What to Watch: Weekend Guide

(Apologies: Had to re-send this out due to email glitch.)

I’ve waited a while to say something about last Sunday night’s Oscars in part because there isn’t a whole lot to say. I thought the show was acceptable, Conan was fine, the awards went to enough of the right people and movies. (My correct-prediction score was 16 out of 23 or 70% – about average for me, and if I hadn’t placed wild-card bets on “Conclave” for Best Picture and Chalamet for Best Actor, it would have been higher.)

What was most unsettling was what wasn’t there: Any mention of the current administration’s dismantling of government down to the wall studs, among other man-made disasters. Aside from a decent drive-by joke about Putin from Conan and a shout-out to Ukraine from Daryl Hannah, the only nod to the world outside the Dolby Theatre came from Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham, the co-directors of the deserved feature documentary winner “No Other Land.” That film still doesn’t have a US distributor, and the silence of the Academy lambs on Sunday was just another reminder that the entertainment industry isn’t even very good at talking the talk anymore, forget about walking the walk. It’s enough to make a person pine for the incisive sociopolitical insights of Sacheen Littlefeather. 

But on to the weekend viewing picks. Some remaining Oscar nominees are now available on demand, you can program your own festival for a dear departed star, and I suggest a four-star foreign film and a couple of terrific classics. See below.