MA RAINEY, MIDNIGHT SKY and TWO 100% NETFLIX SERIES

I'm trying to avoid Trump and COVID-19 for the rest of the year. I saw two films and started watching two Netflix series rated 100% by Rotten Tomatoes:

ROTTEN TOMATOES

Reviewers Audiences My Grade

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom 99 80 C+

Midnight Sky 54 25 B

Travelers 100 97 B+

The Uncanny Counter ? 100 B-

I won't say much about each so you can yourself assess the productions. Plus, I only saw one episode each of those two series.

With such high ratings by Rotten Tomatoes, I'm somewhat shocked that I just did not enjoy Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. The acting was superb. But the whole movie was one-dimensional in many ways.

Viola Davis was commanding as Ma, the female founder of the Blues. But she was so despicable that the mood of the whole show was a downer. The late Chadwick Boseman showed why he will be missed into the future. He showed signs of becoming the next great black movie actor. The usual racial animosities pervaded and the music was so-so.

Conversely, I would not have even bothered to watch Midnight Sky for such abominable scores. But I did because I'm a fan of extrasolar planets. It is entirely possible that if you're not into this subject matter, you too will react as did the RT reviewers/audiences. George Clooney was everything: actor, director and producer. Seven years ago there was Gravity (RT: 95/80) where he also starred. I thought MS had more to offer than that space adventure.

Travelers is a time travel film, with a nice twist. Earth in the future is doomed by something that occurs in our time frame. The technology then is such that they can transpose consciousness to people in the past. Not whole bodies, which makes for greater reality. So several travelers are sent into the body of current individuals, coincidentally all in their twenties/thirties, who were just about to die anyway. The flaw is that they have no memory of that person's past, so acquaintances wonder what is happening. This group, some with greater physical skills, then work as a team to fix the problem. They're doing something right, for the series is into season 3.

The Uncanny Counter is a South Korean effort that on the surface should turn me off. Superhuman strength is afforded to certain individuals to neutralize malevolent spirits. I hate comic book films, and this is one of them. That's why I will refuse to watch the current Wonder Woman. Plus there is a lot of kung-fu-type fighting, which I disdain. Upon observing these defects, I was close to leaving, but stuck around just enough to convince me to watch episode 2. The 100% score, plus that something extra that is special in Korean productions is sufficiently intriguing. However, you would think, though, that they could have come up with a more meaningful title.

I end with just a deviation, a Johnny Carson spoof as President Ronald Reagan with an Abbott and Costello twist and two or three.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 204 to an all-time high of 30,404.

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