P-Valley (2020-, Katori Hall)
Renewed for a second season just two weeks after its release, American playwright Katori Hall’s P-Valley gives us an engaging, neon-lit drama about a fictional town in the Mississippi Delta and the inhabitants whose life revolves around The Pynk, a troublesome and rundown strip-club that serves as the livelihood to its main characters and the obstacle to the local elite’s dreams of gentrification. When Hailey Colton arrives to town looking to start a new life having lost everything in a hurricane, she enters a poledancing competition wherein she incurs the wrath of its more established stars, including Mercedes (Brandee Evans), the club’s prima donna with ambitions of her own. Meanwhile the club’s owner, the charismatic Uncle Clifford (Nicco Annan), keeps the ship barely afloat amid mounting debts and battles with a corrupt local government that wants The Pynk replaced by a casino. Reminiscent in all the right ways of FX’s Pose, this is an addictive eight-episode glimpse into the struggles of those whose lives and artistry are often reduced to sideshow, instead of respected for the mental, emotional and physical fortitude their nine-to-five demands.
Greenland (2020, Ric Roman Waugh)
This disaster flick by Ric Roman Waugh is an unexpected end-of-the-world treat that manages to mostly avoid Emmerich- and Bay-style cliche even as the rocks start falling. A tense movie that makes the most of its relatively modest budget, Greenland depicts a somewhat realistic reaction to an admittedly unlikely event. John Garrity (Gerard Butler) and his wife and child, Allison (Morena Baccarin) and Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd) prepare for a weekend barbecue, keeping a casual eye on the skies and the television for updates on the impending near-earth fly-by of the comet Clarke. While the twenty-four-hour news channels present the moment as a thrilling but harmless spectacle, large-scale military operations and a notification from Homeland Security informing John of his family’s admittance to an ark-like bunker suggests the world has likely been kept in the dark about what’s really going on. After breakaway debris devastates Florida, the panicked looting and rioting begins, as John and his family must now desperately fight their way to the hidden military facility.
Wander (2020, April Mullen)
A film about one man’s fight against government conspiracy and mind-control could literally not have arrived at a worse time, as poisons of a similar kind now filter through a paranoid Trumpian America. Aaron Eckhart plays Arthur Bretnik, an erratic and mostly-broken man who years earlier lost his wife and child in mysterious circumstances, and who now spends his time self-medicating in a caravan in the American desert, away from the watchful eyes of Big Brother. A woman enlists his help to investigate the death of her daughter, who, he learns, died in a manner similar to that of his family, believing the government and small town’s police department are hiding a sinister plot. Supported by Jimmy (Tommy Lee Jones) and Shelley (Heather Graham), the driving force behind this minor mess of a thriller is, of course, whether Arthur is out of his drug-addled (and possibly schizophrenic) mind or if he’s onto something that no one else is.