Honor the late indie director Lynne Shelton by watching a great Edie Falco performance in Shelton’s Outside In. I also have remembrances of Fred Willard, who, as much as anyone, invented the deadpan mockumentary, and actor Michel Piccoli, a stalwart of French cinema.
Coming up this weekend – a 2020 indie gem about inter-generational friendships – one of those rare heartwarming movie recommendations from the Movie Gourmet.
ON VIDEO
Outside In is a superb indie drama by director Lynne Shelton, who died this week. It’s a story of self-discovery with an astonishing performance by Edie Falco. Outside In can be streamed on Netflix, Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The T.A.M.I. Show is the first concert film as we understand the genre today and features eight future Rock and Roll Hall of Famers. It’s very easy to find the full one hour, 52 minute, version for free on YouTube, along with clips of each of the acts.
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- Cold Case Hammarskjöld: An investigatory documentary that sends-up the genre.
- Spaceship Earth: A visionary scientific experiment, unraveled from human foibles.
- Night on Earth: This indie has the funniest vignette and the saddest – all in one movie.
- The Deep: astounding fact-based survival story.
- Very Semi-Serious: glorious The New Yorker cartoons.
- The Whistlers: a shady cop and a mysterious woman walk a tightrope of treachery.
- Capital in the Twenty-First Century: concentration of wealth critiqued.
- The Wild Goose Lake: vivid nights in the Chinese underworld.
- The Handmaiden: gorgeous, erotic and a helluva plot.
- Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project: it seemed crazy at the time…
- Radio Dreams: stranger in a strange and funny land.
- The Lost City of Z: the historical adventure epic revived.
- Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache: every cinephile should know this story.
- Rojo: bobbing in a sea of moral relativism just before Argentina’s coup.
- Panic in the Streets: pandemic film noir.
- Buck: the man inside the horse whisperer.
ON TV
Turner Classic Movies is running their usual war movie marathon on Memorial Day Weekend. But my choice, on Monday, May 25, is a movie that evokes our experience today. The Best Years of Our Lives is about people yearning to Get On With It after their lives were consumed by an upheaval they all shared. In their case it was WW II. In our case, it’s COVID-19.
One of the greatest movies of all time, The Best Years of Our Lives, is an exceptionally well-crafted, contemporary snapshot of post WW II American society adapting to the challenges of peacetime. It justifiably won seven Oscars. And it’s still a great and moving film.
When Frederic March, immediately back from overseas, sneaks back into his apartment where Myrna Loy is washing the dishes, I dare you not to shed tears at her reaction.
REMEMBRANCES
Fred Willard, as much as anyone, invented the deadpan mockumentary, starting with his talk show sidekick, Jerry Hubbard character in 1977’s Fernwood 2 Night with Martin Mull. Willard’s zenith was in This Is Spinal Tap and the Christopher Guest ensemble mockumentaries that followed: Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, For Your Consideration, A Mighty Wind and Mascots. He finished up by playing yet another uncontrollable character, Phil Dunphy’s dad on Modern Family.
Here are some tidbits from Willard’s unashamedly unprepared dog show commentator Buck Laughlin in Best in Show:
- If you put them in a race, who would come in first? You know if you had a little jockey on them, going like this [imitates jockeys hitting the side of the horse].
- And to think that in some countries these dogs are eaten.
- I went to one of those obedience places once… it was all going well until they spilled hot candle wax on my private parts.
- [sees the trophy] I’ve taken a sponge bath in smaller bowls than that.
Director Lynne Shelton was the best of the mumblecore directors with Your Sister’s Sister, Touchy Feely, Laggies, Outside In and Sword of Trust. Between her uncompromisingly authentic and goofy indies, she was sought out to direct mainstream TV like Mad Men and GLOW. She got in front of her own camera in Sword of Trust and delivered one of last year’s best performances.
When I think of actor Michel Piccoli, I think of his simmering performance in La Belle Noiseuse; Jacques Rivette’s masterpiece has a run time of three hours and 58 minutes, and it’s gripping throughout because of the tension between Piccoli and Emmanuele Beart. He also appeared in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos, Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt and Luis Bunuel’s Belle du Jour, Diary of a Chambermaid and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. At age 85, he was very funny as a reluctant pope paralyzed by panic attacks in We Have a Pope.