Movie Recommendations, Rants and Ruminations
movie gourmet 
Tonight, the excellent documentary Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project will air on PBS Independent Lens. It will be available to stream for free from PBS through July 14 here. I also recommend this PBS interview with Director Matt Wolf.
If you miss it on PBS, you can pay to stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Let’s go surfin’ now
Everybody’s learning how
Come on and safari with me
It’s a great time to get stoked with the two most bitchin’ surfing movies, the documentaries Step Into Liquid and Riding Giants.
In Step Into Liquid (2003), we see the world’s best pro surfers in the most extreme locations. We also see devoted amateurs in the tiny ripples of Lake Michigan and surfing evangelists teaching Irish school children. The cinematography is remarkable – critic Elvis Mitchell called the film “insanely gorgeous”. The filmmaker is Dana Brown, son of Bruce Brown, who invented the surf doc genre with The Endless Summer (1966) and The Endless Summer II (1994).
Riding Giants (2004) focuses on the obsessive search for the best wave by some of the greatest surfers in history. We see “the biggest wave ever ridden” and then a monster that could be bigger. The movie traces the discovery of the Half Moon Bay surf spot Mavericks. And more and more, all wonderfully shot.
The filmmaker is Stacy Peralta, a surfer and one the pioneers of modern skateboading, (and a founder of the Powell Peralta skateboard product company). Peralta also made Dogtown and Z-boys (2001), the great documentary about the roots of skateboarding, and wrote the 2005 Lords of Dogtown.
Both Step into Liquid and Riding Giants can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
This week: an insightful, wry showcase for two of France’s most iconic actresses and a tribute to movie composer Ennio Morricone.
From earlier this week, here’s my remembrance of Ennio Morricone.
ON VIDEO
The Truth: Writer-director Hirozaki Koreeda’s latest wry and authentic exploration of human behavior is a showcase for Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche.
John Lewis: Good Trouble: A revealing documentary on the Civil Rights icon.
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
ON TV
On July 14, TCM brings us something COMPLETELY different, the 1955 Pete Kelly’s Blues, directed by and starring Jack Webb, who we all know from TV’s Dragnet. Made at the downturn of the Big Band Era, Pete Kelly’s Blues is set at during Prohibition in the infancy of Big Bands.
It’s a fairly routine drama about a small time bandleader on the outs with a dangerous crime boss, but Jack Webb loved jazz and worked hard to get the music in the movie right, resulting in quite the period document. Peggy Lee received a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for portraying an alcoholic vocalist. There’s an unforgettable cameo performance by Ella Fitzgerald at the top of her game. The house band includes many real-life musicians who played with Benny Goodman, Bing Crosby and the like, including Matty Matlock, Eddie Miller and Jud De Naut.
Webb never had much range as an actor, but the rest of the cast is excellent: Janet Leigh, Edmond O’Brien, Lee Marvin, Andy Devine, Jayne Mansfield and Harry Morgan. Not a great flick, but worth a look for the music.
The documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble traces the life of civil rights icon, US Representative John Lewis. I usually don’t buy reverential biodocs, but when the subject is a freaking saint, I guess you have to go with it. The rest of the title comes from Lewis’ mantra – if you see injustice, make good trouble, necessary trouble.
John Lewis, of course, is a real American hero. As a very young man in 1965, he had been leading efforts to register Blacks to vote in Selma, Alabama, including a peaceful march to the State Capitol in Montgomery. On March 7, 1965, the march got as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma when they were attached by local law enforcement and Ku Klux Klan members under the command of Sheriff Jim Clark. Lewis was in the very first rank and was beaten, shedding his own blood on “Bloody Sunday”. Two subsequent marches on the bridge and the LBJ speech that followed led directly to the Voting Rights Act of 1964, the most important civil rights legislation since 1867.
In John Lewis: Good Trouble, we see footage from the Edmund Pettus Bridge. We see a young John Lewis being beaten in 1965, and we see an elderly Lewis in an anniversary march with President Barack Obama and former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
John Lewis: Good Trouble is well-sourced by director Dawn Porter, even though only a few of Lewis’ contemporaries survive. When the first Black president was elected, Lewis says he wept for JFK, RFK, Dr. King and the others who hadn’t lived to see it. Fortunately, Lewis has sisters sill alive who participate in the documentary.
We get an inside glimpse at Lewis’ childhood. We get to see Lewis watching footage of himself at a pivotal Nashville sit-in that he had “never seen”. And, this intimate portrait shows us some dry Lewis humor and some impressive octogenarian dance moves.
How did Lewis get to Congress? John Lewis: Good Trouble shows us the race against his longtime friend and fellow Civil Rights icon Julian Bond. My day job is in politics, and I understand that, to win, you have to do what you have to do to win; others may find this episode bracing and unsettling.
