My Halloween recommendation is to stream Borgman, a scary movie for adults. If you’re venturing into a movie theater, for my money, the best choices are the unsettling fable Lamb or the James Bond blockbuster No Time to Die.
I’ve also written about the new DVDs of the Argentine films restored by the Film Noir Foundation, Los tallos amargos and The Beast Must Die.
IN THEATERS
Becoming Cousteau: a pedestrian biodoc about an amazing and important guy.
Also in theaters:
- Lamb: dark fable of karma.
- No Time to Die: I went to a James Bond movie, and a romance broke out.
- The Many Saints of Newark: Tony Soprano’s origin story. Also streaming on HBO Max.
- Titane: Demented, icky and excessive.
ON VIDEO
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- Old Henry: too late for redemption. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.
- Wildland: giving family ties a bad name. Laemmle.
- The Unknown Saint: a shrine to really bad luck. Netflix.
- CODA: a thought-provoking audience-pleaser. AppleTV.
- Sibyl: masking its trashiness with expert filmmaking. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed: Improbability squared. Netflix.
- Searching for Mr. Rugoff: the best movie taste of any barbarian. Laemmle.
- Curiosa: erotic, but do we care? Laemmle.
- The Green Knight: More of a test than a quest. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, Redbox.
- Riders of Justice: Thriller, comedy and much, much more. It’s the year’s best movie so far. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube. #1 on my Best Movies of 2021 – So Far
- Dirt Music: a gorgeous bodice-ripper with a WTF ending. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
- Kansas City Bomber: self-discovery at the roller derby track. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.
- No Sudden Move: Steven Soderbergh’s neo-noir thriller has even more double-crosses than movie stars – and it has plenty of movie stars. HBO Max.
- The Neutral Ground: the supremacist legacy of old statues. PBS.
- Mama Weed: it’s always fun when Huppert gets outrageous. Laemmle.
ON TV
On November 3, Turner Classic Movies presents The Getaway, a 1972 crime thriller starring the charismatic Steve McQueen and his real-life squeeze Ali MacGraw. McQueen and MacGraw are delightful to watch as they move between violent clashes and double- and triple-crosses. As befits a Sam Peckinpah film, there’s an intense shootout at the end. The grossly underrated character actor Al Lettieri (Sollozzo the Turk in The Godfather) gets to play perhaps his most delicious villain; when he comes across a oddly matched married couple – the nubile Sally Struthers and the nerdy Jack Dodson (county clerk Howard Sprague in The Andy Griffith Show). Lettieri layers on some glorious sexual perversity.
Speaking of character actors, we also get to enjoy the crew of Peckinpah favorites: Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Dub Taylor, Bo Hopkins and Richard Bright. My friend Sandy lets Ali McGraw’s lack of acting range get in the way of enjoying The Getaway, but IMO Al Lettieri more than makes up for it.
