movie gourmet

Movies to See Right Now

by
PARASITE. Photo courtesy of Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) .

Parasite is the best movie in theaters right now, and I’ve got twelve, count ’em TWELVE, more recommendations this week. Tonight, The Wife and I have a date: The Irishman and dinner.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter.
  • In his Pain and Glory, master filmmaker Pedro Almodovar invites us into the most personal aspects of his own life, illuminated by Antonio Banderas’ career-topping performance.
  • The indie gem Light from Light ingeniously embeds three portraits of personal awakening into what looks like a familiar haunted house movie. It’s playing in Silicon Valley for only one more week.
  • Harriet is excellent history (and Harriet Tubman belongs on the twenty dollar bill), but it’s not great cinema.
  • The atmospheric slow burn neo-noir Motherless Brooklyn gets postwar New York City right, but it’s too long.
  • The raucous romp Zombieland Double Tap is a fun change of pace to the serious fare in theaters.
  • I liked the Isabelle Huppert drama Frankie, but the Mill Valley Film Festival audience was very indifferent at the screening; I’m guessing that folks failed to warm to an ambiguous ending that leaves some plot threads unresolved.
  • Where’s My Roy Cohn? is Matt Tyrnauer’s superb biodoc of Roy Cohn – and was there a more despicable public figure in America’s 20th Century than Cohn?
  • Loro, Paolo Sorrentino’s send-up of Silvio Berlusconi is much more interesting visually than it is thematically.
  • It’s tough to imagine anyone who wouldn’t enjoy the biodoc Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, about the first female mega rock star. 
  • Watching The Lighthouse is such an ordeal it could drive you crazy before Robert Pattinson goes mad on screen.
  • Skip Netflix’s The Laundromat and watch The Big Short again instead.

ON VIDEO

My Stream of the Week is Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me , the portrait of a needy talent through complicated times. This fine and insightful film can streamed on Amazon (included with Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

Turner Classic Movies is airing the Peter Bogdanovich classic The Last Picture Show on November 20. I’ll be writing about it on November 19.

Turner Classic Movies is devoting Monday evening, November 18, to swashbucklers, and my favorite is Richard Lester’s boisterous The Three Musketeers from 1973. Watch Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Michael York and Frank Finlay swashbuckle away against Bad Guys Christopher Lee, Faye Dunaway and Charlton Heston. Geraldine Chaplin and Raquel Welch adorn the action. [If you like it, you can stream the second volume, The Four Musketeers, from Criterion Collection, Amazon, YouTube and Google Play; it was filmed in the same shoot and released the next year.]

Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay and Richard Chamberlain in THE THREE MUSKETEERS

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN: atmospheric slow burn

by
Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Edward Norton in MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN

Edward Norton adapted the screenplay for, directed and stars in the atmospheric mystery Motherless Brooklyn. A detective’s partner is killed, and his search for the killers plunges him into a web of intrigue. It’s a slow burn paranoid thriller, along the lines of Chinatown, although not nearly as good and set in the New York City of the early 1950s and not nearly as good.

Norton gets the postwar NYC pretty much perfect. If you love the automobiles of the period, especially the Plymouths and Chevrolets, you’ll be in heaven.

The paranoia comes from the omnipotence of master urban redeveloper Robert Moses (under a different name in Motherless Brooklyn). It’s actually pretty accurate history, if a bit esoteric for popular entertainment.

Norton plays novelist Jonathan Lethem’s private detective Lionel Essrog, who has Tourette’s syndrome. Tourette’s was even less understood in the America of the early 1950s, so that creates some fodder, along with the fact that detectives who have to sneak around are not well-served by involuntary outbursts. Norton is always good, but it’s hard not to see this as a gimmick performance.

I really liked Bruce Willis as a more seasoned detective. Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays the woman who must be saved, and we all want her saved. Alec Baldwin twirls virtual mustaches as the villainous Moses character, Willem Dafoe is very good as a haunted character; he is wearing his beard from The Lighthouse, but happily not the Long John Silver accent.

Motherless Brooklyn was a labor of love for Norton, and he loves it too much to edit it. The story could be told better in a movie 30 minutes shorter, One nightclub scene in particular goes on for too, too long. If you have two-and-a-half hours on a cold winter’s night, you could do worse than to stream it.

