Movie to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA: Courtesy of MUBI,

It’s been a massive week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of Jane Schoenbrun’s witty and bizarre Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the Anthony Bourdain coming-of-age biopic Tony, and the sweet and authentic female coming-of-age film Over/Under.

Don’t overlook the long-lost Iranian film Chess of the Wind, a masterpiece of family treachery. Recently rediscovered and restored, it’s now available to stream.

Shohreh Aghdashloo and Fakhri Khorvash in CHESS OF THE WIND. Courtesy of Janus Pictures.

REMEMBRANCES

We remember Dolly Parton acting in the movies 9 to 7 and Steel Magnolias, but she made a massive contribution to the movies behind the camera, with 62 composer credits and and an unfathomable 702 soundtrack credits.

In The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Tim Curry charismatically exploded off the screen as Dr. Frank-N-Furter – A Scientist, the “sweet transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania.” As Frank-N-Furter, Curry created a movie character as unforgettable as Michael Corleone, George Bailey, Rhett Butler, Hannibal Lector or Indiana Jones.

CURRENT MOVIES

  • Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma: witty, bizarre and riotously funny. In theaters.
  • Tony: a brat unspoiled. In theaters:
  • Over/Under. sweet and uncommonly authentic. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
  • Late Fame: will he stay comfortable in his own skin? In theaters.
  • The Odyssey: epic filmmaking at its best. In theaters.
  • Romeria: when the dots don’t connect right away. Amazon, Fandango and on September 1, AppleTV.
  • I Want Your Sex: good, naughty fun. In theaters.
  • The Last Viking: hidden loot amidst the deluded. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
  • Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters, but hard to find.

ON TV

Veronica Lake and Joel McCrea in SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS

On August 30, Turner Classic Movies will be presenting a film recognized as the masterpiece of a great filmmaker, but one that has slipped from the current conversation – Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels. Sturges was the first workaday Hollywood screenwriter to transition into a major writer-director, and between the ages of 42 and 46, he churned out The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, Sullivan’s Travels, Hail the Conquering Hero and The Great McGinty, an impressive body of work. Unfortunately, his turbulent personality led to conflict in his business affairs, which exacerbated his drinking. He burned out and was dead at age 60, but he left behind some of the very, very smartest and funniest movie comedies. Sullivan’s Travels is a fast-paced and cynical comedy about a pretentious movie director who goes on the road to be inspired by The Average Man – and gets more of an adventure than he expects. There has never been a better movie about Hollywood. Sullivan’s Travels is on It’s on my own 50 Greatest Movies of All Time list.

TONY: a brat unspoiled

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Photo caption: Antonio Banderas and Dominic Sesso in TONY: Courtesy of A24.

“I was a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.”

So begins Tony, the origin story of celebrity chef/traveler/raconteur Anthony Bourdain – with Bourdain’s self-description of himself at age 19. Tony is more of a coming of age film than a biopic, focusing on this pivotal, transformative year in Bourdain’s life.

The young Anthony Bourdain (Dominic Sesso), lazy, entitled and supremely confident, is betting everything on being awarded a college writing fellowship that he can use to bankroll a fun year in NYC. Having no Plan B, he is devastated when he doesn’t win the fellowship. Even worse, he has already told everyone he knows that he had already won the prize, and, unable to face the embarrassment, covers it up by running away. Impulsively, he heads to the tip of Cape Cod in pursuit of a a girl who is summering there. Arriving at the onset of Provincetown’s tourist season, he soon finds himself with no girl, no money, no place to stay and no ticket for the return ferry.

The taciturn chef-owner (Antonio Banderas) of a modest restaurant allows him to sleep in a hammock on his back porch and to eat at the restaurant in return for working as the dishwasher. Bourdain becomes the lowest-ranking member of the kitchen team, a colorful assembly of experienced cooks. He thinks that he is too good for this setting, but his colleagues are uniformly unimpressed with him.

Young Bourdain, holding on to the writing fellowship as a false cover story, still tells everyone that he is a writer. Of course, he hasn’t written anything – not even a draft or an outline – or even concocted an original idea. He is, however, an earnest and often successful bullshitter – and he’s about to learn how far that will take him. He’s not a sociopathic liar, on the road to being a con man; he lies out of desperation, terrified that somebody will learn that at age 19, he hasn’t magically already become who he aspires to be. What he needs is a harsh reality check – and that’s what he gets from the restaurant kitchen – where pampering is not tolerated.