John Lewis: Good Trouble is an insightful view of a man and of a critical point in American history. You can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
In The Truth, writer-director Hirozaki Koreeda’s latest wry and authentic exploration of human behavior, Catherine Deneuve plays Fabienne, one of France’s most iconic living actresses. Her daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche), a screenwriter living in New York, brings her family to Paris for a visit to celebrate the publication of Fabienne’s memoir.
As the film opens, an imperious Fabienne is being interviewed by a journalist so mediocre that he’s not ashamed of plagiarizing his questions – and Fabienne doesn’t suffer fools.
Fabienne is a diva who demands to be doted upon, and she is a Real Piece of Work. Fabienne has been so career-focused that she sacrificed an emotional attachment to Lumir, who received maternal nurturing from Sarah, a now-deceased peer of Fabienne’s who Fabienne had screwed out of a career-making role.
Her self-worshipful memoir is ridiculously also entitled The Truth. The book falsely paints Fabienne as an attentive, model mother, doesn’t even mention her longtime assistant and inaccurately claims that Lumir’s father is dead.
Lumir’s resentments quickly bubble to the surface, the two probe and spar throughout he movie. Each sees her own experience as a “truth”. The Truth is about their journeys to accept the other’s point of view and on what terms. It’s very funny, and, thanks to Hirokeeda’s touch, remarkably genuine.
Fabienne is now shooting a movie where she plays the mother of a much younger French film star (Manon Clavel), and the ever-competitive Fabienne has manufactured a one-sided rivalry with her, as she had with Sarah. (The film-within-a-film is a sci fi exploration of mother-daughter angst which I think I would hate if it were a real movie).
I’ve seen four of Koreeda’s movies and they’re all brilliant: Still Walking, Our Little Sister, The Third Murder and The Shoplifters. I rated The Shoplifters among the four best movies of 2018. The Truth is Koreeda’s first film made outside Japan and in languages (French and English) other than Japanese.
Deneuve and Binoche are superb. All of the cast is excellent, including Ethan Hawke, who is a good enough sport to play Lumir’s tag-along husband, a good-hearted but modestly talented American TV actor. The firecracker child actress Clémentine Grenier, in her first film, soars as Lumir and Hank’s daughter Charlotte; Charlotte wants to become an actress like her grandma, and Clémentine just might attain that herself.
The Truth also benefits from the beautiful work of cinematographer Eric Gautier (Ash Is Purest White, The Motorcycle Diaries, Summer Hours).
The Truth may not be Koreeda’s very best, but it’s plenty good. Hirokeeda, such an insightful observer of behavior, can cut to the core his characters’ profound humanity. The Truth is streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Ennio Morricone, one of the greatest movie music composers (and perhaps the most iconic) has died. Among his 519 composing credits, he is most known for his groundbreaking scores in the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
He won an Oscar for The Hateful 8 in 2015. Although his score was excellent, it referred to his earlier, entirely original work, and this was probably a well-deserved “career achievement” award.
Morricone’s work was ever aspirational, seemingly seeking to become iconic. It takes fearlessness to incorporate whistling, gunshots, chanting men’s choirs, the Jew’s Harp, and what the New York Times calls the “bizarre, wailing “ah-ee-ah-ee-ah,” played on a sweet potato-shaped wind instrument called an ocarina“. Morricone didn’t believe in understatement.
Leone earned his first credit in 1960 and wrote the startlingly original Fistful in 1964 at age 36. His music defined the genre of Spaghetti Western as much as did Sergio Leone’s grotesques and closeups. Along with Leone’s great The Man with No Name trilogy, Leona composed for Once Upon a Time in the West and 2 Mules for Sister Sara. His trademark music elevated well over ten Spaghetti Westerns, including the lesser Seven Guns for theMacGregors, Navajo Joe, The Great Silence, My Name Is Nobody, and Duck You Sucker (and I’ve seem ’em all).
Besides the spaghetti westerns, Morricone composed the scores of The Battle of Algiers, 1900 Once Upon a Time in America, La Cage aux Folles and Cinema Paradiso. He was still working in 2020 at age 91.
I particularly admire his score for the 1986 historical drama The Mission. In the video below, Morricone himself conducts a symphony orchestra playing the theme from The Mission. In the story, an 18th Century Jesuit (Robert DeNiro) tries to Christianize an indigenous tribe in Paraguay (and it doesn’t end well). At 3:15, a flute reflects the indigenous culture and, at 5:30, a massive choir brings in the gravitas.
