The story of the kidnapping of Noa Argamani from the Nova Music Festival by Hamas terrorists on October 7 transfixed not only Israelis and Jews, but much of the world, and now her rescue and return to Israel has also touched hearts, not least because it has allowed her to be reunited with her mother, Liora, who is dying of cancer. That makes this week a good time to enjoy mother-daughter movies and there are quite a few available.
‘Mamma Mia!’ – Apple TV+
‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ – Netflix
If you want something silly and fun, with great pop songs, watch Mamma Mia! On Apple TV+, starring Meryl Streep as the mother who never told her daughter who her father is, and Amanda Seyfried as the daughter who wants to know before she gets married. The latest version of Little Women, this one, directed by Greta Gerwig, is streaming on Netflix, with Laura Dern as the matriarch and Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, and Eliza Scanlen as her determined daughters.
Also on Netflix, you can see Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, a coming-of-age story with a touching mother-daughter relationship at its center.
‘Far North’ – Hot 3, Hot VOD, and Next TV
If you want something a little different, try Far North on Hot 3, Hot VOD, and Next TV, which just started running on Wednesday nights. It is the dramatized version of a bizarre true story of how a mechanic named Ed and his exercise instructor/wife Heather, who live together in a small town in New Zealand, stumbled on an international drug deal in 2016 involving half a billion dollars’ worth of meth, bumbling Australian-Tongan smugglers, and Chinese drug lords.
Some of the story may seem too crazy to be true, but the show’s creator, David White, has said in an interview that the funniest parts were lifted verbatim from trial transcripts. It’s a complicated story with a lot of twists that will get you hooked.
Presumed Innocent – Apple TV+
Presumed Innocent was a big Hollywood movie in 1990 based on a Scott Turow novel and starring Harrison Ford, which has just been remade as a series for Apple TV+ and will begin streaming on June 12. Ford is such a commanding and likeable actor, and it’s a pretty tall order to fill his shoes, but Jake Gyllenhaal does his best as Rusty Savidge in the remake, a Chicago prosecutor investigating the murder of a colleague, Carolyn (Renate Reinsve), with whom he had an affair. Not surprisingly, he soon finds himself accused of killing her. Viewers should be warned that the series features graphic photos of the victim and an autopsy scene.
It was a good movie, but the less you remember about the original, the more you are likely to enjoy this remake, which doesn’t begin to match the intensity of the original. The series, created by David E. Kelley, who made Ally McBeal, brings to mind The Good Wife, which mixed marital strife, Chicago politics, and the criminal justice system with more wit and originality.
The backroom sniping among prosecutors is the most forgettable aspect here, and much more weight is given to Rusty’s troubled marriage, as his wife, Barbara (Ruth Negga), struggles to accept the fact that her husband has been given the task of finding his lover’s murderer, worrying that he never stopped loving Carolyn.
Gyllenhaal does his best and makes Rusty into a decent guy in a bad situation, but he doesn’t have Ford’s ability to combine a smoldering sense of contained anger that could turn violent with an everyman quality, which made him into an instant star when he appeared in Star Wars. With Ford, you could understand why he had the affair and you could really wonder if he could have murdered her out of jealousy. In the remake, Gyllenhaal seems so remorseful he’s like a lost puppy.
He isn’t helped by the fact that Reinsve, seen in many flashbacks, doesn’t portray Carolyn in a way that makes you understand why so many men were obsessed with her. A Norwegian actress who starred in The Worst Person in the World, Reinsve was appealing and playful in that movie, for which she won the Best Actress Award at Cannes, but perhaps was not meant to play a no-nonsense prosecutor with a sensible haircut. She speaks with something meant to be a New York accent, which can be a little distracting. But Presumed Innocent is well made enough and suspenseful enough to hold your interest.
‘Becoming Karl Lagerfeld’ – Disney+
Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge – upcoming?
Groovy 70s music, couture outfits, and a brooding genius who sketches clothes in a smoke-filled atelier, evincing contempt for those who revere him – it must be another series about an iconic fashion designer. The latest one is Becoming Karl Lagerfeld, a six-part series just released on Disney+. Daniel Bruhl, who is always fun to watch, plays the titular designer with as much charm as the script allows him to muster.
Bruhl became an international star following his breakout movie, Good Bye Lenin! – a comedy about the end of the Cold War that is worth seeing if you can find it. Much of the series is about Lagerfeld’s relationship with a younger gay man, Jacques de Brascher (Theodore Pellerin), the son of a bourgeois French family who disapproved of his lifestyle. The rest is about his rise from an anonymous dress designer to the man credited with revitalizing the Chanel brand in the 80s.
The more you are interested in fashion, the more you’ll like this series, but if you’re not into the rag trade at all, you’ll want to skip it. Lagerfeld is a chilly, self-absorbed figure and the highlights are the clothes. Like the recent series Cristobel Balenciaga, The New Look, and Halston, and the movie Phantom Thread – all about designers – the fashion’s the thing here.
A fashion documentary that just premiered at the Tribeca Festival, Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge, about the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor who became a major name in fashion, received rave reviews. Let’s hope that it comes to Israel soon, either in a festival or on television.