movie gourmet

LISTENING TO KENNY G: derision, devotion and a hard-working guy

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LISTENING TO KENNY G. Courtesy of HBO.

Listening to Kenny G is director Penny Lane’s surprisingly revelatory biodoc of smooth jazz icon Kenny G. Lane chose Kenny G as a subject to focus on the dramatic and passionate conflict of opinion about his music. Kenny G has sold over 75 million albums and has millions of fans, many of whom have gotten married to his music. The consensus of music critics and academics, however, is that his music is insipid, shallow, commercial crap.

It turns out that Kenny G and his critics may disagree about whether it is Good Music or Bad Music, but not on the underlying facts that Kenny G isn’t trying to challenge listeners, to express ideas or to engage in any cultural conversation. He is just trying to be very technically proficient and to make people feel good, especially relaxed and romantic.

We spend a lot of time with Kenny G, a nice guy who is very comfortable in his skin. He doesn’t show the least bit of bitterness toward those who spew torrents of bile at his work. Kenny G, who comes from the any publicity is good publicity school of public relations, is the perfect subject for a documentary film, very accessible, open and transparent. What you see is what you get. And he gladly points out the moments that he got lucky.

Listening to Kenny G works – even if you have zero interest in Kenny G – because of the Penny Lane’s imaginative approach. Lane (Our Nixon, Hail Satan?, NUTS!) has become one our funniest and most trenchant documentarians. Just watch the faces of the critics as they try to express, in a socially acceptable way, their views of Kenny G’s music.

Near the beginning, Lane asks Kenny G what he loves about music and gets this UNEXPECTED answer: “I don’t know if I love music that much. When I listen to music, I think about the musicians and I just think about what it takes to make that music and how much they had to practice.”

What Kenny G DOES love is doing something very well. His need to be the very best, without a bit of self-consciousness, drives him to work relentlessly at his skill on the saxophone – and at golf and aviation.

And here’s something I didn’t know: Kenny G’s Going Home from the Kenny G Live album has become the unofficial national closing song for businesses in China; every day, the song is looped over and over for the final half hour or so that businesses are open.

Listening to Kenny G is streaming on HBO. I highly recommend the 32-minute interview with director Penny Lane in HBO’s Extra Features.

NOIR CITY returns in-person in January

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The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns IN-PERSON January 20-23, 2022. What’s new in the 2022 edition of Noir City:

  • As usual, Noir City will be held in a vintage movie palace – but it will be the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (not San Francisco’s Castro).
  • This year’s program contains all American movies from the classic film noir period; (no international titles or neo-noirs this year).
  • The festival will be compressed into four days from the usual ten.
  • Masks and proof of COVID vaccination will be required.

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.

Muller, host of the popular Noir Alley franchise on Turner Classic Movies, explains, “The Grand Lake provided Noir Alley with a temporary studio during the pandemic, and I realized its vintage movie palace atmosphere, and the care and upkeep of the venue, would work perfectly for the type of show NOIR CITY loyalists have come to expect. Plus, I love Oakland. It hurts that the town has lost the Warriors and the Raiders, so I’m happy to give a little something back to the city’s cultural life.“

The 2022 Noir City will host the world premiere of the Film Noir Foundation’s 35mm restoration of The Argyle Secrets. The Argyle Secrets (1948) is not available for streaming, nor are these Noir City titles:

  • The Accused (1949)
  • Open Secret (1948)
  • The Sniper (1952) – shot on location in San Francisco.
  • Force of Evil (1948).

The rest of the program includes the more familiar titles On Dangerous Ground, The Prowler, Odds Against Tomorrow, No Way Out, The Killer That Stalked New York, All the King’s Men and Crossfire. The 2022 program, subtitled “They Tried to Warn Us!“, offers movies that address contemporary issues: racism, anti-Semitism, sexual predators, serial killers, police brutality and a KILLER CONTAGION. Muller describes them as “warning flares about issues that still plague our culture more than seventy years later.”

