The environmental justice documentary Demon Mineral explores the impact of uranium mining on the Navajo people. In her first feature, director and co-writer Hadley Austin uses indigenous voices to tell the story, including her co-writer, environmental scientist Dr. Tommy Rock. It’s the testimony of Navajo people themselves that traces the history of uranium mining, subsequent health problems and the science connecting the dots. Some of the first-person narratives are heart-breaking.
This real life story takes place in one of the most iconic locations in American cinema – Arizona’s Monument Valley. (The Navajo themselves have complicated feelings about the legacy of John Ford Westerns made in their homeland.) Cinematographer Yoni Goldstein’s black-and-white photography soars, bringing out the majesty of the harsh landscape and imparting a gravitas to the story.
There’s even a cameo by hard right Congressman Paul Gosar, who is so stupid that he doesn’t comprehend just how stupid he is.
Demon Mineral has enjoyed a robust film festival run and won the Audience Award for Documentary Feature at the 2024 Slamdance.
Photo caption: Lily Gladstone, and Leonardo DiCaprio in KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON. Courtesy of AppleTV.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – two of my favorite film festivals are opening today:
Slamdance: You read that name correctly -vit’s an alternative to Sundance. Whenever I cover a film festival, I’m on the lookout for first films and world premieres – and here’s a festival essentially entirely made up of first films and world premieres. Alumni incude Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer) and many other bigtime filmmakers. It’s in Utah AND online. Here’s my Slamdance preview with recommended movies.
Noir City: Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. This year’s program for each night (or matinee) will present a double bill – one classic film noir from the US or UK, matched with one from Argentina, Mexico, France, Italy, Egypt, Japan or South Korea. It’s in Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater, and I’ll be attending two of the days. Here’s my Noir City preview with recommended movies.
And, coming up on TV, besides Babette’s Feast (described below in today’s post), I’m highlighting Jane Fonda’s first Oscar-winning performance in the now 53-year-old thriller Klute.
One of the year’s best films, Killers of the Flower Moon, is now available for free with an AppleTV subscription (or for $19.99 everywhere else).
CURRENT MOVIES
Anatomy of a Fall: family history, with life or death stakes. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
Rebecca Hall, Jason Bateman and Joel Edgerton in THE GIFT. Courtesy of STX Entertainment.
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
The Gift: three people revealed. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
Inez & Doug & Kira: the tangle of love, friendship and bipolar disorder. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
The Handmaiden: gorgeous, erotic and a helluva plot. Amazon, Vudu.
Run & Jump: a romance, a family drama and a promising first feature. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
Victoria: a thrill ride filmed in one shot. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, KinoNow.
Youth: a glorious cinematic meditation on life. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl: a Must See, perched on the knife edge between comedy and tragedy. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
ON TV
BABETTE’S FEAST
On January 21, Turner Classic Movies will present Babette’s Feast (1987), one of my Best Foodie Movies. Two aged 19th century Danish spinster sisters have taken in a French refugee as their housekeeper. The sisters carry on their father’s severe religious sect, which rejects earthly pleasures. After fourteen years, the housekeeper wins the lottery and, in gratitude, spends all her winnings on the ingredients for a banquet that she prepares for the sisters and their friends. As the dinner builds, the colors of the film become warmer and brighter, reflecting the sheer carnality of the repast. The smugly ascetic and humorless guests become less and less able to resist pleasure of the epicurean delights. The feast’s visual highlights are Caille en Sarcophage avec Sauce Perigourdine (quail in puff pastry shell with foie gras and truffle sauce) and Savarin au Rhum avec des Figues et Fruit Glacée (rum sponge cake with figs and glacéed fruits). This was the first Danish film to win Best Foreign Language Oscar.
On January 22, Turner Classic Movies is airing Klute (1971), highlighted by Jane Fonda’s first Oscar-winning performance. An out-of-town detective comes to Manhattan on a missing person’s case and becomes embroiled in tracking down a sexually sadistic murderer before he can kill a call girl. What elevates this ostensible mystery to a gripping psychodrama are the main characters and their chemistry.
