movie gourmet

NIGHT STALKER: THE HUNT FOR SERIAL KILLER: a good man tracks down evil

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Gil Carrillo in NIGHT STALKER: THE HUNT FOR A SERIAL KILLER

The true crime limited series Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer tells a story of a public justifiably terrorized by profound evil, but it is elevated by one genuinely good guy.

In a five-and-a-half month 1985 crime spree, the serial killer nicknamed the Night Stalker inflicted unspeakable atrocities, mostly in a swath of Los Angeles. There were at least 14 murders, along with rapes and child rapes, brutal beatings and mutilations – enough carnage to ultimately to earn him 19 death sentences. And, to make it all even more sensational, he embraced Satanist symbology.

This was not a serial killer case to be solved by a profiler. The victims were of different ages, genders and races; his weapons of choice and his horrific acts all varied. There was no pattern to the crimes except that they were all nighttime home invasions.

Instead, it was a case for two dogged detectives, armed only with a single shoe print, trying to piece together more physical evidence. Frank Salerno, was the seasoned star detective of the LA Sheriff’s department, a local celebrity for cracking the notorious Hillside Strangler case. His partner was a fresh young cop who had just made detective, Gil Carrillo, underestimated by everyone except Salerno.

The whodunit and the man hunt make for a great story. It’s a roller coaster, with at least two breathtakingly squandered opportunities and a huge gaffe by, of all people, Dianne Feinstein,

Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer is graced by the the testimony of survivors, victims, journalists and witnesses who encountered the Night Stalker face-to-face.

But the man reason I recommend Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer is Gil Carrillo, who is an intoxicating story teller. As professional detectives can be, Carrillo is a disciplined observer who has the gift of narrative, whether in a bar or in a courtroom. He also wears his salt-of-the-earthness on his sleeve. I’m sure that Carrillo can be as terse as any cop on the street, but he lowers his guard here, and lets his humanity flow. The good guy, Carrillo, not the evil guy, is the real star of this movie.

And now a creepy possible connection with The Movie Gourmet. Many of my acquaintances have heard my “rats in the toilet” story from 1983-84, an episode that culminated when a city crew eradicated a colony of sewer rats from the sewer main under South 16th Street in San Jose. I later learned that, at the time, the Night Stalker himself was working as a San Jose sewer worker.

Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer is streaming on Netflix.

MLK/FBI: about America then and about America today

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MLK/FBI. Photo courtesy of IFC Films.

In MLK/FBI, Sam Pollard, the master of the civil rights documentary (Eyes on the Prize), takes on the FBI’s quest to discredit and even destroy Martin Luther King, Jr. Over many years, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI targeted King with wiretaps, bugs, surveillance and informers. The FBI built a trove of audio tapes of King having extramarital sex; these tapes are now in the National Archives and will be released publicly in 2027. The tapes themselves are not included in MLK/FBI, but the film reveals the many secret FBI memos that discuss them.

Pollard bookends MLK/FBI with historians considering the questions of how we should process the behavior on the tapes and how we should face the actual tapes when they are released six years from now.

MLK/FBI documents the moment that Hoover and his top lieutenant William Sullivan became obsessed with King – and the moment they tried to force him into suicide. From their perspective, if King’s movement wanted to upend the racial inequities that included legal segregation, then of COURSE he must be an anti-American subversives. They started by red-baiting King for associating with communists, and then moved to focus on sexual behavior.

MLK/FBI reminds us who we were back in the 1960s. King had not yet been martyred and many in the mainstream shared Hoover’s discomfort with racial progress and his driving fear of communism. When MLK and Hoover had a public spat, the polling documented 50% of the American public siding with Hoover and under 20% with King.

While today, a male public figure would likely not be ruined by consensual heterosexual sex outside of marriage, that was not the case in the 1960s. Then it was still controversial about whether a divorced person – or even someone married to a previously divorced person – should be elected to high office.

