Our reviewer shares insight on inaugurals, apprentices, and primeval excitements
By Juan-Carlos Selznick
The last report from the Stream & Dream Lounge appeared here in June, 2024. Our viewing of motion pictures has continued more or less unabated in all that time, but mulling a surfeit of monumental events — Gaza, Ukraine, a presidential election, crises of health and weather, etc. — confounded the actual attempts to write movie reviews.
All of that remains very much with us, of course, but I’m now finding myself very inclined to reenter the fray. What follows is a report on recent viewing as well as a step toward some belated reflections on the special movie pleasures of 2024.
Reality TV
TV coverage of the recent Presidential Inauguration couldn’t help but look and feel like a continuation of that person’s ventures into reality television. The slow-motion rituals and maneuvers of the inauguration ceremony sometimes took on the look, inadvertently, of a cheapie horror film, as did the reelected executive’s glowering, tone-deaf delivery of the main address.
The next day, the Inauguration Prayer Service gave us the spectacle of the Trump entourage showing several varieties of vacuous stupor as the Episcopalian bishop made her plea for more empathy and compassion in the new administration’s policies. The man himself seemed to be trying too hard to look distracted and impervious. Afterwards, looking more presidential in his long black overcoat, he brushed off a reporter’s question about the service, then said it was “boring” and promptly walked away. It was interesting to see that the only person in the Trump entourage who really looked to be listening to the Bishop was the wife of the new Vice President. When the latter seemed to mutter something to her, she gave a small nod of acknowledgement, but seemed to be paying unbroken attention to the bishop’s words throughout.
The Trumpists’ clannish air of spiritual vacuousness subsequently got an astonishingly perverse twist when the self-styled Christian conservative who is Speaker of the House denounced the bishop’s plea for pity and compassion as “radical ideology.” And there you have it — for the Mike Johnsons of our world, the bishop’s fundamentally Christian message is something alien and dangerous.
Streaming interests
American Primeval (Netflix, 10 episodes) is a tonically brutal winning of the West tale enrichened by historical paradox and uncommon nuance. It is powered by a great collision of multiple historical and cultural forces — Native Americans, Mormons, mountain men, vigilantes, fleeing families, etc. And it is staunchly “primeval” — battle scenes begin with gunfire and arrows and conclude with rocks, sticks, knives, axes, and scratching and clawing. It’s also kinda talky at times, but has some fine moments when what’s NOT being said gets nicely expressed amidst bursts of dramatic dialogue. Shea Wigham’s pragmatically adventurous Jim Bridger might be my favorite among the major characters, but the women’s stories seem the strongest element overall. Brigham Young’s ferocious sanctimoniousness is perhaps a bit overplayed, but it is he who utters the phrase that seems weirdly appropriate for several of the story’s barbaric social passions — “…an ignorant excitement…”
Like 1883 and 1923, the ten-episode “limited series” Landman (Paramount+) is one of Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone spin offs. The focus is on the sometimes violent dramas among the oil wells of South Texas, with Billy Bob Thornton as a hardscrabble trouble shooter in the field and Jon Hamm as the freewheeling executive to whom he reports. There is roiling domestic drama as well with contrasting families and fractious marriages (Demi Moore and Ali Larter play the flamboyantly conflicted wives). Jacob Lofland has some special moments as Thornton’s smart, furiously impulsive son, and a large and impressive cast of secondary characters figures pungently as well. The oil field action leans toward tragedy, while the domestic scenes wobble toward tragicomedy and heavy-handed satire. Thornton thrives as the scruffy, perilously resilient protagonist, and the extraordinarily somber, casually eloquent monologue Sheridan has given him in Episode 3 just might serve as an epitaph for the entire age we’re living in right now.
Viewing The Apprentice (Prime) in the first weeks of the second Trump administration, you just might get the feeling that we’re now living in a world prophesied by Roy Cohn. Ali Abbasi’s starkly handsome biopic about the early career of Donald Trump features a good performance by Sebastian Stan (as the Trump of the 1970s) and an even better one by Jeremy Strong (as Trump’s mentor, the notorious Roy Cohn). Trump and company have spoken disparagingly of the entire project, but much of what the film shows is simply a matter of public record. The gently sympathetic touches in Stan’s portrayal of the young Trump may not entirely match up with the Trump we think we know from decades of television appearances, but as scripted by Gabriel Sherman, The Apprentice is really more of a dual portrait — something that is best thought of as a dramatic evocation of the crucial, corrosive, mutating symbiosis of the Trump-Cohn relationship. Noteworthy supporting performances include Martin Donovan as Fred Trump Sr., and Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump.
High Potential (Hulu), a beguiling mix of police story and situation comedy, lacks the cinematic heft and breadth of Landman and America Primeval, but its relatively brief episodes regularly make for some very charming TV entertainment. The scripts are California-based adaptations of a successful French series in which a high-IQ cleaning woman and single mother finds herself becoming, more or less by accident, a valued partner in police investigations of major crimes. Caitlin Olson, previously celebrated as the lone female member of the “the gang” in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, is terrific as the feisty lady who notices things that the LAPD detectives have missed.
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