Picks of the Week offers Women and Hollywood’s top recommendations — women-driven and women-made movies, series, VOD releases, and more — and tells you why they are worth your time and money.
Note: Women and Hollywood will not be sending Picks of the Week next Tuesday, November 26.
Hala – Written and Directed by Minhal Baig
From writer-director Minhal Baig, “Hala” marks one of the first acquisitions of Apple TV+. The Sundance pic tells the story of Hala, played by the incredibly talented Geraldine Viswanathan. She’s a hijab-wearing young woman struggling with her strict parents’ expectations in a world of opportunity. She’s not perfect, refreshingly so. Her parents’ relationship is the one thing she can count on and when that falls apart, she falls apart. She also challenges her religion and its hold on girls and their sexuality. “Hala” is a coming-of-age story centering on girls we don’t usually see on-screen — that in itself is reason for celebration. (Melissa Silverstein)
Read Women and Hollywood’s interview with Minhal Baig.
“Hala” opens November 22. It will be available on Apple TV+ beginning December 6.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood – Directed by Marielle Heller
“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”: TriStar Pictures/Lacey Terrell
Let’s face it: the world is a hot mess. That’s one of the reasons to go and see “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” It is the perfect antidote to our current times. It’s a reminder — for those of us old enough to remember — of a time when things weren’t this insane. When we weren’t running every second of every day. When we weren’t constantly on our devices.
The film is based on Tom Junod’s article about meeting Fred Rogers. Many of us grew up with Mister Rogers. He discussed tough issues with kids and helped us understand the world a bit better. He is the symbol of being a good, solid person. Who cares about others. Who believes in people.
Marielle Heller’s third movie in five years — that in itself is a feat — brings us the impeccably cast Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers. And yet the film is not about Mister Rogers: it is about his teaching journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) how to love and live. “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” slows us down and reminds us that connecting with people, looking them in the eye, listening to them, is something valuable. The film is much-needed on-screen comfort food. (MS)
Read Women and Hollywood’s interview with Marielle Heller.
“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” opens November 22.
College Behind Bars (Docuseries) – Directed by Lynn Novick
“College Behind Bars”
A four-part documentary film series, Lynn Novick’s “College Behind Bars” kicks off with one of its characters making an observation about life as an inmate. “I’ve been incarcerated for 13 years, and from my experience, I can tell you prison is here to punish us. It’s here to warehouse us. But it’s not about rehabilitating — it’s not about creating productive beings. It just isn’t,” he says.
Produced by Sarah Botstein, Novick’s project turns the camera on a small group of incarcerated men and women pursuing their college degrees in the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), a privately funded prison education program in the U.S. As she told us, “the film reveals the transformative power of higher education and puts a human face on America’s criminal justice crisis. It raises questions we urgently need to address: What is prison for? Who has access to educational opportunity? Who among us is capable of academic excellence? How can we have justice without redemption?”
We see the students/prisoners discussing “Moby Dick,” studying Chinese, and exploring different fields of study with passion and enthusiasm, composing draft after draft in pursuit of excellence, despite difficult conditions. Most study and write essays in the middle of the night, when everyone else is sleeping and the prison is quiet. As one professor acknowledges, she can engage with the students she teaches behind bars in a much different way than the ones she teaches on a conventional college campus — the dialogue is more sophisticated with the incarcerated pupils, who tend to have more life experience to draw from, as well as maturity.
We witness these men and women blossoming; their commitment to learning, and to changing their lives, is clear. But not everyone’s happy about the fact that they get the chance to earn a degree behind bars. We hear politicians — and even one of the students’ mothers — decrying how unjust it is to be “rewarded” for committing a crime by receiving a free education that others struggle to afford, if they have any chance of paying for it at all. Some minds may be changed if we can, as Novick says, engage in a “civil, fact-based conversation about education and justice.”
“Here are some data points we share in the film: America spends an astonishing $80 billion on incarceration annually,” Novick shared. “Every year, more than 600,000 men and women are released from prison, and within three years, nearly half are back behind bars. Higher education, as one of the students says in the film, ‘creates civic beings.’ It promotes human dignity, enhances public safety, and dramatically reduces recidivism. In the past 20 years, more than 500 BPI alumni have been released from prison, and fewer than four percent have gone back. But only a tiny fraction of the more than two million incarcerated men and women currently have access to college programs,” she emphasized.
“College Behind Bars” isn’t just an important, educational call to arms. The doc is also a moving portrait of individuals determined to defy the odds and build a better future for themselves. (Laura Berger)
Read Women and Hollywood’s interview with Lynn Novick.
“College Behind Bars” premieres November 25 on PBS.
New and Returning TV Shows On Our Radar
Cheat (Miniseries) – Created by Gaby Hull; Directed by Louise Hooper (Sundance Now, November 21)
The Accident (Miniseries) – Directed by Sandra Goldbacher (Hulu, November 22)
Harley Quinn (DC Universe, November 29)
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