This week: four new 2020 films – The Traitor, Shooting the Mafia, Mae West: Dirty Blonde, The Ghost of Peter Sellers. Last week: five new 2020 films – Da 5 Bloods, Disclosure, Yourself and Yours, Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things and You Don’t Nomi. As a tribute to Carl Reiner, it’s time to revisit The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! Plus a great classic Western on TV.
ON VIDEO
The Traitor: A true life epic spanning four decades and three continents, The Traitor introduces us to the first and most important Sicilian Cosa Nostra informer. The Traitor can be rented from all the major streaming services.
Shooting the Mafia: Another movie about the Sicilian Mafia, this is the biodoc of Letizia Battaglia, whose photojournalistic specialty became photographing murder victims and also documented the grief, trauma and outrage of the Sicilian population. Shooting the Mafia can be streamed on iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.
Disclosure: This insightful (and even revelatory) documentary about the depiction of trans people on screen is moving and thought-provoking. Disclosure is streaming on Netflix.
Mae West: Dirty Blonde: I learned a lot from this excellent biopic: Mae West was more than a drop-in risque caricature – starting a movie career after age 40, she was an uncredited writer and producer of her films. And she did it in a prudish era when women’s aspirations were not encouraged (intentional understatement). Available on demand from PBS stations. Trailer.
The Ghost of Peter Sellers: This documentary tells the story of an uncompleted early 1970s pirate movie parody, Ghost in the Noonday Sun, sabotaged by its star, Peter Sellers. The doc is from the fraught perspective of the director, Peter Medak, whose career was harmed by the fiasco. The 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha (Amazon, iTunes) which chronicles Terry Gilliam’s disastrous attempt to film Don Quixote, is a much better and more entertaining movie than this one.
The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!: Appreciate Carl Reiner, the best Straight Man in American comedy, in this goodhearted and very, very funny Cold War parody.
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
ON TV
On July 6, Turner Classic Movies presents what is perhaps the best of director Anthony Mann’s “psychological Westerns”, Winchester ’73 (1950) with James Stewart. Winchester ’73 taps the quest and revenge genres, and it has the Western’s requisite Indian battle and climactic shootout. Westerns were oft about Good versus Bad, but Mann makes Jimmy Stewart’s character in Winchester ’73 much more complex and morally ambiguous – and he has what we now call “unresolved issues”. The bad guys are Dan Duryea at his oiliest and Stephen McNally at his most brutish. The 29-year-old Shelly Winters finds herself as the object of several characters’ desires. Millard Mitchell is perfect as Jimmy’s sidekick. One of my favorite character actors, Jay C. Flippen, shows up as a cavalry sergeant.
REMEMBRANCES
Carl Reiner, from earlier this week.
Director Joel Schumacher had been a department store window dresser when he broke into movies as a set designer. Then he wrote the screenplay for the wonderful guilty pleasure Car Wash, which led to directing the similar DC Cab. His career took off when he launched the Brat Pack with St Elmo’s Fire, and followed that with Batman and Robin. My favorite Schumacher film is the 2002 thriller Phone Booth, in which an Everyman – or is he? – (Colin Farrell) is trapped in a phone booth by a sniper villain (Kiefer Sutherland); Phone Booth can be streamed from all the usual sources.
No one has been more important in the evolution of American comedy than Carl Reiner, who has died at age 98. Reiner was a writer and performer on Sid Caesar’s seminal Your Show of Shows. He created one of the greatest and most influential TV sitcoms, The Dick Van Dyke Show. Reiner was the comedy partner who helped Mel Brooks form his work. And he directed four Steve Martin comedies. Reiner was the third person awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Active to the end, Reiner was playing Saul Bloom in the Ocean’s 11 franchise into his late eighties and voiced Carl Reineroceros in last year’s Toy Story 4. In recent years, he also Tweeted some pointed and wickedly funny anti-Trump video commentaries.
Reiner starred in one of my favorite movie comedies – the still timely satire on the Duck and Cover Era, the 1966 The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!. At the height of the Cold War, a Soviet nuclear submarine runs aground and is trapped just off a tiny New England coastal village, and the crew sends a party ashore to heist a boat. The landing party encounters a vacationing American family and the two groups must work together to find a solution to help the sub escape without igniting World War III.
The superb cast includes Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint, Jonathan Winters and Alan Arkin in his breakthrough performance. Although it primarily satirizes the paranoia of the Cold War, there are plenty of laughs sparked by small town New England, family dynamics, teen love and the recurring joke of the town drunk with his reluctant horse.
The message that demonizing “Others” leads to no good, especially resonates in this moment of American and human history.
I rewatch The Russians Are Coming! every other year or so, and it still holds up. Besides showing regularly on Turner Classic Movies, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! is also available streaming from Amazon and Vudu (and on DVD from Netflix).
