Now that it's 2022, I'll be listing some of my favorite streaming shows and films from the previous year in the newsletter all week. Not in ranked lists, because who needs rankings... the point is just to shout out some of my favorite stuff from the past year that, for whatever reason, you might have missed the first time around.
BEST UNSCRIPTED SHOWS AND FILMS OF 2021
THE BEATLES: GET BACK
[Apple TV+]
Much of the discussion around Peter Jackson's epic nearly 8-hour revisit to The Beatles' "Let It Be" sessions -- as the band prepared for both a new album and their iconic rooftop concert performance -- centered around his use of cutting-edge digital restoration techniques on both the audio and the video footage. The technology allowed Jackson to essentially remove all the grain from the images that were first shot in 1969, providing a reasonable facsimile for modern-day high definition footage. There's an eerie, otherworldly quality to it at times, making skin look a bit too smooth, causing lip movements to sometimes not match up perfectly with the words being spoken, and just generally adding a "more real than real" quality to some of the shots.
This bothered some purists, for whom authentically aged footage is part of the overall documentary experience. (Another 2021 music doc, Todd Haynes' "The Velvet Underground," went basically the 180-degree opposite way, relating the story of the band in a style that felt authentic to the avant-garde video projects they were working on in the 1960s and '70s.) But I found it to be one of the most compelling films of the year, of any style or format. Not just educational about the band and their working relationships at this pivotal moment in their history, but genuinely enlightening, providing insight into who they were as people and friends. Jackson's "Get Back" doesn't feel like a historical preservation project, but something more immersive. With its extreme length, its almost hypnotic focus on the minute-to-minute minutae of The Beatles and their collaborative process, and its vivid, bright, colorful and immediate visuals, the film can't help but pull you in, giving you the uncanny feeling of being in the room with these legendary musicians as they write these classic songs.
EXTERMINATE ALL THE BRUTES
[HBO Max]
For those who have studied modern European and American history, there may not be a ton of brand new information in Raoul Peck's video essay collection "Exterminate All the Brutes." It's not a rundown of the history of massacres and broken treaties and war crimes intended to overwhelm you with the scale of atrocities. Streaming services are already filled with documentaries like that, most of which go unwatched or unheeded.
Peck's series is a reconsideration of how we tell the story of our own history, using a combination of archival footage, home movies, original scripted reenactments, animation, clips from notable films. He interrogates antiquated Western notions about things like Exploration and Manifest Destiny, and revisits these narratives from a different point of view. It's equally thrilling and extremely dark, an attempt to shock viewers into altering their perspectives using filmmaking and artistry rather than cold hard facts and statistics.
Many re-enactments, for example, feature former matinee idol Josh Hartnett portraying a variety of American archetypes: the cowboy, the soldier, the explorer. But though typical Hollywood stories about these kinds of characters are usually told from their own perspectives, Peck instead films his reenactments from the POV of the oppressed. We can fill in the details that we'd be given by the traditional Western versions of these stories -- Hartnett's character feels conflicted about his orders, or feels that he has no choice but to follow the other men's example, or behaves badly but then later regrets his actions -- but Peck has no time for these considerations, just as the Native Americans being massacred or the slaves being beaten would not have had time or space for them. It's a powerful choice, one of many made over the course of this remarkable series that didn't get enough attention.
DEREK DELGAUDIO'S IN & OF ITSELF
[Hulu]
It's been nearly a year since I watched this filmed performance of illusionist and storyteller Derek DelGaudio's one-man show, and it has stuck with me for all of that time. If you still haven't seen it, I hesitate to reveal too much; it is, after all, a magic show in some ways, making the thrill of surprise part of the fun. DelGaudio has built-in a number of big turns and revelations into the evening, and I would not dream of spoiling any of them here.
Suffice it to say, the show explores issues of identity and how we view ourselves, with DelGaudio using a combination of monologues and trickery to investigate the ways that we tell stories about who we are, both to the world and to ourselves. It works in large part because it's extremely insightful and smartly conceived; DelGaudio is probably talented enough to work purely as a writer or monologuist if he wanted to give up close-up magic and card tricks. But it also comes alive because he's so good at interacting with his audience, both in the live crowd and at home. "In & Of Itself" is many things, but above all, it's a remarkable performance. (The filmed version, which was recorded by filmmaker Frank Oz, is also something of a marvel, brilliantly using editing to both capture the show itself and give us the feeling of being there in the crowd, experiencing it in the moment with the audience.)
BO BURNHAM: INSIDE
[Netflix]
Bo Burnham's 2021 Netflix special took the form of a series of videos he recorded himself, doing comedy alone in a small room in his Los Angeles home. Many of the segments were songs, or start off as songs before descending into sketches or monologues, and most deal in some ways with the anxieties and loneliness of life during the pandemic. I'll admit... many people found the content more emotionally resonant and powerful than I did. I struggled at times to relate to segments like the one in which Burnham realized he'd celebrate his 30th birthday during lockdown, or an extended segment in which he lamented that the pandemic interrupted his first planned comedy tour in several years. Not that these aren't valid things to complain about! They just weren't the things that defined the pandemic for me, personally.
Having said that, Burnham's realization of his core concept -- the process by which he conceived of, wrote, filmed, and performed all of these segments by himself in a small room -- is completely masterful and captivating all on its own. There are songs during which Burnham is performing, projecting a light show on the wall behind himself, and filming all at the same time, and it comes together seamlessly. Apparently years of making YouTube videos turned him into something of a one-man film crew, and the results -- and I say this as someone with extensive experience making just these kinds of online videos -- are remarkable.
Some of the songs and jokes are also very funny and worthwhile on their own merits. "White Woman's Instagram" is a perfect little piece of cultural observation, and his EDM-style salutes to Amazon CEO Jeffrey Bezos couldn't feel more timely or relevant.
THE LINE
[Apple TV+]
Doug Shultz and Jeff Zimbalist's four-part series on former Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher and his highly-publicized trial for war crimes doesn't play by the usual true-crime rules. Format-wise, it's all pretty familiar The first two episodes present what happened during Gallagher and his unit's deployment in Iraq from opposing perspectives; Gallagher and his supporters give their version of events, and then the men serving under him who accused him of targeting and killing civilians relate their version. The two episodes that follow cover what happened when the SEALs returned home to San Diego and a court-martial was initiated.
But the series is less concerned with the facts on the ground -- proving or disproving this or that specific charge leveled at Gallagher -- as it is with the organization and culture that produced a guy like this in the first place and then gave him an entire team to supervise. "The Line" takes place almost entirely within the US Navy; we hear from very few subjects who weren't there in Iraq serving under Eddie, or directly involved in his courtroom proceedings afterward. (Gallagher himself appears in "The Line" and, for the most part, maintains his innocence, but he's frequently given enough time to talk himself into corners or reveal more than he'd maybe planned.)
This isn't a movie about providing larger context to the Iraq War or even about President Trump's controversial decision to pardon Gallagher in 2019, so much as it is about being in the military (specifically as a SEAL), serving in combat, and having to decide -- in the moment -- what kind of person and soldier you're going to become. On that level, I found it pretty powerful.
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