Photo caption: Frederika Milano and Gem Deger in ENDLESS SUMMER SYNDROME. Courtesy of NashFilm and Altered Innocence.
In the simmering French drama Endless Summer Syndrome, a professional couple and their two very attractive teenage kids are enjoying August, as upscale Parisians like to do, in a roomy, well-appointed country home. Their idyll is rocked when the mom is tipped off that the dad may be sexually involved with one of the adopted kids. She furtively investigates, trying to find out what is going on with whom. We know that there will be a reckoning once she finds out, but no one in the audience will guess the shattering ending.
First-time director and co-writer Kaveh Daneshmand keeps the tension roiling. All four actors give superb performances: Sophie Colon as the mom, Matheo Capelli as the dad, Frederika Milano as the daughter and Gem Deger as the son. Colon is especially effective, as the audience sees most of the developments (but not all) through her lens. I was surprised to learn that only one of the four actors (Capelli) has substantial film experience.
I screened Endless Summer Syndrome for the Nashville Film Festival. It releases into arthouse theaters this weekend.
Photo caption: Mikey Madison and Yura Borisov in ANORA. Courtesy of NEON.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of the brilliant but gory The Substance.
REMEMBRANCE
Lee Van Cleef and Earl Hollimon (right) in THE BIG COMBO
Earl Holliman had the confidence, in one of his first movies, to put a unique spin on the role of a mob henchman in 1955’s The Big Combo. He continued to play character roles in big movies: Giant, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and The Sons of Katie Elder. He went on to amass almost 100 credit in television, most popularly as Angie Dickinson’s boss in Policewoman/ most of his TV work was forgettable, but he did star in the first ever episode of The Twilight Zone.
CURRENT MOVIES
Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters.
Conclave: explosive secrets? in the Vatican?. In theaters.
The Substance: the thinking woman’s Faust, if you can take the body horror. MUBI (free), Amazon, AppleTV.
Blitz: one brave, resourceful kid amid the horrors. AppleTV.
Sweetheart Deal: a triumph of cinéma vérité. In arthouse theaters.
Love Lies Bleeding: obsessions and impulses collide. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
I Saw the TV Glow: brimming with originality. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
ON TV
Patrick McGoohan and Paul Harris in ALL NIGHT LONG
On December 9, Turner Classic Movies airs the little seen All Night Long, one of my Overlooked Neo-noir. It’s Shakespeare’s Othello, set in the jazz world of 1962 London – and with music performed by Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck and other real jazz musicians. Patrick McGoohan is soars in the juicy Iago role – MacGoohan did devious scheming very well, and satisfyingly implodes when it all falls apart. His career was ascending, and he was only two years away from becoming a huge TV star with Secret Agent, to be followed by The Prisoner, possibly the most original show ever on television.
Photo caption: Demi Moore in THE SUBSTANCE. Courtesy of MUBI.
Wow, this movie sizzles with originality and it’s a showcase for an emerging female filmmaker, but I’m not sure if you’ll want to watch it. In The Substance, writer-director Coralie Fargeat comments on all the perversity around the unrealistic ideals of female beauty by reimagining the classic Faustian bargain – what would you give up to restore physical youthfulness? Fargeat has made a sharply funny movie that melds the science fiction and horror genres. It’s absolutely brilliant, but some viewers may not be able to get past the body horror.
Elisabeth (Demi Moore) was a big movie star thirty years ago, and is now starring in a network fitness show (think Jane Fonda’s Workout franchise). Elisabeth is happy with her life until the male suits at the TV network tell that she’s passed her Sell By date and prepare to dump her for a younger, hotter starlet. The shock jars Elisabeth into a desperate spiral of body-loathing. Of course, this is absurd because I would describe Demi Moore as the world’s most beautiful 47-year-old woman, except she’s really 62.
Elisabeth finds a mysterious underground pharmaceutical (called The Substance) that will miraculously take 30 years off her appearance. There is a at least one catch. She has to inject a substance, which triggers the formation of a clone in a separate, younger body – but only for a week; then she needs to recover by re-inhabiting the older body. Off and on she goes, alternating weeks and the older and younger versions. Eventually, she learns about an even more significant side effect.
The clone is Sue (Margaret Qualley), who immediately is hired to replace Elisabeth on the show and vaults to stardom herself. With her celebrity, riches and stunning beauty, Sue’s life is pretty damn great – until each week is over. We soon realize that this is not going to end well for either Elisabeth or Sue.