Stream of the Week: SAMMY DAVIS, JR.: I’VE GOTTA BE ME – a needy talent through complicated times

by
Still from SAMMY DAVIS JR.: I’VE GOTTA BE ME. Photo courtesy JFI.

Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me is now available to stream (and free on Amazon Prime).  As a Baby Boomer who had dismissed Sammy Davis Jr. from the moment he publicly hugged Richard Nixon, I found this to be the most surprising doc (and my favorite) at last year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. I learned that Sammy’s 61-year career as a professional entertainer began at age three (with his first movie credit at age 7), a working childhood that  left emotional needs  It turns out that Sammy was a very, very talented but needy artist,, an uncomplicated man navigating several very complicated times.

Sammy’s life of entertainment began at 3.  We get to see a clip of him in the 1933 Rufus Jones for President.  All that professional work took away his childhood and engraved upon him a need to please.  That and his generation produced the 50s showbiz style that seemed so insincere to us Baby Boomers.  And, of course that embrace of Nixon seemed to be the ultimate sell-out moment.

Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me also poses whether he was demeaned by Rat Pack humor? Were Frank and Dino laughing at Sammy, or with him?

But this was  an immensely talented man, a masterful dancer with a remarkable crooner’s voice and a gift for mimicry.  He was the first American entertainer of color to do impersonations of white celebrities.   BTW there is some unbelievable dancing in Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me.  We get to see Sammy’s 60th anniversary in showbiz celebrated among a host of celebrities – he still had his dancing chops.

Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me is the story of a man whose success condemned him to a career that spanned generations – none of which fit him comfortably.  It’s a fine and insightful film. It can streamed on Amazon (included with Prime, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

[Random note: This film title may contain the most different punctuation marks of any movie title: a comma, a period, a colon and an apostrophe.]

HARRIET: story great, movie only okay

by

Cynthia Erivo in HARRIET. Photo courtesy of Focus Features.

I first watched the trailer for Harriet askance because the Harriet Tubman action figure I saw on-screen didn’t resemble the tiny, revered Tubman in the sepia photos. But that is because of my own skepticism of Hollywood history and my own woeful ignorance of the historic Tubman. The ancient lady in her photos and the historic Tubman are explained in this fine NYT piece Harriet Tubman Facts and Myths: How the Movie Tried to Get it Right. As Harriet’s director Kasi Lemmons says in this NYT article, “You don’t have an image of what she was like when she was actually doing this work in her late 20s, when she was this young superheroine, this completely badass woman.”

Harriet is good history. The problem is that Lemmons doesn’t trust us to appreciate Tubman’s heroism when we see it – a 100-mile solo escape from slavery, guiding 75 escaped slaves to freedom with the Underground Railroad, leading troops into battle to free 700 more in the Civil War, and becoming a thought leader in the abolitionist and suffragist movements. So we have this swelling music every time Tubman does something inspirational. The constant, obvious beatification is distracting.

Tubman is played with convincing intensity by Cynthia Erivo. Erivo was absolutely the best thing about the Steve McQueen film Widows; since Erivo’s character teamed with those played by Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Debicki, the fact that she stole the movie is impressive. Erivo is a Broadway musical actress/singer, and Harriet uses her singing talent as well.

If you’re not expecting great cinema, you’ll appreciate this important and compelling history. Harriet makes it clear why Tubman belongs on the twenty dollar bill.

PARASITE: social inequity – what’s really at stake

by
PARASITE

The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, with master filmmaker Bong Joo Ho taking us through a series of genres. Parasite opens as a hilarious comedy, then evolves halfway through into a suspense thriller and ends with a shocker and a moment of contemplative heartbreak. This is one of the decade’s best films.

The Kim family lives in a grubby basement apartment, so much on the margins of society that they cadge the neighbors’s wi-fi and even the municipal fumigation. They can’t live on the dad’s sporadic employment in low-end jobs, so the family is always on the hustle. It helps that the Kims, especially the college-age kids, are gifted scoundrels.

The Park family lives in an icon of modern architecture. The dad is a CEO with his own driver, and the mom and two kids are pampered by their live-in housekeeper. They have never had to hustle themselves, and they don’t recognize a hustle when they see it.

