This week: The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE, two remembrances and a wonderful essay on drive-ins.
That most literary of critics, the Bay Area’s own Richard von Busack, writes on the Golden Age and the COVID Era resurgence of drive-in movie theaters in SF Weekly: At the Drive-In: A Remembrance. This is a MUST READ.
REMEMBRANCES
Alan Parker had a gift for directing modern musicals (Bugsy Malone, Fame, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Evita) but he was Oscar-nominated for two harrowing dramas, Midnight Express and Mississippi Burning. He also directed the deliciously trashy Angel Heart. My favorite Alan Parker film is the ever-delightful The Commitments.
Actor Wilford Brimley started out in life as a real cowboy. At age 45, he broke through as an actor playing Jack Lemmon’s loyal assistant engineer in The China Syndrome. More good curmudgeon performances followed on TV and in movies (Cocoon, Absence of Malice). Ironically, this fine actor is most well-known for a Quaker Oatmeal commercial.
ON VIDEO
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- Yes, God, Yes: learning that hypocrisy is a choice.
- Dateline-Saigon: the truth will out
- Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado: gentleness and flamboyancy
- Our Kind of Traitor: Skarsgård steals this robust thriller
- Step into Liquid and Riding Giants: Get stoked with the two most bitchin’ surfing documentaries.
- The Truth: Reconciling your truth with another’s.
- John Lewis: Double Trouble: an icon remembered.
- The 11th Green: a thinking person’s conspiracy
- Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo: redemption never gets old
- Driveways: I can’t think of a more authentic movie about intergenerational relationships than this charming, character-driven indie.
- The Lovebirds: A rom com with a playful plot and a truthful relationship.
- Da 5 Bloods: reflections on the Vietnam War and on the Black experience in America and a great Delroy Lindo (but it’s too long).
- The Women’s Balcony: a righteous man must keep his woman happy.
- Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things: A Must See for jazz fans.
- Yourself and Yours: The absurdism of Luis Buñuel meets the social awkwardness of Seinfeld.
- Electrick Children: magical Mormon runaways in Vegas.
- King in the Wilderness: an icon, floundering.
- The Bandit: A Hollywood buddy documentary that features some amazing movie stunts.
ON TV
On August 11, Turner Classic Movies is airing the very idiosyncratic Convicts 4, the true-life tail of one convict, played by Ben Gazzara, who develops into a fine artist while in prison. There’s a particularly unforgettable supporting turn by one of my favorite movie psychos, Timothy Carey, here in one of his most eccentrically self-conscious performances. The rich cast includes Stuart Whitman, Vincent Price, Rod Steiger, Jack Albertson, Ray Walton, Brodrick Crawford and Sammy Davis Jr.