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The Sapphires

This absolutely delightful film focuses on 4 women who form a soul singing group in the 1960s. They are Aboriginal Australians-- 3 sisters and a cousin-- who travel to Vietnam to entertain the troops and make money. Their manager is the white guy from the IT Crowd. Great to watch if you like ladies, music, singing, and movies that don't focus on white people. Content notes: overt racism, discussion of awful racist Australian policies towards native peoples, and some war violence. Has captions. Based on a true story.

Europa Report. 2013, 90 minutes.

This tense SF film is done in documentary style, about a troubled mission to Jupiter's moon Europa. I liked it quite a lot! It moves back and forth in time, contains "interviews" with mission planners and astronauts, and keeps you wondering until the end. It's one of these movies that has a fairly simple idea and does it well. A bit scary at times.

The Bletchley Circle

I highly recommend this mini-series even though is about tracking down a serial killer. The heroine of the tale is a housewife who was a code-breaker / analyst during WWII, and now after the war she solves puzzles as a hobby. When she starts to investigate a spate of killings, she gets the band back together (3 more women) to help her. They use math and complex data analysis to try and catch the killer; one of them has a photographic memory. They do all this without the police's help, and their partners/husbands don't support them either. It's a brilliant show.

North and South. British miniseries.

This adaptation had a "Jane Eyre" feel to me, except it's in a Mill Town rather than a manor. I liked how Margaret's ideas about places and people change. She has a complex relationship with an owner of one of the mills, who is a friend of her father. Margaret is an outspoken and compassionate person who seems fundamentally normal, and very relatable. Recommended.

If you have Netflix streaming I recommend watching "Terriers"! It is GREAT. It is only one season long.

It is about 2 private detectives. Hank is an ex-cop who is a recovering alcoholic. His partner Brit is an ex-thief. They have really great chemistry and banter. Early on, they uncover some kind of conspiracy in their town of Ocean Beach, CA, which forms the arc of the season. There are also a few stand-alone episodes and some relationship stuff.

Brit's girlfriend Katie, a vet student, is also a regular character, as is Hank's ex-wife Gretchen. Hank's old cop partner, Sgt. Gustafson, is also a character. There is a sense of backstory between all these people, of family. They get in fights, make serious mistakes, and go forward with their relationships anyway. They joke and banter with each other. I loved this aspect of the show. One of my favorite arcs involved Hank's relationship with his sister.

Both Brit and Hank show a huge range of emotion. They are not shy of showing affection towards each other. This would be a good slash pairing-- one that hopefully included Katie in an OT3/open relationship kind of thing. There was a plot line in canon that did not support this, and that frustrated me, but oh well, you know, canon schmanon. There was also an episode involving a trans* prostitute that I could not tell if it was offensive of not? It seemed OK to me, if a little awkward because it was trying a little too hard in the way that a show tries to address a social justice issue.

Overall this show was good! Highly recommended. Also Brit is super cute (I nearly forgot to say).