Crazy Rich Asians is wildly popular for a reason – it’s damn entertaining and probably the year’s most appealing date movie. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll wait for the chance to see Awkwafina in her next movie. Other choices in theaters:
OUT NOW
Spike Lee’s true story BlacKkKlansmanis very funny and, finally, emotionally powerful.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exuberance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
The hyper-violent and stylized Belgian thriller Let the Corpses Tan is a contemporary thriller that pays loving homage to the Sergio Leone canon. Essentially a soulless exercise in style, more interesting than gripping. It’s a visual stunner, though, and the Leone references are fun.
The coming-of-age drama We the Animals is imaginative, but a grind.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the cheeky and original sex comedy Threesomething, which I saw at its world premiere at this year’s Cinequest. Comedy is hard to write, especially comedy as smart and original as this. Threesomething is now available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
On September 1, Turner Classic Movies presents the iconic 1946 film noirThe 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 David Washington and Laura Harrier in BlacKkKlansman, a Focus Features release.Credit: David Lee / Focus Features
OUT NOW
Spike Lee’s true story BlacKkKlansmanis very funny and, finally, emotionally powerful.
You can still see the best movie of the year: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone). Superbly well-crafted, impeccably acted, thoughtful and emotionally powerful, it’s a Must See. Still at one theater in Silicon Valley and one in San Francisco.
The savagely funny social satireSorry to Bother You carries the message that humans are more than just their commercial value as consumers and labor to be exploited.
The political documentary Dark Money exposes the growing threat of unlimited secret money in political campaigns.
Puzzle intelligently and authentically traces one woman’s journey of self discovery.
The surprisingly emotional biodoc Won’t You Be My Neighbor?is about Fred Rogers’ fierce devotion to the principle that every child is deserving of love and our protection.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exuberance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
ON VIDEO
My DVD/Stream of the week is the period thriller The Two Faces of January, a Patricia Highsmith tale of dark hearts in sunny Greece. The Two Faces of January is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
Turner Classic Movies is airingRequiem for a Heavyweight(1962). Anthony Quinn is Mountain Rivera, a fighter whose career is ended by a ring injury by Cassius Clay (played by the real Muhammed Ali). His manager, Jackie Gleason, continues to exploit him in this heartbreaking drama. There’s no boxing in this clip, but it illustrates the quality of the writing and the acting.
Adam Driver and John David Washington in BLACKKKLANSMAN
My top choice this weekend is Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, which I’ll be writing about this weekend.
OUT NOW
You can still see the best movie of the year: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone). Superbly well-crafted, impeccably acted, thoughtful and emotionally powerful, it’s a Must See. Still at one theater in Silicon Valley amd one in San Francisco.
The savagely funny social satireSorry to Bother You carries the message that humans are more than just their commercial value as consumers and labor to be exploited.
The political documentary Dark Money exposes the growing threat of unlimited secret money in political campaigns.
Puzzle intelligently and authentically traces one woman’s journey of self discovery.
The surprisingly emotional biodoc Won’t You Be My Neighbor?is about Fred Rogers’ fierce devotion to the principle that every child is deserving of love and our protection.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exhuverance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is a tale of magical Mormon runaways in Vegas. With Electrick Children, first-time feature filmmaker Rebecca Thomas has created an entirely unique teen coming of age story. Electrick Children employs an element of magical realism that requires the audience to accept a premise which cannot be real. The result is a highly original success. Electrick Children can be streamed from Amazon (included in Amazon Prime) and can be purchased from several other VOD platforms.
ON TV
On August 22, Turner Classic Movies presents the still-powerful 1943 The Ox-Bow Incident, a parable about mobs acting rashly on the basis of fear and prejudice (which certainly resonates in today’s political environment). Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan lead an excellent period cast with Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn and Jane Darwell, along with Frank Conroy and Harry Davenport, whose performances are perfect little gems. Which character most resembles Donald Trump?
Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan in THE OX-BOW INCIDENTTHE OX-BOW INCIDENT
Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson in SORRY TO BOTHER YOU
It’s getting harder to find the year’s best movie so far, so please track down Leave No Trace. I’ll be seeing the muc anticipated BlacKKKlansman by Spike Lee.