Bree Daniels (Fonda) is both a masterful call girl and a failed actress/model. Fonda’s Bree is confident, sexy, vulnerable, manipulative and the terrified target of a maniac. She’s also a fashion plate – stylishly braless in long knit dresses and sporting the shag haircut that sparked its own fad. This is Fonda at her iconic peak – she earned six Best Actress nominations in a twelve year period.
Bree Daniels’ foil is the stolid John Klute (Donald Sutherland), who is so clear-eyed and disciplined that he is immune to Bree’s charms – until he isn’t. Sutherland’s career is still peaking today, but he sandwiched Klute between Kelly’s Heroes, M*A*S*H*, National Lampoon’s Animal House and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Director Alan J. Pakula takes us to the grimy, seedy NYC of the period, and keeps the tension building. The scenes with Bree’s junkie acquaintances are heartbreaking. Pakula received Oscar nominations for producing To Kill a Mockingbird, directing All the President’s Men and writing Sophie’s Choice. For more on Alan Pakula, you can stream the fine documentary Alan Pakula: Going for Truth, which features Jane Fonda’s memories of Pakula.
Veteran television writer Andy Lewis, with the far less prolific Dave Lewis (presumably his older brother), were nominated for the original screenplay Oscar.
The supporting cast is good, too, Ray Scheider is superb as a smug pimp. In his first movie, Charles Cioffi’s very contained performance makes for a chilling villain; he followed Klute with a key role in Shaft and then essentially left movies for a long career in television (including playing another villain on a TV soap).
Klute has more than its share of bit players who were about to become famous:
Veronica Hamel (a decade before Hill Street Blues) as a model at a cattle call audition;
Richard Jordan (four years before Logan’s Run) as a guy kissing Bree at a disco;
Harry Reems (a year before Deep Throat) as another disco patron;
Jean Stapleton (just months before All in the Family) as the secretary at a garment factory.
I recently rewatched Klute, and it still works today. If you haven’t seen it, or seen it recently, set your DVR.
Photo caption: David Allen White in Fabio D’Orta’s THE COMPLEX FORMS. Courtesy of Slamdance.
It’s time for the 30th Slamdance Film Festival, which is all about discovering new filmmakers and unveiling their work. It’s a hybrid festival with events in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah from January 19th to 25th and online on the Slamdance Channel from January 22nd to 28th. All Slamdance feature films selected in the competition categories are directorial debuts without U.S. distribution, with budgets of less than $1 million. The 125 films in this year’s program were selected from 9,004 submissions.
Slamdance was founded in 1995 by filmmakers reacting to the gatekeeper role and growing marketplace focus of a nearby film festival with a similar name. Whenever I cover a film festival, I’m on the lookout for first films and world premieres – and here’s a festival essentially entirely made up of first films and world premieres.
Slamdance alumni include: Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Memento,Dunkirk), Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room), Lynn Shelton (Outside In,Sword of Truth), Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine), Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Brick), Benny & Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems) and the Russo Brothers (Avengers: Infinity War).
MUST SEE
Here are three films from the 2024 Slamdance program that you shouldn’t miss. Each features at least one original and fresh element:
The Complex Forms: This visually striking atmospheric is set in a centuries-old Italian villa, where Christian (David Allen White) and other down-on-their-luck middle-aged men sell their bodies for a period of days to be “possessed”. Possessed how? By who or by what? As the dread builds, Christian resolves to pry the answers from the secretive masters of the villa. Director Fabio D’Orta unspools the story with remarkably crisp black-and-white cinematography, a brooding soundtrack and impeccable editing. In his astonishingly impressive filmmaking debut, D’Orta wrote, directed, shot and edited The Complex Form. US premiere. (Full review goes live on January 22.)
The Accident: Marcella (Giulia Mazzarino) is a meek, good-hearted young woman who, in quick succession, loses her partner, custody of their daughter, her car and her job. Desperate for financial survival , she buys a tow truck, but she is utterly unsuited for the cutthroat Italian towing industry, where no good deed goes unpunished. Marcella is trapped into a downward spiral of increasingly disadvantageous situations, until she happens on a logical, but outrageously amoral, solution. The Accident is the first full-length narrative feature for documentarian Giuseppe Garau, who describes it as an “experimental film” because virtually the entire movie is shot from a camera in the front passenger side of Marcella’s vehicle. That may be an experiment, but it’s not a gimmick, because it drives our attention to Marcella’s incentives and disincentives in this allegory, an acid parable of social criticism. North American Premiere. (Full review goes live on January 22.)
