This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of Eleanor the Great and Anemone, plus To a Land Unknown, newly available on VOD. I also highlighted the top-rate thrillers now streaming for free on Amazon Prime.
Last week, I had fun with The Last Movie Title series:
REMEMBRANCES
Claudia Cardinale was first noticed in the Italian comedy Big Deal on Madonna Street and had a key role in Fellini’s 8 1/2, one of the greatest movies ever. Popularly seen as a voluptuous bombshell in the 1960s, she worked in 128 films through 2022. The scene in which she is re-introduced to the local nobleman (Burt Lancaster) as a nubile adult in The Leopard is one of the most stunning entrances in cinema.
Indie writer-director Henry Jaglom was known internationally among cinephiles for his artsy, individualistic, women-centered films like Eating and Venice/Venice. I attended an in-person Jaglom presentation of his film Hollywood Dreams.
CURRENT MOVIES
- Eleanor the Great: grief, an appalling lie, redemption. In theaters.
- Anemone: resisting redemption. In theaters.
- To a Land Unknown: no good choices. Amazon, AppleTV, Youtube.
- To Kill a Wolf: mysteries revealed. Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango.
ON TV
On October 11, TCM is presenting a triple-header of important film noir:
- Kansas City Confidential: A criminal mastermind hides his identity from his own squad of indelible goons (Lee Van Cleef, Neville Brand, Jack Elam) as they pull off a heist and frame a poor flower delivery driver (John Payne). To solve the crime and clear himself, the driver has to head to Mexico, where more plot twists await.
- The Manchurian Candidate: For a ticking bomb thriller, you really can’t top John Frankenhimer’s 1962 original. Laurence Harvey plays a victim of Commie brainwashing who has become a robotic, remote-controlled assassin. Can he be stopped in time?The Manchurian Candidate tops off a set of brilliant Frank Sinatra performances (before his directors couldn’t restrain him from mugging): From Here to Eternity, Suddenly!, The Man with a Golden Arm. Harvey, Sinatra and Janet Leigh are all good, but this is really Angela Lansbury’s movie. Not only is her character promoting the political career of her bombastic Joe McCarthy-like husband, but she is a Communist agent intent on the Communist takeover of the US government. And she is pulling the strings to direct the assassin – her own son! Lansbury’s character makes my list of Worst Movie Mothers.
- Sweet Smell of Success: This film proves that you don’t need a murder to qualify as a film noir as long as there’s enough blackmail, police corruption and brutality, sexual harassment, criminal frames and red-baiting. In his best-ever performance, Tony Curtis plays a press agent who must suck up to a powerful, cruel and capricious columnist (Burt Lancaster).
