Weinstein

Filmmakers Jane McMullen and Leo Telling’s drily proper PBS-aired Frontline documentary feels unintentionally humorous in its summary of lurid sexual harassment charges brought against Hollywood mega-producer Harvey Weinstein (perhaps one should render unto TMZ what belongs on TMZ). Before his Oscar-strewn career flourished, Harvey Weinstein entered moviedom via the grotty 1980 slasher flick The Burning, shot in upstate NY, where a female PA complained about Weinstein's awkward advances toward women. More actresses and crew members (including Gwyneth Paltrow, in Weinstein's A-list Shakespeare in Love) have been rumored to be victims of grotesque and unwanted seductions (the producer materializing in a bathrobe and demanding a "massage" being a serial modus operandi). Blade Runner star Sean Young claims that a resentful Weinstein helped torpedo her career. The documentary charges that Hollywood's power structure and corrupt values drew a curtain of silence around Weinstein's alleged depredations (Weinstein's role as a major Democratic Party fundraiser is only briefly acknowledged), with the full scope of the scandal being cinema's worst-kept secret until a New Yorker investigation by Ronan Farrow was published in 2017. Left out of this inquest is any larger picture of the "Me Too" movement that came in the wake of the Weinstein scandal. Current only to early 2018, this too-staid treatment of a tawdry subject is an optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)