By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

When the Irish weren’t running to other continents from the potato famine, the Irish were in a full throttle rebellion against the religious occupation of Protestant England.

The two sisters, Dolours and Marian Price, occupy a lot of space on the narrative as soldiers in the Irish Republican Army whose resistance to religious persecution devolved into a violent struggle for redemption.

Director Michael Lennox uses the Belfast Project as a narrative device in which Dolours is interviewed about her involvement in what has become known as The Troubles. The Troubles was a violent clash of Irish resistant fighters and the British occupying Ireland in the 1970s, and about three ore decades thereafter.

The series show sin part that the Irish fought amongst themselves in a religious clash between Protestants and Catholics just as hard as they fought against the occupiers.

Lennox shows how the IRA carried out an urban gorilla campaign that frequently transferred over the relative short distance to London, England.

The streaming series plot reversal occurs when the sisters and 9 others travel from Belfast to London and plant four car bombs near buildings that represented the institution structure, colonialism perhaps, that supported the occupation, such as New Scotland Yard and the Old Bailey Courthouse on March 8, 1973.

The sisters, played by Lola Petticrew and Hazel Doupe, get caught partly as a result of mistakes made by the team leader, Dolours, but also because of an informant leaking information about the bombings to the British before the bombs go off. The British military had solicited IRA members to inform from the inside.

The narrative gets intersected by a wraparound that begins with a much older Dolours, played by Maxine Peake, being interviewed, but then quickly falls away to show the sisters as they are recruited into the IRA and eventually sent to prison for 8 years for their involvement in the bombings. 

The camera swings back around and records the last days of Dolours, eventually found overdosed in her own bed just as the information she had been leak to the Belfast Project is used to confront Jerry Adams, the suspected leader of the Irish Republican Army.

Lennox stays away from the faux docudrama look, and instead paints the scenes with that featurette film dramatization quality that seamlessly bleeds through 9 episodes.

A light score is used appropriate to the atmosphere, as a quite hymn frequently provides a backdrop to the plotters plotting and the guns and bombs going off, as well as the blank moments now and then when people never return to Belfast.

Lennox shows how the outward use of violence gradually begins to fold back into the inner circle of the urban gorilla movement with informants being discovered and disappearing – and also, once in a while a member is arrested.

The script is well sown together with the first episodes showing how the gorilla army was formed and carried out various missions, but then as the episodes begin to stack up at the same time the British make inroads, the violence bleeds them out until both sides sue for peace.

A little bit of aesthetics is used with a lot of violence, put into context with dialogue between a large cast of interesting characters, interconnected from episode to episode.

Say Nothing is streaming in Canada on Disney+.

POST WAR PARISIAN COUTURE REIMAGINED FOR GENERATIONS

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Fashion has been influenced by the circumstances whether the Parisian couturiers are surviving the austerity of the Great Depression or the persecution of NAZI occupation.

Series creator Todd A. Kessler designs the story boards around the beautiful dresses made for women in The New Look (Series 2024).

Ben Mendelsohn has the title role as Christian Dior while Juliette Binoche portrays Coco Chanel in a parallel narrative. Dior is establishing himself as the leading fashion designer in Paris while Chanel is struggling to remain relevant in Switzerland.

Mendelsohn plays Dior as slightly feminine, thoughtful and ever moving forward to create beautiful fashion.

The script says just as much about the war time society split between collaborators and resistance fighters as about the designers and competing couture houses of the Parisian fashion industry.

Christine’s younger sister, Catherine Dior, is portrayed by Maisie Williams, as she fights in the resistance during the war until her imprisonment at Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Dior initially is employed as a designer for Lucien Lelong, played by John Malkovich. Malkovich augments carefully chosen words with facial gestures and body language to express heart felt sentiment.

The fashion houses, run by people with warm hearts and an eye for detail, is contrasted by Coco Chanel oscillating between submissiveness and desperation. Chanel wants to maintain her position in fashion as newly defined couture emerges from the war years.

This 10 part streaming series on Apple TV+ wends through several twists and turns as the characters become immersed in several personal and systemic issues.

Mendelsohn shows how Dior was torn between his duty to Lelong and his fear of persecution by the occupiers while gradually accepting his own personal development as a leading fashion designer.

Essentially, Parisians did what they had to do to survive the war, and certain people managed to survive a bit better than other people.

Glenn Close appears as the influential Harper’s Bazaar editor, Carmel Snow. Carmel arrives just as Dior begins to explore the possibility of establishing his own house of couture.