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER. Courtesy of the Film Noir Foundation.

Movies to See Right Now

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The Power of the Dog: Kodi Smit-McPhee on his breakout performance | EW.com
Photo caption: Kodi Smit-McPhee in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Courtesy of Netflix.

This week – three new movies in theaters, but your best bet is The Power of the Dog on Netflix.

And it happened AGAIN, for the second time this month and the fourth time in thirty years: I had the whole theater all to myself at a Monday 1 PM screening of Benedetta at the Shattuck.

IN THEATERS

House of Gucci: Lady Gaga and Adam Driver shine in this modern tale of Shakespearean family treachery.

C’mon C’mon: In Mike Mills’ charming and authentic film, Joaquin Phoenix plays a well-intentioned, emotionally intelligent guy who gets an immersion course in parenting.

Benedetta: Paul Verhoeven’s entertaining parable of belief and class, wrapped in scandal and sacrilege.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

Some of my choices for Best Movies of 2021 are already on video:

More 2021 movies on video:

ON TV

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Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN

On December 13, Turner Classic Movies is airing eight of the most important films noir, including:

  • The Naked City
  • The Asphalt Jungle
  • Kansas City Confidential
  • Crime Wave
  • The Big Sleep
  • Out of the Past
  • Mildred Pierce.

I’m highlighting The Narrow Margin, a taut 71 minutes of tension from my Overlooked Noir. Growly cop Charles McGraw plays hide-and-seek with a team of hit men on a claustrophobic train. Marie Windsor is unforgettable as the assassins’ target. McGraw and Windsor’s performances are first-rate, and their hardboiled dialogue is terrific. Director Richard Fleisher, early in his career, imaginatively stages the woman-hunt up and down the tight corridors and compartments of the moving train. Masterpiece.

I love this movie, and a replica of the poster is next to my TV.

Director Richard Fleischer’s use of reflection in THE NARROW MARGIN

BENEDETTA: a mystery of belief, made scandalous

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Photo caption: Daphné Patakia (second from left), Virginie Efira (center) and Charlotte Rampling (right) in BENEDETTA. Courtesy of IFC Films.

Benedetta is Paul Verhoeven’s extraordinary film about belief, embedded in scandalous Renaissance history.

Let’s get right to the scandalous part, which has earned Benedetta notoriety since its premiere at Cannes. As a filmmaker, Paul Verhoeven has proven himself to be an enthusiastic provocateur with the lurid Basic Instinct and Showgirls and the more mature (and still subversive) Elle.

So, everybody expects something outrageous from Verhoeven, but, in Benedetta, he plunged right past naughty to sacrilege – two nuns pleasuring each other with a figurine of the Virgin Mary adapted into a dildo. I had originally titled this review “two nuns, a dildo and the Black Death“.

But Benedetta is really a highly entertaining parable, albeit a cynical one, about belief and class. Here’s the story.

It’s the early 1600s in Tuscany, and Benedetta, the precocious and spirited eight-year-old daughter of a rich family (more on that later) enters a convent. Even as a child she attracts strange happenings, which could be miracles or coincidences. She grows into a talented young woman (Virginie Efira of Sibyl). With a gift for performance and her education, she becomes indispensable to the abbess (Charlotte Rampling), whether as the star of religious pageants or in keeping the convent’s books.

When the earthy and saucy Bartolomea (Daphné Patakia) joins the convent, the two become secret lovers.

Benedetta starts having more intense visions – visions of a very tangible Jesus. She starts speaking in a male register, as if possessed by Him. Then she develops stigmata. Holy moly!

Are these real miracles on earth produced by God – supernatural events that result from sincere faith? Or are they a hoax, dishonestly manufactured by Benedetta for her own benefit? Or is she experiencing delusions, hallucinations and disassociation due to what we understand today as a mental disorder?

