movie gourmet

ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL: an underdog has his day

June 7, 2017June 7, 2017 by movie gourmet

Nobody likes a bully, and the documentary Abacus: Small Enough to Jail tells the riveting story of an American family business bullied into a nightmarish fight for survival. We meet the members of family, the Sungs of New York, and relive their existential struggle. It’s a compelling story, well-told.

Thomas Sung founded the Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a small bank in New York’s Chinatown, and passed on the management of the bank to his daughters. The bank’s customers are almost all Chinese from the neighborhood. The bank management discover a corrupt loan officer, fire him and turn him in to regulators. But prosecutors go on to blame the whole loan department and then the bank leadership – and file criminal charges against the bank. Suddenly, the Sungs are in a fight for their professional lives.

The Manhattan prosecutor was looking for a scapegoat for the financial crisis of 2008. Let’s remember that the global crisis was caused by the biggest players in the American financial system. The very biggest financial institutions were guilty of overt corruption – the banks were packaging and selling worthless financial products and the credit rating agencies were falsely labeling them as valuable. Banks were making crazy, unsustainable and predatory home loans. Insured accounts turned out to be not really insured.

But those crooked big banks were “too big to fail” They were bailed out by the taxpayers and escaped accountability for their crimes. Here’s what is mind-boggling: to this day, the tiny Abacus Federal Savings Bank remains the ONLY bank that has faced criminal charges from the financial crisis. Hence the movie’s subtitle “Small Enough to Jail“.

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail comes from the documentarian Steve James, who directed Hoop Dreams, the masterpiece that both Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel picked as the best movie of 1994, as well as the more recent Ebert celebration Life Itself. Abacus is brilliantly sourced – James was able to get prosecutors, defense attorneys and even jurors on camera, along with the entire Sung family.

Getting to know the individuals in the Sung family is one of the pleasures of viewing Abacus. Let’s just say that it’s a mistake to take a family business to court when the whole family are lawyers.

Right at the beginning of Abacus, James makes an inspired choice – he matches the family patriarch and bank founder Thomas Sung with George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life. And the engrossing saga of the Sungs begins.

Stream of the Week: THE BURGLAR – loyalty among thieves

June 6, 2017 by movie gourmet

Jayne Mansfield and Dan Duryea in THE BURGLAR

The Stream of the Week comes from my Overlooked Noir. The Burglar (1957) is known primarily as the movie debut of Jayne Mansfield, but it’s a fine film noir. It starts out with a tense burglary, but once the necklace is successfully burgled, the story focuses on the heist team going stir crazy as they wait for the environment to cool down so they can safely fence the booty. They are strung so tight that even the whistle of a tea kettle is enough to startle the gang. While dodging the cops, they find that they are also being hunted by a corrupt rogue cop and his partner.

The core of The Burglar is the stellar lead performance of Dan Duryea as the chief burglar. He’s a tortured and worn-out guy – with one deep loyalty.

There are plenty of noir moments – lots of shadows, uplit faces in the darkness and amoral, grasping characters. We have not one, but two noir vixens – Jayne Mansfield and Martha Vickers. Asked at a bar by Duryea what she wants, Vickers answers “Basically, I’m out to find myself a man.” The characters in this fine film noir find themselves in Atlantic City, where the bad cop chases the protagonists through the House of Horrors and the Steel Pier, culminating in a final confrontation under the boardwalk.

The acting is excellent, other than Peter Capell, who gives over-acting a bad name while playing the most nerve-wracked member of the gang. Even Mansfield is good; (The Burglar was held in the can for two years and then released when Mansfield became a sensation with The Girl Can’t Help It).

The movie was shot on location in Philadelphia and Atlantic City. We see Independence Hall, and it’s hard not to think of Rocky when Duryea climbs the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Burglar plays from time to time on Turner Classic Movies and is available streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, Xbox Video and Flixster.

[Note: The Burglar features John Facenda as his real-life role as a Philadelphia newscaster (when local TV stations aired 15-minute newscasts). Facenda later found much broader fame as “The Voice of God” for his narration for NFL Films football documentaries.]