There is a lot of body horror in The Substance, beginning with an icky “clone birth” scene and the weekly transitions between Elisabeth and Sue. The Substance ends with an over-the-top, splattering finale that makes Carrie look like a finger prick. It’s not going to work for most of my readers whom I know personally. I’m not a big horror fan and especially don’t care for body horror, but I’m glad I hung with it.
Margaret Qualley in THE SUBSTANCE. Courtesy of MUBI.
The Substance is the second feature for French writer-director Coralie Fargeat. Her first film Revenge (which I haven’t yet seen) won accolades as a feminist take on the rape revenge genre. To keep her right of final cut, Fargeat spurned Hollywood financing and made The Substance on spec. It is now the highest grossing film for MUBI, which bought the distribution rights. She knows what to do with the actors, the camera and the soundtrack, and is unafraid of coloring outside the lines. Wow, Fargeat is impressive.
The first three scenes are enrapturing. The first is an overhead shot of a broken egg, which is injected with a syringe and then clones a second yolk. The second scene is another overhead shot, this one of Elisabeth’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which traces the arc of her career. The third is of Elisabeth leaving the set of her show, as she absorbs the accolades of her stardom, the unwelcome birthday wishes and some rude hints to her aging out of being a sex symbol. Really smart storytelling.
Predictably, given my personal bias, I thought that the running time 2 hours, 20 minutes was too long, but it’s not like the movie dragged.
The male characters in The Substance are not very smart nor even minimally evolved; they are so broadly played that it’s even fun for men in the audience.
This is career-topping performance for Demi Moore, who , besides being uniquely physically perfect for the role, brings out all of Elisabeth’s yearnings and vulnerabilities – and her fraught ambivalence for continuing with The Substance. Moore is also a good sport about working under some some very extreme prosthetics.
Margaret Qualley always brings energy and magnetism to her performances, and she’s superb here as s Sue who, like Elisabeth, wants it all and wants it too much.
Dennis Quaid takes boorishness to new lows as a shamelessly sexist network boss. Quaid must have had lots of fun in this role, and he’s hilarious.
The Substance got a standing ovation at its premiere at Cannes, and won the People’s Choice Award at Toronto. The Substance is now streaming on Amazon and AppleTV, and it’s free on MUBI.
Photo caption: Mikey Madison in ANORA. Courtesy of NEON.
This week on The Movie Gourmet, new reviews of two historical dramas Steve McQueen’s WW II thriller Blitz and the grimly beautiful Chilean drama The Settlers. I’m not going to be writing about the two new Big Movies – Wicked (even though I always like Cynthia Erivo) and Gladiator II (the CGI rhino in he trailer looked too cheesy).
During the holidays, my WATCH AT HOME feature suspends its usual The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE and subs in films on my Best Movies of 2024 – So Far list; there are plenty of great movies from earlier this year that you can now stream at home.
CURRENT MOVIES
Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters.
Conclave: explosive secrets? in the Vatican?. In theaters.
Blitz: one brave, resourceful kid amid the horrors. AppleTV.
Sweetheart Deal: a triumph of cinéma vérité. In arthouse theaters.
Love Lies Bleeding: obsessions and impulses collide. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
I Saw the TV Glow: brimming with originality. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
ON TV
THE LIFE OF BRIAN
On November 29, Turner Classic Movies is airing one of the wittiest satires of all time, The Life of Brian. The guys from Monty Python send up the Greatest Story Ever Told, while skewering human nature, religion, sword-and-sandal epics, and, in its funniest scene, political correctness.
I just wrote about Peeping Tom, the best-ever psycho serial killer movie, and there goes TCM playing it again on November 30. If you have yet to see it, don’t miss it this time.
Photo caption: Saiorse Ronan and Elliott Heffernan in BLITZ. Courtesy of AppleTV.
In the WW II drama Blitz, Rita (Saiorse Ronan) is a single mom who, like all Londoners, must endure The Blitz, the 8-month German terror bombing of civilian London. Over a million English city-dwellers were evacuated to the countryside, and half of them were children. Rita’s own nine-year-old son George (Elliott Heffernan) is set to be sent to safety while she remains at her job in a munitions factory.
This plan angers George, and he bolts, running amok through London. His adventures, and Rita’s terrified search for him when she finds him missing, make up the core of Blitz. It is a child-in-peril story, but not one where the adult protagonist rescues the child. Rita may be played by a big movie star, but this is George’s story and a portrait of his determination and resourcefulness.
George is multi-racial, which is hard to be in 1940 England, where he looks different that just about everyone else. As he runs a gauntlet of racist attitudes, it’s a huge relief whenever George encounters someone with even minimal kindness.
