Weekly Watch List Recap 9/17/21

Welcome to the Friday recap of Ty Burr’s Watch List postings. If you’d like to receive this weekly email ONLY, please go to your account page and under “Email notifications” uncheck every box except “Weekly Digest.”

On Monday, I went personal after a weekend revisiting childhood haunts in Maine and drew connections to two island movies, “Moonrise Kingdom” and “The Lighthouse.”

Islands in the (Slip)Stream

Today’s newsletter is about islands real and metaphorical – islands of land surrounded by water and islands of memory surrounded by life. And movies (because this is a movie newsletter) – movies feel like islands, too. They’re discrete archipelagos of experience, each 90- to 120-minutes long, after which we take a ferry back to the real world, shaken or…

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For Wednesday’s newsletter, I alerted readers to the sharp, affecting streaming premiere, “Together,” on Amazon and DirecTV. It stars James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan.

Estranged Bedfellows

“Together” was released to theaters at the end of August for reasons that elude me – it’s not a movie so much as the first pandemic teleplay. As such, it’s quite good. Yes, it mostly consists of two people stuck in a house talking to each other when they’re not talking to the camera, but the two people are Jam…

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On Thursday, I sent out a quickie for paying subscribers about my favorite MGM musical, “It’s Always Fair Weather,” playing on Turner Classics and rentable elsewhere.

Classic of the Week: "It's Always Fair Weather"

Is “Singin’ in the Rain” the best musical to ever come out of Hollywood? Sure, and it’s a great gateway drug for turning kids on to old movies. But favorite musicals are another matter, and mine has always been “It’s Always Fair Weather,” from 1955. It’s another gem from Arthur Freed’s musicals unit at MGM, with a script by Betty Comden and Adolph Green…

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And to end the week, I touched on new releases “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” and “Cry Macho” and dug into the backlist for the funny and provocative documentary “Tim’s Vermeer.”

What to Watch This Weekend 9/17/21

NOTE TO READERS: Starting today, you’ll be able to reduce the number of Watch List emails you receive to one weekly recap on Fridays. The first one will go out later today and link to all the week’s postings. If you would like to receive the recap and ONLY the recap, go to

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