Movies to See Right Now

June 2, 2017 by movie gourmet

Why so few good films in theaters right now? I’ll tell you why! According to my calculations, a whopping 45% of all theater screens in Silicon Valley are devoted to ONLY THREE MOVIES: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and Baywatch. (It doesn’t help that the miserable A Quiet Passion is taking up some of the very few art house screens.) Nevertheless, you can still go out and see:

Paris Can Wait, a female fantasy with glorious French cuisine to tantalize all genders.
The Commune looks like a comedy of errors, but it’s a family drama with a searing performance by Trine Dyrholm.
The Lost City of Z, a thoughtful and beautifully cinematic revival of the adventure epic genre.
In Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, writer-director Joseph Cedar and his star Richard Gere combine to create the unforgettable character of Norman Oppenheimer, a Jewish Willy Loman who finally gets his chance to sit with the Movers and Shakers. This may be Gere’s best movie performance ever.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Paterson, a genial and occasionally very funny portrait of an artist’s creative process. Paterson is now available on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On June 5, Turner Classic Movies is airing the very idiosyncratic Convicts 4, the true-life tail of one convict, played by Ben Gazzara, who develops into a fine artist while in prison. There’s a particularly unforgettable supporting turn by one of my favorite movie psychos, Timothy Carey, here in one of his most eccentrically self-conscious performances. The rich cast includes Stuart Whitman, Vincent Price, Rod Steiger, Jack Albertson, Ray Walton, Brodrick Crawford and Sammy Davis Jr.

On June 8 on TCM, look for John Dall playing the classic narcissist in Hitchcock’s psychological thriller Rope. Can he outwit Jimmy Stewart?

And, guess what? Pedro Almodóvar has ascended into Classic Cinema. His raucous and provocatively sexy comedy Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! will play on Turner Classic Movies on July 4. Almodóvar a classic? Makes you feel old…

for fans of HOUSE OF CARDS

June 1, 2017 by movie gourmet

Season Five of House of Cards is now available on Netflix. One of the jewels of Seasons 3 and 4 was the character of Victor Petrov, a thinly-disguised Vladimir Putin played by the Danish actor Lars Mikkelsen. (It doesn’t look like he’s back for Season 5, but you might want to rewatch some previous episodes to prep for binge watching the new season.)

Putin is such a rich real-life character, with such an unashamed flair for the inappropriate. In House of Cards, Petrov’s antics are only a shade more outrageous than Putin’s: kissing the American First Lady on the mouth, demanding that the President fire his own wife as UN Ambassador, etc. But Petrov is more sympathetic because he gets to make explicit his perceived need to look strong for his people. Lars Mikkelsen just nails the meaty role of Petrov.

What you might not know is that Lars Mikkelsen is the older brother of a much bigger European movie star, Mads Mikkelsen. You’ll recognize Mads Mikkelsen from After the Wedding and the 2006 Casino Royale (he was the villain with the tears of blood). He won the 2012 Cannes Best Actor award for his performance. in The Hunt. Reportedly, Lars followed his younger brother into acting, which is great for film fans.

PARIS CAN WAIT: female fantasy (disputed) and tantalizing food

June 18, 2017May 31, 2017 by movie gourmet

Here’s an entertaining piece of fluff. In Paris Can Wait, Diane Lane plays Anne, the neglected wife of movie mogul Michael (Alec Baldwin). A show biz emergency has short-circuited their European vacation in Cannes, and the Michael’s French partner Jacques (Arnaud Viard) offers to drive Anne to Paris. It should be a seven-hour drive, but Jacques stretches it out to take in as many fine dining experiences as he can pack in.

The flirtatious but gentlemanly Jacques is an expert gourmand and a militant epicurean. And he has resolved to make Anne feel special in ways that her husband doesn’t, at least anymore. Anne enjoys the attention, but she is anything but naive. She and the audience are expecting Jacques to make a pass at any moment.

As the closing credits rolled, most of the women in my audience applauded. Above all, Paris Can Wait is a fantasy from a woman’s point of view. That woman is director Eleanor Coppola, who, at the age of 81, has made her first fiction film. Coppola had previously made what is perhaps the best ever “making of” documentary, the 1991 Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, which chronicled the making of her husband Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now!. Eleanor and Francis have been married since 1963, and their daughter Sofia just won Best Director at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival for her remake of The Beguiled.

The great and underutilized Diane Lane is such a masterful and magnetic actor. Anne is an unchallenging role, but it’s still hard to imagine anyone better. In the 1980s, Lane started her run of The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club and as Paulette Goddard in Chaplin. Her most unforgettable role was probably as Lorie in the 1989 classic miniseries Lonesome Dove. My own favorite Diane Lane performance was the one for which she was Oscar-nominated, in 2002’s Unfaithful. I’ll watch her in anything.

Arnaud Viard, a French actor whose work, mainly on French TV, I wasn’t familiar with, is perfect as the debonair but vulnerable Jacques. As we would expect, Alec Baldwin is excellent as the self-absorbed blowhard Michael.