The canny abbess (Rampling) and the provost (Olivier Rabourdin) the town’s chief religious leader, both from the educated upper class, disdain any possibility of miracles here, but cynically choose to accept the financial benefits of their very own destination for pilgrims. The parish priest, mindful of his superiors’ authority and the new money, turns a blind eye. It’s established early in Benedetta that the convent is run on money, not only on devotion, and that the hierarchy of the Church is entirely corrupt. Unfortunately for the locals, the papal nuncio to Florence (Lambert Wilson) gets wind of the possible chicanery, and he won’t be made a fool of.

Of course, people tend to believe what conforms to their own narratives. In Benedetta, belief in the supernatural is presented not as faith, but as superstition – and it runs along class lines. Benedetta, the abbess, the provost and the nuncio are privileged to have been born to wealth, which brings education and power. The townspeople and the nuns from humble backgrounds are ignorant and gullible – why wouldn’t God appear in my time and my town?

Bartolomea is most assuredly from among the ignorant and powerless, but, between orgasms, she sees what is happening with her own eyes.

Benedetta is based on Judith C. Brown’s book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. Benedetta Carlini, Sister Bartolomea, Father Ricordati and the papal nuncio Alfonso Giglioli are real historical characters. Benedetta and Bartolomea’s sexual liaison, Benedetta’s claims of stigmata and supernatural visions and the Plague in northern Italy all really happened. Verhoeven took some liberties with the ending (and the dildo).

Verhoeven sure lets us know that we are in 17th Century Italy. A hundred years before, Michelangelo and Brunelleschi may have been changing the world’s culture 45 miles away in Florence, but this is still an age where the Church can have someone burned at the stake. This is a world of the bubonic plague, roving bands of mercenary brigands, self-flagellation by the devout and horrific (off-screen) torture.

One of the pleasures of Benedetta is the medieval and Renaissance music on the soundtrack.

There isn’t a bad performance in Benedetta. I gotta say that Charlotte Rampling remains one of my favorite screen actors, with her eyes ranging from the most piercing to the saddest and most knowing. Benedetta is far from her most transgressive film, having starred in The Night Porter (1974). Rampling has delivered some of her most powerful work in the past decade: 45 Years and The Sense of an Ending.

Ever the carnival barker, Paul Verhoeven draws an audience into the tent with over-the-top sex and sacrilege for a thoughtful exploration of faith and superstition. Benedetta is now in a few art house theaters.

C’MON C’MON: parenting, even an adorable kid, is hard

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Photo caption: Joaquin Phoenix and Woody Norman in C’MON C’MON. Courtesy of A24.

In the charming and authentic C’mon C’mon, Joaquin Phoenix plays a well-intentioned, emotionally intelligent guy who gets an immersion course in parenting.

Phoenix plays Johnny, an NPR-style radio journalist whose current project is interviewing children, getting their views on their world, their parents and our future. Johnny is really good with his subjects, but he is not responsible for the 24/7 welfare of these kids.

His Los Angeles sister Viv (Gaby Hoffman) has to deal with an out-of-town emergency, so she asks Johnny tocome from New York and watch her nine-year-old son Jesse (Woody Norman) for a couple days. The emergency becomes extended, and Johnny takes Jesse back home to New York with him, and then on an assignment in New Orleans.

Fortunately, Jesse enjoys using Johnny’s professional sound equipment for recording the ambient sounds of Venice Beach’s Ocean Front Walk, a skate park, the bustling NYC streets, Central Park and a New Orleans street parade.

But Jesse’s life has been disrupted, and Johnny learns that parenting a kid whose life has been disrupted is hard. Jesse may be just a kid, but he’s more than a match for Johnny.

C’mon C’mon is written and directed by Mike Mills, who makes a feature film every five or so years: 2005’s Thumbsucker, 2010’s Beginners (Christopher Plummer won a Supporting Actor Oscar) and 2016’s 20th Century Women (Mills was nominated for a screenwriting Oscar). I wish his movies came more often. Mills is interested in making films for adults about inter-family issues.

Joaquin Phoenix is utterly believable as this well-intentioned and sympathizing character. Phoenix has never been more relatable. One critic had even described him as “endearing” (Joaquin Phoenix?) and, surprisingly, that adjective fits.

