Movies to See Right Now

THE WOMEN'S BALCONY
THE WOMEN’S BALCONY

In theaters this week:

  • The delightfully smart and character-driven Israeli comedy The Women’s Balcony with a community of traditional women in revolt.  The longer you’ve been married, the funnier you’ll find The Women’s Balcony.
  • The David and Goliath documentary Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, the riveting story of an American family business bullied into a nightmarish fight for survival.
  • Paris Can Wait, a female fantasy with glorious French cuisine to tantalize all genders.
  • You can still find Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer in theaters, perhaps Richard Gere’s best movie performance ever, and strongly recommended.
  • The bittersweet dramedy The Hero has one thing going for it – the wonderfully appealing Sam Elliott.

Here’s my contribution to the argument about the Best 25 Movies of the 21st Century.

School is out for the summer, and my DVD/Streams of the Week are the two surfing documentaries Step Into Liquid and Riding Giants.  Both are available on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Here’s an interesting nugget from Turner Classic Movies on June 17. Three different actors play Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled LA detective Philip Marlowe: Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep, James Garner in Marlowe and Robert Montgomery in Lady in the Lake.

The most famous – and my favorite – of these is The Big Sleep, with its iconic performance by Bogart and its impenetrably tangled plot. It’s also one of the most overtly sexual noirs, and Lauren Bacall at her sultriest is only the beginning. The achingly beautiful Martha Vickers plays a druggie who throws herself at anything in pants. And Dorothy Malone invites Bogie to share a back-of-the-bookstore quickie.

Lady in the Lake is more cinematically inventive.  Shot entirely from the point of view of the protagonist detective (Montgomery), we never see him except when reflected in mirrors. Even without this interesting gadget, it’s a good movie. Audrey Totter plays one of her iconic noir Bad Girls.

Marlowe is less distinguished a film, but James Garner is always watchable.

Dorothy Malone and Humphrey Bogart in THE BIG SLEEP
Dorothy Malone and Humphrey Bogart in THE BIG SLEEP

Movies to See Right Now

ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL
ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL

I recommend the David and Goliath documentary Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, the riveting story of an American family business bullied into a nightmarish fight for survival.

Other recommendations in theaters:

My Stream of the Week is one of my Overlooked Noir, The Burglar (1957).  Dan Duryea leads an initially successful heist team as they go stir crazy waiting for the environment to cool down so they can safely fence the booty.  Martha Vickers plays one of the most direct of the noir vixens, and it’s the debut of 50s sexpot Jayne Mansfield.   The Burglar is available streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, Xbox Video and Flixster.

On June 12, Turner Classic Movies will broadcast The Battle of Algiers, the story of 1950s French colonialists struggling to suppress the guerrilla uprising of Algerian independence fighters. Although it looks like a documentary, it is not. Instead, filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo recreated the actual events so realistically that we believe that we are watching the strategy councils of each side. Urban insurgency and counter-insurgency are nasty, brutal and not very short – and we see some horrifically inhumane butchering by both sides.

Among the great war films, it may be the best film on counter-insurgency. In 2003, the Pentagon screened the film for its special operations commanders.

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS

Movies to See Right Now

Diane Lane in PARIS CAN WAIT
Diane Lane in PARIS CAN WAIT

Why so few good films in theaters right now?  I’ll tell you why!  According to my calculations, a whopping 45% of all theater screens in Silicon Valley are devoted to ONLY THREE MOVIES:  Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and Baywatch.  (It doesn’t help that the miserable A Quiet Passion is taking up some of the very few art house screens.)  Nevertheless, you can still go out and see:

