Staff Picks: The Best Movies to Watch (Page 2)

This Golden Globe-winning series is a comedy about, well, Ramy, an Egyptian-American who navigates an archetypal early-20s millennial life crisis, while being torn between what it means to be Muslim and to be American. With weird encounters at the mosque, overbearing, antisemitic uncles, kinky dates, and rampant drug use, it shines the spotlight on all the nooks and crannies of dual identities in 21st century America.

Both the show and its protagonist are named after its multi-award-winning creator Ramy Youssef, who was offered a show based on his own life after a successful career as a stand-up comedian. The soundtrack is also outstanding, combining tunes from well-known indie greats with obscure Middle Eastern funk. In addition to being hilarious, relatable, and deftly written, Ramy is a reminder of why diversity in storytelling matters. Not for PC points, but because it brings about original stories that make you walk in other people's shoes while reflecting on universally human problems.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Amr Waked, Hiam Abbass, Laith Nakli, May Calamawy, Mohammed Amer, Ramy Youssef

Though it takes place in New York at the turn of the 20th century, The Knick is not your typical historical drama. Set to a pulsating techno score and with a whizzing pace and kinetic camerawork, director-cinematographer-editor Steven Soderbergh injects the show with a potent sense of immediacy so that it never feels like a dusty history lesson. The two-season show is set in the titular Knickerbocker Hospital and tracks the intertwining personal and professional dramas of its benefactors and staff — led by Clive Owen’s arrogant Dr. John Thackeray, who works tirelessly at the bleeding edge of medicine, fuelled by his addiction to the then-medically-permissible cocaine.

Thack’s brilliant innovations and thorny personality take up a good deal of the show, but The Knick’s complex ensemble — from André Holland as the city’s first Black doctor to Cara Seymour as an Irish nun who secretly conducts out-of-hours abortions — are equally compelling. What’s more, the show is just as committed to lifting the events of its period out of the history books and into crackling life. With an unsparing eye, it weaves its way through modern medicine’s gory past and New York’s history with racism (both institutional and otherwise), corruption, immigration, and epidemics (such as that caused by “Typhoid Mary”). If you’re looking for a quaint, comfort period drama, The Knick isn’t it — but if you want to get your adrenaline pumping with a gripping, raw ride through history, your prescription is right here.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Andre Holland, Cara Seymour, Chris Sullivan, Clive Owen, Eric Johnson, Eve Hewson, Jeremy Bobb, Juliet Rylance, Michael Angarano

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Actor: Andrew Scott, Dakota Fanning, Johnny Flynn

Rating: TV-MA

Patriot is about a secret agent meddling with the Iranian elections to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Ok, so like Homeland? Yes, and also very much no. Its protagonist is not a hardened, larger-than-life secret operative but a singer-songwriter stoner with PTSD.

As far as spy dramas go, Patriot certainly takes a lot of risks. Professional assassin John Tavener (played by Michael Dorman), whose dad (played by the amazing Terry O'Quinn from Lost) is the intelligence chief, is on an undercover mission in Iran. But, he's not sure he wants to be. On top of that, he faces an incompetent federal bureaucracy, challenges to maintaining his cover, and bouts of mental illness.

Tavener is no hero. Patriot is more a mix between offbeat spy thriller and workplace comedy with a lot of dark humor in between.

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Mystery

Actor: Kathleen Munroe, Kurtwood Smith, Michael Chernus, Michael Dorman, Terry O'Quinn

This excellent drama miniseries starts in the middle of one night when Alex, a 25-year-old, grabs her daughter and flees her home. She is chased by her abusive boyfriend but doesn’t look back. She has 18 dollars to her name.

The story is based on a real-life memoir called “Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive”, where Alex’s character (based on executive producer Stephanie Land) does everything to get her daughter and herself to a safe environment. She gets a trial at a cleaning job.

Maid does such a good job at portraying the many stresses that Alex goes through: will she have enough gas? Will she find a safe place to sleep? Will she get to the cleaning job on time? And as the series progresses, the questions become different but the stress is the same - except in episode five, in which she cleans a weird house, and then it becomes an actual horror movie.

And on every other aspect, the show delivers. The cast, led by Margaret Qualley and her real-life mother Andie MacDowell, is phenomenal. Each episode is long enough to leave an impact but not too long to be melodramatic. The scenery (set in Washington state but filmed in British Columbia) is gorgeous. It’s such an all-around great show.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Andie MacDowell, Anika Noni Rose, Billy Burke, Margaret Qualley, Nick Robinson, Tracy Vilar

Former SNL cast member and comedy legend Bill Hader is the writer and main protagonist of the HBO-produced and three-time Emmy-winning series Barry. Part psychological thriller, part dark comedy – one of many new series in the “dramedy” genre – deals with the unlikely premise of a PTSD-ridden low-rent assassin, who, after travelling to LA to execute an actor, decides to dedicate his life to the amateur theatre scene. (Watch out for the always amazing Henry Winkler as the acting class teacher! He was rightly nominated for an Emmy for this performance.)

In typical Bill Hader fashion, this genre-mix is still a lot more comedy than thriller and one cannot help but root for hapless Barry, while he dodges one bullet after the other, as it were, navigating Chechnyan mobsters, the FBI, and his intense acting peers. A lovely, funny, and smart show about a seemingly emotionless guy trying to escape his past.

Genre: Action & Adventure, Comedy, Crime, Drama

Actor: Anthony Carrigan, Bill Hader, Henry Winkler, Sarah Burns, Sarah Goldberg, Stephen Root