The American Experiment — Netflix
A multi-episode PBS docuseries examination by unofficial documentarian-in-chief Ken Burns beat this Netflix one to the punch earlier this year. But the five-episode deep-dive into all things American ahead of its 250th anniversary has Tom Hanks as executive producer and is directed by Brian Knappenberger, creator of the excellent Turning Point series. The series’ assessment of the somewhat tattered beacon of liberal Western democracy provides an honest reflection on whether the founding fathers’ ideals can still be realised.
Theatre of the World: Ulrike Ottinger’s Berlin Trilogy — Mubi.com
Director Ulrike Ottinger is now rightly celebrated as a pioneer in her own right, even though she has not been as widely celebrated as her 1970s German New Wave contemporaries Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. She has also shunned their preference for social realism and classic Hollywood-inspired melodrama. Preferring surrealism and a glitter-strewn, high-visual anarchic style to grey grit and grime, Ottinger’s films explore the freedoms, distinctive characters, absurdism and existential angst of Berlin during the height of the Cold War, spotlighting the city’s many queer and marginalised citizens and their struggles to stay positive in the face of challenges from all sides. Mubi presents three of Ottinger’s films from her peak early era: Ticket of no Return, Freak Orlando and Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press.
The Bear Season 5 — Disney Plus
Carmy built it, broke it and left it to the rest of the crew to manage, but what now for The Bear and its dysfunctional but loving and loveable crew of misfit Chicago diehards? Creator Christopher Storer’s emotionally exhausting but heartfelt examination of the restaurant business and the eccentricities of the citizens of Chicago makes its exit from a TV and pop culture universe it helped to redefine. With armloads of Emmys and a cast who’ve become global household names, it’s just left to say goodbye in typical offbeat, heartbreaking style to a show that will live on long after its final credits roll.
In the Hand of Dante — Netflix
Whether as a 1980s bad-boy New York painter or an Oscar-nominated film director, 75-year-old Julian Schnabel has never shied away from being big, bold, brash and egotistical. His latest offering is a sprawling, multilayered, star-studded affair. It stars Oscar Isaac in dual roles: as a present-day New York novelist caught in a mobster’s plan to steal a rare Dante manuscript and the tortured 14th-century poet searching for inspiration.
Carrington — Prime Video
Unfairly dismissed when it was released in 1995, playwright and director Christopher Hampton’s 1995 period drama about a Bloomsbury Group fringe figure, the painter Dora Carrington and her tragic relationship with writer Lytton Strachey is now rightfully noted for its excellent lead performances from Emma Thompson and Jonathan Pryce and its smart choice to reveal much about the more celebrated Bloomsbury members through its focus on its troubled, tragically star-crossed artists in the tumultuous years between World War 1 and the onset of World War 2.
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