The Kim son falls into a job tutoring one of the Park kids. After a series of riotously funny cons, the Kim family positions itself to take advantage of the Parks. The Kims are soon living off the fatted calf, but they must contend with one uncomfortable fact – their newfound fortune is extremely fragile because it all comes at the whims of the rich.

PARASITE. Photo courtesy of Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) .

The biggest disconnect between the rich and the rest of us is the understanding of capitalism as a meritocracy – or not. Despite capitalist mythology, working hard and taking risks is often not rewarded with wealth. Conversely, just being wealthy is not an indicator of talent or accomplishment, however entitled the rich feel they are.

Mr. and Mrs. Kim are wily, but uneducated. The Kim kids are trapped by the Korean economy economy; they have no realistic pathway to social mobility, no matter how industrious they are. The kids’ college-educated peers are all under- or unemployed.

Mr. Park is successful in business, but he is a drive-by family man and thinks he can identify the working class by their smell. His wife is a neurotic adornment, his daughter is spoiled and his son is a mess.

Why does Bong shock us with some horror? The stakes of social inequity – impacting generations – are very high and as high as life and death. Bong is reminding us of those stakes after reeling us in with all the fun.

Along with comedy, thriller and horror, Bong even gives a couple minutes of the disaster genre. The Kim’s poor neighborhood is afflicted by a pestilence of biblical scale that would be unthinkable for any affluent community. Let’s just say that the poor live in crap.

Song Kang-Ho in PARASITE

Parasite is superbly acted. The poor family’s dad is played masterfully by Song Kang-Ho. It’s his kids who are directing the scam, but it’s the dad whose slow burn resentment finally explodes.

Bong Joo Ho (Memories of Murder, Mother, Snowpiercer and Okja) makes movies so original that it’s been said that he is his own genre. His Memories of Murder, also starring Song Kang-Ho, is, for my money, the very best serial killer movie. Snowpiercer and Okja, like Parasite, also take on the issues of class and corporate greed.

Martin Scorsese recently said that people watch cinema, as opposed to “worldwide audiovisual entertainment”, to be surprised. Indeed, to view the work of Bong Joo Ho is to be surprised every single time.

Bong Joo Ho himself says, “My goal is to have the audience captivated for two hours by subverting their expectations.” Captivation, check. Subversion of expectations, check.

This is a masterwork. Parasite won the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and currently has a meteoric Metacritic score of 95. Parasite will win the Best Foreign Language Oscar and is arguably the best movie of 2019.

LORO: just eye candy

by
Kasia Smutniak and Toni Servillo in LORO

Loro is director Paolo Sorrentino’s take on the career end of the despicable Italian media mogul and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. The Berlusconi character has a different name, but there’s no mistake that it is the hair-dyed, ever-grinning Berlusconi.

The movie Loro is actually the combination of two television programs. In the first, we see Berlusconi’s corruption through the POV of another amoral grasper, Sergio (Ricardo Scarmacia). Sergio seeks his fortune by collecting a brigade of cocaine-fueled escorts to sexually entertain Berlusconi. In the second half, we follow Berlusconi himself as, out of power, he is unable to climb back into power, he loses his wife and he is sexually humiliated by a 20-year-old aspiring actress. Sorrentino gets his licks in by making Berlusconi, finally, pathetic.

Loro stars Sorrentino’s frequent collaborator Toni Servillo, who is able to play the Berlusconi character as a figure powerful to get all he desires…and then not.

I had high expectations of Loro because I loved Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty and Youth. Sorrentino is a master of the eye candy and those movies are especially beautiful, but also tell stories compelingly. Ultimately, Loro is much more interesting visually than it is thematically.

Loro, which got a screening at the San Francisco international Film Festival, has just concluded a wisp of a theatrical release in the Bay Area. It can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

