January 2022: Netflix Picks

Film
Written By Danica Blaisdell

By: Kassidee Toguchi

With the new year comes a new month of H3R's Netflix favorites! Bruised and Inspector Koo are our top female-centered picks of the month. If your New Year involves hosting more dinner parties or exercising your body and brain, Salt Fat Acid Heat and The Mind: Explained will be next on your watchlist.

Bruised

Halle Berry debuts as a director in, Bruised, a female-lead story about a former martial arts competitor who struggles to raise her estranged son and overcome alcohol addiction. Unlike the masculine protagonists in sports dramas, such as Rocky, and The Karate Kid, Berry’s character, Jackie Justice, seeks to establish her identity not only as a fighter, but as a mother and human being. She is a character that we can root for.

Inspector Koo

In this South Korean drama series, former police officer Koo Kyung-Yi returns to work as a private investigator to catch a female serial killer known as K. The two women go head-to-head in a battle of wits to outpace one another. Inspector Koo is a hidden gem in the vast library of Netflix, starring a predominantly-female cast.

Salt Fat Acid Heat

If your New Year's resolutions for 2022 include learning how to cook - or to finally learn how to not burn your toast - Salt Fat Acid Heat is the show for you. Hosted by American chef and food columnist Samin Nosrat, each episode of the four-part series takes you on a trip around the world, from Italy to Japan to Yucatan to California. She samples local delicacies, such as miso paste and Mayan honey, and highlights the four elements in each delicious food.

Pro Tip: Make a charcuterie board to snack on while you stream and engage with the show!

The Mind: Explained

Are you interested in learning something new this year? If so, take this opportunity to try Netflix's documentary series, The Mind: Explained. Narrated by actress Emma Stone, each episode reveals the workings of the brain, explaining everything from how the mind stores both short and long-term memories to the way that hormones affect teenage behavior. The twenty-minute episodes - filled with colorful graphics and easy-to-understand explanations - ensure that you can easily follow along and learn about the science of the brain.

H3R’s Watchlist: Ava DuVernay

Ava DuVernay took an unconventional route in becoming a filmmaker. After graduating with a double-major in English and African-American studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, DuVernay began her career as an intern with CBS News, where she helped to cover the O.J. Simpson trial. After realizing that journalism was not her passion, Duvernay worked in public relations, eventually establishing The DuVernay Agency, a marketing firm that advertised for films such as Dreamgirls.

While working on PR for various film projects, DuVernay was inspired to create a short film called Saturday Night Live, which was inspired by her mother. Afterward, she worked on documentaries such as Compton in C Minor and This is the Life since they are more cost-efficient to create than narrative films.

DuVernay’s theatrical film debut came in 2011 with I Will Follow. The film, influenced by her aunt's breast cancer diagnosis, took only two weeks to film. I Will Follow won Best Screenplay at the African-American Film Critics Association Awards and appeared at the AFI Fest, Chicago International Film Festival, and RiverRun Film Festival. Following the release of her movie, DuVernay left marketing to focus on filmmaking full-time.

The following year, DuVernay released her second narrative film, Middle of Nowhere, which was based on her personal experience growing up in the Compton community, where she knew women with incarcerated family members. This film made DuVerney the first Black woman to win the Best Director award at the Sundance Film Festival. DuVernay also took home the 2012 Independent Spirit Awards' John Cassavetes Award.

In 2014, DuVernay's Selma made history as the first-ever feature film to portray Martin Luther King Jr. Selma, which centers around the 1965 voting rights march in Alabama, was nominated for Best Dramatic Motion Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor at the Golden Globe Awards.

DuVernay’s latest film, 13th, references the 13th amendment by highlighting incarcerated people of color and ultimately proposing that slavery within the United States has been replaced by the prison system. At the 2017 Academy Awards, DuVernay became the first African American woman to be nominated for Best Director. Later, in 2018, DuVernay’s movie adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, made her the first woman of color to direct a $100 million budget film.

H3R’s Watchlist simply cannot summarize all of Ava DuVernay's outstanding accomplishments in one space; we can't wait to see what she has in store next! □

Danica Blaisdell
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