Rants and Ruminations

NOIR CITY comes to your home

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Ingmar Zeisberg and Helmut Wildt in BLACK GRAVEL

Here’s a once-in-a-pandemic film noir experience, the opportunity to see classic film noir that you can’t see anywhere else. The Noir City International at the AFI Silver is available to stream through November 29.

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president, the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and movies not available on DVD or streaming.

This January, as usual, I attended this year’s festival, sharing the program with a thousand other film fans in a vintage movie palace, San Francisco’s Castro Theatre. In normal years, Eddie Muller then takes the program on the road, but the pandemic eliminated the satellite Noir City mini-fests in other cities. Good news – this year’s festival program is streaming through the AFI Silver so everyone can watch it at home.

This year’s program is Noir City International 2 – l focusing on international film noir, as it did so successfully six years ago. Then I was enthralled by the Argentine Bitter Stems and the Swedish Girl with Hyacinths, and must admit that I had never even imagined that vintage film noir from those nations existed. This year’s fest brings us titles from Argentina, France, Germany, Korea, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Poland.

One of best things about Noir City is the opportunity to see films that are not available to stream. This year Noir CIty is outdoing itself by presenting SIX films that can’t found on a streaming platform, most of them impossible to see outside of Noir City in any format.

  • Black Gravel (West Germany 1961)
  • The Black Vampire (Argentina 1953)
  • …And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear (Czechoslovakia 1965)
  • The Devil Strikes at Night (West Germany 1957)
  • Panique (France 1947)
  • Razzia (France 1955)

Pale Flower, Ashes and Diamonds and Any Number Can Win are only available to stream periodically on the Criterion Channel.

“Difficult to find” doesn’t mean “obscure”. The program includes films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Pierre Melville and Roebert Siodmak and starring Ingrid Bergman, Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

PALE FLOWER

My personal favorites on the program:

  • Pale Flower: Writer-director Masahiro Shinoda’s masterpiece is a slow burn that erupts into breathtaking set pieces. This is pioneering neo-noir; its look and feel is as different from classic noir as are Elevator to the Gallows and Blast of Silence.
  • Black Gravel: This tragic romance is set in post-war Germany, a Petri dish for hustlers. Rarely has a movie plot swung as rapidly between They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught.
  • Ashes and Diamonds: Auteur Andrzej Wajda‘s filmmaking gifts are on display in this Hit Man Finds Love tale, set as the Polish Resistance battles for a place in post-war Poland. As kinetic and unpredictable as James Dean, Zbigniew Cybulski makes for an irresistibly charismatic leading man.
  • The Black Vampire: In this often trippy 1953 remake of Fritz Lang’s M, Nathán Pinzón is AT LEAST AS GOOD as was Peter Lorre in the original.

The offerings also include Leave Her to Heaven with Gene Tierney as the most disturbing female villain in film noir and Detour with Ann Savage as the grungiest and most predatory. The Korean The Housemaid is so bizarre as to defy description. And the coolest middle-aged guy in cinema, Jean Gabin, stars in Razzia and Any Number Can Win.

DO NOT MISS this rare opportunity. Individual screenings are $12 and the Festival Pass is $125. Explore the program and get your pass or tickets.

Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Sean Connery and his gifts

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Sean Connery as Bond, James Bond

If we’re going to talk about male cinema stars with overpowering magnetism and studly charisma, we’re going to start with Sean Connery, who has died at age 90.

No screen actor has more personally defined a role than did Connery with James Bond. The character of James Bond in Ian Fleming’s source novels is nothing special; Bond was made iconic by Connery’s gifts.

The Bond movies are cartoonish, but Connery’s James Bond never is. Connery’s Bond is hunky, but he’s not just a hunk. He is supremely confident. He is cunning. He always assesses a risk before he takes it.

Several actors, some very talented, have also played the James Bond role that Connery originated. Only Daniel Craig has approached the mix of rugged charm and resourceful physicality that that Connery delivered.

