The Crimson Kimono

Movies to Watch Right Now (at home)

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NIGHT ON EARTH

More overlooked movies to watch at home: the funniest and saddest movie – all in one – and two jaw-dropping documentaries. Plus an amazingly charismatic star in a classic noir…from Poland! Scroll down for remembrances of Jerry Stiller and Little Richard.

ON VIDEO

SPACESHIP EARTH, Courtesy of Spaceship Earth

Spaceship Earth: The latest from Silicon Valley native filmmaker Matt Wolf, this documentary traces an audacious scientific quasi-experiment of the 1990s, the Biosphere 2, perhaps the Last Stand of the Renaissance Man. Just released this weekend, Spaceship Earth can be streamed from iTunes, Hulu, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Cold Case Hammarskjöld: This eccentric and irresistible documentary purports to solve a historical mystery, buts it”s an excuse for the filmmaker to hop around Africa talking to aged fixers and mercenaries. It’s both an investigatory documentary and a send-up of the genre. Available on most streaming platforms.

Night on Earth: this Jim Jarmusch indie has one of the very funniest scenes and one of the very saddest scenes – in the same movie.  Night on Earth is comprised of five vignettes, each in a taxi and each in a different city: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and, of all places, Helsinki. It’s now available to stream from the Criterion Collection and Amazon. Do not confuse this 1991 Jarmusch film with the 2020 miniseries of the same name.

Ashes and Diamonds: This Polish thriller is one of my Overlooked Noir. A masterful director and his charismatic star make this a Can’t Miss. Last week I wrote when Turner Classic Movies aired it, but if you missed it, you can stream Ashes and Diamonds from Amazon and iTunes.

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

ON TV

On May 16, Turner Classic Movies will air The Crimson Kimono, another sensationalistic and deliciously exploitative cop noir from the great Sam Fuller.  Always looking to add some shock value, Fuller delivered a Japanese-American leading man (James Shigeta), an inter-racial romance and a stripper victim.  The groundbreaking aspect of The Crimson Kimono is that Fuller’s writing and Shigeta’s performance normalized the Japanese-American character.  This film is on my list of Overlooked Noir.

James Shigeta (Right) in THE CRIMSON KIMONO

REMEMBRANCES

Jerry Stiller, along with his wife and professional partner Anne Meara (scroll down), was a comedy pioneer. He’s best remembered for playing George Costanza’s father on TV’s Seinfeld and for being Ben Stiller’s real life dad. But Stiller sandwiched some good work in movies (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Ritz, Hairspray) between the early and later phases of his work.

The Rock pioneer Little Richard has died. I fondly remember his hilarious turn in Down and Out in Beverly Hills as the neighbor to Richard Dreyfus’ family, Orvis Goodnight. He appeared in one of the very first rock n roll movies Don’t Knock the Rock (1956), a same-year followup to Rock Around the Clock. His music was featured in hundred of films and television shows.

The groundbreaking James Shigeta

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James Shigeta (Right) in THE CRIMSON KIMONO
James Shigeta (Right) in THE CRIMSON KIMONO

Actor James Shigeta, who along with writer-director Sam Fuller, broke ground in 1959’s  The Crimson Kimono, has died at age 85.  Shigeta was a fixture on mainstream television series, accounting for many of his 88 screen credits.

But his first movie role was in The Crimson Kimono, another sensationalistic and deliciously exploitative cop noir from the great Sam Fuller.  Always looking to add some shock value, Fuller delivered a Japanese-American leading man (Shigeta), an inter-racial romance and a stripper victim.  The groundbreaking aspect of The Crimson Kimono is that Fuller’s writing and Shigeta’s performance normalized the Japanese-American character.  Shigeta’s Detective Joe Kojaku is a regular hardboiled, jaded and troubled film noir protagonist.  Other than his inside knowledge of the Japanese community, there isn’t anything exotic or “foreign” about him – as you can see in the clip below.

Of course, Fuller certainly relished the fact that many 1959 Americans would have been unsettled by a Japanese-American man’s intimate encounter with a white woman – another groundbreaking moment in American cinema.

Interestingly, the American-born Shigeta , a Korean War vet, became a singing sensation in 1950s Japan before launching his US acting career.

The Crimson Kimono is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video; it also plays occasionally on Turner Classic Movies.

Coming Up on TV: Sam Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono

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The Crimson Kimono: a rare mixed-race encounter for 1959

The Crimson Kimono (1959) is another sensationalistic and deliciously exploitative cop noir from the great Sam Fuller.  As usual, Fuller has the guts to break ground, this time with a Japanese-American leading man (James Shigeta), an inter-racial romance and a stripper victim.  Plays on TCM November 13.

For other great movie choices on TV, see my Movies on TV.

This week's Movies to See Right Now

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Bryce Dallas Howard and Matt Damon in Hereafter

The Must See films in theaters this week remain Inside Job and The Social Network.  Hereafter and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest are also good choices.

Charles Ferguson’s brilliant documentary Inside Job may be the most important movie of the year. It is a harsh but fair explanation of the misdeeds that led to the recent near-collapse of the global financial system. Unexpectedly, the film begins in Iceland, setting the stage for the collapse and kicking off the easily understandable explanations of the various tricks and bamboozles that have hidden behind their own complexity.

Hereafter: For the first time, Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon, The Damned United) venture into the supernatural with the story of three people and their individual experiences with death. The most skeptical, nonspiritual viewer (me) finds this to be a compelling film.

The question of What Comes Next is unanswered, and less interesting than the film’s observations of what happens on this Earth to living humans. Eastwood’s genius is in delivering moments of complete truthfulness, one after the other, across a wide range of settings, from intimate human encounters to the big CGI-enhanced action sequence at the beginning of the film. Eastwood is an actor’s director, and star Matt Damon leads a set of excellent performances, especially by Bryce Dallas Howard, Frankie McLaren, Cecile de France and Richard Kind.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is an acceptable final chapter in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy and best as the showcase for Noomi Rapace’s final performance as Lisbeth Salander. If you’ve seen the first two movies, you should complete the trilogy by seeing this somewhat plodding film. As with the first two films, Hornet’s Nest centers on Rapace’s Lisbeth, a tiny fury of a Goth hacker, damaged and driven. Lisbeth is always mad AND always gets even.

The Social Network: The birth story of Facebook is a riveting tale of college sophomores that are brilliant, ambitious, immature, self-absorbed and disloyal – and about to become zillionaires. It’s a triumph for actor Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland, Zombieland and Solitary Man), director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War). It’s already on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far.

Leaving (Partir) is a romantic tragedy with another powerful performance by Kristin Scott Thomas and not much else.  Howl has a fine performance by James Franco, but is marred by an unsuccessful animation. The Town is hanging around theaters and, without strongly recommending it, I can say that it is a satisfying Hollywood thriller.

For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.

I have not yet seen Welcome to the Rileys, which is just opening. This Sundance hit features James Gandolfini as a Midwestern plumbing contractor who visits New Orleans for a conference, meets teen runaway Kristin Stewart, and decides to stay. I also haven’t seen Fair Game, the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson story. You can see the trailers at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the Week is I’ve Loved You So Long.   My top two American films of the year are now available on DVD – the indie Winter’s Bone and Pixar’s Toy Story 3.   For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.

Movies on TV include The Best Years of Our Lives, Harlan County U.S.A., The Crimson Kimono and Picnic at Hanging Rock on TCM.   More on The Crimson Kimono tomorrow.

Sam Fuller's The Crimson Kimono