Paris Can Wait is probably even more of a travelogue than a romantic comedy. France is a beautiful country, and Jacques and Anne get to drive and picnic through the most scenic parts. And then there’s the food – serious food porn! This is by no means an excellent movie, but if you enjoy France, and if you enjoy eating anywhere, this is a harmlessly fun 90 minutes.

[NOTE: The Wife disputes a) that this is a widespread female fantasy and b) that is was the women clapping in the theater, and she finds my “female fantasy” characterization to be offensive. On the first point, she says that the story here is NOT something that would appeal to all or most women. I remain convinced that a story in which a woman is found desirable by a non-threatening man who lavishes attention on her does appeal to women, at least more than to men (who I believe prefer non-platonic screen relationships). On the second point, it is true, as she points out, that I always have us sit in the very front of the theater, and, with our backs to the rest of the audience, I did not actually see who was applauding.]

DVD/Stream of the Week: PATERSON – inside a poet

May 30, 2017 by movie gourmet

In Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, Adam Driver plays a Paterson, New Jersey, bus driver named Paterson. Paterson is a poet, and, when you think about it, bus driver is a perfect job for someone who eavesdrops and observes, and who needs time to rework phrases in his head. Paterson the movie is a genial, occasionally very funny, portrait of an artist’s creative process.

There’s not much overt action or conflict in Paterson. Every morning Paterson awakes between 6:09 and 6:27 AM, kisses the cheek or naked shoulder of his girlfriend Laura and heads to the kitchen for coffee and Cheerios. While his bus is warming up, he drafts and edits poems in his notebook until his supervisor appears at his bus. After work, he walks home past old factories and straightens his leaning mailbox. After dinner, he walks Laura’s bulldog Marvin and stops for exactly one beer at the neighborhood tavern. The bus, the bar and Paterson’s time going to and fro constitute the platform for his art: finding material for observation and for crafting and recrafting poems.

The city of Paterson is a perfect setting for this story. Paterson is not a tourist destination, and there doesn’t seem to be much interesting in the place that boasts of its memorial to Lou Costello. But a careful, open-minded observer like Paterson can revel in the beauty of the Great Falls of the Passaic River and find interest in all the dingy places and seemingly ordinary denizens.

Paterson doesn’t share any of his poetry, except VERY occasionally to Laura; in Paterson, he even chooses to quote her a poem from someone else when she asks for one of his. Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), a suitably kooky artist, is impractical and adorable, and obsessed with black and white. She seems as frivolous as Paterson is deep, but he is devoted to her, and she lightens his life and is the unrelenting cheerleader for his poetry.

Paterson is filled with sly humor, much coming from the antics of the regular folks that Paterson encounters, along with Laura’s goofiness. I particularly enjoyed the two guys on bus talking about women they think have hit on them and the knowitall college student posing as an anarchist. At my screening, wry chuckles kept erupting in the audience.

To make sure we’re paying attention (and enjoying the film on other levels), Jarmusch has filled it with patterns, with recurring themes like twins and secrets and with repeated phrases. Paterson meets three other poets – none anything like him – and at the most unexpected locales.

For Paterson to work, an actor is needed who has the charisma to be interesting while acting very passively. Adam Driver is the perfect choice, and he is exceptional. I also really liked Barry Shabaka Henley as Doc, the tavern’s proprietor and bartender.

Not everyone will enjoy Paterson, but I did. A viewer needs to appreciate the juxtaposition of a routine exterior with an artist’s sometimes bursting inner dialogue. I recommend settling in and going for the ride. Paterson is now available on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

May 26, 2017 by movie gourmet

It’s Memorial Day weekend. Scroll down for my recommendations of current and classic movies on video and television that honor military service.

Recommended movies to see in theaters this week:

Opening this weekend, The Commune, looks like comedy of errors, but it’s a family drama with a searing performance by Trine Dyrholm.
The Lost City of Z, a thoughtful and beautifully cinematic revival of the adventure epic genre.
In Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, writer-director Joseph Cedar and his star Richard Gere combine to create the unforgettable character of Norman Oppenheimer, a Jewish Willy Loman who finally gets his chance to sit with the Movers and Shakers. This may be Gere’s best movie performance ever.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is last year’s Oscar-winning Hacksaw Ridge, about American Army Medic Desmond T. Doss, who single-handedly rescued 75 fellow soldiers at the Battle of Okinawa and became the first Conscientious Objector in American history to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. You can rent Hacksaw Ridge on DVD from Netflix and Redbox or stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play and DirecTV. If you’re going to see one war movie this year, make it this one.

