What to Watch, #76

System Crasher and a controversial Berlinale

Welcome to What to Watch, a handcrafted newsletter for Netflix and Amazon Prime.

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It is that time of year again! The Berlin Film Festival takes place over the next two weeks. It is my favorite time of year when I get to watch a lot of movies while subsisting on an exclusive diet of supermarket sandwiches.

Last year, towards the end of the festival, I was sitting in the press conference room writing this newsletter. One cameraman looked to another and said “have you seen System Crasher? It’s the best film in the festival.” The other guy responded, “oh I know”. Guess what movie was added to Netflix today!

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THE TOP MOVIE OF THE WEEK

System Crasher

New today on Netflix. In German.

This is one of the craziest, most high energy movies you’ll ever watch. It’s about a 9-year-old who is considered a case the healthcare system calls a “system crasher”: someone who has exhausted every option child protective services has and still failed to get better.

This girl, called Benni, wants to get out of the system and go back to live with her mom, but her mother is scared of her. She is introduced to a new shelter with a social worker who tries a different approach in one last attempt to reform her.

System Crasher is a wild ride, but it’s made with so much heart that the thrills never feel senseless: it’s a movie that will stay with you for a long time.

📰 Little White Lies: “A tender and visceral film that leaves knots in your chest … Crafted with heaps of heart, well worth seeking out.”

📺 on Netflix everywhere; 🍅 rating: 90%

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THE TOP TV SHOW OF THE WEEK

Last Tango in Halifax

The first three seasons (out of five) are now on Netflix.

From the same showrunner as Happy Valley, the amazing thriller-drama also streaming on Netflix, comes this quiet romance-drama set in the British countryside.

But it’s not a coming-of-age story, the opposite. Last Tango is a later-in-life romance. Alan and Celia were neighbors and were attracted to each other when they were younger but never voiced their feelings. Now, 50 years later thanks to Facebook, they start dating again. And there are many other storylines going on other than this heart-melting romance at the center of the story.

📰 Observer: “As Shakespeare knew, there's something deeply appealing about the possibility of true love being one day realised, even so greyishly late that the wedding becomes a race against the funeral.”

📺 on Netflix U.S. and Canada; 🍅 rating:98%

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Readers’ top picks

• Warehoused, one of our mid-week picks, is our readers’ favorite TV show. It’s a Mexican movie with only two characters: one a slacker and the other a hardworking man about to retire. Funny and insightful, it’s a wonderful choice for viewers who like movies that are focused on the characters more than the plot.

• The Netflix miniseries The Pharmacist is our readers’ favorite TV show for the second week in a row. It starts as a true-crime show about a father investigating his son’s murder but moves into an investigative mission: the same father takes on big-pharma at the start of the opioid crisis.

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New titles worth your time

• A new docuseries premieres today on Netflix called Babies. It’s about trying to explain babies’ behavior: why is their sleep so intermittent? What do the faces they make mean? Is there any way to scientifically explain their behavior? All questions that this show asks a wide array of scientists.

  Our top movie pick, System Crasher, is also new on Netflix today.

• Amazon Prime premieres a highly-anticipated show today: Hunters with Al Pacino. It’s about a group of people who chase high-ranking Nazi officials in 1970s New York. Produced by Jordan Peele.

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Great titles that will soon expire

• The Oscar-nominated Indonesian documentary The Look of Silence leaves Netflix this Tuesday, February 25th. Made by the same team as The Act of Killing, it also deals with communities trying to make sense of the genocide that took place in the country in the 60s.

  Expiring next Friday, February 28th are two highlights from 1996: Trainspotting and Primal Fear.

• Darren Aronofsky’s mother! leaves Amazon Prime this Wednesday, February 26th. The 1991 classic The Silence of the Lambs leaves the next day, Thursday, February 27th. Lastly, The Hours with Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, and Julianne Moore expires Friday, February 28th.

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The Newsflash: a controversial start to the Berlin Film Festival

If you don’t want to read about the festival, can I suggest watching a short film instead? Released this week, it was shot by a camera crew who are stuck in Wuhan, a city under lockdown because of the new Coronavirus. They called it Wuhan: The Long Night.

The opening remarks of the first press conference at the Berlinale this year, made by Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons who is the president of the jury (pictured below), were not to celebrate but to address criticism. Criticism on three (!) levels: supporting sexual abuse (for signing a petition to support Roman Polanski), same-sex marriage (for saying that it would “debase” marital law) and abortions (for being quoted as agreeing with a pro-life advocate). Was that Oscar for problematic statements?

But it’s not just Scar from the original Lion King who’s facing issues, the festival itself is under scrutiny. The founder of the festival, Alfred Bauer, whose name is given to one of the festival’s most prestigious awards (it was, for example, a star-making moment for Baz Luhrmann) was … a nazi.

His affiliation with the Nazi party and Nazi film propaganda institutions were detailed during an investigation led by the newspaper Die Zeit. These links are now being studied by an external organization commissioned by the Berlinale, and the award was suspended.

It doesn’t help that this year is the 70th edition of the festival, which was supposed to be a big celebration of the moment it all started.

So the same question will be asked twice this year: why did the festival proceed?

Knowing about Jeremy Irons’ controversial opinions, why pick him as president of the jury? And knowing about Bauer’s history (there were reports as early as the 70s of his Nazi affiliation), why did the festival wait until a major publication broke the story to launch an investigation and suspend the award?

I don’t know enough about the Berlinale’s internal decision-making process to answer these two questions but this is part of a persisting pattern within old establishments in cinema. Whether by being silent on sexual harassment in Cannes where Weinstein once reigned or by being silent on Nazi history in Germany: there is a tendency to let reactions come from the outside. Film establishments rarely (if ever) take action to correct problems from within.

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That’s it for this week, I hope there is something in there for you.

The next edition will be in your inbox on Friday, February 28th.

Until then,

Bilal Zou, founder [bilal@agoodmovietowatch.com]

Carried with the support of the Creative Europe Program – MEDIA.