And MLK/FBI says a lot about our society today. Although this salacious material was leaked to many journalists in the 1960s, none actually made it public. I find this particularly sobering, because today there is no way that the temptation to generate clicks, likes retweets and ratings would have been resisted – it would have gone viral, as we now say, probably with history-changing consequences.

MLK/FBI can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now (at home)

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Barbara Stanwyck in WITNESS TO MURDER

This week: a hard-to-find suspense classic on TV and a disappointing romcom.

Here’s my remembrance of the late director Michael Apted, whose 9 Seven Up movies constitute the greatest documentary series in the history of cinema. Got to see him in person at the 2019 Mill Valley Film Festival.

ON VIDEO

I was disappointed in Sofia Coppola’s inoffensive but tired romantic comedy On the Rocks, a waste of Coppola’s talent and Bill Murray’s. I’ve often said that I could watch Bill Murray read the phone book, but this IS like Bill Murray reading the phone book. AppleTV.

And some more current films:

Peter Capaldi in THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD

ON TV

Don’t miss the gripping and hard-to-find Witness to Murder, which I wrote about in depth yesterday, on Turner Classic Movies tomorrow night and Sunday morning.

And on January 18, TCM airs Pedro Almodovar’s 1988 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, eighty-eight minutes of non-stop hilarity. Women on the Verge is not as profound as Almodovar’s later work, but it is a masterpiece of madcap comedy.

Carmen Maura plays Pepa, a voice-over actress who has been dumped by her voice-over actor boyfriend, Ivan.  Pepa has a gal pal who has discovered that her new squeeze is a Shiite terrorist.   Ivan has a lunatic wife (who is armed and bewigged), a bespectacled son (a very young Antonio Banderas) and a new feminist attorney girlfriend.   Everyone converges in Pepa’s apartment, on the streets of Madrid and on the way to a flight to Stockholm.  Along the way, there is a mambo-loving Mad Hatter of a cabbie and some barbiturate-spiked gazpacho.  Comic mayhem ensues.

Almodovar had made several outrageously raucous movies before, but Women on the Verge was the art house hit that first brought him to the attention of American audiences.  Today he is one of our very best film makers.  His Talk To Her (2002), Bad Education (2004) and Broken Embraces (2009) each made the top four on my lists of the years’ best films.

Actress Rossy de Palma, a very good sport in a key supporting role, sports one of the greatest noses in cinema.

Rossy De Palma in WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

coming on TV: WITNESS TO MURDER

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Barbara Stanwyck in WITNESS TO MURDER

On January 16 and 17, Turner Classic Movies is airing the gripping and hard-to-find Witness to Murder. Richter (George Sanders) and Cheryl (Barbara Stanwyck) live in neighboring apartments. Cheryl believes she has seen Richter murder someone, but Richter’s clever and ruthless duplicity makes it appear that Cheryl is just crazy. Will Police Lt. Larry Mathews (Gary Merrill) believe her before Richter can make Cheryl his second victim?

What a wowzer first scene! Witness to Murder opens with a gripping scene that economically sets up the plot. “Operator, get me the police! Hurry!” We know immediately and certainly that Richter really committed the murder and that Cheryl really saw it. Throughout the movie, the audience knows this and Richter knows this, but no one else does, and neither does Cheryl herself during segments of the story.

Cheryl reports the murder and the police (Larry Mathews and sidekick) respond. However, Richter has concealed the crime so well that cops can’t find any evidence that a crime occurred. Could Cheryl have been mistaken? Or dreamed it? or made it up? or hallucinated? Is she neurotic and mildly hysteric or is she psychotic and delusional?

Larry develops an immediate attraction to Cheryl, and, despite her apparent emotional instability, begins a courtship.

Richter (malevolently) and Larry (paternalistically) begin gaslighting Cheryl, trying to convince her that she really only imagined what she saw – trying to convince her that what seemed so real, was not. Cheryl starts doubting herself.

Of course, Richter knows that he committed the murder, and he knows that Cheryl knows. To get her out of the way, he schemes to have her seen as crazed stalker. His scheme drives her to an outburst that serves as a pretext for locking her up in a psychiatric facility (with an interview by an oddly brusque shrink). Richter’s attempts to murder Cheryl continue right into Witness to Murder’s Perils-of-Pauline ending.

