She Dies Tomorrow – The Movie Gourmet

Mina Farid and Zahia Dehar in AN EASY GIRL

This week: two female-written, European coming of age films, The August Virgin and An Easy Girl, are still the top recommendations, but there’s also a powerful WWII doc and a film that is a morbid horror comedy with flecks of sci-fi and surrealism.

ON VIDEO

She Dies Tomorrow: This completely original fable from writer-director Amy Seifetz bounces between absurdism, sci-fi, dark comedy and horror. It’s streaming on all the major platforms.

Apocalypse ’45: Never-before-seen color film and the memories of survivors bring to life the grisly final two years of WWII in the Pacific. Apocalypse ’45 is now streaming (I watched it at the Pruneyard Cinemas). It will premiere on the Discovery Channel on Labor Day weekend.

The August Virgin: In the best movie of summer 2020, a young woman switches up Madrid neighborhoods to mix things up in her life. It’s a lovely and genuine story of self-invention, and it’s on my list of Best Movies of 2020 – So Far. The August Virgin is streaming on Virtual Cinemas, like San Rafael’s Rafael or Laemmle’s in LA.

An Easy Girl: A 16-year-old girl is introduced to her 22-year-old cousin’s Eurotrash lifestyle and learns about life; written by its female director, it doesn’t go as you would expect. An Easy Girl is a NYT Critic’s Pick, and it is streaming on Netflix.

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

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
Summerland: finally arrives at heartwarming
The Go-Go’s: five women do what men do
The Booksellers: we collect what we treasure
Yes, God, Yes: learning that hypocrisy is a choice.
Dateline-Saigon: the truth will out
Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado: gentleness and flamboyancy
Our Kind of Traitor: Skarsgård steals this robust thriller
Step into Liquid and Riding Giants: Get stoked with the two most bitchin’ surfing documentaries.
The Truth: Reconciling your truth with another’s. Best Movies of 2020 – So Far.
John Lewis: Double Trouble: an icon remembered.
The 11th Green: a thinking person’s conspiracy
Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo: redemption never gets old
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.
The Women’s Balcony: a righteous man must keep his woman happy.
Electrick Children: magical Mormon runaways in Vegas.
King in the Wilderness: an icon, floundering.

ON TV

Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain and Frank Finlay in THE THREE MUSKETEERS

On August 30, Turner Classic Movies is Richard Lester’s boisterous The Three Musketeers from 1973. Watch Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Michael York and Frank Finlay swashbuckle away against Bad Guys Christopher Lee, Faye Dunaway and Charlton Heston. Geraldine Chaplin and Raquel Welch adorn the action. [If you like it, you can stream the second volume, The Four Musketeers, from Criterion Collection, Amazon, YouTube and Google Play; it was filmed in the same shoot and released the next year.]

And, if you like your movies more complex and mysterious, tune in to Turner Classic Movies on September 3 for the enigmatic Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) by Australian filmmaker Peter Weir. An Australian girls school goes on an outing to a striking geological formation – and some of the girls and a teacher disappear. What happened to them? It’s beautiful and hypnotic and haunting. It’s a film masterpiece, but if you can’t handle ambiguous endings – this ain’t for you.

Weir has gone on to make high quality hits (The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show, Master and Commander), but Picnic at Hanging Rock – the movie that he made at age 31 – is his most original work.

Writer-director Amy Seimetz’s offbeat fable She Dies Tomorrow is difficult to categorize, except as completely original and unlike anything we’ve seen before.

At first, it’s hard to figure out what’s going on, as we follow Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil), who recently has bought a house and is ready to embark on a fling with Craig (Kentucker Audley). But then Amy has an epiphany – she’s going to die tomorrow. No, she hasn’t decided to kill herself – she just is, for lack of a better word, prophesying that something will cause her death tomorrow. That’s pretty heavy and, as anyone would, she becomes fixated on her impending mortality.

Of course, it’s also absurd. How can anyone predict the date of her own natural or accidental death? But here’s where things really get crazy. Amy tells her geeky chemist friend Jane (Jane Adams), and afterward, Jane is convinced that she, also, will die tomorrow. Jane, in her pajamas, crashes the dinner party of her brother Jason (Chris Messina) and unloads her realization. Soon, Jason, his wife and their two guests have been “infected” – and become dazed by the belief that they, too, will die tomorrow. Virus-like, the phenomenon spreads to a seemingly well-grounded doctor (Josh Lucas), a poolside slacker (Michelle Rodriguez) and others.

And here’s another absurdity – how can a psychological disorder (if that’s what this is) be instantly contagious? She Dies Tomorrow is unrelentingly deadpan, so the absurdism is morbidly comic. Each character reacts differently to his/her infection, and this can be pretty funny. Some are profoundly distraught, while one dumps the boyfriend she has found tiresome. Amy’s own ordering of a very special leather jacket is especially perverse.

For all the humor (and this is not guffaw-producing humor), She Dies Tomorrow is also one scary movie. Of all the genres it touches, it is probably closest to horror.

The entire cast is very good. Sheil and Audley starred in Seimetz’s swampy neo-noir Sun Don’t Shine.

For good reason, film critics boost films that break the mold, and She Dies Tomorrow has an Metacritic score of 80. John DeFore wrote in The Hollywood Reporter, “Movies like this are why art houses exist.”

She Dies Tomorrow is available on all the major streaming services.

Movies to See Right Now (at home)

SHE DIES TOMORROW: you have not seen this before