movie gourmet

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Jaylin Webb and Banks Repeta in ARMAGEDDON TIME. Courtesy of Focus Features.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of All Quiet on the Western Front, The Banshees of Inisherin and Armageddon Time. I also wrote about the masterpiece noir thriller Ashes and Diamonds; if you missed it this week on Turner Classic Movies, you can stream it from Amazon and AppleTV. Plus, TCM airs a 2022 documentary this week that I’ve been recommending that you pay to stream.

CURRENT MOVIES

WATCH AT HOME

GRIZZLY MAN

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

  • Grizzly Man: a fool’s misadventure. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Augustine: obsession, passion and the birth of a science. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Phoenix: riveting psychodrama, wowzer ending. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
  • Headhunters: from smoothly confident scoundrel to human piñata. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
  • Her Smell: powerhouse Elisabeth Moss. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Take Me to the River: fresh, unpredictable and gripping. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Lost Solace: a psychopath afflicted by empathy.  Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.

ON TV

THE AUTOMAT: Actress Audrey Hepburn photographed by Howard Fried in New York City as part of a multi-day photo shoot for Esquire magazine, 1951. Courtesy of A Slice of Pie Productions.

On November 22, Turner Classic Movies will air a charming 2022 documentary that I had recommended during its blink-and-you-missed-it theatrical run in March – The Automat. It traces the fascinating seven-decade run of the marble-floored food palaces where one could put nickels in a slot and be rewarded with a meal. Filled with unexpected nuggets, The Automat gives voice to those nostalgic about the automat, but it is clear-eyed about why it didn’t survive. The Automat is the first film for director Lisa Hurvitz, who spent eight years on the project. 

THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN: a contest of absurd stubbornness

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Photo caption: Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

The Banshees of Inisherin is set in 1923 on a fictional Irish island literally detached from the mainland and its Irish Civil War. Pádraic (Colin Farrell), who raises some livestock, and Colm (Brendan Gleeson), a fiddler, are lifelong buddies. There’s not much to do on the island, other than look forward to meeting up at the local pub. So, Pádraic is shocked when Colm announces that he no longer wishes to chat with Pádraic at the pub. Colm is facing his own mortality and reckons that shooting the breeze with Pádraic is taking away valuable focus from composing Irish music, Colm’s only chance at an immortal legacy. Unlike Colm, Pádraic is not a man of ideas, and Pádraic is hurt and baffled.

Colm is polite but very firm and clear about his request to be left alone. But Pádraic desperately needs human connection, and he cannot leave Colm alone. Colm throws down an ultimatum, and Pádraic, to the dismay of the other islanders, blunders right through the stop sign. Actions escalate, and the two men become mired in a contest of absurd stubbornness.

One thing is for sure, I will always remember this movie when I hear a thunk on my window or door (not a knock, but a THUNK).

As serious as are the consequences of the men’s squabble, Irish wit abounds, and The Banshees of Inisherin is a funny movie. It may contain the funniest confession booth scene in the history of cinema.

The Banshees of Inisherin is written and directed by Martin McDonagh, whose Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Minnesota won two Oscars. Banshees reunites McDonagh, Gleeson and Farrell fourteen years after their In Bruges, a masterpiece of comic neo-noir that I just rewatched last week (to my renewed delight).

This is an acting showcase for the considerable acting talents of Gleeson and Farrell. Gleeson, whose Colm is ever polite but even more resolute, has an amazing body of work: Into the West, Braveheart, The General, Gangs of New York, The Guard, Albert Nobbs, The Grand Seduction, Calvary, The Tragedy of Macbeth and a few Harry Potter movies.

Farrell has demonstrated that seeks out auteur directors; he’s worked with Steven Spielberg (Minority Report), Joel Schumacher (Phone Booth, Valerie Guerin), Yorgos Lanthimos (Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer), Terrence Malick (The New World), Sofia Coppola (The Beguiled) and Kogonada (After Yang). Farrell’s Pádraic takes dim affability to an unmatched level of self-destructive obnoxiousness.

Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan in THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

But the best two performances in this exceptionally well-acted film are those by Kerry Condon as Pádraic’s sister Siobhan and by Barry Keoghan as the intellectually challenged young islander Dominic. Condon’s longsuffering Siobhan is bright and spirited – and the only islander with a lick of common sense. The longer the two men’s struggle progresses, the more the movie becomes Siobhan’s as she tries to mitigate their madness and at least protect herself from it. Condon is the youngest actor to play Ophelia for the Royal Shakespeare Company and has amassed a considerable body of work in episodic television: Rome, Ray Donovan, Better Call Saul.

Keoghan is always a splashy actor and he has a lot of fun with the unpredictable and irritating Dominic. His lakeside scene with Condon is heartbreaking.

There’s been plenty of Oscar buzz for Gleeson, Farrell and Keoghan – and there should be for should be for Condon.

Now how good a movie is this? The humor and gripping story kept me wanting to see the pages turned, the acting is magnificent and the cinematography is beautiful. But what is McDonagh trying to say, if anything? Is this some kind of a parable, or just a portrait of two individuals’ stubbornness? I’m really not sure, but it’s a good thing that The Banshees of Inisherin made me care about the answer.

ARMAGEDDON TIME: coming of age – right into a moral choice

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Photo caption: Banks Repeta and Anthony Hopkins in ARMAGEDDON TIME. Courtesy of Focus Features.

The thought-provoking Armageddon Time, centers on Paul (Banks Repeta), a 6th grade boy in 1980, who, besides grappling with all the regular coming of age issues, must face issues of conscience. Paul and his new school friend, Johnny (Jaylin Webb), have their interests, but the adults at school miss the opportunity to harness the boys’ passions, instead trying to force square pegs into round holes; of course, these smart and spirited lads act out and get into trouble. That’s less of a problem for Paul, who has been sheltered by his affluent family, but Johnny is African-American and poor and already has a more clear-eyed view of the world.

On a day-to day basis, Paul is raised by his tightly wound mom (Anne Hathaway), but she defers to the family’s men when something really big must be confronted. Paul’s male role models are his venerable grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) and his grouchy, stressed-out dad (Jeremy Strong). The grandfather’s point of view has been shaped by his own mother’s having escaped a Ukrainian pogrom and having experienced anti-Semitic college quotas himself. He has survived to build a family and business success.

The grandfather is the anchor of the family, and his moral stance is absolute – a person must act with justice and decency in every situation, no mater how difficult. The dad, who views life as a continuous struggle to keep one’s head above water, is more pragmatic – one must do what is necessary to get along. The grandfather despises privilege; the dad wants to leverage any privilege that might fall his way.

The kid actors, Banks Repeta and Jaylin Webb, are excellent. (For some reason, Repeta’s facial features kept reminding me of Molly Parker).

Anthony Hopkins is a treasure, and we should appreciate every performance he continues to bring us, even an unchallenging one like this.

Jeremy Strong is such a strong actor, and he’s such a chameleon that I never seem to recognize him until the closing credits, as he shows up as Jerry Rubin, Lee Harvey Oswald, Abraham Lincoln’s secretary John Nicolay and the like. Here, he seems like a one-dimensional brute for most of this film, until the story reveals his fears and hopes.

Reportedly, writer-director James Gray, who just re-invented the adventure epic with The Lost City of Z, peppered this story with his own childhood experiences. Maybe that’s why Fred Trump and Maryanne Trump appear as characters. Maryanne Trump (Donald’s much more sympathetic sister) shows up in a Jessica Chastain cameo, and lays out the narrative that the privileged are actually meritorious.

I wasn’t wowed upon leaving the theater, but, the more I noodle about this film, the more I admire it.

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT: the trauma of war

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Photo caption: Felix Kammerer in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. Courtesy of Netflix.