Of course, there is humor in watching a young punk getting his comeuppances, and much of Tony is very funny. Dominic Sesso (The Holdovers) is able to keep the audience rooting for the young Anthony Bourdain even while he is behaving badly. Banderas is solid as his boss and purveyor of tough love. Leo Woodall (Tuner, Nuremburg, The White Lotus) is excellent as kitchen crewmate Sal, a blue collar hedonist who has much more game than the teen Tony.

Note: Bourdain’s real life best friend, fellow celebrity chef Eric Ripert, appears in a cameo as the chair of the admissions committee for the Culinary Institute of America.

I remembered reading about Bourdain’s Provincetown experience in his own colorful memoir Kitchen Confidential, which launched his post-restaurateur career as a travel and food writer and television personality. The Bourdain biodoc Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain was one of the best films of 2021, and also covers this period as it traces his entire life.

The director Matt Johnson and co-writers Todd Bartel and Lou Howe made wonderful choices in adapting the source material; instead of making a movie about Bourdain discovering a love of cooking, they focus on the character-building payoff of his Provincetown experience. Johnson also gets the tone just right, with just the right amount of humor, as he did in the corporate docudramedy BlackBerry in 2023. 

Tony’s  trailer (below) depicts a talented, immature narcissist who keeps self-sabotaging until he falls under the guidance of a crusty mentor.  Because that’s the plot of 1969’s fictional  Downhill Racer, with Robert Redford and Gene Hackman, I was going to skip Tony. But then I read Jeannette Catsoulis’ glowing review in the NYT, and I’m glad that The Wife and I got to see it. It’s a good watch.

OVER/UNDER: sweet and uncommonly authentic

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Photo caption: Anastasia Veronica Lee and Emajean Bullock in OVER/UNDER. Courtesy of Bulldog Film Distribution.

In the sweet and uncommonly authentic coming of age film Over/Under, a deep friendship between two girls evolves over four years.

Their Southern California families vacation each year in a New England beach community, and nine-year-old Violet (Emajean Bullock) and Stella (Anastasia Veronica Lee) have become the fastest of friends. Over/Under reminds us of the innocent intensity of childhood friendship when kids feel compelled to spend every minute fully engaged with a best friend.

As the years pass, the beach setting remains idyllic, but their bodies and interests evolve. Disappointments, jealousies, betrayals and the appeal of boys threaten the friendships. Can their profound bond survive?

In her debut, director and co-writer Sophia Silver has made a film without a single false moment. Female viewers will recognize every moment of heartfelt exuberance or anguish.

Over/Under was nominated for a Grand Special Prize at the Deauville Film Festival (a French film fest devoted to American film).

This is a film that will resonate strongly with women and girls. Over/Under is now available to stream.

TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA: witty, bizarre and riotously funny

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Photo caption: Gillian Anderson in TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA: Courtesy of MUBI,

In Jane Schoenbrun’s witty and pleasingly bizarre Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the promising young filmmaker Kris (Hannah Einbinder) has been tapped to make yet another sequel to a slasher movie franchise. The once popular Camp Miasma movie franchise has slipped into oblivion, and the movie studio that owns the intellectual property wants to re-monetize it. The origin story of the slasher character was transphobic, so the studio intends to use Kris, who is polyamorous, to queer-wash the newest Camp Miasma movie.

The Camp Miasma movies are devoid of any cinematic aspiration, but the cynical studio execs just want to cash in with more schlock. What the suits don’t know is that Kris herself is a huge fan of the franchise, and that Kris, who over-intellectualizes everything, has envisioned elevating the next chapter into something artsy and meaningful. And she’s obsessed with casting Billy, the actress who played the Final Girl in the original 1980s Camp Miasma.

Billy (Gillian Anderson) retired early from acting and now lives a reclusive life in the abandoned summer camp that was fictionalized as Camp Miasma in the movies. Billy is more than a little weird, and she both fascinates and unsettles Kris. I strongly recommend Schoenbrun’s own video narration of a scene in the NYT; there’s absolutely no gore in this clip.

As the two rewatch the original movie, Schoenbrun spins Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma into a loving homage to and parody of the slasher movie genre. They send up all the slasher movie tropes – a bunch of teens doing things their parents wouldn’t like, impending virgin deflowering, the nocturnal emergence of a slasher villain and the plot importance of the Final Girl. Here, the slasher villain is Little Death, who wears an HVAC vent on their head and wields a bayonet-like spear.The body horror is intentionally so unrealistic (Old Faithful-scale geysers of blood instead of mere spurts) that it’s not as cringe-worthy as are most teen splatter movies.

