This week: The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE. And this weekend, I’ll be previewing a great film festival that we can all attend (virtually).
Don’t miss this beautifully-written essay on Five Easy Pieces by Steven Gaydos in Variety. Gaydos gets the impact on the 1970 audience just right and shines overdue credit on its female screenwriter Carole Eastman. There’s also a tidbit on Helena Kallianiotes, the funniest hitch hiker in movie history.
REMEMBRANCE
Cinematographer Michael Chapman shot the most stunning boxing scenes ever in Raging Bull. Before that, Chapman had an amazing run of work in indelible films from 1973 through 1979: The Last Detail, Taxi Driver, The Last Waltz, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Wanderers.
ON VIDEO
I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore: This wonderfully dark comedy is a showcase for Melanie Lynskey as a schlub who goes postal. Streaming on Netflix.
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- Sibyl: trashy, but in that sly and expert French way.
- #Alive: A Korean Home Alone with zombies.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: 5 million orange-toothed critters and a Cajun octogenarian.
- The August Virgin: searching for reinvention. Best Movies of 2020 – So Far.
- Apocalypse ’45: I never imagined hell being that bad
- Coup 53: uncovering what we suspected
- An Easy Girl: summer school in Cannes
- Moka: whodunit mixed with psychological thriller
- Lucky Grandma: tour de grouch
- She Dies Tomorrow: you have not seen this before
- Prime Suspect: binging one of TV’s greatest episodic characters.
- The Speed Cubers: odd, and then profound
- Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind: no, I hadn’t thought of him for decades, either
- Yes, God, Yes: learning that hypocrisy is a choice.
- Dateline-Saigon: the truth will out
- The 11th Green: a thinking person’s conspiracy
- Driveways: I can’t think of a more authentic movie about intergenerational relationships than this charming, character-driven indie. Best Movies of 2020 – So Far.
- The Lovebirds: A rom com with a playful plot and a truthful relationship.
ON TV
On October 1, Turner Classic Movies airs the compelling Dodsworth, William Wyler’s 1936 film version of the Sinclair Lewis novel. The title character is a guy who has worked hard to get rich enough to step away from the rat race and take his wife on an extended European holiday. He thinks that he finally has it all – until he discovers that his wife has conflicting needs.
In one of his greatest performances, Walter Huston plays Sam Dodsworth as a guy supremely confident in his own skin, until he is devastated in learning who his wife really is. Unlike many stars from the Classic Era, Huston’s naturalistic acting would work in today’s cinema. Ruth Chatterton, who was a big Broadway star just ending a ten-year movie career, is equally good as Sam’s unashamedly selfish wife Fran (you’ve just to let me have my fling!).
The third great performance is Mary Astor’s most sympathetic, as Edith, the straight-shooting anti-Ftan. Astor shot Dodsworth during the daytime and then suffered through a humiliating child custody trial, held at night (with Chatterton at her side for support). Astor won over the court on the stand by channeling the character of Edith.
“Love has to stop somewhere short of suicide.” I just discovered Dodsworth this year, thanks to TCM guru Sandy Wolf.