See my complete post on Witness to Murder, for more on the filmmakers and supporting cast. It’s one of my Overlooked Noir.

On this weekend’s TCM broadcast of Witness to Murder, film historian Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir – will provide his always insightful intro and outro. Witness to Murder is not available to stream; I own the DVD. Be sure to DVR it when it airs on Turner Classic Movies.

George Sanders in WITNESS TO MURDER

ON THE ROCKS: waste of talent

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Rashida Jones and Bill Murray in ON THE ROCKS

The inoffensive but unsatisfying On the Rocks, which can technically be described as a romantic comedy, wastes of the talents of Sofia Coppola, Bill Murry and Rashida Jones.

Laura (Rashida Jones) suspects that her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans), the striving CEO of a startup, is cheating on her. Her father Felix (Bill Murray), a worldly art dealer and serial womanizer, encourages her to stalk Dean, and propels them into increasingly crazy dad-daughter escapades.

The problem is that the suspicious wife plot is so tired that not even the considerable talents of Murray and Jones can make it sparkle. From Shakespeare through Howard Hawks to I Love Lucy, we’ve seen comedies based on mistaken perceptions, so we should expect SOME new element or nuance. This is, after all, from the writer-director of The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation. The dad-daughter issues in On the Rocks just aren’t enough.

I did enjoy the character of Felix, for whom wordly is a gross understatement. Completely at home with the billionaire class, he also knows every cop, concierge and maître d’, and glides smoothly among all of them with charm and craftiness. He also can’t resist hitting on anybody without a visible Adam’s apple.

Murray is winning as Felix, but he can’t elevate the predictable screenplay. As we watched On the Rocks, I said to The Wife, “I’ve always said that I could watch Blil Murray reading the phone book, but this IS Bill Murray reading the phone book.”

On the Rocks is streaming on AppleTV.

Michael Apted: pioneering the exposure of privilege

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Michael Apted. Photo credit: First Run Features courtesy Everett Collection.

The director Michel Apted has died at age 79, leaving us with one of the most significant documentary series in cinema history (and on my list of Greatest Movies of All Time). Apted’s 7 Up series explicitly documented the impacts of societal privilege and evolved into a holistic observation of humanity.

Each of the nine films followed the same fourteen British children, filming snapshots of their lives at ages 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56 and 63. Choosing kids from different backgrounds, the series started as a critique of the British class system, but has since moved into a broader exploration of what factors can lead to success and happiness at different stages of human life.

Apted was the hands-on researcher, not the director, on Seven Up! and then directed the next eight films in the series. Apted was a big time movie director (Coal Miner’s Daughter, Gorillas in the Mist).  It is remarkable that he returned so faithfully to his subjects in the Up series. 

Because Apted included clips from earlier films to set the stage for each character, you don’t need to watch all nine movies.  The earlier films are difficult, perhaps impossible, to find streaming, but the entire series (Seven Up!, Seven Plus Seven, 21 Up, 28 Up, 35 Up, 42 Up, 49 Up, 56 Up) has been available on Netflix DVDs (for anyone that still subscribes). 42 Up, one the most powerful films in the series, is available to stream from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play. 56 Up can be streamed from AppleTV, Hoopla and kanopy.

I saw 63 Up in 2019 at the Mill Valley Film Festival, with Apted in attendance. Apted was then 78, and hoped to direct 70 Up if he still had mental acuity. Apted acknowledged that his biggest mistake was not including enough girls at the outset (four girls out of fourteen kids); he tried to address this in the later films by expanding the roles of several female partners of the male subjects.

To give you a feel for Michael Apted’s body of work, here’s the trailer for 63 Up.

Movies to See Right Now (at home)

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Mads Mikkelseln and Maria Bonnevie in ANOTHER ROUND

ICYMI – eight of my Best Movies of 2020 are streaming right now. Plus an early look at The Father, an Oscar hopeful being released on February 26.