I learned a lot about the crushing childhood poverty that formed Connery in this insightful NYT obit. There’s also a great Sydney Lumet admonition against underestimating an actor’s charm.

My favorite Connery performance (and the best movie he was in) is The Man Who Would Be King (1975). It’s a great Rudyard Kipling adventure yarn,  gloriously brought to the screen by director John Huston.

Connery stars with Michael Caine as a pair of reprobates mustered out of the Queen’s army in colonial India. Rather than return to menial prospects in England, these cheeky and lovable scoundrels seek to make their fortune as mercenaries in the outskirts of the Raj.  Fortune smiles, and they reach unforeseeable success – and then Connery’s character overreaches…

The Man Who Would Be King, which is widely available to stream, is unforgettable, and so is Sean Connery.

Sean Connery (right) with Saeed Jaffrey and Michael Caine in THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

the art house comes to your home

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THE WHISTLERS, which I watched at the Roxie Virtual Cinema

Independent films are still here, even though we can’t go to the art house theater in the Age of COVID. Not all the top acclaimed indies can be streamed right away from the major VOD services, but you watch them now at home on platforms like Virtual Cinema. Expect to pay $8-10; yes, that’s more than the $5-7 you pay at Amazon and iTunes, but it’s often the only source, and your ticket purchase supports your own local art house theater.

I’ve been watching movies from San Francisco’s Roxie Virtual Cinema. Since the COVID lockdown, I’ve seen The Wild Goose Lake, The Whistlers, Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things, Mr. Topaze and You Don’t Nomi at the Roxie.

If you want to support a Silicon Valley theater, the Pruneyard Cinemas has just launched its own Pruneyard Virtual Cinemas through eventive.

Notably, the Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles has jumped in, too. In my book, this is the best art house chain in the US, and a whopping 32 films are now available to stream from its Laemmle Virtual Cinema.

Other indie films are being distributed on Theatrical-at-home. That’s where I watched The 11th Green.

I’m not planning to go to a real indoor movie theater anytime soon. Some film festivals and film society film series are pivoting to on-line screening, with uneven success. Right now, the best bet is Virtual Cinema at your own own favorite theater.

THE 11TH GREEN, which I watched on Theatrical-at-home

farewell to John Saxon

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John Saxon in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS

Versatile. Prolific. Intense. Such was the late actor John Saxon, who amassed over 200 screen credits, mostly on TV. Saxon was the handsome, swarthy, character actor who you would come to recognize when he showed up on Dr. Kildare, The Fantastic Journey, Mary Tyler Moore Show, Ironside or Murder, She Wrote. Saxon’s ethnic ambiguity (he was an Italian-American from Brooklyn, born Carmine Orrico) led him to play lots of Latinx roles – and an Israeli general in Raid on Entebbe.

Saxon appeared five times over ten seasons of Gunsmoke, playing guys named Gristy Calhoun, Pedro Manez, Virgil Stanley, Dingo and Carl Stram, Jr., and in 32 episodes of Falcon Crest (plus Dynasty and Melrose Place).

In 1976 ALONE, Saxon appeared on The Rockford Files, The Bionic Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man, Starsky and Hutch and Wonder Woman, acted in seven movies. and starred in the miniseries Once an Eagle.

Saxon’s best known movie roles were as Jackie Chan’s martial arts buddy Roper in Enter the Dragon (Saxon had already studied karate for years) and as police Lieutenant Don Thompson, who repeatedly battled Freddy Kreuger in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

Saxon was always reliable, but he could handle quality roles when he got them. One was in an obscure Korean War film, War Hunt (1962), where Saxon played the psycho killer in the platoon, and another was in the Clint Eastwood western Joe Kidd (1972), where Saxon played Mexican revolutionary Luis Chama.

John Saxon in JOE KIDD

Remembering John Lewis

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John Lewis (on far right) in JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

John Lewis, that most profoundly American of American heroes, has died at age 80. Released just nine days ago, the documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble traces the life of the civil rights icon.  I usually don’t buy reverential biodocs, but when the subject is a freaking saint, I guess you have to go with it.  The rest of the title comes from Lewis’ mantra – if you see injustice, make good trouble, necessary trouble. 