Yesterday I wrote about Turner Classic Movies’ uncommon slate of thoughtful Korean War movies airing Saturday, including Men in War, The Steel Helmet, The Rack and The Hook.

On Sunday May 28, TCM will present the definitive Pearl Harbor movie, Tora! Tora! Tora! from 1970. Featuring great American and Japanese casts, Tora! Tora! Tora! tells the story from both American and Japanese perspectives. It’s a suspenseful minute-by-minute countdown. Tora! Tora! Tora! is one of the very best movies ever made about a well-known historical event. And on Monday, May 29, TCM will broadcast the fine WW II submarine warfare movie The Enemy Below, which I wrote about last month (scroll down.

THE COMMUNE: funny funny squirm

May 25, 2017 by movie gourmet

In the Danish family drama The Commune, Erik (Ulrich Thomsen) is an architecture professor married to the television newscaster Anna (Trine Dyrholm). Erik is very reserved, tends to be harsh and does not suffer fools. Anna is bubbly. They have a watchful 14-year-old daughter.

Erik inherits a huge house and wants to sell it. Anna wants to move the family in. Erik points out that it’s totally impractical and too expensive to keep up. Anna suggests taking in their friends as tenants – essentially starting a commune. After all, it’s the 1970s. What could possibly go wrong?

The folks who move in, of course, are a collection of oddballs. Anna embraces everyone’s eccentricities, and Erik tries, but it’s hard for him. At this point, we think we’re watching a comedy of manners – but we’re wrong.

The Commune is really the story of Erik and Anna and their marriage. Each is having a mid-life crisis that will test their marriage. The foibles of the commune are just a distraction.

Trine Dyrholm gives a remarkable performance as Anna. Is Anna shockingly open-minded and permissive, a desperate enabler or is she masking an internal implosion?

I loved writer-director Thomas Vinterberg’s earlier films Celebration (Festen) and The Hunt (Jagten). Vinterberg’s Funny Funny Squirm rhythm in The Commune reminds me of Celebration. But the payoff in The Commune just doesn’t match Celebration and The Hunt, which are exceptionally good films. I especially detested the death of a character in The Commune, which I found to be grossly manipulative.

Still, Dyrholm’s performance is stunning, and Vinterberg remains a master at the cold-eyed observation of human behavior. I saw The Commune at Cinequest.

coming up on TV: a Korean War movie sampler

May 24, 2017May 24, 2017 by movie gourmet

Turner Classic Movies usually serves up war movies on the Memorial Day weekend, and, on May 27, TCM will present an uncommon slate of Korean War movies. Most of the featured films were made between 1951 and 1957 – more or less contemporaneously with the conflict. If you want to survey this subgenre, here’s your chance.

The best two are:

Men in War (1957): An infantry lieutenant (Robert Ryan) must lead his platoon out of a desperate situation, and he encounters a cynical and insubordinate sergeant (Aldo Ray) loyally driving a jeep with his PTSD-addled colonel (Robert Keith). In conflict with each other, they must navigate through enemy units to safety. Director Anthony Mann is known for exploring the psychology of edgy characters, and that’s the case with Men in War.
The Steel Helmet (1951) is a gritty classic by the great writer-director Sam Fuller, a WWII combat vet who brooked no sentimentality about war. Gene Evans, a favorite of the two Sams (Fuller and Peckinpah), is especially good as the sergeant. American war movies of the period tended toward to idealize the war effort, but Fuller relished making war movies with no “recruitment flavor”. Although the Korean War had only been going on for a few months when Fuller wrote the screenplay, he was able to capture the feelings of futility that later pervaded American attitudes about the Korean War.

And these two are unusually thoughtful “message” films:

The Rack (1956): A returning US army captain (Paul Newman) is court-martialed for collaborating with the enemy while a POW. He was tortured, and The Rack explores what can be realistically expected of a prisoner under duress. It’s a pretty good movie, and Wendell Corey and Walter Pidgeon co-star.
The Hook (1963): A small unit of GIs is ordered to kill a North Korean prisoner, and this stagey screenplay explores the morality of following – or resisting – orders that violate civilized standards. Kirk Douglas gives one of his testosterone-laden performances.

On the same day, TCM is also airing One Minute to Zero (1952), Target Zero (1955) and Battle Hymn (1957).