The anti-war epic All Quiet on the Western Front unforgettably makes two points: war, in general, is a traumatizing experience and WW I, in particular, was disgustingly senseless.

The screenplay was adapted from the famous Erich Maria Remarque novel, as was the 1930 Lewis Milestone cinematic masterpiece. Since the story is told from the point of view of a German infantry recruit, Netflix commissioned a German director and cast for this version. That director is German filmmaker Edward Berger, who has been working in US television over the past decade. The actors may be German and Austrian, but they speak English in this movie.

Paul (Felix Kammerer) is a callow youth who, with his friends, is swept away by patriotic fervor and enlists in the German Army just in time to participate in the last few months of WW I. Both sets of belligerents have been grappling for years in the mire of trench warfare, suffering mass casualties for the sake of a few hundred yards here and there. The conditions between battles are horrific, and the battles are more so. Paul endures the terror of bombardment, gas attacks, invulnerable enemy tanks and charges across no-man’s land in the face of machine gunfire. The hand-to-hand combat is especially savage.

Kammerer, in his first screen role, is exceptional as an Everyman who experiences physical and mental exhaustion, dread, panic, shock, guilt and hopelessness.

The battle scenes are superbly photographed by cinematographer James Friend, who has 71 screen credits, not a one suggesting that he was capable of anything this masterful.

War may be traumatizing, but this eminently watchable film is not. All Quiet on the Western Front is streaming on Netflix.

on TV: ASHES AND DIAMONDS: a killer wants to stop

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Photo caption: Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Coming up November 15 on Turner Classic Movies, a masterful director and his charismatic star ignite the war-end thriller Ashes and Diamonds, set amidst war-end treachery. It’s one of my Overlooked Noir.

It’s the end of WW II and the Red Army has almost completely liberated Poland from the Nazis. The future governance of Poland is now up in the air, and the Polish resistance can now stop killing Germans and start wrestling for control. Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) is a young but experienced soldier in the Resistance. His commanders assign him to assassinate a communist leader.

Maciek is very good at targeted killing, but he’s weary of it. As he wants out, he finds love. But his commander is insisting on this one last hit.

This is Zbigniew Cybulski’s movie. Often compared to James Dean, Cybulski emanates electricity and unpredictability, Unusual for a leading man, he often wore glasses in his screen roles. He had only been screen acting for four years when he made Ashes and Diamonds. Cybulski died nine years later when hit by a train at age forty,

Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Andrzej Wajda fills the movie with striking visuals, such as viewing Maciek’s love interest, the waitress Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska), alone amidst the detritus of last night’s party, through billows of cigarette smoke. Wajda’s triumphant signature is, literally, fireworks at the climax; the juxtaposition of the celebratory fireworks with Maciek’s emotional crisis is unforgettable.

Ewa Krzyzewska in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Wajda adapted a famous 1948 Polish novel into this 1958 movie. In the adaptation, the filmmaker changed the emphasis from one character to another.

Ashes and Diamonds was the third feature for Andrzej Wajda, who became a seminal Polish filmmaker and received an honorary Oscar. US audiences may remember his 1983 art house hit Danton with Gerard Depardieu.

Ashes and Diamonds can be streamed from Amazon and AppleTV. It was featured at the 2020 Noir City film festival.

Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: LOUIS ARMSTRONG’S BLACK & BLUES. Courtesy of AppleTV.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of two music documentaries, Louis Armstrong’s Black and Blues and The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile, and the surprisingly thoughtful anti-war comedy The Greatest Beer Run Ever. And I’ve recently refreshed The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE.

CURRENT MOVIES

WATCH AT HOME

Elisabeth Moss in HER SMELL.

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

  • Her Smell: powerhouse Elisabeth Moss. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Augustine: obsession, passion and the birth of a science. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Phoenix: riveting psychodrama, wowzer ending. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
  • Headhunters: from smoothly confident scoundrel to human piñata. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
  • Grizzly Man: a fool’s misadventure. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Take Me to the River: fresh, unpredictable and gripping. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Lost Solace: a psychopath afflicted by empathy.  Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.

