Jan. 1: Produced last year, “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink” has found new life streaming on Kanopy.com. The 99-minute documentary tracks journalist Julie Reynolds investigating hedge fund Alden Global Capital, which is buying newspapers and gutting them. Her findings trigger actions across the country by journalists working at newspapers owned by the “vulture capitalists.” Two-time Oscar nominated filmmaker Rick Goldsmith — whose “press trilogy” includes “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” (2009) and “Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press” (1996) — directs the explosive expose about Wall Street billionaires concerned only with profit versus those who value journalism as a public service. Free from Kanophy (with a library card or university login).
Jan. 5: The 82nd Golden Globes will be broadcast live from Beverly Hills, with comic Nikki Glaser hosting — showing on CBS and Paramount+.
Jan. 7: Network TV needs another medical drama like viewers need holes in their heads, but this new series has an interesting premise. Molly Parker (“House of Cards”) stars as Dr. Amy Larsen, the chief of internal medicine at a Minneapolis hospital, where she must reassemble her career and life after suffering a brain injury that caused her to forget the last eight years. Depending some on her estranged 17-year-old daughter, whom she remembers as a pre-teen, Larsen must reacquaint herself with patients, co-workers, loves lost and gained, and crises she’d endured. Fox.
Jan. 9: The six-episode “American Primeval” stars Taylor Kitsch (“Friday Night Lights”) in a raw, sometimes violent fictionalized take on 19th century settlements on land already inhabited by Native Americans. Struggle is everywhere all the time. Kim Coates is gripping as Brigham Young. Netflix.
Jan. 14: “Journey to America: With Newt and Callista Gingrich” seems like a selective, sanitized look at immigration. Narrated and produced by the former House Speaker and his wife, the ex-ambassador to the Vatican, the 90-minute documentary is promoted as celebrating “the achievements of nine individuals from diverse backgrounds who pursued the American dream and contributed to the fabric of our nation.” None of these immigrants are from Africa or Latin America, and none came after George W. Bush’s term. Vulture critic Anne Victoria Clark wrote, “This is a documentary for people who like immigration when their ancestors did it, [from times] when anyone could legally enter the United States as long as you had 50 cents and weren’t disabled or Chinese.” Viewers may wonder: “Would they have come for opportunities or to escape Nazis with circumstances like today’s?” PBS.
Jan. 17: The 67-minute adventure “Under the Crystal Sky” is scheduled to be available as Video on Demand. A yarn about an indigenous family in the 1800s U.S. Southwest seeing an extraordinary celestial event and a UFO crash nearby, it follows them confronting their confusion and fear of that phenomenon while also defending themselves against approaching soldiers.
Jan. 24: In “Brave the Dark,” a teacher realizes a student has been living out of his car and jailed, so he decides to help. Then the teacher discovers secrets that are destroying the young man, and he has to decide how far he can go to save a kid about to lose everything. In theaters.
Jan. 31: With a cast including Ricky Gervais and Pete Davidson, the animated comedy “Dog Man” is sure to surprise, as a police officer and his canine partner are both injured on the job and a life-saving operation fuses them as one creature able to fight crime (and fetch, sit, etc.). In theaters.