More overlooked movies to watch at home: the funniest and saddest movie – all in one – and two jaw-dropping documentaries. Plus an amazingly charismatic star in a classic noir…from Poland! Scroll down for remembrances of Jerry Stiller and Little Richard.
ON VIDEO
Spaceship Earth: The latest from Silicon Valley native filmmaker Matt Wolf, this documentary traces an audacious scientific quasi-experiment of the 1990s, the Biosphere 2, perhaps the Last Stand of the Renaissance Man. Just released this weekend, Spaceship Earth can be streamed from iTunes, Hulu, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Cold Case Hammarskjöld: This eccentric and irresistible documentary purports to solve a historical mystery, buts it”s an excuse for the filmmaker to hop around Africa talking to aged fixers and mercenaries. It’s both an investigatory documentary and a send-up of the genre. Available on most streaming platforms.
Night on Earth: this Jim Jarmusch indie has one of the very funniest scenes and one of the very saddest scenes – in the same movie. Night on Earth is comprised of five vignettes, each in a taxi and each in a different city: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and, of all places, Helsinki. It’s now available to stream from the Criterion Collection and Amazon. Do not confuse this 1991 Jarmusch film with the 2020 miniseries of the same name.
Ashes and Diamonds: This Polish thriller is one of my Overlooked Noir. A masterful director and his charismatic star make this a Can’t Miss. Last week I wrote when Turner Classic Movies aired it, but if you missed it, you can stream Ashes and Diamonds from Amazon and iTunes.
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- 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.
- 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
On May 16, Turner Classic Movies will air The Crimson Kimono, another sensationalistic and deliciously exploitative cop noir from the great Sam Fuller. Always looking to add some shock value, Fuller delivered a Japanese-American leading man (James Shigeta), an inter-racial romance and a stripper victim. The groundbreaking aspect of The Crimson Kimono is that Fuller’s writing and Shigeta’s performance normalized the Japanese-American character. This film is on my list of Overlooked Noir.
REMEMBRANCES
Jerry Stiller, along with his wife and professional partner Anne Meara (scroll down), was a comedy pioneer. He’s best remembered for playing George Costanza’s father on TV’s Seinfeld and for being Ben Stiller’s real life dad. But Stiller sandwiched some good work in movies (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Ritz, Hairspray) between the early and later phases of his work.
The Rock pioneer Little Richard has died. I fondly remember his hilarious turn in Down and Out in Beverly Hills as the neighbor to Richard Dreyfus’ family, Orvis Goodnight. He appeared in one of the very first rock n roll movies Don’t Knock the Rock (1956), a same-year followup to Rock Around the Clock. His music was featured in hundred of films and television shows.