Binoche develops Chanel as an interesting world renowned character with eccentric traits and the stubborn determination that made her the leading fashion designer. Chanel at times becomes consumed in self interest as she struggles to remain relevant.

The New Look explains the importance of the fashion industry to culture while also underscoring the negative impact of the war on the people behind couture.

As Dior’s influence spreads, the thorough discussions of the issues throughout the series fold back in on themselves to explain that life and all circumstances are inseparable from culture and fashion.

GOLDEN AGE ICON WITH HEART FELT EMOTIONS

Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon star in the four-part British television series Archie (2023).

That’s just how good Jason Isaac and Laura Aikman are as the biographical Hollywood actors.

Isaac plays Grant in his twilight years on stage as part of a swan song personal appearance tour. Grant is doing a stream of consciousness performance with the audience asking him questions that lead him to anecdotes and a bit of deadpan humor about him having sex with women, plural.

This format allows Grant free moments to reflect.

Director Paul Andrew Williams then takes everyone back to Grant’s childhood living in poverty in Bristol, England.

Grant’s father was a bit of a shit, so the young boy began earning his own money in a vaudeville act that eventually led him out of the neighbourhood and across the ocean to near Broadway in New York City.

The first episode spends a lot of time on these formative years and how Grant changed his name from Archie Leach on his way to becoming a big star with a five year Hollywood film contract.

Grant became one of the greatest screen actors during the Golden Age of Hollywood because producers were taken by his good looks. But the rising star could also act, clown around a bit and bring in the audience with the development of a genuine heart felt screen character.

Several film scripts capitalize on this appeal by trapping the character in compromising positions and making him an early suspect of moral wrongdoing.

Isaac recreates the screen character with that iconic speech and often whimsical smile that compliments some gentle body language and hand gestures.

Williams runs the past in the flashbacks against the present on stage until the past catches up to the present. The director even ever so briefly magically splits time and space with the young vaudeville actor running toward the screen star on the same set in the same scene sequence.

The dramatization of home movies is used as scene transitions and narrative twists that often require a second look to verify whether the character captured on the home movie camera is Isaac or Grant.

The script offers a good balance between telling of an acting career and a personal life until Grant seemingly decides to start again at his Hollywood Hills mansion with Dyan Cannon.

The humor that made Grant so endearing as a screen icon is ever present until the relationship with Cannon shows how difficult Grant was to live with after a third divorce and an established icon being set in his ways wanting things a certain way.

Grant is very much Cannon’s senior with Cannon as a result not being all that overwhelmed by the connection initially. But Grant falls in love at first sight and incrementally wins her love over until quickly falling through a 4^th divorce over petty differences and just a selfish spoiled need to do everything exactly the way he wanted it done.

Cannon, though, seems to save Grant’s life by having a daughter with him. Being a father gives Grant a greater sense of belonging and accomplishment in the world than his Hollywood career gave him at the end of the day.

Williams uses the natural colors and beautiful architectural settings in Hollywood to tell the story with a bit of glamorous realism that one might expect from universal acting ions.

The scenes are kept moving with the natural beauty of the environment and the character studies that just kind of draw in the camera as if needing to look for the real actor portraying Cary Grant. This introspection by the camera is also effected by the portrayal of other Hollywood celebrities, such as Ian McNeice as Alfred Hitchcock, Lily Travers as Grace Kelly and Stella Stocker as Audrey Hepburn.

The story is not so much about the complicated world outside than about just how charming and endearing the actor was who created the film character with very similar qualities.

DIRECTOR MAKES FINDINGS OF GUILT AND INNOCENCE

The dangerous teeter-totter between the government and the militia is unraveled in detail in the sequel to the Showtime streaming series Waco (2018).

Michael Shannon reprises his role as the lead negotiator for the Federal Bureau of Investigations during the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas in the Spring of 1993.

Waco: The Aftermath (2023) costars Shannon as Gary Noesner and Giovanni Ribisi as defence counsel Dan Cogdell tasked with defending several survivors of the Waco siege.

Branch Davidian leader David Koresh had assembled a loyal following with his personalized teachings of the Book of Revelations and Seven Seals.

The FBI siege of Koresh’s Branch Davidian Compound at Mount Carmel began on February 28, 1993 and lasted 51 days until the center caught fire after tear gas was inserted into the main buildings. 79 Branch Davidians perished in the blaze, including 21 children.

Two years to the day later, in a clear act of reprisal by the militia, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bombed the Alfred P. Murrah  Federal Building in Oklahoma City killing 168 and injuring 680 on April 19, 1995.

