Abacus: Small Enough to Jail

Movies to See Right Now

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OKJA
OKJA

Current movie recommendations (Okja and Moka are both good – don’t get them mixed up):

  • Okja, another wholly original creation from the imagination of master filmmaker Bong Joon Ho, is streaming on Netflix and opening in theaters.
  • The delightfully smart and character-driven Israeli comedy The Women’s Balcony with a community of traditional women in revolt. The longer you’ve been married, the funnier you’ll find The Women’s Balcony.
  • The character-driven suspenser Moka is a showcase for French actresses Emmanuelle Devos and Nathalie Baye.
  • The David and Goliath documentary Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, the riveting story of an American family business bullied into a nightmarish fight for survival.
  • The bittersweet dramedy The Hero has one thing going for it – the wonderfully appealing Sam Elliott.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the geezer roadtrip comedy Land Ho!, available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, and Google Play.

This week Turner Classic Movies brings us three classics of film noir:

  • While the City Sleeps is a tale of boardroom backstabbing from the cinema great Fritz Lang. The killer cast is so deep (Dana Andrews, Ida Lupino, Vincent Price, George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell, Rhonda Fleming), that noir leading man Howard Duff is stuck playing the cop. July 5 on TCM.
  • Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is another film noir from the great Fritz Lang.  Seeking to discredit capital punishment, a reporter (Dana Andrews) gets himself charged with and CONVICTED of a murder – but then the evidence of his innocence suddenly disappears! Crackerjack (and deeply noir) surprise ending. July 5 on TCM.
  • Raw Deal features some of the best film noir dialogue, a love triangle and the superb cinematography of John Alton. July 7 on TCM.

Also on July 5, TCM presents Sam Peckinpah’s very underrated neo-noir crime drama The Getaway (1972) starring Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw. McQueen and MacGraw are delightful to watch as they move between violent clashes and double- and triple-crosses. There’s a still-shocking but funny plot thread involving a sadistic villain (Al Lettieri – Sollozzo the Turk in The Godfather), a trashy bimbo (Sally Struthers) and her poor hubbie (Jack Dodson – Howard Sprague in The Andy Griffith Show). The wonderful cast is rounded out with Peckinpah regulars: Slim Pickens, Ben Johnson, Dub Taylor, Richard Bright and Bo Hopkins.

Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw in THE GETAWAY
Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw in THE GETAWAY

Movies to See Right Now

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THE WOMEN'S BALCONY
THE WOMEN’S BALCONY

In theaters this week:

  • The delightfully smart and character-driven Israeli comedy The Women’s Balcony with a community of traditional women in revolt. The longer you’ve been married, the funnier you’ll find The Women’s Balcony.
  • The David and Goliath documentary Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, the riveting story of an American family business bullied into a nightmarish fight for survival.
  • The bittersweet dramedy The Hero has one thing going for it – the wonderfully appealing Sam Elliott.

Here’s my contribution to the argument about the Best 25 Movies of the 21st Century.

My Stream of the Week won the Oscar for Best Documentary feature.  Searching for Sugar Man is the story of a Detroit construction laborer who didn’t know that he was a rock star. You can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On June 27, Turner Classic Movies presents the iconic 1946 film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice.  An essential element in film noir is a guy’s lust for a Bad Girl driving him to a Bad Decision, and when John Garfield first sees Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice, you can tell that he’s hooked.  She’s a Bad Girl, and a Bad Decision is on its way.

John Garfield's first look at Lana Turner in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
John Garfield’s first look at Lana Turner in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE

Movies to See Right Now

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THE WOMEN'S BALCONY
THE WOMEN’S BALCONY

In theaters this week:

  • The delightfully smart and character-driven Israeli comedy The Women’s Balcony with a community of traditional women in revolt.  The longer you’ve been married, the funnier you’ll find The Women’s Balcony.
  • The David and Goliath documentary Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, the riveting story of an American family business bullied into a nightmarish fight for survival.
  • Paris Can Wait, a female fantasy with glorious French cuisine to tantalize all genders.
  • You can still find Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer in theaters, perhaps Richard Gere’s best movie performance ever, and strongly recommended.
  • The bittersweet dramedy The Hero has one thing going for it – the wonderfully appealing Sam Elliott.

Here’s my contribution to the argument about the Best 25 Movies of the 21st Century.

