What to watch this week: Pelé, Tokyo Girl, Creem magazine

 

Tokyo Girl

reviews by Allan Tong 

TOKYO GIRL (on Prime)

ChinoKino score: A

Tokyo Girl would kick Emily in Paris' ass in a Superbowl game.

Tokyo Girl is a Prime series about a smalltown girl who finds her dreams working in fashion in the big city, while Emily in Paris, the Netflix hit, follows a Chicago girl who trimphs in the European culture capital through her Instagram account. Both heroines are fishes out of water, bore wear gorgeous clothes and they dine in dazzling restaurants with lovers and backstabbing colleagues.

After watching Emily in Paris, I remember gorgeous Paris and posh clothes. After watching Tokyo Girl I remember work triumphs, everyday struggles and broken relationships. I remember watching a real person mature.

This comparison, I admit, can go only so far. Emily is told in real time while Tokyo Girl spans nearly 20 years in the heroine's life. Also, Emily is lighter while TG mixes drama with laughs.

Both shows are helmed by strong actresses, though. Emily takes a lot slagging for being an American philistine, but Lily Collins nails the role. Collins injects her character with unexpected vulnerability at times. (A shout-out goes to Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu who nails Emily's bitch boss.) Asami Mizukawa (pictured above) has a tougher gig in Tokyo Girl, portraying how smalltown girl Aya turns into career woman Aya by age 40, when she wonders what th hell she'll do next with her life. Mizukawa pulls it off.

TG's writing is tougher, smarter and more complex. Guys need to watch this show to understand women better. Emily, in contrast, overdoses on gee-whiz sweetness that would kill a diabetic. But, hey, Paris, is dazzling.

The call: Tokyo Girl by 14 points.

 

PELÉ (on Netflix)

ChinoKino score: B

Before Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky, there was Pelé. This kid from the slums of Sao Paulo shot to football (soccer) superstardom and put Brazil atop the football map. This doc covers the meat of his career, playing for Santos and leading Brazil to three World Cups, from 1958 to 1970.

Those years were a hell of a ride that lifted Brazilian national pride and made Pelé a rock star. Goals, goals, goals. There's an endless stream of Pelé making acrobatic moves on the football pitch, drawn from vintage black-and-white footage and grainy colour. This doc is thrilling to watch, and captures a lot of Pelé's former teammates and coaches on camera recounting their victories and struggles.

Pelé himself, now 80, tells a lot of his story. He needs a walker these days, undoubtedly a result of many years of taking cheap shots from less-talented opponents. Yet, he still speaks with a sparkle in his eye. All great. However, the issue of him never opposing Brazil's dictator, who imprisoned and murdered his countrymen from 1964 to 1985, is thorny. Credit this film for including Pelé's critics as as well as offering Pelé's own justification for keeping his nose out of politics. Maybe we expect too much from our athletic heroes (Jordan and Gretzky were also apolitical, not Ali), but I winced when Pelé hugs the country's butcher after the 1970 World Cup victory.

What to watch tonight on Netflix, Prime & Crave

 

reviews by Allan Tong 

 

THE CROWN (on Netflix)

ChinoKino score: A+

A dramatic series about a rich English family who live in big houses with servants, and they can't stand each other's spouses. The Crown covers the second half of Britain's 20^th century and the latest season explores the slick, big-shouldered 1980s. This season (arguably the best) features a powerful woman named Thatcher (brilliantly played by that redhead from X-Files, Gillian Anderson) who bosses a lot of wimpy men around, even though she herself doesn't like women. Thatcher must be a cokehead, because she perpetually speaks as if she has something stuck up her nose.

Meanwhile, the rich family is thoroughly miserable, though they live in really nice palace and millions of people love them, especially the blonde princess, Diana.

The show hits a grand slam in every department: writing, acting, directing. By now, everyone on the planet including the Pope has seen The Crown, so if you haven't, what are you waiting for?

FLACK (on Prime)

ChinoKino score: A-

Canadian Anna Paquin, heads a quartet of spin doctors (Latin for bullshit) in London who rescue their showbiz clients from all kinds of emergencies they get themselves into, whether it's obnoxious behaviour on a transatlantic fight, faking a lesbian sex tape, or a gay hooker OD'ing in a hotel room. The irony is that Robyn is a bigger screw-up than all her clients while her colleagues are no better.

film review: Zappa

 

Directed by Alex Winter

ChinoKino score: A-

Review by Allan Tong

How to sum up the career of the one of music's most provocative, ornery, diverse and contrary talents in two hours? Alex Winter does a good job capturing one of music's most iconoclastic figures in this new documentary, simply called Zappa. No, Zappa isn't complete. The doc goes easy on Frank's notorious arrogance, and unfortunately leaves much of his early family life--and the forces that shaped his headstrong personality--vague. However, Winter does paint a complex, exciting portrait of a unique talent who still attracts a fervant cult of fans. As Alice Cooper says in the film about FZ, "He had the freaks and the artsy people. Then, he had the whole middle that didn't get it."

I'm no Zappa freak, but I do respect his stature in modern music. It's best to approach this film with an open mind or to know nothing about the man at all. Zappa freaks will probably know a lot of the information disclosed here, like Zappa drumming in an interracial band in the late-1950s when segregation still gripped the United States, or his obscenity bust a few years later (likely a set-up) for making an "obscene" recording when he ran a recording studio.

film review on VOD: The King

Written and Directed by: Eugene Jarecki
Starring: Alec Baldwin, Chuck D, Ethan Hawke, Emmylou Harris, James Carville

ChinoKino score: A

Review by Allan Tong

There are countless documentaries about Elvis Presley, but nothing like The King. 

It's a simple premise: drive Elvis' Rolls-Royce across America, and have guests in the backseat tell his life story. But--and here's the difference--reflect on race, class, democracy and militarism in the King's time and today. The effect is puzzling at first, sometimes brilliant and surprisingly insightful about Elvis himself.

Elvis was a poor kid who made it big, the embodiment of the American Dream. But campaign strategist James Carville laments that that dream has vanished, because the disparity between rich and poor has widened too far. That poverty is starkly seen when Elvis' Rolls rolls into his hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi where poor blacks as well as whites feel forgotten.