Elliott Heffernan in BLITZ. Courtesy of AppleTV.
Writer-director Steve McQueen’s biggest achievement in Blitz is to tell this story so compellingly from the child’s point of view. Sometimes George isn’t scared when he should be, and sometimes he is overwhelmed by a situation any adult could handle. McQueen certainly found the right actor to play George in Heffernan, who captures George’s vulnerabilities as well as his underlying reservoir of tenacity.
McQueen also pulls off a well-paced thriller and makes the audience feel the historical context. We’ve all seen depictions of The Blitz with the air raid sirens, blackout wardens and plucky Brits sheltering in the Underground and emerging to see the rubble, carnage and fire. But not like this. McQueen’s Blitz is vivid, uncomfortable and terrifying.
There is a spectacular scene at a ritzy hotel’s nightclub, complete with a Cab Calloway-like band and an extra-long tracking shot through the kitchen, an homage to Martin Scorsese’s famous Copacabana shot in Goodfellas. I understand that McQueen would argue that this scene sets up a brief moment later in the film, but it really isn’t necessary and McQueen is just showing off his skills (and AppleTV’s budget). It’s fun, though.
What McQueen fails to deliver, though, is multi-dimensional characters (with the exception of George). Pretty much every non-George character is just one thing – officious, bigoted, evil or saintly.
The is, however, more than a glimmer of texture in a performance by one of my favorite actors, Stephen Graham, who often plays a troubled cop or a criminal psycho in British crime shows like Line of Duty and Little Boy Blue. Graham has a small role as a depraved gang leader, and he makes the character despicable and unhinged and scary and damaged. Grahamhas worked in US films, too, as an Italian-American mobster in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, Scrum in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire and Baby Face Nelson in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies.
Blitz is a fine adventure yarn, evocative history and a visually impressive film. Blitz is now streaming on AppleTV.
Photo caption: Mark Stanley, Camilo Arancibilia and Benjamin Westfall in THE SETTLERS. Courtesy of MUBI.
The grimly beautiful Chilean drama The Settlers takes us to Tierra del Fuego in 1901 where Spanish tycoon Jose Menendez (Alfredo Castro) is setting up a massive sheep ranch on 250,000 acres that spans across both Chile and Argentina. Menendez assigns his foreman, a ruthless Scot former soldier, Alexander MacLennan (Mark Stanley), to clear out the indigenous residents, who are inconveniently eating some of the sheep. Melendez makes it clear to MacLennan that he wants the indigenous people exterminated. Melendez and MacLennan are real historical figures, and these events are known as the Selk’nam Genocide.
MacLennan is assigned Bill (Benjamin Westfall), an American veteran of Indian conflicts. He also brings along the half-indigenous local man Segundo (Camilo Arancibilia). Neither MacLennan or Bill sees any humanity in the indigenous, and go about their work as if they were eradicating household pests. It’s pretty awful. There is some on-screen gore, but we experience most of the horror through the reaction of Segundo.
The Settlers jumps ahead almost a decade to explore the impact of the events on some of the key characters and their loved ones. There has to be a reckoning, after all, even if it can’t be fully satisfying.
Sobering as it is, The Settlers is remarkably fine cinema, and is an impressive debut feature for director Felipe Galvez Haberle. The matter-of-fact brutality is almost dwarfed by the stark, vast expanses of Patagonia. Some of the landscape shots by cinematographer Simone D’Arcangelo (The Tale of King Crab) are absolutely breathtaking. The unsettling story is enhanced by a soundtrack reminiscent, but not derivative of, Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western scores.
First time actress Mishell Guana is very powerful as an indigenous woman. Sam Spruell colorfully brings alive a rogue British colonel (think Kurz in Apocalypse Now!).
The Settlers played in the Un Certain Regard program at Cannes, winning the FIPRESCI prize, and has won awards at a slew of other international film festivals. The Settlers is streaming on MUBI.
British actor Timothy West became recognized in the US for his titular performance in the imported mini-series Edward the King, as the son of Queen Victoria, who simmered for decades, waiting for his chance to become King Edward VII. I loved him one of my favorite movies, Day of the Jackal. West’s 151 screen credits included three portrayals of Winston Churchill. As prolific as he was in television and the movies, he had even more of an impact on stage. He was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Prospect Theater Company, served as artistic director of the Old Vic Theater, and, at age 81, played the role of King Lear for the fourth time.
CURRENT MOVIES
Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters.