Kris proudly proclaims herself to be polyamorous as if she’s earning some woke-ism points. But polyamorous threesomes may be equitably more reciprocal in theory than in practice. Kris’ girlfriend and the girlfriend’s boyfriend seem to be getting more of their needs met than does Kris. Basically, Kris is masking that she is a puddle of sexual unfulfillment. Will her stirrings be awakened?

In another comic thread, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma sharply mocks the cynical business side of Hollywood, including perhaps the most disastrous movie pitch ever,

Hannah Einbinder in TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA: Courtesy of MUBI,

Hannah Einbinder carries the movie, reaping all the humor in Kris’ pretensions and her sexual unease, along with her Final Girl vulnerability. Einbinder, a standup comic and daughter of SNL original cast member Laraine Newman, won an Emmy for the TV series Hacks.

Gillian Anderson goes full creepster and nails Billy’s teetering between assured self-control and psychosis.

Amanda Fix plays the young Billy acting in the first Camp Miasma film, and her performance is unexpectedly haunting. Dylan Baker strikes the perfect tone as a studio exec. Prolific character actors Patrick Fischler and Kevin MacDonald are very fun as slasher movie tropes – the ominous townsman and the local sheriff; wait through the final credits for their final gag.

In 2024, I wrote that Schoenbrun’s evocative psychodrama I Saw the TV Glow was the “emergence of a great filmmaker”, and that was a good call by me. In Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, they have successfully braided together a romantic comedy, a sexual awakening film, a horror movie and a slasher parody. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is very smart and riotously funny.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Greta Lee and Willem Dafoe in LATE FAME. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of Willem Dafoe’s tour de force in Late Fame and the long lost Iranian film Chess of the Wind, a masterpiece of family treachery.

Next week: Jane Schoenbrun follows their astonishingly original I Saw the TV Glow with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony and the sweet and authentic female coming of age film Over/Under.

REMEMBRANCE

Mark Rydell directed The Cowboys, Cinderella Liberty, The Rose and his triple-Oscar winner, On Golden Pond.

CURRENT MOVIES

  • Late Fame: will he stay comfortable in his own skin? In theaters.
  • The Odyssey: epic filmmaking at its best. In theaters.
  • Romeria: when the dots don’t connect right away. In art house theaters, but hard to find.
  • I Want Your Sex: good, naughty fun. In theaters.
  • The Last Viking: hidden loot amidst the deluded. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
  • Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters, but hard to find.

ON TV

Dana Andrews and Joan Fontaine in BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT

On August 24, Turner Classic Movies brings us Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, with its ending of unsurpassed irony. Seeking to discredit capital punishment, a cocksure novelist (Dana Andrews) gets himself charged with and CONVICTED of a murder, planning to then reveal proof that he couldn’t have done it. But then the evidence of his innocence suddenly disappears! Crackerjack (and deeply noir) surprise ending. Another film noir from The great German auteur Fritz Lang directed the cinematic masterpieces Metropolis and M before fleeing the Nazis; Beyond a Reasonable Doubt was the last in his remarkable string of Hollywood film noir: The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, House by the River, Clash by Night, The Blue Gardenia, The Big Heat, Human Desire and While the City Sleeps.

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CHESS OF THE WIND: a lost masterpiece of family treachery

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Photo caption: Akbar Zan Janpour, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Fakhri Khorvash and Shahram Golchin in CHESS OF THE WIND. Courtesy of Janus Pictures.

The Iranian thriller Chess of the Wind is a newly rediscovered lost film, a masterpiece of craven family intrigue, with a singular look and feel.

Chess of the Wind was screened at the Tehran Film Festival in 1976 and immediately banned for objectionable content. Things got worse with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the negative ad all prints were supposed to have been destroyed. Decades passed, and,i n 2014, the director’s son was browsing in a Tehran junk shop and miraculously happened upon film cans that contained the negative Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna worked to restore the film, which was released in 4K in 2020.

Chess of the Wind is all about a wealthy family’s mansion, where almost all the action takes place. The family matriarch having just died, leaving her willful, forty-something daughter Aghdas (Fakhri Khorvash) as the nominal head of the family. Unmarried and childless, Agdas’ health confines her to a wheelchair, dependent on her young maid Kanizak (Shohreh Aghdashloo).