  • Paris Can Wait, a female fantasy with glorious French cuisine to tantalize all genders.
  • The Commune looks like a comedy of errors, but it’s a family drama with a searing performance by Trine Dyrholm.
  • The Lost City of Z, a thoughtful and beautifully cinematic revival of the adventure epic genre.
  • In Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, writer-director Joseph Cedar and his star Richard Gere combine to create the unforgettable character of Norman Oppenheimer, a Jewish Willy Loman who finally gets his chance to sit with the Movers and Shakers. This may be Gere’s best movie performance ever.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Paterson, a genial and occasionally very funny portrait of an artist’s creative process. Paterson is now available on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On June 5, Turner Classic Movies is airing the very idiosyncratic Convicts 4, the true-life tail of one convict, played by Ben Gazzara, who develops into a fine artist while in prison. There’s a particularly unforgettable supporting turn by one of my favorite movie psychos, Timothy Carey, here in one of his most eccentrically self-conscious performances. The rich cast includes Stuart Whitman, Vincent Price, Rod Steiger, Jack Albertson, Ray Walton, Brodrick Crawford and Sammy Davis Jr.

On June 8 on TCM, look for John Dall playing the classic narcissist in Hitchcock’s psychological thriller Rope. Can he outwit Jimmy Stewart?

And, guess what? Pedro Almodóvar has ascended into Classic Cinema. His raucous and provocatively sexy comedy Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! will play on Turner Classic Movies on July 4. Almodóvar a classic? Makes you feel old…

TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN!
a young Antonio Banderas and Victoria Abril in TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN!

PARIS CAN WAIT: female fantasy (disputed) and tantalizing food

PARIS CAN WAIT
PARIS CAN WAIT

Here’s an entertaining piece of fluff.  In Paris Can Wait, Diane Lane plays Anne, the neglected wife of movie mogul Michael (Alec Baldwin).   A show biz emergency has short-circuited their European vacation in Cannes, and the Michael’s French partner Jacques (Arnaud Viard) offers to drive Anne to Paris.   It should be a seven-hour drive, but Jacques stretches it out to take in as many fine dining experiences as he can pack in.

The flirtatious but gentlemanly Jacques is an expert gourmand and a militant epicurean.  And he has resolved to make Anne feel special in ways that her husband doesn’t, at least anymore.  Anne enjoys the attention, but she is anything but naive.  She and the audience are expecting Jacques to make a pass at any moment.

As the closing credits rolled,  most of the women in my audience applauded.  Above all, Paris Can Wait is a fantasy from a woman’s point of view.  That woman is director Eleanor Coppola, who, at the age of 81, has made her first fiction film.  Coppola had previously made what is perhaps the best ever “making of” documentary, the 1991 Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, which chronicled the making of her husband Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now!.  Eleanor and Francis have been married since 1963, and their daughter Sofia just won Best Director at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival for her remake of The Beguiled.

The great and underutilized Diane Lane is such a masterful and magnetic actor.  Anne is an unchallenging role, but it’s still hard to imagine anyone better.   In the 1980s,  Lane started her run of The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club and as Paulette Goddard in Chaplin.  Her most unforgettable role was probably as Lorie in the 1989 classic miniseries Lonesome Dove.  My own favorite Diane Lane performance was the one for which she was Oscar-nominated, in 2002’s Unfaithful.    I’ll watch her in anything.

Arnaud Viard, a French actor whose work, mainly on French TV, I wasn’t familiar with, is perfect as the debonair but vulnerable Jacques.  As we would expect, Alec Baldwin is excellent as the self-absorbed blowhard Michael.

Paris Can Wait is probably even more of a travelogue than a romantic comedy.  France is a beautiful country, and Jacques and Anne get to drive and picnic through the most scenic parts.  And then there’s the food – serious food porn!  This is by no means an excellent movie, but if you enjoy France, and if you enjoy eating anywhere, this is a harmlessly fun 90 minutes.

[NOTE: The Wife disputes a) that this is a widespread female fantasy and b) that is was the women clapping in the theater, and she finds my “female fantasy” characterization to be offensive.  On the first point, she says that the story here is NOT something that would appeal to all or most women.  I remain convinced that a story in which a woman is found desirable by a non-threatening man who lavishes attention on her does appeal to women, at least more than to men (who I believe prefer non-platonic screen relationships).  On the second point, it is true, as she points out, that I always have us sit in the very front of the theater, and, with our backs to the rest of the audience, I did not actually see who was applauding.]