Platform Diving

Applying the 17-second test as to film's worthiness

Don Cheadle and Andrew Rannells star in Black Monday, a half-hour comedy set on Wall Street in the 1980s which premieres on the Showtime platform this weekend.
Don Cheadle and Andrew Rannells star in Black Monday, a half-hour comedy set on Wall Street in the 1980s which premieres on the Showtime platform this weekend.

One of the things you can't complain about in this job is the sheer opportunity you have to watch stuff. I can sit in my office with headphones on watching movies on my computer all day and people think I'm working hard. During the week, it's rare that an hour goes by that I'm not offered, via email, a chance to watch someone's movie.

Most of these aren't the sort of movies that show up in our cineplexes. I pass on most of these, because time is a finite resource, and most of you are likely to find a review of a feature or documentary that's hard to see of limited utility.

On the other hand, we are living in 2019 now -- the year in which the original Bladerunner is set. You probably have movies in your pocket. You might have Netflix or Hulu. You certainly know about YouTube.

While we might agree that the best way to see a movie is sitting in the dark in a theater among strangers who have come together to watch light projected on a wall, a lot of us don't get out that much. We have nice TVs now.

Besides, in Arkansas, you didn't even get a chance to watch Roma in a theater.

So I think this section -- which you may have noticed hasn't actually been called MovieStyle for a while -- ought to be nimbler and more open-minded. We've done some writing about video-on-demand before; we've covered a few Netflix movies, and we'll try to do more of that in the future. But we won't try to write about everything.

We can't. There are too many platforms. Too much content. But we're going to pick our spots. That's what this new feature is about.

Maybe in this space we won't worry too much about when a project starts streaming, which means we won't always have to see it in advance. I haven't seen the Netflix film Bird Box yet, and from what I've heard I don't think I need to see it, but it wouldn't be off-limits.

And this column won't preclude the occasional full-stop review of a video-on-demand release (as when Karen Martin recently reviewed Dumplin'). It's just another tool in our toy box. We'll pull it out when we want. Maybe to talk about The Sopranos at 20, or the Don Cheadle/Regina Hall series Black Monday, which debuts on Showtime on Sunday.

I've watched the first two episodes of that half-hour series, and can see myself getting interested in it. Cheadle has always fascinated me as an actor, and this dark comedy, set on Wall Street in the year leading up to the Black Monday crash on Oct. 19, 1987, an event that the series claims has never been completely understood. (Conventional wisdom attributes the crash to computer trading models and derivative securities, illiquidity, trade and budget deficits and pilot error -- over-confidence then panic on the part of traders.)

Cheadle plays Maurice Moore, a blaxploitation caricature of his character in House of Lies, an uneven but sometimes wickedly funny comedy that ran on Showtime from 2012 to 2016 (and is available on Amazon Prime Video). Hall is his former lover and more competent junior partner in his investment firm, while Andrew Rannels (Girls) is a new trader with a trading algorithm (probably the one that eventually breaks Wall Street) whom Moore schemes to bring into his fold.

It's a quick show. A lot of the gags feel cartoonish and skit-comedy level although there's a sense that seeds are being sown that might pay off later. The second episode is a lot better than the first, which exists simply to introduce us to the characters. There's potential, and it's only a 30-minute investment, so I'll watch a couple more.

Also debuting Sunday night on Showtime is the second season of SMILF, a series I dropped halfway through the first season because something else caught my magpie eye and I wandered off. I didn't hate it, though I didn't like it as much as the irredeemable guilty pleasure Shameless, which is the prime reason we maintain a Showtime subscription.

I'm impressed by Frankie Shaw, the series' star, showrunner and chief writer (I would have liked to have caught more than a glimpse of her in Homecoming, Amazon's prestige half-hour show with Julia Roberts). I've never spent much time in South Boston, but the show feels like it's set in a real place. And while Shaw looks far too healthy for her character's bad habits, it feels grounded in recognizable working-class reality.

Finally, one of those movies that I had a chance to watch but didn't debuts on Netflix today. What's most intriguing about Close, billed as "an adrenaline-pumping action thriller written and directed by Vicky Jewson," is that it stars Noomi Rapace, the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo star who has, by design or fluke made something of a cottage industry out of appearing in these Netflix Original Movies. (She is also in Bright and What Happened to Monday.)

In this one she plays a counter-terrorist expert partially based on Jacquie Davis, a former police officer who has served as bodyguard to, among others, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli, J.K. Rowling, Nicole Kidman and Justin Bieber. In the film, Rapace's character Sam is charged with protecting Zoe (Sophie Nelisse), a young and rich heiress. But this apparently easy job gets complicated quickly.

While you shouldn't judge a movie by its marketing, the plain truth is no one can keep up with everything, and we all need a way of performing triage. Back in the days when I used to review records, Karen and I devised the 17-second test. If a record didn't do anything to grab your attention -- one way or the other -- in those 17 seconds, it went in the slush pile, dismissed without prejudice.

This new feature will operate on that same principle.

Email:

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

www.blooddirtangels.com

MovieStyle on 01/18/2019

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