US Representative John Lewis, of course, was a real hero.  As a very young man in 1965, he had been leading efforts to register Blacks to vote in Selma, Alabama, including a peaceful march to the State Capitol in Montgomery.  On March 7, 1965, the march got as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma when they were attached by local law enforcement and Ku Klux Klan members under the command of Sheriff Jim Clark.  Lewis was in the very first rank and was beaten, shedding his own blood on “Bloody Sunday”.  Two subsequent marches on the bridge and the LBJ speech that followed led directly to the Voting Rights Act of 1964, the most important civil rights legislation since 1867. 

In John Lewis: Good Trouble, we see footage from the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  We see a young John Lewis being beaten in 1965, and we see an elderly Lewis in an anniversary march with President Barack Obama and former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

John Lewis: Good Trouble is well-sourced by director Dawn Porter, even though only a few of Lewis’ contemporaries survive.  When the first Black president was elected, Lewis says he wept for JFK, RFK, Dr. King and the others who hadn’t lived to see it.  Fortunately, Lewis had sisters still alive who participated in the documentary.

We get an inside glimpse at Lewis’ childhood.  We get to see Lewis watching footage of himself at a pivotal Nashville sit-in that he had “never seen”.  And, this intimate portrait shows us some dry Lewis humor and some impressive octogenarian dance moves.

How did Lewis get to Congress?  John Lewis: Good Trouble shows us the race against his longtime friend and fellow Civil Rights icon Julian Bond. My day job is in politics, and I understand that, to win, you have to do what you have to do to win; others may find this episode bracing and unsettling. 

 John Lewis: Good Trouble is an insightful view of a man and of a critical point in American history.  You can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

tonight on PBS – RECORDER: THE MARION STOKES PROJECT: it seemed crazy at the time…

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Marion Stokes in RECORDER: THE MARION STOKES PROJECT, directed by Matt Wolf. Photo credit: Eileen Emond and courtesy of Zeitgeist Films.

Tonight, the excellent documentary Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project will air on PBS Independent Lens. It will be available to stream for free from PBS through July 14 here. I also recommend this PBS interview with Director Matt Wolf.

If you miss it on PBS, you can pay to stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Ennio Morricone

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Ennio Morricone, one of the greatest movie music composers (and perhaps the most iconic) has died. Among his 519 composing credits, he is most known for his groundbreaking scores in the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

He won an Oscar for The Hateful 8 in 2015. Although his score was excellent, it referred to his earlier, entirely original work, and this was probably a well-deserved “career achievement” award.

Morricone’s work was ever aspirational, seemingly seeking to become iconic. It takes fearlessness to incorporate whistling, gunshots, chanting men’s choirs, the Jew’s Harp, and what the New York Times calls the “bizarre, wailing “ah-ee-ah-ee-ah,” played on a sweet potato-shaped wind instrument called an ocarina“. Morricone didn’t believe in understatement.

Leone earned his first credit in 1960 and wrote the startlingly original Fistful in 1964 at age 36. His music defined the genre of Spaghetti Western as much as did Sergio Leone’s grotesques and closeups. Along with Leone’s great The Man with No Name trilogy, Leona composed for Once Upon a Time in the West and 2 Mules for Sister Sara. His trademark music elevated well over ten Spaghetti Westerns, including the lesser Seven Guns for theMacGregors, Navajo Joe, The Great Silence, My Name Is Nobody, and Duck You Sucker (and I’ve seem ’em all).

Besides the spaghetti westerns, Morricone composed the scores of The Battle of Algiers, 1900 Once Upon a Time in America, La Cage aux Folles and Cinema Paradiso. He was still working in 2020 at age 91.