Woody Norman, a kid absolutely brimming with personality, plays Jesse.

Gaby Hoffman is excellent in a far less neurotic role than the ones she often gets; her Viv is a solidly competent working mom who is highly-stressed and then even more highly-stressed.

C’mon C’mon is playing in theaters.

HOUSE OF GUCCI: don’t wish, you may get it

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Photo caption: Lady Gaga and Adam Driver in HOUSE OF GUCCI. Courtesy of MGM

Lady Gaga and Adam Driver shine in House of Gucci, a story of sordid behavior among the rich and famous, “inspired by true events”. Driver plays Maurizio, the feckless scion of the famed Gucci clan. Lady Gaga plays Patrizia, the humbly born striver who snares Maurizio as a husband. In filmmaker Ridley Scott’s telling, the conniving Patrizia molds the charmingly goofy naif into someone with the wherewithal to screw his relatives out of the business.

This is Shakespearean family treachery – and Patrizia will learn the price of turning someone into a cutthroat. Lady Gaga is once again (A Star Is Born) absolutely magnetic on-screen. Driver makes the character of Maurizio very, very interesting as he evolves into (almost) what Patrizia wants him to be.

The flashiest role – and performance – is Jared Leto’s as Maurizio’s cousin Paolo. Leto is physically unrecognizable in the role – chubby, with the hair of the The Three Stooges’ Larry Fine and corduroy suits of absurdly wide wale. In The House of Gucci, every other character explicitly and correctly describes Paolo as an idiot. Many critics have compared Paolo, as the family’ weakest link, to Fredo in The Godfather; however, John Cazale’s performance as Fredo brought subtlety that was not on the written page, and Paolo is written to be a full-out buffoon. Leto is very funny, though.

Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons are excellent as the Gucci generation that built the business. Pacino’s Aldo (Paolo’s father) is a shameless hustler and Iron’s Rodolfo (Maurizio’s father) has reinvented himself as a patrician recluse.

Although it’s a smidgen too long, I was entertained by The House of Gucci. But The Wife, even less tolerant of long running times than am I, was bored and disgruntled by what she saw as a lack of redemption.

(For some reason, I keep calling this movie “House of Pizza” after the legendary San Jose joint.)

House of Gucci is now in theaters.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Benedict Cumberbatch in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Credit: Kirsty Griffin; courtesy of Netflix.

This week – three more movies in theaters, five more now streaming and a note on my own William Randolph Hearst movie-going fantasy.

Every once in a loooong while, I have an experience that I treasure – seeing a movie as the only patron in a theater. Since I visited Hearst Castle as a kid, I’ve loved the idea of posing as the magnate at his very own private theater. One would think that this would happen more than it does. In a non COVID year, I will see 100+ movies in theaters, and I see lots of obscure movies at sparsely-attended weekday matinees. But, almost always, there’s at least one more audience member.

Anyway, it happened for the third time last Monday – The Souvenir Part II at San Francisco’s Landmark Embarcadero. My previous two solo screenings were of The Mariachi in 1992 at the Los Gatos and of Not Fade Away in 2012 at the AMC Cupertino Square.

IN THEATERS

The Power of the Dog: Jane Campion’s simmering drama of hostility that, most unexpectedly, meets its match. Brilliant performances by Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit-McPhee. Also now streaming on Netflix.

Julia: This charming documentary, affectionate and clear-eyed, tells the unlikely story of how Julia Child broke through every expectation of her gender, class and upbringing to become an icon in her fifties.

The Souvenir Part II: An exquisite art film about a young woman’s emotional recovery. This won’t be in theaters for very long.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

Brian Wilson (seated left) in BRIAN WILSON: LONG PROMISED ROAD. Courtesy of Nashville Film Festival.