Mafia movies have long been a cinematic staple and two current films explore the original Sicilian Mafia, the Cosa Nostra. The true life epic The Traitor and the documentary Shooting the Mafia cover the same territory – the Cosa Nostra‘s utter domination of Sicily until prosecuting judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellini convicted almost 400 mafiosi in the bizarre Maxi Trial in 1986-87, the Mafia War on the State and assassination of the judges, leading to public outrage and arrests which have somewhat tamed the Cosa Nostra. Both films even feature the real village of Corleone, the home village of the fictional Godfather.
The Traitor chronicles the career of Tommaso Buscetta, a mafia figure who traded in billions of dollars worth of heroin. Then, an internal gangland power grab led to the murders of his sons and to his arrest by very harsh Brazilian authorities. Buscetta retaliated by turning state’s evidence and testifying against his former Mafiosi, becoming the first and most important Sicilian Cosa Nostra informer.
The Traitor opens at a Mafia party where Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino) is sniffing out betrayal by his colleagues. It’s poker wisdom that, if you can’t spot the player who is :”the fish”, then it’s you. Or, as Victor Mature said in Gambling House, “You know what I think, Willie? I think I’m the fall guy.”
Written and directed by Marco Bellocchio, The Traitor is a two-and-a-half hour epic that spans decades and three continents. The highlight is the Maxi Trial, held in a super-secure fortified arnea, ringed by over 400 defendants caged around the top.
Pierfrancesco Favino is very, very good as Buscetta, a guy who is firmly devoted to his personal code. Luigi Lo Cascio from The Best of Youth also appears as a Buscetta friend.
The documentary Shooting the Mafia introduces us to Letizia Battaglia, a talented Palermo photographer, whose photojournalistic specialty became photographing murder victims – scores, perhaps hundreds of corpses, bullet-riddled and bomb-mangled, in pools of blood. Her work also documented the grief. trauma and outrage of the Sicilian population.
Battaglia is open and unapologetic about her lusty personal appetites – and she over-shares. She would be an interesting subject for a biodoc even if she photographed ears of corn.
Shooting the Mafia, an Irish and US production, is directed by Kim Longinotto.
The Traitor can be rented from all the major streaming services. Shooting the Mafia can be streamed on iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.
This week: an absurdist comedy from Korea, a doc that gives voice to trans creatives, an insightful jazz biodoc, a movie about a really bad movie and Spike Lee’s latest.
REMEMBRANCE
The 5’5″ Ian Holm was a giant of the stage, where he created a definitive King Lear, and is most well-known in movies for playing Bilbo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings franchise. I remember Holm’s heartrending performance in Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, my choice as the most profoundly sad movie ever. He also appeared in supporting roles in some of my favorite movies: Young Winston, Jesus of Nazareth and the Branagh Henry V.
ON VIDEO
Yourself and Yours: The absurdism of Luis Buñuel meets the social awkwardness of Seinfeld in Hong Sang-soo’s Korean comedy. During its Bay Area virtual run at the Roxie, you can stream Yourself and Yours at Roxie Virtual Cinema.
Disclosure: This insightful (and even revelatory) documentary about the depiction of trans people on screen is moving and thought-provoking. Disclosure is streaming on Netflix.
Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things: A Must See for jazz fans, this well-sourced biodoc brings insights into the juvenile delinquent who became an innovative genius, Includes a never-broadcast interview in which Ella makes clear her views on race. It opens today in the Roxie Virtual Cinema.
Da 5 Bloods: Spike Lee’s latest features a great performance by Delroy Lindo and a couple other compelling elements, but it’s too long and drags. How Spike reflects on the Vietnam War and on the Black experience in America is far more evocative than is the story itself. Da 5 Bloods is streaming on Netflix.
You Don’t Nomi: A deep dive into the making and cult film aftermath of a terrible big Hollywood movie, Showgirls. I don’t find Showgirls, campy as it is, that entertaining on a so-bad-it’s-good basis, but You Don’t Nomi does contain many of its funniest, most awful clips. I watched it on Roxie Virtual Cinema, but it’s available to stream on all major platforms. There are much better movies about bad movies: Ed Wood (about Plan 9 from Outer Space), The Disaster Artist (about The Room), Best Bad Movie (about Troll 2)
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
ON TV
On June 30, Turner Classic Movies will broadcast The Phenix City Story; gritty, crisp and unvarnished, it’s a jarring contrast to 1950s Ozzie and Harriett American culture. It’s impossible to imagine a film noir that is more “ripped from the headlines”. The Phenix City Story is one of my Overlooked Noir; it’s hard to find to stream, so set your DVR for TCM this week.