by
LIGHT FROM LIGHT

Parasite is the best movie in theaters right now, but there’s really something for everyone. I’m also recommending the under-the-radar indie Light from Light. Other audience-friendly movies range from the outrageous Jojo Rabbit and the affirming Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice to the raucous Zombieland Double Tap. Coming soon: reviews of Loro, Harriet, Midway, Motherless Brooklyn and Marriage Story.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter.
  • In his Pain and Glory, master filmmaker Pedro Almodovar invites us into the most personal aspects of his own life, illuminated by Antonio Banderas’ career-topping performance.
  • The indie gem Light from Light ingeniously embeds three portraits of personal awakening into what looks like a familiar haunted house movie. It’s playing in Silicon Valley for only two weeks.
  • The raucous romp Zombieland Double Tap is a fun change of pace to the serious fare in theaters.
  • I liked the Isabelle Huppert drama Frankie, but the Mill Valley Film Festival audience was very indifferent at the screening; I’m guessing that folks failed to warm to an ambiguous ending that leaves some plot threads unresolved.
  • Where’s My Roy Cohn? is Matt Tyrnauer’s superb biodoc of Roy Cohn – and was there a more despicable public figure in America’s 20th Century than Cohn?
  • It’s tough to imagine anyone who wouldn’t enjoy the biodoc Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, about the first female mega rock star. 
  • Two rock music documentaries, The Quiet One and Echo in the Canyon. will be of moderate interest to rock fans of a certain age.
  • Watching The Lighthouse is such an ordeal it could drive you crazy before Robert Pattinson goes mad on screen.
  • Skip Netflix’s The Laundromat and watch The Big Short again instead.

ON VIDEO

My stream of the week is Making Montgomery Clift the biodoc that explodes some of the lore that has shaped popular understanding of movie star Montgomery Clift. Making Montgomery Clift is available to stream on Amazon.

ON TV

On November 13, TCM will broadcast The Battle of Algiers, 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

LIGHT FROM LIGHT: a haunted house movie that isn’t

by
Marin Ireland and Jim Gaffigan in LIGHT FROM LIGHT

Writer-director Paul Harrill’s indie gem Light from Light ingeniously embeds three portraits of personal awakening into what looks like a familiar haunted house movie.

Single mom Sheila (Marin Ireland) has been a paranormal investigator (a ghost hunter), but she isn’t sure that she even believes in ghosts; she had taken up this pursuit because her most recent ex was a true believer. A clergyman asks for her help with a widower that he is counseling; the man (Jim Gaffigan) has experienced some odd happenings and wonders if his dead wife is haunting the house. And so we think we’re off on a thrill ride of chills and jump scares…

Instead, the phenomena that Light from Light explores are down-to-earth: the impacts of absence and loneliness.

Scarred by one too many failed relationships, Sheila is closed down. She’s working a dead-end job behind a rental car counter, doing her best to raise her sensitive teen son and not doing much else; she has isolated herself in her routine. Her son mirrors his mom – a girl is sweet on him, but he’s afraid to have a relationship with her lest it bring him the heartbreak that his mom has experienced. The widower is both immersed in grief and mulling over something about his wife that complicates his feelings.

The plot is about looking for the ghost, but the movie is really about these three people and whether they can self-liberate from their social paralysis and engage with others.

Light from Light is centered around an astonishing performance by Marin Ireland (Hell or High Water, Sneaky Pete and Tony-nominated for reasons to be pretty). Elisabeth Moss is a producer, and she suggested Marin Ireland for the role of Sheila.

The well-known comedian Jim Gaffigan (who also had a serious supporting turn in Chappaquiddick) has impressive screen-acting chops. The grief of Gaffigan’s character does not look “dramatic”; it’s all the more powerful for being matter of fact. Harrill wrote the part with Jim Gaffigan in mind after listening to him on NPR’s Fresh Air, and learning that Gaffigan had almost lost his wife to cancer and understood facing this loss.

This is the second feature for Harrill. Besides successfully subverting a genre, he makes effective use of a quiet, restrained, spare soundtrack. Set and shot in Knoxville, Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains, Light from Light excels in bringing us into a very specific time and place.

I saw Light from Light at Cinema Club Silicon Valley, before its release, with a Q&A with Paul Harrill. Thanks to that screening, Light from Light begins a two-week Bay Area theatrical release tomorrow at San Jose’s 3Below. See it if you can.

Stream of the Week: MAKING MONTGOMERY CLIFT – exploding the myths

by
MAKING MONTGOMERY CLIFT, directed by Robert Anderson Clift and Hilary Demmon

The best documentary in this year’s Frameline festival was Making Montgomery Clift, from directors Robert Anderson Clift and Hilary Demmon. It’s an unexpectedly insightful and nuanced probe into the life of Clift’s uncle, the movie star Montgomery Clift. And it explodes some of the lore that has shaped popular understanding of Montogomery Clift.

