom and Hannibal Buress in the lead roles. Their characters try to live out Samuel Beckett’s line about failing better. “Most of the characters love each other”, Swanberg told Chicago magazine last week. “Despite their failings, they’re in relationships with people who love them and are hoping for their success.” The series is more broadly about the divide between “who we say we are and who we really are,” he added. The ‘Easy’ of the title could refer to the unfortunate promiscuity of young adulthood but Swanberg also hopes it might be an easy watch. And from the little we saw, he might be onto something.
Power
3 seasons, Available now Power has a power all its own and the third series of the show went up on Netflix in the first week of September. It’s a fast-paced drama about a New York drug kingpin who wants a way out and conjures some other classics which have explored this theme — The Sopranos and Sons of Anarchy being the most obvious influences. James “Ghost” St Patrick, played with understated intensity by Omari Hardwick, breaks bad — to use the Netlfix vernacular — to find both the rewards and pain that lie there. Ghost, whose backstory is somewhat inspired by that of executive producer Curtis ‘Fifty Cent’ Jackson, makes a more than comfortable living from his drug selling. He has a loyal wife, Tasha (Naturi Naughton), who turns a blind eye because she likes what it brings. The strength of this series is in its sizzling dialogue and thumping soundtrack. Definitely worth a look,
The Wrestler (2008)
Available now This still ranks as one of the unlikeliest career turnarounds in history. Mickey Rourke, his face ravaged by surgery, considered something of an acting has-been, suddenly produces a performance that has critics swooning. And there was a compelling art-imitates-life element to the fascination with this film. Rourke stars as a broken-down professional wrestling star still clinging to his glory days from the 1980s. Shooting in a grainy, barebones naturalistic style, full of jump cuts and raw light and hand-held camera work, Darren Aronofsky, the director of Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain, pares away all frills, tapping a classic Hollywood trope — a washed-up icon looking for redemption — and, at the same time, transcends that myth. The Wrestler is like Rocky made by the Scorsese of Mean Streets. It’s the rare movie fairytale that’s also an unsentimental and moving work of art.
The Way We Were (1973)
Available now NETFLIX has a surprising amount of incredible old classics mixed in with more current fare. Perhaps the most comforting of these is this romantic touchstone and its “misty water-coloured memories” from the 1970s. It’s essentially a love story — between a young activist, Katie (played by Barbra Streisand) and a writer, Hubbell (Robert Redford). They have nothing in common. So of course they fall madly in love and get married (Katie alternating between praising Hubbell’s mind and his body; Hubbell listening attentively). And Hubbell sells his book to Hollywood and follows it West to sell out. The film was acclaimed but the soundtrack was one for the ages — the Sex & the City ladies even sang along to it. Except Samantha who dismissed it as a “chick flick.” Which it is, but the very best kind.