‘All Together Now’, ‘Binge’ debut
Friday’s movie debuts include “All Together Now,” streaming on Netflix, a teen melodrama based on the book “Sorta Like a Rock Star” by Matthew Quick.
Auli’i Cravalho stars as Amber Appleton, a bright, talented and immensely optimistic young woman who hides her homelessness and her mother’s dysfunction from her college-bound friends. Amber’s sunny nature is tested when acceptance to a prestigious program takes a backseat to family crises. Look for Carol Burnett, Judy Reyes (“Scrubs”) and Justina Machado (“One Day at a Time”). Most of the film was shot in and around Portland, Oregon, so it’s only natural that Fred Armisen (“Portlandia”) appears as a teacher.
› Over on HULU, “The Binge.” Set in a clean and sober America, “only a few years in the future,” “The Binge” imagines a world where all drugs and alcohol have been banned except for one frantic night each year. Vince Vaughn stars as a high school administrator shepherding young students into their first night of debauchery. It has all of the preposterous trappings of “The Purge” movie franchise but substitutes vomit for violence. Don’t go looking for subtlety.
› The first two seasons of “Cobra Kai,” a spinoff of the “Karate Kid” franchise, moves to Netflix from YouTube Premium (or YouTube Red), where it originated. A third season is in the works.
› Disney+ introduces a movie-length adaptation of a long-running franchise, the 2020 feature “Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candace Against the Universe.”
It’s impossible to know if any of these features would have had proper theatrical releases. But for the foreseeable future, it looks like most films will go directly to streaming.
› Movie nights aren’t the only cultural casualty of COVID-19. Outdoor summer concerts have vanished from the schedule. “Great Performances” (9 p.m., PBS, TV-G, check local listings) repeats an annual rite, the Vienna Philharmonic’s Summer Night Concert. Sadly, it’s from 2019.
› TCM showcases Paul Henreid in two of the best movies of the World War II era, “Now, Voyager” (8 p.m., TV-G) and “Casablanca” (midnight), both from 1942. In “Now” he’s the friendly therapist who shares cigarettes and affection with Bette Davis’ fragile character, and in “Casablanca,” he’s Victor Lazlo, the freedom fighter and husband of Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa, both a hero and a romantic rival to Rick (Humphrey Bogart).
There are many who see “Casablanca” as one of the greatest American movies, a durable, quotable romance that doubles as a propaganda film, encouraging Americans to join the fight against Nazi Germany and embark on a “beautiful friendship” with the prickly and problematic Free French.
Henreid was one of many refugees from Nazi
Germany in the cast or on the crew of “Casablanca.” Hollywood opened its doors to foreign actors and filmmakers in the 1940s and was richer for it. Their arrival paralleled the influx of foreign scientists (like Enrico Fermi) who fled fascism and became indispensable in helping America create the weapons that eventually won the war.
Nazi Germany sealed its doom when it exiled its brightest minds, reminding us today that countries that try to build walls around culture and science are acting not from strength, but insecurity, dogmatic authoritarianism and ultimate weakness.