Demon Mineral: This environmental justice documentary explores the impact of uranium mining on the Navajo people. This real life story takes place in one of the most iconic locations in American cinema – Arizona’s Monument Valley, and cinematographer Yoni Goldstein’s black-and-white photography soars. The story is told by indigenous voices, one of whom, environmental scientist Dr. Tommy Rock, co-wrote Demon Mineral with director Hadley Austin. First feature for Austin. (Full review goes live on January 22.)
And here’s a bonus recommendation: Slide is a firehose-in-the-face of anarchic cynicism from the veteran animator Bill Plympton. Set in a 1940s backwater town hoping to become a location for a Hollywood movie, Plympton harnesses all the tropes of movie Westerns to send up human corruption. The music by Maureen McElheron and Hank Bones is pretty cool, too. Here’s a taste of the fun.
Remember, even if you don’t travel to Utah, you can sample these films on the Slamdance Channel from January 22nd to 28th.
Photo caption: Jeanne Moreau in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS
The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns January 19-28 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. The program for each night (or matinee) will present a double bill – one classic film noir from the US or UK, matched with one from Argentina, Mexico, France, Italy, Egypt, Japan or South Korea. This year’s tagline is Darkness Has No Borders.
Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies.
One of Noir City’s greatest gifts to noiristas, and to cinephiles in general, has been introducing us to previously unfamiliar foreign noir classics. It is ONLY because of Noir City that I’ve seen some of my favorite movies: Los tallos amargos(The Bitter Stems), Black Gravel, El vampiro negro(The Black Vampire), Ashes and Diamonds, La noche avanza (Night Falls),…And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear and Girl with Hyacinths.
These titles from this year’s Noir City program are NOT available to stream, so Noir City is your best chance to see them:
Street of Chance (US)
Cairo Station (Egypt)
Victims of Sin (Victimas del pecado) (Mexico)
Black Tuesday (US)
Aimless Bullet (South Korea)
Plunder Road (US)
Without Pity (Italy)
Four Against the World (Mexico)
Across the Bridge (UK)
Strongroom (UK)
Murder by Contract (US)
Smog (Italy)
Not all the program is obscure. Here are three Must See classics:
Elevator to the Gallows: This is such a groundbreaking film, you can argue that it’s the first neo-noir. It’s the debut of director Louis Malle, shot when he was only 24 years old. In 1958, no one had seen a film with a Miles Davis soundtrack or one where the two romantic leads were never on-screen together. Totally original.
La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) and Human Desire: In this Murder-The-Jealous-Husband double bill, Jean Renoir’s classic La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) with the charismatic Jean Gabin and Simone Simon is paired with Fritz Lang’s remake, starring Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford. Grahame projected an uncanny mixture of sexiness, vulnerability and unpredictability, perfect for this hard luck femme fatale; (the fact that Gloria was a Bad Girl in real life doesn’t hurt.) I have the Australian version of the Human Desire poster in my living room; the tag line is “She was born to be bad…to be kissed..to make trouble“, and the Aussie authorities have labeled it “NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN“.
Le trou: This is the all-time best prison break movie, combining a riveting real-time escape procedural with a fear of betrayal that crescendos. Le trou is a true crime story, with three of actual participants consulting on the film and one of them playing the mastermind. It was the last film by Jacques Becker, who had directed Casque d’Or and one of the very best film noirs in any language, Touchez pas au grisbi.
Photo caption: ANATOMY OF A FALL. Courtesy of NEON.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of Driving Madeleine. I’m busy preparing to cover two film festivals that open next weekend: Slamdance and Noir City. I’m currently screening about a dozen Slamdance movies and will publish a fest preview with recommendations. I’ll preview Noir City, too, some of which I’ll be covering in-person in Oakland.
My choice as the year’s second-best movie, Anatomy of a Fall, is now streaming on the major platforms. Don’t miss it.
Tom Wilkinson, with Sissy Spacek, in IN THE BEDROOM.
