What’s Up? Docs.

With all that is transpiring in this Fisher Island household at present, I found my attention span (or perhaps my tolerance) somewhat limited. Plopping down into my semi easy chair, I eschewed my usual preference for serialized storytelling, turned away from the melodrama of the stand-alone movie, and instead decided to sit back and learn something … or at least observe something … in the form of the documentary.

I turned to Netflix where I quickly glommed onto a quartet of better than average pieces of filmmaking. Operation Varsity Blues … the story of the college admission scandal… was the least impressive of the three but still worth the time spent watching. Much of it is old news about the rich and famous having their way with college entrance boards to favor their children.

Surprise, surprise: rich white people have advantages that the less rich, less white folks do not have. What did shock a bit was that some folks (but not many and certainly not enough) went to jail for their duplicity.

What is sad is that the documentary did not go at all into the more current and (I think) more important aspects of what could be called Varsity Blues … that is the cost/reward ratio of today’s college education and just how much (or little) that degree is really going to be worth in a world of AI and all that portends. 

So … a little less adventuresome … a little out of date, but a not uninteresting expose of something we already knew or (at least) assumed.

The Social Dilemma was arguably the best of the four films if for no other reason than because of subject matter. If you can watch this and still watch your kids on their cell phones at the dinner table you are just not paying attention. Here is my solid recommendation. Make this Netflix documentary required viewing at your house and, if possible, watch as a family. I assure you that it is a worthwhile activity.

Then there is The New Yorker at 100. Even at one hour and thirty-seven minutes, it largely works at holding the interest of any viewer. The magazine of the American elite … which began in 1925 … is still going strong at 100 even when such publications as LIFE, Time, LOOK, The Saturday Evening Post, and others have either faded or flat out disappeared. No small accomplishment, and this look behind the scenes of just who makes it tick and how they do it is … well, if not fun, certainly a legitimate way to spend nearly one minute for each of those hundred years.

And finally, Murder in Monaco. Advertised as “Monaco’s O.J. trial,” I found myself riveted to this incredible true story of the murder of an international billionaire in the town made famous by Grace Kelly at least twice (once with the Prince of this microstate on the French Riviera and the other time with royalty from Hollywood in the personage of Cary Grant). Giving equal time where it is due, one should also point out that James Bond sort of made Monaco notorious as well.

The documentary is really more like a movie than any of the other films mentioned here and, in this case, I think that is a good thing. See them all.

Consider it a healthy reason to have an appointment with a doc.

 

Barney Rosenzweig