ON VIDEO

Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins in THE FATHER. Photo courtesy of Sundance Institute

The Father: Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman deliver heartbreaking performances in this unsettling exploration of memory loss.Coming on February 26.

And some more current films:

ON TV

On January 12, Turner Classic Movies presents another of my Overlooked Noir and one of most fun to watch: His Kind of Woman. A down-and-out gambler (Robert Mitchum) is offered a deal that MUST be too good to be true; he’s smart enough to be suspicious and knows that he must discover the real deal before it’s too late. He meets a on-the-top-of-the-world hottie (Jane Russell), who is about to become down on her luck, too. Witty entertainment ensues.

Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell in HIS KIND OF WOMAN

Movies to See Right Now (at home)

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Dev Patel in THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD

New this week – a dazzling literary adaptation, a profound social satire and a dreary slog. And check out my Best Movies of 2020.

I’ve also recently remembered 32 filmmakers that we lost in 2020:

  • 2020 Farewells: On the Screen (Part 1): Kirk Douglas, Sean Connery, Max von Sydow, Carl Reiner, Olivia de Havilland, Rhonda Fleming. Brian Dennehy, Fred Willard and Chadwick Boseman.
  • 2020 Farewells: On the Screen (Part 2): John Saxon, Ian Holm, Jerry Stiller, Allan Garfield, Michael Lonsdale, Ann Reinking, Stuart Whitman, Wilford Brimley, Sue Lyon, Jo Shishido, Little Richard, Linda Manz and John Benfield.
  • 2020 Farewells: Behind the Camera: Ennio Morricone, Buck Henry, Terry Jones, John le Carré, Lynne Shelton, Ivan Passer, Michael Chapman, Alan Parker, Joel Schumacher and Mike Cobb.

ON VIDEO

The Personal History of David Copperfield: That master of social satire, Amando Ianucci, brings Charles Dickins’ masterpiece to life in this vivid and brilliantly constructed film. Streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Another Round: Writer-director Thomas Vinterberg once again explores human foibles with humor and cold-eyed insight – and profoundly to boot. Mads Mikkelsen is stellar. I watched Another Round on Virtual Cinema at Laemmle.

Ammonite: The fine acting of Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan can’t save Ammonite, a slog of a period romance. Streaming on Amazon.

And some more current films:

ON TV

Alec Guinness in THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI

On January 5, Turner Classic Movies presents David Lean’s WWII epic The Bridge on the River Kwai.  It’s the stirring story of British troops forced into slave labor at a cruel Japanese POW camp.  The British commander (Alec Guinness, in perhaps his most acclaimed performance) must walk the tightrope between giving his men enough morale to survive and helping the enemy’s war effort.  He has his match in the prison camp commander (Sessue Hayakawa), and these two men from conflicting values systems engage in a duel of wits – for life and death stakes.  William Holden plays an American soldier/scoundrel forced into an assignment that he really, really doesn’t want.  There’s also the stirringly unforgettable whistling version of the Colonel Bogey March. The climax remains one of the greatest hold-your-breath action sequences in cinema, even compared to all the CGI-aided ones in the  62 years since it was filmed.

Sessue Hayakawa in THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI

Best movies of 2020

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Chadwick Boseman in MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM. Photo courtesy of Netflix.

In the Year of Pandemic, I somehow managed to watch one hundred and fifteen 2020 movies (and another one hundred and forty-nine movies from earlier years). Here are the Best Movies of 2020.

Every year, I keep a running list of the best movies I’ve seen this year.  By the end of the year, I usually end up with a Top Ten and another 5-15 mentions. Here’s last year’s list.

To get on my year-end list, a movie has to be one that thrills me while I’m watching it and one that I’m still thinking about a couple of days later. I haven’t yet seen Nomadland, Mayor or The Sound of Metal, and I will add films to the list as I see fit.