Shohreh Aghdashloo and Fakhri Khorvash in CHESS OF THE WIND. Courtesy of Janus Pictures.

Aghdas assumes that she now owns her family’s ancestral home, but her mother’s second husband Hadji Amoo (Mohamad Ali Keshavarz) claims the inheritance for himself ans prepared to bully Aghdas and Kanizak out on the street. Hadji is despicable, a thuggish deadbeat who treats everyone badly, including his own adult nephews Ramazan (Akbar Zan Janpour) and Shaman (Shahram Golchin). Ramazan has his own designs on marrying Aghdas for her property, and Kanizak allies herself with Shaman.

Hadji, a horrible person, is now a danger to everyone, and his death would be universally convenient. Fortunately, the mansion’s decor features Ottoman antiques including a flail, a traditional Persian weapon, and an antique pistol. Hadji is indeed murdered, and the plan is for his body to be stashed in the cellar and dissolved in acid.

But Aghdas hears from the local authority, the police commissar, that Hadji, whom we know to be dead, has been recently seen in pubic. Aghdas becomes more unsettled when that report is echoed by some street musicians. The police commissar shows up with two of Hadji’s creditors, who are allowed to search for him. (A modern audience may not immediately grasp that the guys who bring back the commissar are creditors, who have been stiffed by Hadji.) As their search leads to the cellar, the plots hints of Clouzot’s Diabolique.

Shahram Golchin and Akbar Zan Janpour in CHESS OF THE WIND. Courtesy of Janus Pictures.

Chess of the Wind takes a cynical view of human nature, reminiscent of Claude Chabrol. Everyone acts out of the most venal self-interest. There is forgery, destruction of documents, murder and cover-up. Even the family physician and the police official may have their own scams going. The last twenty minutes is Shakespearean – every sinner gets his or her due.

It’s hard to imagine what offended the Iranian authorities the most – the immoral scheming, the female agency, or a startling moment of woman-on-woman intimacy.

The darkness of the story is mirrored by brooding music and a dark visual palette. The darkness of the house and its inhabitants is contrasted by a Greek Chorus of gossiping washerwomen outside in the bright light. Director Mohammad Reza Aslanisaid that the look of Chess of the Wind was inspired by the paintings of Vermeer and de La Tour.

Shohreh Aghdashloo in CHESS OF THE WIND. Courtesy of Janus Pictures.

It’s hard to fathom, but Chess of the Wind, with its astonishing originality and quality, was the first film directed and written by Mohammad Reza Aslani. Aslani was a poet, who made this film at age 33. He devoted his career to a literary magazine, and his only other feature film came 30 years later.

The performances are uniformly excellent, led by the internationally acclaimed Fakhri Khorvash, who plays the central character of Agdhas.

Shohreh Aghdashloo in CHESS OF THE WIND. Courtesy of Janus Pictures.

Chess of the Wind was debut film for actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, who plays the maid. She left Iran after the Revolution and built a career in Hollywood, amassing 91 screen credits. Aghdashloo was nominated for the Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in House of Sand and Fog.

Chess of the Wind is now streaming on Criterion (included), Amazon and AppleTV. Here’s the trailer, courtesy of Film Forum.

LATE FAME: will he stay comfortable in his own skin?

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Photo caption: Greta Lee and Willem Dafoe in LATE FAME. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

In the character-driven gem Late Fame, Willem Dafoe plays Ed Saxberger, a Greenwich Village poet of the late 1970s, whose work is rediscovered by a band of twenty-something would-be literati. His moment of modest fame long-vanished, Ed has been working as a postal clerk for 37 years, and his fellow dive bar patrons don’t even know about his published work.

Ed is tracked down and accosted by the determined young man Wilson Myers (Edmund Donovan), who has learned that Ed, whose work Myers worships, is still extant. Myers invites Ed to meet his circle of friends, who see themselves as a new wave of artists – and, crucially – one that will be written about in the future like the Algonquin Roundtable or the Beat Poets. They even brand themselves as the Enthusiasm Society. In fact, although they insist that they are poets, playwrights, essayists and the like, they are posers, sheltered from the real world by their rich parents.

Ed, baffled and initially made uncomfortable by the adulation, finds that being exalted isn’t so bad. It’s been long time since he’s been around people who like poetry, and he enjoys encouraging the youngsters. Of course, Ed comes from a time and place before it was even imaginable that loft living would become fashionable, so he is a fish out of water with the youngsters.