A slew of movies have become widely available to stream, by which I mean that they can be rented for $3.99-$6.99 from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube:

If you are willing to pay $19.99, you can already stream Lamb, No Time to Die, Last Night in Soho and The Many Saints of Newark. Or you can wait just a few weeks for these films to get down to $6 territory.

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

ON TV

On December 6, Turner Classic Movies airs Caged, the 1950s prototype for Orange Is the New Black?  Eleanor Parker played the naive young woman plunged into a harsh women’s prison filled with hard-bitten fellow prisoners and compassion-free guards. Parker was nominated for an acting Oscar, but her performance pales next to that of Hope Emerson, whose electric portrayal of a hulking guard also got an Oscar nod. Caged also features the fine character actresses Thelma Moorhead, Jane Darwell (Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath) and Ellen Corby (Grandma Walton here as a young woman).  Sixty-four years later, Caged might still be the best women’s prison movie ever.

Hope Emerson and Eleanor Parker in CAGED
Hope Emerson and Eleanor Parker in CAGED

THE POWER OF THE DOG: one man’s meanness and another man’s growth

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Photo caption: Benedict Cumberbatch in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Courtesy of Netflix.

Set in 1925 on a vast Montana cattle ranch Jane Campion’s simmering drama The Power of the Dog is a portrait of a seething man and three pivotal relationships.

That man is Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), who owns the ranch with his brother George (Jesse Plemons). Phil is a natural leader, quick-witted and verbal, with the cowboy skills and machismo to single-handedly castrate 1500 steers…without wearing gloves. He acts like he is living in 1870, but not out of ignorance – he was Phi Beta Kappa at Yale and has chosen his retro persona.

George has also been to college, but one senses that George didn’t have the intellectual curiosity to finish. George is quiet but not self-conscious about it. Comfortable in his own skin, he dresses like a prosperous 1925 businessman, even when on horseback. Phil has excitement, and George has decency.

There is no alpha in the brothers’ relationship. With all his overt masculinity- Phil defers to George socially and in business. Despite their contrasting personalities, they complement each other comfortably, and they even sleep in the same hotel bed.

Kirsten Dunst in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Courtesy of Netflix.

Phil is rocked when George suddenly brings home a bride, the widow Rose (Kirsten Dunst). (Dunst and Plemons are a couple in real life.) Phil reacts with a toxic campaign intended to inflict misery on Rose. He bullies her son and os so mean to her that she won’t even come down to dinner in her own house without her husband. Once capable of running an inn and restaurant, she is now shattered, hiding booze around the house so she can sneak self-medication, and she sinks into a puddle of drunkenness.

But Phil’s most pivotal relationship is with Rose’s teen son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is sensitive, artistic and effeminate. From his first sighting of Peter, Phil unleashes a torrent of bullying with merciless hostility and incites the entire bunkhouse full of cowboys to join in. Peter’s life at the ranch becomes as filled with dread as his mother’s.

Campion doesn’t linger on the point, but Peter returns to the ranch from a year of medical studies, having developed a close friendship with another guy at school. Peter is much more self-confident, and then he discovers one of Phil’s secrets. At this point, the scales are tipped, and Phil and Peter’s interactions evolve into more of a duel. After all, Peter is the only character who is at least as smart as Phil. What happens is utterly unexpected.

The ending of The Power of the Dog is the ultimate irony – on multiple levels.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit-McPhee deliver two of the year’s finest performances. Benedict’s Phil is fundamentally mean, with a meanness driven from rage just below the surface, perhaps from self-loathing. Or, perhaps the rage is from Phil’s resenting that he has any vulnerability.

There is (hopefully) a time when each boy becomes a man. In the culture, we usually see this depicted physically, but it has more to do with developing a new psychological toughness than physical toughness. Late in the film, The Power of the Dog morphs into a singular coming of age story. Smit-McPhee’s performance as Peter finds his own mental and emotional power and takes psychological command is the key to The Power of the Dog’s success.

The Power of the Dog: Kodi Smit-McPhee on his breakout performance | EW.com
Kodi Smit-McPhee in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Courtesy of Netflix.