This time around, TCM is not showing the three most well-known Korean War movies: The Manchurian Candidate, Pork Chop Hill and M*A*S*H. The precursor to M*A*S*H*, of course, was Battle Circus, a 1953 Humphrey Bogart film about a camp full of rowdy army surgeons.

And here’s a curiosity among Korean War movies: War Hunt, a 1962 film about a rookie (Robert Redford) joining a Korean War unit as a new replacement with John Saxon as the platoon’s psycho killer. Along with Redford, Sidney Pollack and Francis Ford Coppola are in the cast, making War Hunt the only film with three Oscar-winning directors as actors. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss Coppola as an uncredited convoy truck driver.

DVD/Stream of the Week: HACKSAW RIDGE – unimaginable bravery disconnected from acts of violence

May 23, 2017May 23, 2017 by movie gourmet

My video pick for Memorial Day Week is Mel Gibson’s powerful Hacksaw Ridge. Just before the 2017 Oscars, The Wife and I finally got around to watching Hacksaw Ridge, which had been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Before you see this movie, you need to know that it’s a true story – otherwise you wouldn’t believe it. It’s the story of American Army Medic Desmond T. Doss who single-handedly rescued 75 fellow soldiers at the Battle of Okinawa and became the first Conscientious Objector in American history to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Hacksaw Ridge shows Doss (Andrew Garfield) growing up in rural Virginia as a devout Seventh Day Adventist. After Pearl Harbor, Doss feels compelled to serve his country but, as a religious pacifist, he can’t sign up for combat. So he enlists as a conscientious objector to become a combat medic. He’s thrown into a combat unit for training and endures bullying from both his officers and his fellow troops.

Doss and his unit are ordered into the Battle of Okinawa. They must climb a 350-foot cliff on cargo netting, The Americans can carry up radios, bazookas, machine guns and flamethrowers but not anything heavier than that. The Japanese are not contesting the climb up because they have set up a killing field on the ridge-top, which they have fortified with concrete pill-boxes. The Japanese have also constructed a network of tunnels, in which they can wait out the US naval artillery bombardments.

It’s a blood bath. Historically, this was an extraordinarily brutal battle – even by War in the Pacific standards. And so director Mel Gibson, who never shies away from violence, graphically depicts that violence. Of course, being Mel, he can’t resist a few completely gratuitous moments, including a hara-kiri and the very cool-looking slo-mo ejection of casings from an automatic weapon. But, generally, the movie violence is proportionate to the real-life violence.

Nevertheless, the real focus is on the bravery of the US troops, of which Doss’ is extraordinary. Their and his courage to climb the cliff a SECOND time – after learning what it is like on top – is unimaginable.

Andrew Garfield is superb as Doss, playing him with a goofy and infectious grin, whose niceness and sweetness masks formidable strong will. I’ve never see him as Spider-Man, but Garfield’s work in Red Riding, The Social Network, 99 Homes and now Hacksaw Ridge has been very impressive.

There isn’t a bad, or even mediocre performance in Hacksaw Ridge. You can’t tell that Aussies Teresa Palmer, Hugo Weaving and Rachel Griffiths (Brenda in Six Feet Under) aren’t from Blue Ridge Virginia. Sam Worthington and Vince Vaughn are especially good as Doss’ commanders.

I’ve been a fan of Hugo Weaving since he so compellingly played a blind man in the 1991 Proof (also our first look at a very young Russell Crowe). Since then, Weaving has earned iconic roles in the Matrix movies and V for Vendetta and is usually the most interesting performer in big budget movies. Here Weaving plays Doss’ father, not just as the mean drunk who terrorizes his family, but as a vet still reeling from the PTSD of his own WWI combat experience.

Hacksaw Ridge deservedly won Oscars for both film editing and sound mixing. Gibson’s directing is excellent, as is the work of cinematographer Simon Duggan (who shot Baz Luhrman’s otherwise dreadful but great-looking The Great Gatsby).

Make sure that you watch through the epilogue and closing credits to see and hear the real life folks portrayed in the film.

You can rent Hacksaw Ridge on DVD from Netflix and Redbox or stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play and DirecTV.

[SPOILER ALERT: I have also read on the Internet about something that is NOT in the movie. Reportedly, when Doss was being evacuated by stretcher after being wounded by the grenade, he ROLLED OFF the stretcher when he passed another wounded soldier and demanded that the stretcher bearers take the other guy. Doss then CRAWLED the final 300 yards to the cargo netting to rescue himself. Again reportedly, Mel Gibson kept this out of the movie because he thought the audience just couldn’t be expected to believe that it really happened.]