ON TV

Audrey Totter and Richard Basehart in TENSION.

On November 12 and13, Turner Classic Movies will present a film on Eddie Muller’s Noir Alley that I haven’t yet written about. It’s the deliciously sordid Tension, where Quimby (Richard Basehart), the wimpy night manager of a drugstore, has one of the worst wives in film noir. Claire (Audrey Totter) spends her daytime hours belittling Quimby and her nighttime hours cuckholding him. When she moves into Barney’s beach house and lets the hairy-chested Barney (Lloyd Gough) beat up her nerdy hubbie, the humiliated Quimby has had enough. There’s a murder and a frame. Wikll the cops find the real murderer? Rising star Cyd Charisse plays the good girl, and Barry Sullivan plays the cop who outsmarts them all.

Lloyd Gough and Audrey Totter in TENSION.

THE RETURN OF TANYA TUCKER: FEATURING BRANDI CARLILE: she’s still a handful

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THE RETURN OF TANYA TUCKER.: FEATURING BRANDI CARLILE. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile is a portrait of a music legend with sapped confidence, whose career is jumpstarted by admiring younger musicians. The audience gets a glimpse into the creative process of writing of a song, an Emmy winner at that.

Tanya Tucker, in showbiz from age 9, exploded onto the country music scene with the monster hit Delta Dawn at 13. After stardom in her teen years and a Wild Child period in her twenties, her career dipped, setting up a comeback in her thirties. Now sixty, by 2019 she hadn’t released any recording for 17 years.

In 2019, Shooter Jennings began a project to showcase Tucker’s talent with new material (a la Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash) and invited Brandi Carlile to help. Carlile, a huge Tanya Tucker fan, became central to the project, coaxing Tucker along, pumping up her confidence and riding the roller coaster of Tucker’s reliability issues. The Return of Tanya Tucker is essentially a “making of” documentary about the project.

Now 60 and looking older, Tucker has a lot of mileage on her (and has launched her own brand of tequila, named with the Spanish translation of Wild Thing). Carlile finds out that Tucker is a handful.

Tucker is still a formidable song stylist, though, with a distinctive cry-in-her-beer break in her voice. The project goes better than anyone could have expected, and there’s a Feel Good ending. The Wife particularly enjoyed this film.

I screened The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile for the Nashville Film Festival. It is now in theaters.

LOUIS ARMSTRONG’S BLACK & BLUES: what Armstrong was really thinking

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Photo caption: LOUIS ARMSTRONG’S BLACK & BLUES. Courtesy of AppleTV.

Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues affirms my observation that, ideally, a satisfying documentary requires a great subject and great source material. For decades, apparently focused on his historical legacy, Louis Armstrong audiotaped his conversations with visiting friends, preserving his candid thoughts and reflections on his life and times. His family has made those taped conversations available to the filmmakers and Armstrong’s own words are a revelation.

Armstrong’s public Satchmo persona, perpetually upbeat and non-threatening, made White Americans comfortable and seemed Uncle Tom-like to younger Black Americans. Armstrong’s own words in private (he preferred being called Pops) leave no doubt about his own complicated thoughts. Armstrong, who was raised in the South at the height of the lynching period, was clear-eyed and resolute about American racism. His perception of personal safety and commercial viability intentionally guided his self-invented image and, also, the roles in the Civil Rights movement that he adopted and that he declined.

Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues also lays out Armstrong’s pivotal influences on impact on vocal popular music, on jazz and on American music. We also see Armstrong’s private personality with his family and intimates.

Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues, which closed this year’s Nashville Film Festival, is steaming on AppleTV.

THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER: a blowhard plans a stunt, gets an education

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Photo caption: Zak Efron and Russell Crowe in THE GREATEST BEER RUB EVER. Courtesy of AppleTV.

