This week, The Movie Gourmet adds more three overlooked gems to watch at home: a real life survival story, an irresistible glimpse into The New Yorker cartoons and a forgotten anti-war classic.
ON VIDEO
The compelling The Deep tells the fact-based survival story of a shipwrecked Icelandic fisherman’s ordeal in frigid waters. You can stream The Deep on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
If you’re like me and you worship the cartoons in The New Yorker, then the documentary Very Semi-Serious is a Must See. You can stream it from Amazon (free with Prime), iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.
In the absorbing crime thriller The Whistlers, a shady cop and a mysterious woman are walking a tightrope of treachery. The Whistlers was a hit at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, but COVID-19 impaired its 2020 theatrical release in the US. You can stream it from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Other recent streaming recommendations:
- The Wild Goose Lake
- Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
- Radio Dreams
- The Lost City of Z
- Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache
- Rojo
- Panic in the Streets
- Buck
- A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
- Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
- Gone Girl
- The Commitments
- Short Term 12
ON TV
On May 3, Turner Classic Movies will present an overlooked masterwork. Set in England just before the D-Day invasion, The Americanization of Emily (1964) is a biting satire and one of the great anti-war movies. James Garner plays an admiral’s staff officer charged with locating luxury goods and willing Englishwomen for the brass. Julie Andrews plays an English driver who has lost her husband and other male family members in the War. She resists emotional entanglements with other servicemen whose lives may be put at risk, but falls for Garner’s “practicing coward”, a man who is under no illusions about the glory of war and is determined to stay as far from combat as possible.
Unfortunately, Garner’s boss (Melvyn Douglas) has fits of derangement and becomes obsessed with the hope that the first American killed on the beach at D-Day be from the Navy. Accordingly, he orders Garner to lead a suicide mission to land ahead of the D-Day landing, ostensibly to film it. Fellow officer James Coburn must guarantee Garner’s martyrdom.
It’s a brilliant screenplay from Paddy Chayefsky, who won screenwriting Oscars for Marty, The Hospital and Network. Today, Americanization holds up as least as well as its contemporary Dr. Strangelove and much better than Failsafe. Reportedly, both Andrews and Garner have tagged this as their favorite film.
One of the “Three Nameless Broads” bedded by the Coburn character is played by Judy Carne, later of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.
