Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, BELFAST (2021) is a heartfelt coming of age story about the meaning of home in times of turmoil. I liked it a lot despite its flaws, notably Branagh periodically overplaying his directing chops.

Lovingly shot in black and white, the film, apparently based roughly on Branagh’s childhood in the northern Irish city of Belfast, is about a nine-year-old boy named Buddy who lives with his working class family. (For this, BELFAST feels a bit like Branagh’s answer to Alfonso Cuarón’s also-excellent ROMA.) Through Buddy’s eyes, we see the Troubles starting with August 1969 riot, where nationalists and unionists clashed on the streets.

As the civil strife increases and the British Army moves in, life becomes more and more precarious and Buddy, trying to live a happy childhood, faces the prospect of having to leave. Belfast is home for him, where he has friends and everybody knows and loves him. But as Belfast is becoming increasingly unsafe, he learns his real home is with his family.

As far as family drama goes, everything is here: beautiful cinematography, rousing music of the era, lovable characters played by stellar actors, and love and death. The storytelling is by turns humorous and heartfelt and menacing, and one can see how personal this work was to Branagh, particularly when the only moments in color are films and plays Buddy watches, which offer an escape from his life’s challenges and we know will become a life’s passion for him.

The only trick is this is a story told through largely through a nine-year-old’s eyes, and what we see sometimes feels a bit too much childlike. This sets up the unionists as stock villains with a final showdown that was a bit out there for me. For the real story of the Troubles, there are many historical sources that reveal exactly what a big mess it all was.

Overall, BELFAST is good stuff, its art a bit over baked and its personification of the era a bit too simplistic, but solid drama nonetheless, pulled by terrific characters and acting.

Based on the nonfiction book of the same title by Justin Fenton and written and developed by George Pelecanos and David Simon, one of the creators of the seminal HBO series THE WIRE, WE OWN THIS CITY is a miniseries that acts a spiritual sequel THE WIRE. It’s powerful, thoughtful, heartbreaking, and all too real.

Told non-linearly in time in six parts, WE OWN THIS CITY is based on the shocking true story of a plainclothes police unit in Baltimore that ended up becoming as bad if not worse than the criminals they were policing. Played by a terrific ensemble cast with numerous familiar faces from THE WIRE, the many characters include police officers, a Department of Justice civil rights team negotiating an oversight deal with the city to help it clean up its police department, the powerless police commissioner, and the FBI agents bringing the rogue police unit down.

I’m a sucker for institutional conflict and drama, where an institution’s problems and contradictions are brought to light via storytelling. An example is TRAFFIC, which examined the drug war. WE OWN THIS CITY similarly shows how the contradictions and defects in Baltimore’s police department produced the Gun Trace Task Force, which for years operated with impunity, robbing drug dealers and honest citizens, planting evidence to cover up mistakes, and eventually selling drugs themselves. The show makes the case that the problem with the War on Drugs is thinking of it as a war, resulting in mass incarcerations, the militarization of police departments, ignoring Constitutional search and seizure protections, and broken trust between police and the communities they serve.

Through this lens, we get all sides: the pain of the community that feels oppressed by an occupying force, the police who feel overburdened and under siege, the politicians in a broke city who can’t fix institutional problems. On the police side, we’re largely given the point of view of Jenkins, played by Jon Bernthal. I like Bernthal a lot but think he works too hard to chew the scenery; I have to say, though, he was born for this role. Through flashbacks, we see how the system shaped Jenkins to become the cop and criminal he is. In a fascinating bit of characterization delivered by real life, Jenkins believes he’s untouchable because he’s a super cop who delivers results, results that also give him a free pass to do whatever he wants. In his view, he may steal, frame, and sell drugs, but he’s not a “dirty” cop, which to him means being an inherently bad person.

On the downside, the storytelling convention of flipping around in time easily got confusing for me. Things are happening on multiple timelines, and I found it hard to keep track of what was happening when.

In the end, it’s a small criticism. Overall, I loved WE OWN THIS CITY and hope we get more like it.

In BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK (2016), a young soldier’s heroics are caught on camera during a firefight, resulting in his squad being sent home to America for a two-week propaganda tour culminating in an appearance at the halftime show during a Dallas Cowboys game at Texas Stadium. I’m currently reading the 2012 novel by Ben Fountain on which the Ang Lee film is based and found it had a lot to say about how war is perceived, so I checked out the film. The movie took a lot of knocks from critics and viewers, but I loved it.

Billy Lynn (Joe Alwynn) does what is expected of him, from press conferences to standing on stage during a ridiculously over-the-top halftime show starring Destiny’s Child, and it’s both humorous and painful to see him and his squad mates get used as a product, their story no longer theirs but America’s. The day of that firefight was full of loss and horror, the worst day of Billy’s life, and he’s being honored for it in the most garish way possible.

His comrades are just trying to have some fun before they have to go back to Iraq, and they’re largely bewildered by all the attention they never received in civilian life, where they were basically poor and had few prospects. Thankfully, Sergeant Dime (perfectly played by Garrett Hedlund) maintains a tight grip on his boys, keeping them from getting into too much trouble and reminding them that all this nonsense is also part of duty.

Along the way, we see how war’s reality and the way it’s interpreted are different things, the discordance of Billy as a man and how he’s regarded as a hero, and how easy it is to cheer lead and feel virtuous about other people going to war as long as there’s no personal cost or even critical thinking. We also see Billy silently suffering in his role while torn between wanting out at any cost and staying with his unit out of loyalty and love for his comrades.

Overall, BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK is a powerful story that entertains, makes you love and sympathize with these guys, and asks you to think for yourself about the story’s nuanced and layered themes. It asks viewers to look at soldiers as real people instead of movie stereotypes, whether noble bloodthirsty American heroes or victims. As for the war itself, it doesn’t tell viewers whether it was good or bad but instead simply invites them to view the war with a critical eye that goes beyond the propaganda and mythologizing.

For that and everything else, I loved this movie and recommend it.

Created by Bill Hader (who also stars) and Alec Berg, BARRY is a standout show on HBO, following familiar territory (GROSSE POINTE BLANK comes to mind) while carving out its own identity. The third season delivers the same punches and black comedy, though this season is far blacker as Barry brutally faces far bigger consequences of his life choices.

In this season, Barry and Sally are living together, Sally is working on her own show, and Barry is going through a depression as all the death he produced is catching up to him. He sees a way to make things right, but the past isn’t done with him. An awful comeuppance is on the way, producing some of the funniest and most thrilling set pieces the show has produced. While Barry is by no means a good guy, we can sympathize with him as he’s trying to change his life and discover a higher purpose, only to be sabotaged by his past with a strong dash of karma.

Sometimes, a terrific series hits season 3 doldrums, as what makes it work starts to feel over familiar. The first few episodes of season 3 made me wonder if the show, while still enjoyable for its wonderful characters and actors, had lost some of its energy. Once events start to accelerate to achieve a critical mass, however, the season rediscovers its vitality with frequently funny but far darker, far more brutal material than previous seasons. The conceit of Barry facing his past sins not only psychologically but in the flesh was a terrific foundation for the season.

Things end fairly bleakly, but it’s not over yet. From what I understand, things are about to get even darker. Season 4 has been signed, and it’s on its way over the next year.