Clift is the son of Brooks Clift, Montgomery Clift’s brother and archivist. The younger Clift never met his uncle Monty, but had access to his father’s vast collection of Monty memorabilia and to the memories of family, friends and previous biographers.

Many of us think we know the arc of Montgomery Clift’s life: success as a 1950s movie heartthrob is torpedoed by the inner torment of his closeted homosexuality; then alcoholic self-medication and disfigurement from an auto accident propel him into drunken despair and an early death. It turns out to be a much, much more nuanced story.

It turns out that some in the Clift family indulged in secret audio taping to a jaw-dropping degree. Directors Clift and Demmon take full advantage of the actual conversations of Monty and others. Their gift is to drop in the most startling revelations without lingering or even emphasizing them. To watch Making Montgomery Clift is a constant exercise in “wait…WHAT?” Demmon’s brisk editing helps, too.

How tormented was Monty by his sexuality (which we learn was a robust bisexuality)? Witnesses – who would know – let us know that Monty was comfortable in his own skin and fairly open – for the times – about his sexuality. This wasn’t Rock Hudson or Tab Hunter.

We learn that Montgomery Clift’s refusal to sign a studio contract was to preserve BOTH his artistic independence and his sexual independence (avoiding being forced into faux marriage and the like).

Making Montgomery Clift also discredits the view that Monty sank into depression after the accident changed his looks. His personally most satisfying performances came AFTER the accident.

The insights into Monty’s artistic process are unique and significant. We hear the actual conversation between Montgomery Clift and director Stanley Kramer about Clift’s riveting cameo in Judgment at Nuremberg. Monty’s intentionality in shaping the scene dispels the myth that, instead of giving a performance, he had an actual breakdown before the camera. Yes, he was acting it, and it was spectacular.

There has been a handful of recent showbiz biodocs made by younger relatives of the famous artists. Usually, these films add some personal family anecdotes, but are so fond of their subjects that they’re not especially insightful. Making Montgomery Clift is not that – it ascends above the pack – and should change how all of us understand Monty Clift.

Making Montgomery Clift is available to stream on Amazon.

THE LIGHTHOUSE: enough to drive a guy crazy

by
Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe in THE LIGHTHOUSE

In The Lighthouse, it’s the 1890s and Wake (Willem Dafoe) and Winslow (Robert Pattinson) are two lighthouse keepers isolated on a New England island. The operative word is “isolated”, because it’s a long time between relief and supply boats, so these guys only have themselves and the gulls for company for weeks on end.

Wake is in charge, which means that he can command Winslow to perform all the tasks. I get the whole chain of command thing, but Wake is a first class jerk, and he unnecessarily makes every moment of Winslow’s life insufferably hard and humiliating. On the surface, not much goes on in The Lighthouse. But a psychological typhoon is brewing, as Winslow’s misery and desperation compounds. The hardship and the annoyances are enough to drive many a person mad, and, as Winslow starts to decompensate, we start expecting something extreme to happen.

Director and co-writer Robert Eggers seems to be aiming at a trippy 21st century take on Gothic Horror, but he fails at basic storytelling. The problem with The Lighthouse is that we don’t really care about these two characters enough to endure the slog. Then, the bleak ending doesn’t justify sitting through the first 90 minutes of bleakness.

I am far more likely than most movie viewers to embrace a slow burn. Here, the “slow” is glacial, and the “burn” seems powered by the hot plate in a 1970s studio apartment.

Willem Dafoe channels Robert Newton from the 1950 Treasure Island to give us the full Long John Silver. It’s an, ahem, unrestrained performance by one of our best screen actors. Dafoe does have one marvelously entertaining dialogue when Wake tags Winslow with a curse from Neptune himself.

Pattinson is the lead here, and he does an excellent job going mad. I admit that I didn’t use to take Pattinson seriously, because of the material, when his career was launched in the Twilight series. But he proves here, as in The Lost City of Z, that he is the real deal.

Because The Lighthouse has an original and artsy look, it’s gotten extra points from many critics. But watching it is an ordeal, no matter how many hallucinatory mermaids there are. I was wondering whether I would go crazy before Pattinson’s Winslow.