Tom Wilkinson won an Oscar for Michael Clayton, but I best remember his searing performance in In the Bedroom and his delightful turn in The Full Monty.
CURRENT MOVIES
Anatomy of a Fall: family history, with life or death stakes. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
Photo caption: Line Renaud and Dany Boon in DRIVING MADELEINE. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group.
In Driving Madeleine, a ninety-two year-old Parisienne, having outlived her family, must move from her apartment to a nursing home. Madeleine (Line Renaud) cajoles her harried cabbie Charles (Dany Boon) to visit some of her old haunts along the way. As they stop at the locations where Madeleine’s life pivoted, director Christian Carion reveals that Madeleine has lived a helluva life, one spanning ecstasy, tragedy and even notoriety.
Charles’ family is facing severe financial pressure, he is one traffic violation away from losing his taxi license, and he is practically vibrating from the stress. As he reluctantly complies with Madeleine’s circuitous wishes, he takes some lessons from her life and softens. Driving Madeleine is an unflinchingly sentimental film, which is okay because it’s not trying to be anything else. There is a place for sweet, heartfelt movies.
Driving Madeline’s sweetness doesn’t get syrupy because of the painful injustices Madeleine survived in pre-feminist 1950s France. The cause of her notoriety is an act that I haven’t seen depicted before.
Actress-singer Line Renaud is actually older than her character, and she delivers the mischievousness and steely toughness that is Madeleine. The versatile comedian/actor/writer director Dany Boon easily inhabits the role of Charles; (Boon, often cast in broad comedies, is also in the recent The Crime Is Mine, which will release on VOD within a month.) Alice Isaaz is excellent in flashbacks as the young Madeleine.
Driving Madeleine’s opening tomorrow includes the Landmark Sunset 5 and the Landmark Pasadena; it opens more widely next weekend, including at the Opera Plaza in San Francisco.
This week on The Movie Gourmet: new reviews of Poor Things, The Boys in the Boat and Ferrari. All three are good movies, and the extraordinarily original Poor Things is one of the year’s best.
When we get to the Holidays I pause my regular WATCH AT HOME feature The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE) and replace it with the movies from my Best of 2023 list that are already available to stream.
CURRENT MOVIES
Anatomy of a Fall: family history, with life or death stakes. In theaters.
RETURN TO SEOUL: brilliantly crafted and emotionally gripping. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
BARBIE: a marriage of the intelligent and the silly. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
FREMONT: self-discovery and a fortune cookie. Amazon, Vudu.
HANNAH HA HA: what makes for human value and fulfillment? Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
ON TV
Rita Hayworth (and dress) in GILDA
On January 10, Turner Classic Movies is airing the always entertaining 1946 film noir Gilda. Glenn Ford plays a shady gambler who shows up in exotic Buenos Aires, where he lucks into a job with a casino operator; turns out that his new boss has a gorgeous young wife (Rita Hayworth). The Ford and Hayworth characters shared a past relationship that ended ugly. There are plot twists aplenty, including a faked death, former Nazis running a tungsten cartel, and a love affair that is on-again, off-again and on-again. Glenn Ford’s character spins like a top through sap-hero-jerk-hero. The wonderful actor Joseph Calleia comes brooding through the story. Gilda is almost worthwhile just for the dramatic cinematography of Rudolph Maté (D.O.A.) and for Hayworth’s stunning wardrobe.
But there’s more – Czar of Noir Eddie Muller has opened my eyes to a hiding-in-plain-sight nugget. Watch Gilda with the premise that the Glenn Ford character has an intimate relationship with his boss – so the appearance of the wife sparks a love triangle.
And, finally, a gourmet treat from the Movie Gourmet’s recent excursion to San Sebastian, Spain. San Sebastian is justifiably famous for its sumptuous and inexpensive pinxtos, and the trend started with a pinxto named for the glamorous Rita Hayworth character. It’s a toothpick loaded with a green olive, a few strips of pickled guindilla pepper, an anchovy filet, more guindilla strips, and a final olive, all coated with olive oil. It’s available in almost every San Sebastian bar, and called a Gilda (pronounced HEEL-dah).