The entire cast is very good, including Keith Carradine, Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under), and Thomasin McKenzie (Leave No Trace, Jojo Rabbit, Last Night in Soho).

The Power of the Dog is directed by Jane Campion (The Piano), and Campion adapted the screenplay from the Thomas Savage novel.  Campion is a historic figure, the second woman to be nominated for a directing Oscar, the first to win the Palme d’Or; and a favorite of critics and cinephiles.  I have not warmed to her other work, except for the first season of the episodic series Top of the Lake, starring Elisabeth Moss.  But The Power of the Dog is a perfectly paced film, as the story builds from an exercise in dread into the unforeseeable.

The Power of the Dog is also a beautiful film, thanks to Campion and rising cinematographer Ari Wegner (Zola). I wouldn’t have suspected that New Zealand is standing in for Montana. Campion found enough dust and dry, yellow grassland in New Zealand to make it work very well.

The Power of the Dog has been in theaters and is now streaming on Netflix.

THE SOUVENIR PART II: her emotional recovery

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Photo caption: Honor Swinton Byrne in THE SOUVENIR PART II. Courtesy of A24.

In The Souvenir Part II, writer-director Joanna Hogg continues the autobiographical story from her The Souvenir, where the young filmmaker Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) has been devastated by the sudden death of her lover, which reveals that he was NOTHING that he had seemed to be. Part II follows Julie’s emotional recovery.

Grieving and shattered, Julie is consumed by investigating, Who WAS he, REALLY? The central question in this story is whether she be able to process the loss and get on with her life. And then, as she moves on, will she get to make her movie?

I called The Souvenir “certainly…the most profoundly sad film of the year”. Part II is more relaxed and sometimes even funny (and less challenging to watch than the first film).

Hogg is a remarkably gifted filmmaker. Making use of static shots, and glimpsing characters through doorways and in mirrors, she frames each shot exquisitely. The most economical of storytellers, Hogg relies on a MINIMUM of exposition ithrough dialogue,and lets the audience pick up the story through the telling visual hints.

Honor Swinton Byrne’s quiet but powerful performance as Julie is exceptional. Her scene in a pub where Julie begins to connect with a sympathetic and supportive film editor (Joe Alwyn) is one of the year’s best.

Julie’s mom is played by Swinton Byrne’s mother, Tilda Swinton, who is flawless. Richard Ayoade shines as Julie’s most talented and temperamental classmate.

You don’t need to have first watched The Souvenir to appreciate The Souvenir Part II. Part II is playing in theaters, but won’t be for long.

THE HARDER THEY FALL: forgettable Old West shoot ’em up, but with soul

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Jonathan Majors and Zazie Beetz in THE HARDER THEY FALL. Courtesy of Netflix.

The Harder They Fall is a neo-spaghetti western, pretty much like Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, except that all the gunslingers are of African ancestry. As in Taratinoesque film, there is lots of bloody violence prefaced by clever speechifying.

Technically, this is a revenge film, with a heinous act in the opening scene sure to to be avenged in the last. But it’s really an excuse for some of the finest Black screen actors (Regina King, Idris Elba, LaKeith Stanfield, Delroy Lindo) to don cowboy gear and engage in the Western genre.

The protagonist is played by Jonathan Majors, who broke through in The Last Black Man in San Francisco, and it’s great to see him leading a Hollywood movie. Because I don’t watch much TV, I’m late to the party in recognizing Zazie Beetz as a compelling screen presence; man, she’s a force.

Deon Cole (Blackish, I’m Fine, Thank You or Asking) so good in broadly comic roles, gets to show off his dramatic chops.

There is plenty of humor sprinkled throughout and one LOL moment when the protagonists ride into a White Town. That joke is an homage to one in Blazing Saddles.

There’s nothing original about The Harder They Fall except for the all-Black cast. There’s nothing memorable about it, either – just 2 hours and 19 minutes of amusing shoot ’em up with some really excellent actors.

The Harder They Fall is streaming on Netflix.