The Good the Bad and the Ugly

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Idella Johnson, Sivan Noam Shimon and Hannah Pepper in Marion Hill’s film MA BELLE, MY BEAUTY. Courtesy of SFILM.

This week – an expectation-busting documentary in theaters and two new audience-pleasers to watch at home.

IN THEATERS

499: Photo courtesy of Cinema Guild.

499: In this critique of contemporary Mexico, director Rodrigo Reyes has invented the medium of “docu-fable”. It is all as real as real can be (the documentary), except for the fictional, 500-year-old conquistador (the fable). Opens today at San Francisco’s Roxie with Reyes in attendance and plays through September 8.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

The Unknown Saint: I loved this crime comedy from Morocco. It’s a deadpan dive into human foibles and really, really bad luck. Netflix.

Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed. This doc tells two improbable stories. The first is how Bob Ross, the soft-talking, permanent-coiffed painting instructor on PBS, could become such a cultural phenomenon. The second is a sordid tale of bone-picking exploitation. Netflix.

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

ON TV

Clint Eastwood in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

On September 6, Turner Classic Movies gives us a helluva choice, depending on how you prefer your movie violence. For stylized movie violence (and stylized movie music, camerawork and everything else, there’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Then there’s the serious-as-a-heart-attack Battle of Algiers.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly completes Sergio Leone’s hugely influential triad of Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. The wonderfully idiosyncratic score by Ennio Morricone is indelible.

The Battle of Algiers is 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 strategy councils of each side. 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

Movies to See Right Now

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Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn in BEAST

This week, I’m featuring two psychological thrillers with powerful endings and a comic heist documentary.

OUT NOW

  • Beast: Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in this psychological thriller.
  • First Reformed: Ethan Hawke stars in this bleak, bleak psychological thriller with an intense ending.
  • American Animals is funny documentary/reenactment of a preposterous heist.
  • RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
  • A Quiet Place is as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.

ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the very funny and sentimental The Last Movie Star with 82-year-old Burt Reynolds and Ariel Winter (Alex Dunphy in Modern Family).  You can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE

Faithful readers know that I revere the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood/Ennio Morricone spaghetti westerns. On June 13, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the three great Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. All star Clint Eastwood and feature wonderfully idiosyncratic scores by Ennio Morricone.

Eastwood’s character in the trilogy is referred to in film literature as “the man with no name”. But actually, the character is named Joe, Monco and Blondie in the three movies, respectively.

Here’s Morricone’s theme for A Fistful of Dollars.

Eli Wallach: a character actor who amplified his roles

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Eli Wallach in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
Eli Wallach in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

The actor Eli Wallach has died at age 98.  He was a star of the New York stage and of NYC-based TV series and live television dramas of the 1950s.  Wallach was a great movie character actor who had the gift of packing maximum entertainment value into any role.  Movie fans will probably best remember him for two bandito bad guys – Cavela in The Magnificent Seven and Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Wallach had 167 screen credits – he was in Polanski’s The Ghost Writer just four years ago.  I hope we don’t overlook his feature film debut in 1956, Elia Kazan’s
comedy of seduction Baby Doll.  Wallach plays a cotton gin owner who knows – and is trying to prove – that his gin has been burnt down by his rival (Karl Malden).   Getting even involves the seduction of Malden’s dim, oversexed and luscious young wife (Carroll Baker).  In this scene, watch Wallach pour on the charm while his eyes reveal predatory horniness.  I love it when Baker exclaims, “Mr. Vacaro – this conversation is certainly taking a personal turn!”.

Movies to See Right Now

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The Sapphires

I’m still recommending the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War. The other side of the coin is the bleak, but masterful Romanian drama Beyond the Hills.

And I still love two indies on Video on Demand:

  • Letters from the Big Man: a beautifully looking and sounding fable about a prickly woman with a guy and a Bigfoot competing for her affections.
  • Electrick Children: an entirely unique teen coming of age story with fundamentalist Mormon teens in Las Vegas.

The other best choices in theaters:

  • No: Gael Garcia Bernal stars as the regular guy who brainstormed the guerrilla advertising campaign that dethroned Chilean dictator Pinochet.
  • The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: a pleasant comedy and a showcase for Jim Carrey.
  • Side Effects: Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
  • Quartet: a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances.

Music fans will enjoy the bio-documentary Beware of Mr. Baker, available on VOD.

On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel, with surprisingly little energy. The HBO movie Phil Spector is really just a freak show.

You may still be able to catch the fine PBS documentary Philip Roth: Unmasked. Roth himself gets lots of screen time to explain his career and his creative process.

I haven’t yet seen the much anticipated The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, which opens today.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the week is the campy 1994 sci fi western Oblivion, which I’m betting is more entertaining than this week’s Hollywood remake.

On April 15, Turner Classic Movies is showing all four of the Clint Eastwood Man with No Name movies:  the Sergio Leone trilogy (For a Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) plus Hang Em High.

Coming up on TV: Sergio Leone and the man with no name

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FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE

On the single blissful evening of November 9, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the three great Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. All star Clint Eastwood and feature wonderfully idiosyncratic scores by Ennio Morricone.

Eastwood’s character in the trilogy is referred to in film literature as “the man with no name”. But actually, the character is named Joe, Monco and Blondie in the three movies, respectively.

Here’s Morricone’s theme for A Fistful of Dollars.