El Marginal—No Boundaries
A tortuous viscous and extremely violent Argentine prison drama: well-crafted and attention-getting.
“Shining Girls”—A Time Machine
Shining Girls, an Apple TV+ thriller series, is based on the 2013 novel The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. Totaling eight episodes, Shining Girls (released on April 29 of this year) also can be classified under the science-fiction genre.
In the opening scene a little girl, sitting on the front stoop...
“The Staircase”—Entryway into Murder?
The Staircase (HBO Max released May 2022), loosely based on the 2004 French documentary by the same name, (see my October 2017 review of the Netflix documentary mini-series) dramatizes the death of wife Kathleen Peterson (Toni Collette), and the subsequent indictment and conviction for her murder by her husband, the novelist...
“Gaslit”–“The Martha Mitchell Effect”
This STARZ series, released immediately before the 50th anniversary of the Watergate scandal, reveals the familiar but also the untold stories of Richard Nixon and his circle of subordinates and eventual whistleblowers. Gaslit takes us back to the divided America of the early 1970s (pending the “end” of the...
“The First Lady” (2022)–Second to None
Three remarkable women, in The First Lady, a Showtime mini-series (released April 17), provided indispensable support to their husbands before and throughout their presidencies. Eleanor Roosevelt (Gillian Anderson), Betty Ford (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Michelle Obama (Viola Davis)–all three made soul-crushing...
“Tokyo Vice”–Yakuza on Ice
Tokyo Vice, adapted from the titular 2009 memoir, by Jake Adelstein, retells and also fictionalizes the experience Adelstein had as a 20-something American expatriate determined to be a reporter for the largest Japanese newspaper.
The first episode details Jake’s (Ansel Elgort of “Baby Driver” and...