Conclave: explosive secrets? in the Vatican?. In theaters.
The Outrun: facing herself without the bottle. In theaters.
On November 23 (tomorrow), Turner Classic Movies airs the 1950 western The Gunfighter, which I recently watched and enjoyed. Gregory Peck plays the gunfighter Jimmy Ringo, notorious throughout the West, he is a target for others who want to become famous for killing him. reconcile with his estranged wife (Helen Westcott), who has been keeping her marriage to the gunfighter a secret, The town sheriff is a gunfighting pal of Ringo’s, since reformed, concerned about the inevitable violence that follows Ringo to every town Millard Mitchell, Hollywood storytelling so well – in a taut 85 minutes, one of Peck’s best performances (right upyhere with Atticus Finch), Karl Malden, Ellen Corby, Richard Jaeckal, Alan Hale,Jr., and former child star Skip Homeier, who plays one of the best punks you’ll ever despise
Photo caption: Sav Rodgers in CHASING CHASING AMY. Courtesy of Level 33 Entertainment and Kino.
In the irresistible documentary Chasing Chasing Amy, filmmaker Sav Rodgers tells his own highly personal story of finding sanctuary in a romantic comedy, a movie that ultimately spurs a both a filmmaking career and his transition to trans man. Rodgers weaves in parallel tracks, the origin story of the 1997 movie Chasing Amy, and thoughtful discussion of how that film, after 25 years of cultural evolution, has aged. Chasing Chasing Amy seamlessly braids together the fictional love story in Chasing Amy with the stories of real life relationships, including his own.
Chasing Chasing Amy‘s writer-director Savannah Rodgers grew up a bullied lesbian in small town Kansas, and found lesbian representation in an old DVD of Chasing Amy, which became a lifesaver. When Kevin Smith himself heard Rodgers’ TED Talk, he connected with Rodgers and supported her (and then his) filmmaking career. All this is contained in Chasing Chasing Amy along with some revelations.
The novelty of Chasing Amy is a straight man and a lesbian as inseparable soulmates, and we learn that Kevin Smith modeled this after his real life friends, his producer Scott Mosier and the screenwriter Guinevere Turner. Turner had written the lesbian coming of age film Go Fish, which was on the festival circuit along with Smith and Mosier’s Clerks; Turner later wrote the screenplays for American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page.
But the core of Chasing Amy’s narrative is a love affair sabotaged by the guy’s insecurities, mirroring Smith’s own less-than-two-year relationship with Joey Lauren Adams, who plays Alyssa, the main female character.
Rodgers meets Smith himself, who becomes a mentor, and we get current on-camera interviews with Smith, Adams and other principals. There’s a shoulder-to-shoulder joint interview with Smith and Adams, followed by a sobering solo interview with Adams. Along the way, Rodgers matures from a gushing fan girl to a grownup who recognizes the personal flaws that complicate other people’s relationships. Smith comes off well here, and if Rodgers seems too adoring of Smith in most of the film, just wait until her final interview with Joey Lauren Adams.
Chasing Amy was director Kevin Smith’s 1997 masterpiece, with a groundbreaking lesbian/bi-sexual leading lady; but, after 25 years of cultural evolution, some elements now seem stale and even embarrassing. The leading male character is Holden, played by Ben Affleck. His buddy and wingman is Banky, played by Jason Lee, and Banky (to Lee’s off camera discomfort) is unspeakably vulgar and homophobic, a whirlpool of toxic masculinity. But of course, Banky is there to highlight Holden’s comparative evolved tolerance and openness. As an exasperated Kevin Smith says, ‘Banky is the idiot“. However, were Smith to make the same movie today, he would certainly still make Banky offensive, but not so over-the-top offensive.
Some viewers saw in Chasing Amy a toxic male fantasy of a “the right” straight male being able to “convert” a lesbian to heterosexuality. But Alyssa is a bisexual character, as is explicitly depicted in the movie when her lesbian friends react to her fling with Holden. She’s just a bisexual who is more than he is emotionally able to handle.
The story of Sav Rodgers winds from Kansas and the TedTalk, through her long relationship and now marriage, and final, the transitioning into a he/him trans man. Rodgers grows from a naïf into a grown ass man, albeit one that is still earnest, sweet and wears his emotions on his sleeve.
That Rodgers tells such a highly personal story along with the origin story of Chasing Amy and subsequent film and cultural criticism is impressive and ever watchable. I screened Chasing Chasing Amy for the San Luis Obispo Film Festival. It releases into theaters tomorrow.
