What to Watch This Weekend? Here Are 3 Recommendations
Are you a Moonie? Diehard fans of the classic magical-girl anime Sailor Moon will tell you that the two new feature films Netflix has just released are faithful dramatizations of the fourth Sailor Moon manga cycle “Dreams,” in which Usagi and her sailor guardian pals battle villains from the Dead Moon Circus. If you’re new to Sailor Moon—an iconic 1990s anime with a candy-colored mix of skimpy costumes and giggling love stories alongside actually exciting action narratives of female empowerment—these new films are an eye-popping, if potentially confusing, place to start. Still, you’ll get the gist. Sailor Moon is a world unto itself—genuinely imaginative, transporting in its mix of the silly and the dark. Cost for entry is an appetite (or a tween in your family with an appetite) for princesses, sparkling jewels, and talking cats. —Taylor Antrim
Philly D.A.: currently streaming on PBS
How real, fundamental, sustainable change happens is something that’s been on many minds over the past year, and Philly D.A. is a riveting new docuseries that sheds light on one corner of that tumultuous process. Filmmakers Ted Passon, Yoni Brook, and Nicole Salazar follow Larry Krasner, a civil rights attorney who sued the Philadelphia Police Department 75 times throughout his career, from his long-shot election as Philadelphia district attorney in 2017 as he tries to overhaul the criminal-justice system from the inside, arguing for a kind of radical, systemic change that seems near impossible in the face of institutional inertia. It’s an ambitious, sprawling epic (set to an excellent score by electronic musician Dan Deacon) that has rightfully drawn comparisons to The Wire, not least because of its constellation of vivid, flawed, truly human characters. (Episodes four and five, centering on the impact of incarceration on the lives of individuals and their loved ones, are especially compelling.) Thanks to wide-ranging access to what’s referred to as the black box of criminal justice, the series clearly and movingly depicts the nuts and bolts of an institution that dictates a substantial amount of local policymaking and proves the old—and in these times oft-forgotten—adage that all politics is local. —Lisa Wong Macabasco
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