‘Encounters’ makes case for UFOs, ‘The Continental’ explores the world of ‘John Wick’

Spending the week after the Port Townsend Film Festival in quarantine, due to COVID, allowed me to catch up on old and new streaming series.

“Reservation Dogs” on Hulu: Last episode aired Wednesday, Sept. 27.

After three seasons and 28 episodes, “Reservation Dogs” went out without a single misstep, wrapping up its multigenerational saga of the oddball yet everyday lives of the fictional Native American reservation of Okern, Oklahoma, by bidding a final farewell to Old Man Fixico, the medicine man who quietly served as the glue holding the community together.

The last episode also saw a few members of that community choose to head off “the rez,” for education and employment, but their relocation wasn’t treated as a tragedy or a betrayal of their roots, because it showed us that their kinship with their people will endure, regardless of where they happen to reside physically.

When the young “Reservation Dogs” made their pilgrimage to California at the end of Season 2 to honor their fallen friend Daniel, Bear was the most reluctant to return to Okern, but coming home the long way ‘round allowed him to make an unexpected connection, that ultimately brought one of the reservation’s long-lost elders back into the fold.

Season 3 continued this show’s streak of successful celebrity stunt-casting, with Ethan Hawke, but I was much more impressed with how consistently all three seasons showcased solidly talented indigenous actors, including Zahn McClarnon, Gary Farmer, Wes Studi, Graham Greene, Kimberly Guerrero and Lily Gladstone.

Television historians will be talking about this show for decades to come, so check it out now, to get in on the ground floor as a fan.

“Ahsoka” on Disney+: Last episode aired Tuesday, Oct. 3.

While this show has managed to bring an old live-action “Star Wars” fan like me up to speed on previously animated characters such as Ahsoka Tano, Hera Syndulla, Sabine Wren and Ezra Bridger, I must admit they still feel more like my old friends’ other friends at this point.

They’re pleasant enough characters, and if they’re hitting all the right buttons for my fellow “Star Wars” fans, who grew up watching “The Clone Wars” and “Rebels,” then I’m happy for them, but watching them interact exclusively with each other feels like sitting through forced small-talk with your former college roommate’s coworkers.

At the same time, I’ve been digging the Cobra Command vibe that’s been developing between our cadre of villains, which now finally includes Lars Mikkelsen as Grand Admiral Thrawn, whose unperturbed patience and serene optimism only serve to make him that much more sinister.

Between Mikkelsen’s long-awaited Thrawn, Diana Lee Inosanto’s smoldering glower making the witchy Morgan Elsbeth intimidating and compelling all at once, and Ivanna Sakhno radiating angry, unresolved daddy issues as the Dark Jedi apprentice Shin Hati, one could almost overlook the relatively understated (and sadly departed) Ray Stevenson, delivering his absolute career-best performance as the gruff, merciless and yet intriguingly contemplative Dark Jedi master Baylan Skoll.

Bonus points for former “Doctor Who” David Tennant’s voice-acting as Jedi training droid Huyang, and Hayden Christensen delivering his own best performance as Anakin Skywalker, in flashback and spirit-form (it’s complicated).

“Encounters” on Netflix: All four episodes went online Wednesday, Sept. 27.

This documentary miniseries was produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin, so don’t be surprised when its allegedly real-life accounts of UFO sightings, and claimed moments of contact between humans and aliens, heavily emulate the tone of the director’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” even though he had no direct involvement in this project.

The geographically eclectic accounts hopscotch from rural Texas and coastal Wales, to a racially diverse schoolyard in Zimbabwe and even the infamous Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, while spotlighting testimonials from observers and ostensible experts alike, who manage to comport themselves relatively credibly on camera.

If “Encounters” had any definitive proof of their theories, you’d obviously have heard about it from serious news sources outside of a streaming series on paranormal phenomena, but it does offer corroborating evidence, in the form of radar data and video footage, to confirm that unidentified objects were indeed apparently in the air, when and where they were reported to have been spotted, by not-inconsiderable numbers of onlookers.

Regardless of whether one believes these “Encounters” or not, this show is at its strongest when it highlights how our respective cultural perspectives can’t help but affect what we perceive, whether it’s U.S. or UK children potentially falling prey to the sci-fi pop culture they’ve been raised with, or the Japanese contactees acknowledging their culture’s tendency to regard ephemeral entities as restoring a natural cosmic balance.

“The Continental: From the World of John Wick” on Peacock: Last episode airs Friday, Oct. 6.

The irony is that this three-part miniseries’ worst drawback is its headline star, since Mel Gibson brings his by-now-notorious name-brand, but none of his former talent or charisma, to the role of lead villain Cormac O’Connor, to whom we’re introduced as a former street-level gangster who’s been promoted to the manager of the “John Wick” films’ Continental hotel during the 1970s.

Fortunately, Gibson is more than counterbalanced by an appealing cast of less-famous actors, who are reasonably convincing at playing younger versions of characters previously depicted in the present day by impeccable performers such as Ian McShane, Lance Reddick and Laurence Fishburne (I might be wrong on that last one, but the Bowery King needs an origin as much as Winston and Charon, and one actor in particular mimics Fishburne’s vocal cadence very well).

If you’re going to do “John Wick” without Keanu Reeves’ John Wick, then exploring the rich and still largely untapped mythos of Wick’s world is the perfect choice.

Setting this flashback heist caper in the grim-and-gritty New York City of the 1970s lends what’s essentially a glorified MacGuffin hunt the outsized air of chronicling an empire in decline, as we see time-honored agreements ground down by the grasping ascendance of crude new crime bosses.

Casting 1990s indie film mainstay Peter Greene as a younger version of David Patrick Kelly was an unconventional choice, but we’re all nursing our own nostalgia.