In the surprisingly thoughtful anti-war comedy The Greatest Beer Run Ever, an ignorant blowhard’s neighborhood pals are serving in the Vietnam War, and he thinks he can uplift their spirits by bringing them beer. It’s a plot too idiotic to be credible – except that it really happened.

Our protagonist is Chickie (Zak Efron), a slacker ne’er-do-well (although we didn’t call them slackers back then) who has the intellectual curiosity of a stump. Offended by non-rah rah media coverage of the Vietnam War and by the burgeoning anti-war protest movement, he thinks a simplistic gesture is in order. As a merchant marine, he actually has means to GET TO Vietnam – by signing on a freighter. So, off he goes, with a duffel packed with cans of beer.

Once he is on the ground in country, of course, he sees that press is accurately reporting that the war is not going well and that the LBJ Administration and the military commanders are indeed lying about it. He learns that not all Vietnamese welcome Americans. And that war is very, very dangerous and very, very scary. Nor do his pals all welcome his crazy stunt.

A lesser director could have made this film as an empty-headed Bro comedy, only about the stunt itself. But Peter Farrelly, as he did with the Oscar-winning Green Book, has made an entertaining movie about a serious human experience.

And give Farrelly credit for something rarely seen in a Hollywood Vietnam War movie – Vietnamese characters are more than cardboard cutouts. Chickie has interactions with a goofy traffic cop, a savvy bartender and, most stirringly, a peasant mother and her young daughter in the countryside. The carnage and grieving among Vietnamese of all persuasions is depicted, too.

That being said, The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a very funny film, with most of the humor stemming from Chickie’s dunderheadness and the military characters all assuming that an American civilian asking for a helicopter ride into a combat zone MUST be CIA.

The very underrated Zak Efron carries the movie as Chickie gets force fed a life-changing reality check. Russell Crowe is excellent as a world-weary war correspondent. Bill Murray, without a single wink at the camera, is perfect as the lads’ bar owner, a WW II vet who just doesn’t get it. Matt Cook is very funny as a junior Army officer who idolizes the CIA.

Make sure you watch the closing credits.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever is streaming on AppleTV.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Charlbi Dean and Harris Dickinson in in TRIANGLE OF SADNESS. Courtesy of NEON.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of three big movies – Tar, Triangle of Sadness and Amsterdam – each a disappointment in some way. This week, I’m bringing you an all new The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE. Plus an obscure but personally meaningful remembrance.

REMEMBRANCE

John Jay Osborn Jr. wrote the autobiographical novel which became the movie The Paper Chase, which has been very meaningful to me. That film, about a first-year law student, was released just before I started law school and many of the protagonist’s experiences mirrored those of my own first year.

CURRENT MOVIES

WATCH AT HOME

Vincent Lindon (left) and Soko (center) inAUGUSTINE

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

  • Augustine: obsession, passion and the birth of a science. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Phoenix: riveting psychodrama, wowzer ending. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
  • Headhunters: from smoothly confident scoundrel to human piñata. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
  • Her Smell: powerhouse Elisabeth Moss. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Grizzly Man: a fool’s misadventure. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Take Me to the River: fresh, unpredictable and gripping. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Lost Solace: a psychopath afflicted by empathy.  Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.

ON TV

Robert Ryan in THE SET-UP
Robert Ryan in THE SET-UP

On November 8, Turner Classic Movies will present The Set-Up (1949), one of the great film noirs and one of the very best boxing movies. Robert Ryan plays a washed-up boxer that nobody believes can win again, not even his long-suffering wife (Audrey Totter).  His manager doesn’t even bother to tell him that he is committed to taking a dive in his next fight.  But what if he wins?

Director Robert Wise makes use of real-time narrative, then highly innovative. Watch for the verisimilitude of the bar where the deal goes down.

Robert Ryan in THE SET-UP
Robert Ryan in THE SET-UP