Skip to main content

The Atlantic Daily: What an Oscar-winning Filmmaker Is Watching

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.

Today, we send you into the weekend with:

  • Three quarantine film recommendations, selected by the Moonlight director Barry Jenkins;

  • Three new TV shows to consider, as reviewed by our writers;

  • Three short documentaries, available to stream on our site right now.

(If you prefer the page to the screen, browse our weekly Books Briefing.)

JUANITO AGUIL / GETTY / THE ATLANTIC

Barry Jenkins’s Quarantine Film List

The Oscar-winning director, best known for Moonlight, was wrapping an upcoming television project when the stay-at-home orders arrived. Since then, it’s all Mondays. “I feel like we’ve been home for three Mondays, and nothing else,” Jenkins told our staff writer David Sims. “It’s just been one continuous Monday.”

To reclaim that Friday-at-the-movies feeling, try one of these Jenkins-approved picks:

MID-AUGUST LUNCH (2008)

The film: This light Italian comedy-drama follows a man who starts caring for his neighbors’ elderly relatives during the busy holiday season as a way to pay off his debts.

Jenkins’s notes: “I’ve been [thinking] about Italy during this crisis, and this was a tiny film I’d seen years ago. It’s the most amazing little film, the directorial debut of the writer of the Italian film Gomorrah. It’s 75 minutes, it’s on Amazon Prime, and it’s just delightful.”

Watch it on: Amazon Prime

TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016)

The film: A zombie apocalypse suddenly breaks out in South Korea, ensnaring the passengers of a train on the way to the city of Busan.

Jenkins’s notes: “This was [Jenkins’s partner, the writer and the director Lulu Wang’s] recommendation. I hadn’t seen it, but it’s really awesome—I was in the back room where we watched, screaming and shouting. It transported us, in a way! We turned the lights off, enjoyed the jump scares.”

Watch it on: Netflix

STALKER (1979)

The film: Andrei Tarkovsky’s sci-fi masterwork sees a strange figure called the “Stalker” leading a writer and a professor into the forbidden and desolate “zone,” where a room supposedly exists that can fulfill any desire.

Jenkins’s notes: “It’s the kind of movie that sits in the back of your head.”

Watch it on: Criterion Channel

You can find more details about Jenkins’s choices—along with five additional picks—on our site.

HULU / THE ATLANTIC

Three New TV Shows, Reviewed

NORMAL PEOPLE

“The Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s hit novel ushers an addictive, messily human portrayal of young love to the small screen.”

LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE

“The show is clearly trying to cover the bases [the book’s author, Celeste Ng,] couldn’t get to herself, and it’s admirable to see an adaptation try to improve upon its source material and write toward a savvy audience mindful of social and racial issues. Yet in some ways, it can feel like the show is being pulled in too many directions at once.”

MRS. AMERICA

Mrs. America is maybe the first great television series of 2020, a project that manages to capture the complicated essence of real characters while telling a story at both micro and macro levels.”

Rishi Chandna

Three Bite-Size Documentaries

Step aside, Tiger King. I asked my colleague Emily Buder, who curates our Atlantic Selects documentary series, to pick three bite-size videos worth the watch. This week, she explores the connection between animal and man through three films (all of which are shorter than 15 minutes and can be watched on our site).

PICKLE

The quirky story of a family who rescued a menagerie of variously sick, deformed, or otherwise unconventional creatures

TUNGRUS

The unforgettable tragicomedy about a family living in a cramped Mumbai apartment with a “chicken from hell”

HAIRAT

A poetic ode to the communion between an Ethiopian man and the beloved hyenas that roam his ancient city


Sign yourself up for The Daily here



from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/3bWlPKJ

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

REPORT: Furious Spike Lee Paces Aisle, Turns Back To Stage...

REPORT: Furious Spike Lee Paces Aisle, Turns Back To Stage... (Top headline, 5th story, link ) Related stories: REVIEW: Hostless Show Starts With Rock & Rolls Off Rails... Actor knocks borders, walls during speech in Spanish... Stage designed to look like Trump hair? 'GREEN BOOK' OVERCOMES BACKLASH, NABS BEST PICTURE... Top Critics Fume... LIST: WINNERS... Advertise here from Drudge Report Feed https://ift.tt/2SUpIKy

Tiny Love Stories: ‘Who Was I to Deprive Him of Joy?’

By Unknown Author from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2UV7YAG

The Ugly History of Dual-Loyalty Charges

When Representative Ilhan Omar recently complained about “the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” many noted accurately that she had deployed a trope—dual loyalty—that had been used against Jews for years. But this accusation has a broader history in the United States, having been used against several religious minorities—including Muslims like Omar. Indeed, many battles over religious freedom have revolved around dual-loyalty claims. [ Read: Ilhan Omar just made it harder to have a nuanced debate about Israel ] In the 19th century, many attacks on Catholics stressed that these immigrants were pawns of a foreign power. In the 1830s, Samuel Morse—then a prominent painter and later the inventor of the telegraph—urged Americans to build “walls” and “gates” to keep out Catholic immigrants, who would always be loyal to Rome. Because these Catholic immigrants were decrepit —“halt, and blind, and naked”—they were easy to co...