I am aware that the new Avengers movie is taking up about forty percent of Bay Area movie screens. Be on the lookout for Her Smell, which is playing hardly anywhere, and the brilliant new release Long Day’s Journey into Night, along with Aretha Frankin’s gospel concert film Amazing Grace.
Writer-director John Singleton, who died this week, was the first African-American nominated for the Best Director Oscar (for Boyz in the Hood) and remains the youngest person ever nominated for that award.
OUT NOW
- Elisabeth Moss’ powerhouse performance as a monstrously narcissistic and drug-deranged rock star in Her Smell is the acting tour de force of 2019.
- The brilliantly original Chinese neo-noir Long Day’s Journey into Night is a Must See.
- Werner Herzog’s admiring biodoc Meeting Gorbachev is uncritical but insightful, especially as we meet the unfiltered Gorbachev himself in 2018 interviews.
- The Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience.
- In The Chaperone, Downton Abbey’s writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern reunite for a pleasing character study of self-discovery in 1921 America – it’s deeper than it first appears to be.
- In Teen Spirit, Elle Fanning plays an underdog teenager who has the chance to win a talent contest and become an instant pop star – yes, it’s a genre movie, but it’s a pretty fair one.
- Ramen Shop is a lightly-rooted dramedy about a Singaporean-Japanese family’s reconciliation. There’s also a metaphorical foodie angle.
ON VIDEO
The ingeniously original Prospect is a frontier coming-of-age movie. It’s just set in space, not in the Old West. A consistently unpredictable plot and superb performances by Pedro Pascal and young Sophie Thatcher make Prospect well worth streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube or Google Play.
ON TV
On May 7, Turner Classic Movies brings us a fantastic comedy, My Man Godfrey (1936). An assembly of eccentric, oblivious, venal and utterly spoiled characters make up a rich Park Avenue family and their hangers-on during the Depression. The kooky daughter (Carole Lombard) brings home a homeless guy (William Powell) to serve as their butler. The contrast between the dignified butler and his wacky employers results in a brilliant screwball comedy that masks searing social criticism that is sharply relevant today. The wonderful character actor Eugene Pallette (who looked and sounded like a bullfrog in a tuxedo) plays the family’s patriarch, who is keenly aware that his wife and kids are completely nuts.
William Powell and Carole Lombard in MY MAN GODFREY