It doesn’t take long for Ed to be introduced to the Enthusiasm Society’s muse and sexy den mother, the fortyish actress Gloria (Greta Lee). Gloria has a need to control her environment, so she has utterly enchanted “her boys”, who are under her spell as was Odysseus with Calypso’s. It’s inevitable that she will turn her charms on Ed.

The Enthusiasm Society rails against influencers and clickbait, but, of course, they are also all about bringing attention to themselves. What Ed doesn’t figure out initially is the source of their ambition. When Ed was their age, he was driven to create art; in contrast, they are driven to be recognized as artistes (whether or not they create any art). They even introduce Ed to an agent who can make him money – but not for his poetry.

Late Fame is a portrait of a man who is comfortable in his own skin. If Ed was ever disappointed that he didn’t become rich and famous, he has long left any bitterness behind him. But Ed may never have been ambitious. He once created art, and he’s proud of it, but he’s content to be who he is. He has his integrity. Will Gloria and his new admirers tempt him away from his equanimity and fulfillment?

Willem Dafoe in LATE FAME. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Willem Dafoe, one of our greatest screen actors, delivers another tour de force. Dafoe takes Ed through his suspicion, confusion, amusement, re-awakened ego, yearning and basic decency.

Greta Lee gets to play a complex character who masks her own insecurity with flamboyance. Gloria is one of those many very talented actors who is not likely to ever star, or even earn a living from her acting. Unlike Ed, who doesn’t need acclaim or approval, Gloria fills an emotional need with her own pose and with her domination of the “boys”. Lee, who can sing, also pulls off a cabaret performance.

Donovan is very good as the intensely earnest Myers, a seemingly ridiculous fanboy with a much darker side.

Writer Samy Burch, Oscar-nominated for her May December original screenplay. based this script on on the century-old novel by Arthur Schnitzel. Both Late Fame and May December reveal Burch to be a master of vivid character portraits.

Director Kent Jones (Hitchcock/Truffaut) delivers verisimilitude with the various Manhattan settings – the bohemian, the gritty and the opulent.

Late Fame opens August 21 in Bay Area theaters, including the Smith Rafael Film Center.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Lucia Garcia and Mitch in ROMERIA. Courtesy of Janus Films.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of the captivating Spanish family drama Romeria.

CURRENT MOVIES

  • The Odyssey: epic filmmaking at its best. In theaters.
  • Romeria: when the dots don’t connect right away. In art house theaters, but hard to find.
  • I Want Your Sex: good, naughty fun. In theaters.
  • The Last Viking: hidden loot amidst the deluded. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
  • Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters.

ON TV

Marlon Brando and Robert Redford in THE CHASE.

On August 18, Turner Classic Movies airs a curiosity from 1965, The Chase, which illustrates the truth that talent alone can’t save lousy source material. Directed by the great Arthur Penn, The Chase stars Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Robert Duvall and Angie Dickinson, not to mention Janice Rule, E.G. Marshall, James Fox, Martha Hyer, and from Hollywood’s earlier golden days, Miriam Hopkins and Bruce Cabot. And it stinks.

Brando plays the sheriff in a redneck Texas town stewing about the expected return of a recently escaped convict named BUBBER (Redford). Bubber’s wife (Fonda) is now having an affair with the son (Fox) of the banker who runs the town (Marshall). Before Bubber sneaks back into the town junkyard, everyone drinks, fusses, and commits more adultery. Emily (Rule) openly humiliates her cuckolded hubbie (Duvall). All the while, the minor characters act really racist and conspire to lynch Bubber, who is white.

What I find bizarre is that Arthur Penn was at the height of his powers in 1966. He had already been Oscar-nominated for The Miracle Worker, as he would be for his next movie, the iconic, groundbreaking Bonnie and Clyde, to be followed by Alice’s Restaurant (yet another Oscar nod), Little Big Man and Night Moves.

I put the blame on the source material and the casting. Lillian Hellman adapted the screenplay from a Horton Foote play, in turn adapted from a Foote novel. It all seems like a over-wrought Southern melodrama in which everyone speaks like they’re pronouncing Big Daddy’s lines in Cat on a Hot tin Roof.

Brando does what he can with a character who is alienated and keeps getting beaten up. Janice Rule and Angie are especially good. But Redford and Fonda are horribly – and distractingly – miscast as white trash, and we just can’t get past that. Plus there’s a racism thread slapped on to be topical, and it’s so sjallow as to be disrespectful of the real Civil Rights movement.

