This week on The Movie Gourmet – a wrap-up of my experience last week’s Noir City in Oakland where Eddie Muller and team introduced me to four new noirs, two of which are magnificent. Now I’m screening films from the March 2024 Cinequest program.
Incidentally, my coverage of Slamdance in January highlighted three films. The Accident and The Complex Forms won the top two narrative feature awards and Demon Mineral won the audience award for documentaries. I’ll let you know when/if they stream.
CURRENT MOVIES
- Anatomy of a Fall: family history, with life or death stakes. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- American Fiction: this can’t be happening. In theaters.
- Killers of the Flower Moon: an epic tale of epic betrayal. AppleTV (subscription), Amazon.
- The Holdovers: three souls must evolve beyond their losses. In theaters, Amazon.
- Poor Things: brazen, dazzling, feminist and very funny. In theaters.
- Dream Scenario: but it can’t be my fault, can it? Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Ferrari: his racecars are easy, his women are not. In theaters and streaming.
- The Boys in the Boat: underdogs soar. In theaters and streaming.
- The Zone of Interest: next door to the unthinkable. In theaters.
- Driving Madeleine: still spirited at 92. In arthouse theaters.
- Rustin: greatness, overlooked. Netflix.
- Maestro: not what she bargained for. Netflix.
- The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial: just what, not who, is on trial here? Showtime/Paramount+.
- The Crime Is Mine: better after Huppert shows up. In arthouse theaters.
- Cypher: the year’s most original movie? Hulu.
- Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy: a movie and its time. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
WATCH AT HOME
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- Run & Jump: a romance, a family drama and a promising first feature. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- The Gift: three people revealed. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
- Inez & Doug & Kira: the tangle of love, friendship and bipolar disorder. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- The Handmaiden: gorgeous, erotic and a helluva plot. Amazon, Vudu.
- Victoria: a thrill ride filmed in one shot. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, KinoNow.
- Youth: a glorious cinematic meditation on life. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl: a Must See, perched on the knife edge between comedy and tragedy. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
ON TV
On February 11, Turner Classic Movies is airing the timeless and fantastic comedy, My Man Godfrey (1936). An assembly of eccentric, oblivious, venal and utterly spoiled characters make up a rich Park Avenue family and their hangers-on during the Depression. The kooky daughter (Carole Lombard) brings home a homeless guy (William Powell) to serve as their butler. The contrast between the dignified butler and his wacky employers results in a brilliant screwball comedy that masks searing social criticism that is still sharply relevant today. The wonderful character actor Eugene Pallette (who looked and sounded like a bullfrog in a tuxedo) plays the family’s patriarch, and he’s keenly aware that his wife and kids are completely nuts.
I feel strongly about this 88-year-old movie, which I first saw when it was only 36-years-old. We talk about screwball comedy, but this is the gold standard. And we need to remember the comic genius of Carole Lombard, who died supporting the war against fascism when she was only 33.