Film Shorts: Valley Cinemas, Streaming, the Worx, Etc.

Back in the previous century when I was a kid, we looked forward to the fall season of television, when the three networks unleashed what seemed to be hundreds of new and returning shows in the course of a week. We’d tick them off with the help of the fall season preview issue of T. V. Guide, which lavishly covered the event. Nowadays, there is too much television, the shows are announced in about 400 magazines and websites, and there is no fall season.

New programs dribble out perennially, like baby’s drool. Still, new and returning shows are appearing this fall, and among them are the wonderfully mean-spirited fantasy football sitcom The League, on FX Wednesdays for its final season, Doctor Who returning for its ninth season and latest Doctor on BBC America on Saturdays beginning on the 19th, and the second season of Fargo, returning on Monday, October 12, with a prequel of sorts to incidents in the first season.

Valley Cinemas is adding two new films this week, Shaun the Sheep and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.

Like all animated films, Shaun the Sheep is about a collection of creatures who are on a quest to rescue one of their numbers. That being said, the animation is good, and the film is practically silent in that the sheep talk in mumbo jumble that is amusing in itself.

Strictly for kids, if even they would have the patience for it, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials is part two in the series of YA novel adaptations for those impatient for the next Hunger Games and Divergent. The film makes no sense even if you have read the books, and the film is made by and stars people you’ve never heard of.

The Worx, at 700 1/2 1st Ave N (406-228-4474), is – as always – offering some new titles on DVD Tuesday. Woman in Gold stars Helen Mirren as an aging Jewish refugee who sues the Austrian government for recovery of lost property. The women in the title is in the painting by Gustav Klimt, the treasure she is seeking to get back, with the help of inexperienced attorney Ryan Reynolds. A by-the-numbers feel-good anti-Nazi movie, Woman in Gold does have a good cast, including Charles Dance, Katie Holmes, and, as the young Mirren, television’s Tatiana Maslany, of the great show Orphan Black.

At Netflix this week, comes Longmier, the fourth season of the show that used to be on A&E. Based on the mysteries by Wyoming author Craig Johnson, innovations, but if you’ve gotten this far, you might as well watch the finale. On Netflix, though, you can watch all 10 episodes in a day, which catch up the viewer on the previous season’s various cliffhangers, adds a couple of new characters, and ups the ante in tensions between Walt and the local Native American casino operators. Too bad the show is filmed in New Mexico rather than our own beautiful north, but in compensation the program features the beautiful Katee Sackhoff as deputy Moretti.