"Private Life", First Visit

Chris Feil wraps up his look at the films of Tamara Jenkins with her newest film, now on Netflix...

If The Savages was like Slums of Beverly Hills all grown up and disillusioned, Private Life is like Jenkins’ first two films in conversation, and it’s maybe her wisest. Here Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti play an intelligencia couple Rachel and Richard exhaustively exploring every avenue to conceive, with newcomer Kayli Carter as their young adoring niece Sadie naively slipping herself into their struggle. With this newest film, Jenkins casts her widest net of characters, all the more rewarding with the vulnerabilities of youth and middle age are in dialogue.

Jenkins chapters the film while still structuring it like messy memory, resembling a life so anxious it can only be delineated by doctor’s visits and holidays. At the point we meet them, Rachel and Richard exist in a flurry of procedures and hormonal upheaval to the point that it defines them. But despite pursuing all of their myriad expensive and physically taxing options to bring a child into their home, Private Life is really about coping with the waning amount of options life provides as we age.

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Links

• IndieWire a brief interview with Steven Yeun about life after The Walking Dead -- strangely there are no questions about his new Korean movie Burning despite the fact that he's amazing in it
• THR Bradley Cooper getting an award from PETA for casting his own dog Charlie in A Star is Born. I mean.... the dog is perfection, so why not?
• Vanity Fair Fan Bingbing has broken her silence after disappearing. She is said to owe more than $100 million in backtaxes to the Chinese government

• /Film Trailer for The Conners series, essentially Roseanne without Roseanne
• The Guardian a wonderful interview with Samantha Morton about choices she made in her career, her new part on The Walking Dead, and why she was dubbed "difficult" in her early years of stardom.
• Playbill Emmy & Oscar winner Christine Lahti now starring in a play Off-Broadway about Gloria Steinem called Gloria: A Life. Steinem is quite the hot topic at the moment since there's also a biopic in the works
• Pajiba on the Bullseye rumors around Daredevil season 3
• Decider a Jeopardy moment that will go viral involving drag superstar Alyssa Edwards
• /Film Netflix will be releasing Paul Greengrass 22 July in 100 theaters (they're also rumored to be trying to buy movie theaters, which is odd considering how much they've worked to diminish the moviegoing habit)
• MNPP Luke Benward nine times
• Daily Beast and director Catherine Hardwicke reflect back on Twilight's success and the sexist aftermath

This Week's Must Read (s)
Wesley Morris has an amazing challenging essay about the new ways we discuss art and how they've come to center more on the artist and that person's perceived moral or representational correctness then the quality of the art.  I loved reading this because so much of what he's saying I've seen happening and whenever I tried to put my finger on why it was frustrating me, I couldn't quite locate the target. 

The essay also prompted this interesting discussion at Vulture among a panel of mostly female critics. I love the point raised that there's a way to discuss art in this new way while also balancing aesthetic discussion but a lot of younger critics haven't been trained in that way or encouraged to learn that skill in the charged political time we're living in.

Netflix in October: Big Mouth, The Shining, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Time to play Streaming Roulette. Each month, to survey new streaming titles we freeze frame the films at random places with the scroll bar and whatever comes up first, that's what we share! 

What does Netflix offer us for free viewing this month? Let's survey...

Well, personally I think teaming up with a Chinese-American was good for the department's image.

The Dead Pool (1988)
Not to be confused with Deadpool. It's Clint Eastwood in his fifth and final Dirty Harry movie, this time paired with Evan C Kim. This line reading is really weird though out of context. I've never seen this but there are lots of stars before they were big: Jim Carrey six years before superstardom, Patricia Clarkson ten years before her critical breakthrough, and Liam Neeson just as he was breaking out. Weirdly even though this movie was a hit it didn't budge the needle on Eastwood's screen partner Evan C Kim's career. He did lots of TV guest spots before it and lots of TV guest spots after it. 

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But why is it called "Bleach"?

by Nathaniel R

boys and their toys... i mean, superpowers.

How often do you have random streaming adventures where you watch something you've literally never heard of? This week on Netflix I caught a new Japanese flick called Bleach (2018) though for the life of me I can't figure out what the title means. It's one of those movies that's 1000% obviously based on a manga because it throws lots of random names, superpowers, and world-building terms and rules at you and assumes you'll be able to keep up. But nowhere in the entire picture does the word "bleach" factor in. I've turned it over and over in my head and unless I blinked during a crucial subtitle the title makes no sense whatsoever.

It was a fun popcorn watch but I had to share one moment near the beginning that had me howling...

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Review: "Atypical" Season 2

by Ben Miller

When Atypical debuted last year, it was not accompanied by widespread critical acclaim or a zeitgeist-catching wave of popularity.  It was seen as more of a niche show with some issues, but with room to grow and a modest budget. Season two didn’t have built-in expectations that a show like Stranger Things or the final season of House of Cards will have. This proves a blessing: with zero expectations, Atypical has now grown into the show we hoped it could be...

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