Here’s a curiosity: The Chase was the second of Paul Williams’ 96 screen acting credits, mostly in fairly silly roles that are entirely divorced from his highly successful career as a composer (six Oscar nominations),

A decade later, no studio could have afforded to make a movie with Brando, Redford, Fonda and Duvall all on the payroll. It may not be good, but The Chase can be fun to watch if you mock the cliches and laugh at the miscasting. And Janice Rule is a force of nature in this film.

Note: many films share the title The Chase, but this is the one made by Arthur Penn in 1966.

Marlon Brando and Angie Dickinson in THE CHASE.

ROMERIA: when the dots don’t connect right away

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Photo caption: Lucia Garcia (center) in ROMERIA. Courtesy of Janus Films.

In the captivating drama Romeria, Marina (Llucia Garcia) has turned eighteen and travels from her home across Spain to Vigo on Galicia’s Atlantic coast. Marina’s biological parents died when she was very young, and she has been raised by an adoptive family in Catalonia. She doesn’t even remember her biological father, but she needs his death certificate to qualify for a college scholarship. So she heads to his hometown, both to pick up that document and to meet her father’s family for the first time.

She is welcomed by her father’s brothers and sisters, heartily by some and warily by others. Marina is carrying her mother’s diary, so she believes she understands the outline of her parents’ life together in Vigo, and she.’s eager to fill in the blanks. But the details that are related by – and slip out from – her uncles, aunts and cousins are surprising and sometimes unsettling. Not all of the dots are connecting.

In her third feature, director and co-writer Carla Simon has spun a helluva story. Marina and the audience work out the mystery of her heritage one step (or misstep) at a time, all the way to the satisfying, but poignant. resolution.

As Marina pieces together her parent’s reality, Romeria uses magical realism to veer into a flashback vignette. I’m generally not a fan of magical realism in movies, but I couldn’t think of a better way for Simon to portray the contrast between her mother’s actual experience and what her mother “recorded” in her diary.

Llucia Garcia, in her screen debut, perfectly captures Marina trying to keep her balance while being rocked by revelations of family secrets. Marina is reserved and ever correct, and maintains outward stoicism, but Garcia’s eyes let the audience inside as she processes surprise after surprise. The moment she quickly sizes up her grandfather is a tour de force.

Romeria is Spanish for pilgrimage, a fitting title for Marina’s journey in search of truth and love, especially since it ends near Santiago de Campostela, the terminus of the Camino de Santiago.

Spanish speakers will note that Marina speaks Catalan on the phone to her adoptive family and the readings from the mother’s diary are in Catalan. Marina speaks Spanish, of course, with everyone in Vigo.

The more I think about Romeria, the more I like it, and I’m looking forward to seeing more from both Simon and Garcia.

Movies to Right Now

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Photo caption: Mads Mikkelsen in THE LAST VIKING. Courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of Anders Thomas Jensen’s dark comedy The Last Viking and an essay on five other wickedly witty Jensen films. The Last Viking, along with I Want Your Sex and Maddie’s Secret, is a smart and satisfying comedy. But don’t miss the summer’s epic blockbuster epic The Odyssey.

    CURRENT MOVIES

    Anne Hathaway in THE ODYSSEY. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
    • The Odyssey: epic filmmaking at its best. In theaters.
    • I Want Your Sex: good, naughty fun. In theaters.
    • The Last Viking: hidden loot amidst the deluded. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
    • Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters.
    • Pressure: engrossing study of high-stakes decision-making. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
    • Power Ballad: what (and who) makes a hit song? Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
    • Exit 8: nightmare on a loop. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
    • Mirrors No. 3: two enigmas explained. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
    • Is God Is: an extraordinary new story-teller. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
    • The Last One for the Road: the party never ends. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
    • Marty, Life Is Short: an engaging profile. Netflix.
    • The Christophers: twisty, watchable and disposable. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.

    ON TV

    Gene Tierney in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN

    On August 9, Turner Classic Movies presents the unsettling classic noir Leaver Her to Heaven – and it’s in technicolor! Poor Cornell Wilde falls for the exquisitely gorgeous Gene Tierney, but she is MESSED UP. When I see Leave Her to Heaven, I think of my best friend Steve’s advice – “Never [date] anyone crazier than you are”. MUCH, MUCH more cautionary than Fatal Attraction. Tierney said that she played the role as an insane person desperately trying to appear sane.