School is out for the summer, and my DVD/Streams of the Week are the two surfing documentaries Step Into Liquid and Riding Giants.  Both are available on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Here’s an interesting nugget from Turner Classic Movies on June 17. Three different actors play Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled LA detective Philip Marlowe: Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep, James Garner in Marlowe and Robert Montgomery in Lady in the Lake.

The most famous – and my favorite – of these is The Big Sleep, with its iconic performance by Bogart and its impenetrably tangled plot. It’s also one of the most overtly sexual noirs, and Lauren Bacall at her sultriest is only the beginning. The achingly beautiful Martha Vickers plays a druggie who throws herself at anything in pants. And Dorothy Malone invites Bogie to share a back-of-the-bookstore quickie.

Lady in the Lake is more cinematically inventive.  Shot entirely from the point of view of the protagonist detective (Montgomery), we never see him except when reflected in mirrors. Even without this interesting gadget, it’s a good movie. Audrey Totter plays one of her iconic noir Bad Girls.

Marlowe is less distinguished a film, but James Garner is always watchable.

Dorothy Malone and Humphrey Bogart in THE BIG SLEEP
Dorothy Malone and Humphrey Bogart in THE BIG SLEEP

Movies to See Right Now

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ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL
ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL

I recommend the David and Goliath documentary Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, the riveting story of an American family business bullied into a nightmarish fight for survival.

Other recommendations in theaters:

My Stream of the Week is one of my Overlooked Noir, The Burglar (1957).  Dan Duryea leads an initially successful heist team as they go stir crazy waiting for the environment to cool down so they can safely fence the booty.  Martha Vickers plays one of the most direct of the noir vixens, and it’s the debut of 50s sexpot Jayne Mansfield.   The Burglar is available streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, Xbox Video and Flixster.

On June 12, Turner Classic Movies will broadcast The Battle of Algiers, the story of 1950s French colonialists struggling to suppress the guerrilla uprising of Algerian independence fighters. Although it looks like a documentary, it is not. Instead, filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo recreated the actual events so realistically that we believe that we are watching the strategy councils of each side. Urban insurgency and counter-insurgency are nasty, brutal and not very short – and we see some horrifically inhumane butchering by both sides.

Among the great war films, it may be the best film on counter-insurgency. In 2003, the Pentagon screened the film for its special operations commanders.

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS

ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL: an underdog has his day

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ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL
ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL

Nobody likes a bully, and the documentary Abacus: Small Enough to Jail tells the riveting story of an American family business bullied into a nightmarish fight for survival.  We meet the members of family, the Sungs of New York, and relive their existential struggle.  It’s a compelling story, well-told.

Thomas Sung founded the Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a small bank in New York’s Chinatown, and passed on the management of the bank to his daughters.  The bank’s customers are almost all Chinese from the neighborhood.  The bank management discover a corrupt loan officer, fire him and turn him in to regulators.  But prosecutors go on to blame the whole loan department and then the bank leadership – and file criminal charges against the bank.  Suddenly, the Sungs are in a fight for their professional lives.

The Manhattan prosecutor was looking for a scapegoat for the financial crisis of 2008.  Let’s remember that the global crisis was caused by the biggest players in the American financial system.  The very biggest financial institutions were guilty of overt corruption – the banks were packaging and selling worthless financial products and the credit rating agencies were falsely labeling them as valuable.  Banks were making crazy, unsustainable and predatory home loans.  Insured accounts turned out to be not really insured.

But those crooked big banks were “too big to fail”  They were bailed out by the taxpayers and escaped accountability for their crimes.  Here’s what is mind-boggling:  to this day,  the tiny Abacus Federal Savings Bank remains the ONLY bank that has faced criminal charges from the financial crisis.  Hence the movie’s subtitle “Small Enough to Jail“.

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail comes from the documentarian Steve James, who directed Hoop Dreams, the masterpiece that both Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel picked as the best movie of 1994, as well as the more recent Ebert celebration Life Itself.   Abacus is brilliantly sourced – James was able to get prosecutors, defense attorneys and even jurors on camera, along with the entire Sung family.

Getting to know the individuals in the Sung family is one of the pleasures of viewing Abacus.  Let’s just say that it’s a mistake to take a family business to court when the whole family are lawyers.

Right at the beginning of Abacus, James makes an inspired choice – he matches the family patriarch and bank founder Thomas Sung with George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life.  And the engrossing saga of the Sungs begins.