Photo caption: Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg in A REAL PAIN. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain begins as an odd couple comedy and evolves into something much deeper. Cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) adored their late grandmother and are honoring her by taking a pilgrimage to Poland to see her homeplace and the Nazi death camp that she survived.
The two forty-year-olds were inseparable growing up, but have drifted apart as adults. David, although he takes medication for his OCD, is highly functional; he has a solid job and lives in NYC with his beautiful wife and adorable son. Benji still hasn’t landed anywhere outside of his family’s upstate basement.
David is a little neurotic and little uptight, but his behavior is well within the normal band; he would be an amiable traveling companion. On the other hand, Benji is erratic, unfiltered and immune to embarrassment and social convention. They have signed up for a guided group tour, and Benji’s unrelenting, inappropriate antics mortify David. To the audience, it looks like Benji is the Real Pain of the title.
But, as the story is unspooled, we learn that Benji is just not quirky – he’s a very damaged human being. His emotional distress is the source of the film’s title. David is frustrated that he cannot fix Benji’s pain, and the ambiguity in the ending is very truthful.
Kieran Culkin’s performance as Benji is extraordinary. He captures all Benji’s charm, impulsiveness, empathy, and profound, underlying sadness.
The rest of the cast is very good, especially Jennifer Grey (yes, THAT Jennifer Grey) as a tour group member and Will Sharpe (White Lotus) as their guide.
Eisenberg wrote and directed A Real Pain as well as starring in it. Eisenberg has said that he was exploring the contrast between “epic pain” (e.g., the Holocaust and its continuing impact) to “more modern pain” (i.e., the real anguish of we who may be hurting personally, but don’t have to worry about survival). The grandmother’s house that David and Benji eventually find is the real former home of Eisenberg’s own relatives.
As a screenwriter, Eisenberg demonstrates real talent for subtlety, in creating a unique character and in exploring sobering topics, leavened with just enough humor. And, as a director, Eisenberg gets some credit for Culkin’s performance.
The soundtrack is almost entirely Chopin, which is both Polish and (vital for indie filmmakers) in the public domain. The Wife found it distracting, and it had a somnolent effect on me.
Watching A Real Pain does not tantalize the viewer into planning a trip to Poland.
Eisenberg’s character David is always wearing a University of Indiana baseball cap. That’s interesting because Indiana is the perennial doormat of Big Ten football and has actually lost more games than any other team in the 140-year history of college football. What Eisenberg could not have possibly known when shooting the film is that Indiana football would be having its best year ever, and, as I write this, is a shocking 10-0.
You might get the impression from the trailer below, as I did, that A Real Pain is lighter than it is. A Real Pain is now in theaters.
Photo caption: Mark Eydelshteyn (left) and Mikey Madison (center) in ANORA. Courtesy of NEON.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – the fall movies, many of which I’ve been waiting for since the Canes Film Festival in May, are flooding into theaters. So, The Movie Gourmet is following last week’s review of Conclave with new reviews of award-winners Anora and Emilia Pérez. The genre-busting Netflix documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin rounded out one of my best movie-watching weeks ever. (I also immersed myself in French cinema and rewatched Jean-Pierre Melville’s neo-noir Second Wind and introduced myself to six of Jean-Paul Belmondo’s films.)
Next week – a new review of A Real Pain, which The Wife and I saw last night.
REMEMBRANCE
I didn’t remember the name of actor Jonathan Haze, who worked in a score of Roger Corman’s low budget exploitation films. His most memorable starring role was in Little Shop of Horrors, where his character cultivated a flesh-eating houseplant and pulled a tooth from a masochistic dental patient (Jack Nicholson).
CURRENT MOVIES
Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters.
Conclave: explosive secrets? in the Vatican?. In theaters.
The Outrun: facing herself without the bottle. In theaters.
Dennis O’Keefe and Ann Sheridan in WOMAN ON THE RUN
On November 19, Turner Classic Movies presents the taut 77 minutes of Woman on the Run, one of my Overlooked Noir. When the police coming looking for a terrified murder witness, they are surprised to find his wife (Ann Sheridan) both ignorant of his whereabouts and unconcerned. And the wife has a Mouth On Her, much to the dismay of the detective (Robert Keith), who keeps walking into a torrent of sass. She starts hunting hubbie, along with the cops, a reporter (Dennis O’Keefe) and the killer, and they all careen through a life-or-death manhunt. Another star of Woman on the Run is San Francisco itself, from the hilly neighborhoods to the bustling streets to the dank and foreboding waterfront.