OUT NOW
Please make every attempt to see the best movie of the year, now in Bay Area theaters: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone). Superbly well-crafted, impeccably acted, thoughtful and emotionally powerful, it’s a Must See.
The savagely funny social satireSorry to Bother You carries the message that humans are more than just their commercial value as consumers and labor to be exploited.
The political documentary Dark Money exposes the growing threat of unlimited secret money in political campaigns.
Puzzle intelligently and authentically traces one woman’s journey of self discovery.
The Third Murder is a legal procedural that takes a philosophical turn.
The surprisingly emotional biodoc Won’t You Be My Neighbor?is about Fred Rogers’ fierce devotion to the principle that every child is deserving of love and our protection.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exhuverance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
ON VIDEO
I’m sure that you’ve never seen this week’s video pick because I don’t think it got a theatrical release. It’s the indie thriller Dose of Reality, which brings a jaw-dropper of a Big Surprise. Dose of Reality is available to stream on Amazon.
ON TV
On August 16, Turner Classic Movies will offer the delightful Peter Bogdanovich screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc? The nerdy academic Howard (Ryan O’Neal) and his continually aggrieved fiance Eunice (Madeline Kahn) travel to San Francisco to compete for a career-launching grant. The luggage with Howard’s great discovery (musical rocks) is mixed up with two identical suitcases, one containing valuable jewelry, the other with spy secrets, and soon we have juggling MacGuffins.
That’s all funny enough, but Howard bumps into Judy (Barbra Streisand), the kookiest serial college dropout in America, who determines that she must have him and utterly disrupts his life. Our hero’s ruthless rival for the grant is hilariously played by Kenneth Mars (the Nazi playwright in The Producers). Austin Pendleton is wonderful as the would-be benefactor.
The EXTENDED closing chase scene is among the very funniest in movie history – right up there with the best of Buster Keaton; Streisand and O’Neal lead an ever-growing cavalcade of pursuers through the hills of San Francisco, at one point crashing the Chinese New Year’s Day parade. I love What’s Up, Doc? and own the DVD, and I watch every time I stumble across it on TV. Bogdanovich’s hero Howard Hawks, the master of the screwball comedy, would have been proud.
Kôji Yakusho in Hirokazu Koreeda’s THE THIRD MURDER. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society (SFFILM).
Opening this week: The Third Murder is the work of director Hirokazu Koreeda, who made the 1995 art house hit Maborosi and one of the best movies of 2008, Still Walking. Koreeda’s Shoplifters just won the Palm d’Or at Cannes, and will be released in the US by Magnolia Pictures on November 23. I saw The Third Murder at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). The Third Murder is a legal procedural that takes a philosophical turn.
OUT NOW
Please make every attempt to see the best movie of the year, now in Bay Area theaters: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone). Superbly well-crafted, impeccably acted, thoughtful and emotionally powerful, it’s a Must See.
The savagely funny social satireSorry to Bother You carries the message that humans are more than just their commercial value as consumers and labor to be exploited.
The political documentary Dark Money exposes the growing threat of unlimited secret money in political campaigns.
Puzzle intelligently and authentically traces one woman’s journey of self discovery.
The surprisingly emotional biodoc Won’t You Be My Neighbor?is about Fred Rogers’ fierce devotion to the principle that every child is deserving of love and our protection.
First Reformed: Ethan Hawke stars in this bleak, bleak psychological thriller with an intense ending.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exhuverance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
American Animals is funny documentary/reenactment of a preposterous heist.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
ON VIDEO
I’m sure that you’ve never seen this week’s video pick because I don’t think it got a theatrical release. It’s the indie thriller Dose of Reality, which brings a jaw-dropper of a Big Surprise. Dose of Reality is available to stream on Amazon.