In Waco, Taylor Kitsch plays Koresh as a persuasive religious leader who had almost total psychological control over his followers. Paul Sparks plays Koresh’s loyal lieutenant.

The scenes continually tumble from inside the compound to inside the tents of the FBI command post and between the lead negotiator, who was often at odds with the FBI commander, and Koresh. The ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) law enforcement unit started the crises. But the series shows that the FBI acted irresponsibility and made matters much worse than was necessary after taking over the police action.

The series directors have little need to dramatize the events that unfolded to make the situation more interesting. Instead, Drew Dowdle and John Erick Dowdle take a journalistic approach to telling both sides of the story with some analyses embedded within the narrative that allows viewers to draw their own conclusions.

Tensions build as the siege continues on, but Koresh’s leadership is never really challenged with many followers refusing to leave the compound without him, even when he becomes seen as unreasonable and stubborn to the series audience.

Shannon plays the leading role, costarring with Kitsch, as the two test the other’s honesty and trust and reasonableness through a series of rationalizations that bolster either side of the standoff. Kitsch does a good job of portraying a devout Christian tending to his carefully chosen flock.

Shannon continues on with a bit of a lessor role in The Aftermath as the storyline of the standoff gives way to the courtroom drama and the pursuit of justice for those few Branch Davidian survivors.

But the Branch Davidians fare no better with the justice system than they did with law enforcement at the Mount Carmel Center.

Directors Drew Dowdle and John Erick Dowdle show the justice system as not seeking the truth so much as needing a conviction on behalf of the government and law enforcement to close a most horrid chapter on domestic terrorism.

The inner demon becomes useful as a narrative device while the camera explores the inner motivations of the characters and the inevitable outcome of how each perceives reasonableness within the ongoing religious discourse.

Ribisi portrays the defense counsel as genuinely wanting the accused to be acquitted, showing how Cogdell struggled personally and professionally with the decisions from the bench that go the other way.

In the end the jury acquits Ruth Riddle, Livingstone Fagan, Michael Cassidy and Paul Fatta. But again, the final results of that acquittal end up being unrewarding.

DEADPAN HUMOR APPLIED TO POLITICAL STORYLINE

Creator Alex Gregory takes everyone into the minds of the team leaders behind the Watergate burglaries.

Woody Harrelson as E. Howard Hunt and Justice Theroux as G. Gordon Libby deadpan their way into the media spotlight after their crew get caught planting listening devices at the National Headquarters of the Democratic Party in 1971.

US President Richard Nixon’s administration had hired Hunt and Libby to organize a dirty tricks unit that would assist in the reelection of the president in 1972.

Gregory masks the real life political events in a bit of a parody to reveal why the team of Cubans and ex-CIA agents loyal to the Whitehouse caused more damage than good. Although Nixon was reelected, the celebrations would be short lived as the media scrutiny intensified around the burglary at the Watergate Hotel in Washington DC, ultimately causing Nixon’s resignation before the end of his second term.

Hunt makes a series of bungles in his delegation of assignments based on an overconfident and over glorified self-image as a master spy in the HBO Series, White House Plumbers (2023).

And to make matters worse, Hunt’s co-conspirator, Libby, is overzealous with a borderline neo-Nazi disorder that involves listening to illegal German Nazi recordings.

Harrelson and Theroux are cast well together, with the two spies bonding well and seeing themselves as the saviors to America operating in the deep background of the presidency.

But the Whitehouse plumbers have a bit of comedic tragedy about them as they make one mistake after another.

This bumbling spy theme is intertwined with the actors demonstrating the idiosyncratic nature of their characters. A light score faithful to the era of late ‘60s and early ‘70s compels many of these scenes.

Lena Headey performs Dorothy Hunt as the loyal old school housewife who shares the same mindsight and remains loyal as long as her husband continues to be successful. Dorothy, though, is overqualified as a stay at home mom, presenting as capable of running more than her own household and providing more than emotional support to her husband’s endeavors.

Director David Mandel tells the story in five episodes, providing a unique spin on the true events that have stayed in the public spotlight for 50 years.

Mandel takes the camera inside the personal lives of the masterminds behind the White House black ops, following them about as they attempt to complete prep work for the Watergate break-ins.

Mandel also subtly sketches the cocktail generation and the nuclear family with all their shortcomings, including during marital sex.

Several scene advances drive the narrative along with the acting and the circus-like score all forming part of an interpretation that is not all that flattering.

Another story about the Watergate break-ins that overturned a democratically elected presidency is worth a watch for the directing and acting art and for the overlay of comedic tone over five episodes that seems to fly by through red traffic lights.