THE BEST OF THE YEAR

BEFORE THE FIRE: world premiere at Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

2020 sucked so badly that several of my favorite movies weren’t from 2020. Noir CIty led me to discover the Czech neo-noir masterpiece …And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear and the amazing German romantic tragedy Black Gravel. And I loved A Colt Is My Passport on Turner Classic movies, a 1960s Japanese hybrid – a Spaghetti Western in the guise of a Yazuka film.

BLACK GRAVEL

ANOTHER ROUND: humanity buzzed

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In Another Round, filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg once again explores human foibles with humor and cold-eyed insight – and profoundly to boot. And, in Another Round, Mads Mikkelsen delivers one of the year’s finest performances.

Mikkelsen plays one of four middle-aged male teachers – each in some sort of personal rut and struggling with career burnout. The other three are played by Thomas Bo Larson (love this guy whenever I see him), Magnus Millang and Lars Ranthe.

Grasping on to some convenient pseudo-science, the four decide to try living their lives with an alcoholic buzz – trying to maintain a steady blood alcohol level of 0.05 from morning through 8 PM. Now THERE’S a good idea.

They all should be trying SOMETHING new. Mikkelsen’s history teacher Martin is mailing in his job performance, so much so that his students and their parents confront him, worried that he won’t cover enough history for the kids to pass their exams. His marriage is comfortably civil but passionless.

With the boost of a drink or two, Martin and his buddies become more lively. Less inhibited, they fly back into their passions and share them with their students.

Suddenly, Martin is a man of spontaneity, shocks wife Annika (Maria Bonnevie) with a surprise vacation, and rekindles romantic sparks.

So far so good. But then they decide to try more is better, and try raising their blood alcohol level to 0.10. things don’t go as smoothly, and then they go on an epic bender and blow well past the 0.10.

The drunk behavior is realistic. So, some is funny slapstick, some is cringeworthy and some is heartbreaking. There’s a buffoonish moment in a supermarket, and we think that it would not be not amusing to be there in that moment. But when, out at dinner, Mikkelsen utters “It’s the little things“, the quip is hilarious.

Their experiment with alcohol treats each of them differently. One guy comes out ahead – he doesn’t suffer any long lasting consequences and even finally gets a girlfriend. Another guy blows up his marriage, but only temporarily, and he’ll be able to look back on this episode as a cautionary tale.

But alcohol abuse does not fit well with latent depression, with tragic results for one character.

Martin has the most complicated experience because he is predisposed to addiction. When it’s time for the guys to end the experiment, he can’t. There’s a moment when he receives a text message in a restaurant hallway, and we think “Leave right now!“, but he goes back inside for another drink. Will he be able to recover from the addiction? Another Round’s final thrilling scene ends with a euphoric dance – and leaves us with that question. (I think I know the answer.)

Mikkelsen’s performance is stellar. Usually we see Mikkelsen in charismatic roles; here he begins the story as a hollow shell, beaten down by the disappointments and responsibilities of life. He allows us to glimpse the talent, charm and vigor of his younger self. Finally, we see him thinking through each life choice (and choosing another round usually wins out); his Martin is not a hedonistic brute – he understands the consequence of each drink. Technically, his portrayal nails the various stages of drunkenness (which much be harder than it looks because even good actors don’t always get it right).

You’ll recognize Mikkelsen, a big star in Europe, from After the Wedding, the 2006 Casino Royale (he was the villain with the tears of blood) and TV’s Hannibal. He won the 2012 Cannes Best Actor award for his performance in Vinterberg’s The Hunt.

A groundbreaking writer/director, Thomas Vinterberg is an astute and cold-eyed observer of behavior. He broke through with Celebration (Festen), that darkest of dark comedy, and directed and the thriller The Hunt (Jagten). (And he can even do bodice rippers like Far From the Madding Crowd.) Vinterberg has worked before with all four of the main actors in Another Round.

Vinterberg also uses Another Round to comment on the drinking culture in his native Denmark (and, presumably, the rest of Scandinavia). This is a society that doesn’t blink at binge drinking, even by teenagers.

I watched Another Round on Virtual Cinema at Laemmle. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2020 – So Far.