Photo caption: Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe in POOR THINGS. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
Well, here’s a movie unlike any you have ever seen. Poor Things begins as a Frankenstein movie, and evolves into an outrageously raunchy, funny and thoughtful feminist triumph. The kindly mad scientist Dr. Baxter (Willem Dafoe behind geologic makeup) implants the brain of a fetus into the body of a young woman and creates Bella (Emma Stone). The adult-sized Bella acts like a baby, then a toddler, then a child and so forth as her brain develops.
The key is that Dr. Baxter, confining her to his house, shields the developing Bella from all societal constructs, like common views of morality, manners, religion and gender roles. Bella is driven by the most basic natural human impulses – for pleasure and safety – without ever having learned any inhibitions.
When Bella’s teenage brain rebels, the scientist allows her independence, accepting that she will make mistakes while she learns how to navigate an outside world populated with humans behaving with avarice, lust and ignorance. One such character, hilariously played by Mark Ruffalo, is only too happy to harness Bella’s urges for sexual pleasure to his own benefit. Unfortunately for him, Bella’s brain develops beyond his ability to exploit her.
Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in POOR THINGS. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
Poor Things is based on the novel by Alasdair Gray, so he’s the guy who actually imagined this bizarre and singular story, but director/jokester Yorgos Lanthimos has imbued it with his often zany and transgressive sensibilities. I was a big fan of Lanthimos’ absurdist breakthrough film Dogtooth, but then I didn’t like his acclaimed The Favourite and downright hated The Lobster and The Killing of a Scared Deer. I was encouraged by Glenn Kenney’s New York Times dispatch from Venice about how much he despised previous Lanthimos films and yet still loved and admired Poor Things.
The one thing that I didn’t like in Poor Things was when Lanthimos aped Wes Anderson and Terry Gilliam with some overly fanciful sets. Totally unnecessary to the story and a distraction.
Emma Stone’s performance is the year’s most startling. For one thing, she is certainly courageous and a good sport about spending so much of the movie unclothed and simulating sex. But the extraordinary element of her performance is in calibrating the subtle growth in Bella’s development.
Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo are both great, too, and Kathryn Hunter (The Tragedy of Macbeth) elevates yet another supporting role.
Poor Things won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, and made my list of the Best Movies of 2023. A feminist message is cleverly embedded in this brazen, dazzling and very funny movie.
Photo caption: Callum Turner (center front) in THE BOYS IN THE BOAT. Courtesy of MGM.
The Boys in the Boat is the entertaining true story of the ultimate sports underdog – the University of Washington’s junior varsity rowing team, which won gold medals at the 1936 Olympics hosted by Hitler in Munich (the Jesse Owens Olympics). Again, this was UDub’s JUNIOR varsity boat.
The Boys in the Boat follows a familiar arc for sports movies – the heroes must win the Big Race (actually, three Big Races here). We’ve all seen this before, but director George Clooney gets the credit for keeping The Boys in the Boat from becoming unbearably hackneyed or corny. Best known as a movie star, Clooney has proven himself an able director: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Good Night and Good Luck, The Ides of March, The Monuments Men.
In telling the story, Clooney emphasizes the Depression setting and how impoverished the kids on the team are, especially the main kid, played by Callum Turner. Joel Edgerton plays the taciturn coach, who must gamble his job on an unconventional decision. Few of us have a deep understanding of the sport of team rowing, so Clooney takes us on a rowing procedural.
Joel Edgerton (second from right) in THE BOYS IN THE BOAT. Courtesy of MGM.
I love Edgerton in everything, and he’s starred in Master Gardener, Loving and Zero Dark Thirty. I especially recommend watching him in The Gift, which he also wrote an directed. Edgerton is very, very good here.
Callum Turner is adequate, but Luke Slattery and Jack Mulhern are especially vivid as his two of his teammates.
This story is still celebrated in Seattle, where you can still visit the boathouse and see the team’s memorabilia. One race is staged in the Montlake Cut between Lake Washington and Puget Sound. The coolest race scene has an observation train, with bleachers on the rail cars, keeping pace with the boats racing down the Hudson River.
The Boys in the Boat ain’t the most original film, but it’s enjoyable to watch.
