Stream It Or Skip It: ‘One Perfect Shot’ on HBO Max, a Twitter Account-Turned-Series Offering Bland Analysis of Iconic Movie Moments

HBO Max series One Perfect Shot promises deep dives into iconic movie moments, led by the directors themselves. Hosted and produced by Ava DuVernay, the six-episode series was inspired by a popular Twitter account (@oneperfectshot) that shared funny, poignant, visually rich still shots from films ranging from classic cinema to popcorn hits and cult obscurities. (The account is currently under the ownership of movie-nerd website Film School Rejects.) The first season digs into the work of a diverse array of filmmakers, including Jon M. Chu, Michael Mann, Aaron Sorkin, Malcolm D. Lee and Kasi Lemmons, and kicks off with Patty Jenkins, who walks through a virtual Wonder Woman set, discussing her inspiration and some of the challenges that went into creating one of the film’s big scenes. Will this stuff tickle the cockles of cinephiles? Let’s find out.

ONE PERFECT SHOT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: DuVernay walks slowly through a screening room, talking about “movie magic” and the series’ concept.

The Gist: After the opening bumper, DuVernay disappears, never to be seen again. Thus, we speak in passive voice as we’re introduced to Jenkins, and she shares some of her background, from her Wonder Woman fandom as a kid to her decade of work as a cameraperson for commercials and music videos. She subsequently attended the American Film Institute, where she made a short film, Velocity Rules, about a female superhero. She landed a whopper of a gig right out of graduation: helming 2003’s Monster, the Aileen Wuornos serial-killer biopic that won Charlize Theron an Oscar.

From there, we skip to Wonder Woman, never touching on the interesting question of what Jenkins did professionally for the 14 years preceding the blockbuster smash – a question that might get into her Emmy-nominated TV work and dead-end projects (she was the original director hired for Thor: The Dark World), or the state of the filmmaking business for women. You know, the nitty-gritty stuff we cinephiles could sink our teeth into. But this show is only 24 minutes long, and it opts for a forgettable conversation among Jenkins, WW producer Charles Roven and VFX guy Bill Westenhofer.

Then Jenkins walks onto a virtual, 3-D recreation of the celebrated “no man’s land” sequence in WW – you know, the one in which our heroine shows off her badass costume for the first time, deflects bullets off her gauntlets and runs headlong into the thick of a World War I battle. She touches on set design, the use of a 360-degree wire-cam (the type you see hovering over the field for a football game) and why the sequence is so crucial to the film.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Film critic Elvis Mitchell’s Elvis Goes There seeks out (as Werner Herzog calls it) the “voodoo of location” with filmmakers; Netflix’s The Movies That Made Us cheerily showcases the zeitgeisty films that help define generations. David Fincher’s Voir, another Netflix joint, also waxes poetic about integral moments on the silver screen, focusing on the perspective of film critics, not moviemakers.

Our Take: One Perfect Shot aims to balance movie-nerd specificity with enough broad content so the more casual viewer won’t feel alienated. It’s a middle-of-the-road tack that, in its quest to be all things for everybody, ends up being flavorless mush, and not nearly as insightful or detailed as one would hope. The HBO Max description line deploys the phrase “one frame at a time,” an outright fib that makes the series sound like a juicy film-studies-class deep dive, when, in truth, the series has more of the gloss and cornball tone of a promotional piece. I anticipated maybe a conversation between DuVernay and the director, a filmmakers-talking-shop vibe that might get into stuff like shot composition, lighting and the problems directors need to solve in order to accommodate their vision, and was disappointed. Too much fluff, not enough nuts and bolts.

I decided to try another episode in an attempt to quell my dissatisfaction. It’s admirable how the series offers a diverse array of directors (six episodes, two white guys), but deeper insight into Girls Trip didn’t excite me. So I selected the Michael Mann episode, which gets into the big bank robbery/shootout sequence in Heat (the only true “classic” the series analyzes). It was more compelling than the Jenkins installment, perhaps because Mann was working on location, not in a computerized environment, and therefore elucidated on the aesthetic of the environment: He chose that specific downtown L.A. street because the tall concrete buildings created a closed-in feeling and allowed the sound of gunshots to echo, amplifying the violent realism he was trying to achieve. (Note: Boy, did it work – and that’s why Mann is a master of the craft.)

Yet no matter what director or film One Perfect Shot delves into, it surrounds the meaty fodder of the series with flowery language, a pseudo-profound piano score and slo-mo shots of filmmakers strolling through the series’ set that’s supposed to enhance the talking-head presentation. It comes off cheesy and overproduced, like an Oscar-telecast segment that’s feeding us banalities about “movie magic.” The core sensibility of the One Perfect Shot Twitter account was its perspective, that of a movie buff with a good eye for “wow” moments. But the series waters down that sense of wonder and admiration into bland puffery.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Jenkins “autographs” her scene with a CGI flourish.

Sleeper Star: I wanted to hear more from Westenhofer – more about his role in creating the sequence being discussed, the specificity of his job or maybe an anecdote from the set. But I frankly can’t recall anything he said.

Most Pilot-y Line: “What if we could step into a single, powerful frame, designed and directed by a visionary filmmaker, as they share the road to their one perfect shot?” – DuVernay delivers the thesis statement

Our Call: SKIP IT. Superfans of a specific film or director who seek a nugget or two of insight they haven’t already uncovered might find something of value in individual episodes. But beyond that, One Perfect Shot isn’t the compelling submersion into the art of film you’d likely prefer it to be.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.