ON TV
This is a great week for film noir and neo-noir on Turner Classic Movies. We begin on August 6 with The Set-Up (1949), one of the great film noirs and one of my 10 Best Boxing Movies. Robert Ryan plays a washed-up boxer that nobody believes can win again, not even his long-suffering wife (Audrey Totter). His manager doesn’t even bother to tell him that he is committed to taking a dive in his next fight. But what if he wins? Director Robert Wise makes use of real-time narrative, then highly innovative. Watch for the verisimilitude of the bar where the deal goes down.
Also on August 6, there’s the 1950 Perfect Murder noirTension, with Richard Basehart as the meek night manager of a pharmacy who is married to a slutty shrew (Audrey Totter – of course). She sneers, “”You were full of laughs then. Well, you’re all laughed out now”” When the wife humiliates him with her newest affair, he works a pair of the newly invented contact lenses and some flashy clothes into a new second identity. The wife’s boyfriend ends up fatally shot, and the cops start looking for the pharmacy manager. Will he take the fall? Barry Sullivan is the cop and Cyd Charisse is the good girl.
And on August 9, TCM plays one of my favorite neo-noirs, the Don Siegel thriller Charley Varrick. Walter Matthau stars as the title character, an expert heist man who sets up a “perfect crime” bank robbery which, of course, goes awry. Worst of all, it turns out that Varrick has stolen a secret Mob fortune being laundered by the bank, and now the underworld organization is after him. Only his wits can save him. I’ve rewatched Charley Varrick a couple of times recently, and it still holds up for me.
Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson in SORRY TO BOTHER YOU
The savagely funny social satire Sorry to Bother You rips both the excesses of 21st century capitalism and the popular response to those excesses – apathetic submissiveness. This may be the most original American film of the year.
Sorry to Bother You is set with specificity in Oakland, but the story is about the greater corporate-dominated culture. A sinister corporation named Worry Free flourishes by enlisting consumers to “lifetime contracts” for their employment and household needs; Worry Free clients/employees are provided for life with meals, housing (in barracks crammed with bunk beds) and clothing (hospital scrubs) in return for menial factory labor. The Worry Free system, of course, is slavery. Almost nobody cares about that – this is a vapid culture where the most popular TV game show is I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me, where each week’s contestant is beaten and humiliated for mass entertainment. Only the insurgent group Left Eye resists, with graffiti and guerilla actions.
Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield), a young man without prospects, is living in his uncle’s Oakland garage with his avant-garde artist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson). Cassius is overjoyed to finally score a telemarketing job, even though his new boss explains that every applicant is hired. Cassius’ telemarketing career is futile until he acts on a tip from an older colleague (Danny Glover) to “use your white voice”. Suddenly, Cassius vaults to the top of the telemarketing world, and is promoted to make big money pitching Worry Free’s slave labor force to global manufacturers. This raises the question, when does “success” become “selling out”?
Complicating matters for Cassius, his former telemarketing buddies and Detroit take on The Man by organizing a union. Cassius becomes both the butt of a viral YouTube video and estranged from his support system just as Worry Free’s founder (Armie Hammer) offers Cassius an even bigger opportunity. Finding slavery not profitable enough, Worry Free is about to launch what is horrifically called “the future of labor” – a sci-fi solution to create a work force “more durable and compliant” than human slaves. If Cassius decides to expose the atrocities, how will the public react?
Sorry to Bother You is the first feature as writer-director for Bay Area artist and rapper Boots Riley, It’s an impressive film debut for Riley, who has proven himself to be a first-rate social observer and satirist.
Lakeith Stanfield is excellent as the stoic, hunched Cassius, and so is the rest of the cast (Thompson, Glover, Steven Yuen, Omari Harwick, Germaine Fowler). Armie Hammer’s performance as the unapologetically monstrous entrepreneur is delicious. Kate Berlani sparkles as the new telemarketing “team leader”, who, having drank the Kool-Aid, spouts corporate management babble.
Sorry to Bother You is a riot – in the comedic sense and also as sociopolitical disruption. Nary a joke goes awry, from Detroit’s self-crafted earrings to the security code in the corporate elevator. And Riley plays a final joke for us (and on us) in the closing credits.