I particularly admire his score for the 1986 historical drama The Mission. In the video below, Morricone himself conducts a symphony orchestra playing the theme from The Mission. In the story, an 18th Century Jesuit (Robert DeNiro) tries to Christianize an indigenous tribe in Paraguay (and it doesn’t end well). At 3:15, a flute reflects the indigenous culture and, at 5:30, a massive choir brings in the gravitas.

a tribute to Carl Reiner: THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!

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comedy legend Carl Reiner

No one has been more important in the evolution of American comedy than Carl Reiner, who has died at age 98. Reiner was a writer and performer on Sid Caesar’s seminal Your Show of Shows. He created one of the greatest and most influential TV sitcoms, The Dick Van Dyke Show. Reiner was the comedy partner who helped Mel Brooks form his work. And he directed four Steve Martin comedies. Reiner was the third person awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Active to the end, Reiner was playing Saul Bloom in the Ocean’s 11 franchise into his late eighties and voiced Carl Reineroceros in last year’s Toy Story 4. In recent years, he also Tweeted some pointed and wickedly funny anti-Trump video commentaries.

Alan Arkin, Eva Marie Saint and Carl Reiner in THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!

Reiner starred in one of my favorite movie comedies – the still timely satire on the Duck and Cover Era, the 1966 The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!.  At the height of the Cold War, a Soviet nuclear submarine runs aground and is trapped just off a tiny New England coastal village, and the crew sends a party ashore to heist a boat. The landing party encounters a vacationing American family and the two groups must work together to find a solution to help the sub escape without igniting World War III.

The superb cast includes Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint, Jonathan Winters and Alan Arkin in his breakthrough performance. Although it primarily satirizes the paranoia of the Cold War, there are plenty of laughs sparked by small town New England, family dynamics, teen love and the recurring joke of the town drunk with his reluctant horse.

The message that demonizing “Others” leads to no good, especially resonates in this moment of American and human history.

I rewatch The Russians Are Coming! every other year or so, and it still holds up.  Besides showing regularly on Turner Classic Movies, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! is also available streaming from Amazon and Vudu (and on DVD from Netflix).

Stream of the week: SHORT TERM 12 – what a cast!

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John Gallagher Jr.,, Brie Larson and Rami Malek in SHORT TERM 12

My video pick this week is Short Term 12 because of its cast of then-emerging actors – Brie Larson, Kaitlyn Dever, LaKeith Stanfield, Rami Malek and John Gallagher Jr. – all before they became stars.

Here’s my original review of Short Term 12, which was high on my Best Movies of 2013.

Brie Larson

The Sacramento-born Brie Larson had a substantial career as a child actor – 19 screen credits before she turned 18, including 22 episodes of TV’s Raising Dad. As a young adult, she led up to Short Term 12 with superb supporting performances in The United States of Tara, Rampart and The Spectacular Now. Short Term 12 was the showcase for her capacity to carry a movie as an adult.

Still only 31, Larson has a Best Actress Oscar for Room and is printing herself money as Captain America. Larson has also made The Glass Castle and Just Mercy for Short Term 12 director Destin Daniel Cretton.

John Gallagher, Jr.

John Gallagher Jr., had delivered an achingly vulnerable performance in Margaret in 2005, but had the misfortune the film not being released until 2011 (and then barely at all) becuse of turmoil between writer-director Kenneth Lonergan and the studio. Gallagher is best know for the relatable Jim Harper in The Newsroom.

Kaitlyn Dever

Kaitlyn Dever just starred in Booksmart and was Golden Globe-nominated for Unbelievable. We got to see her grow up from age 15 to 19 as Loretta McCready in Justified. She had a great run of indies in 2013/2014 (The Spectacular Now, Short Term 12, Laggies), She’s still only 23.

LaKeith Stanfield

Short Term 12 was LaKeith Stanfield’s first feature. That got him in Selma. Stanfield was in two of the best recent films, Sorry to Bother You and Uncut Gems.

Rami Malek

Rami Malek, of course, won last year’s Best Actor Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody.

Short Term 12 is available to be streamed from all the usual platforms.

COVID-19 and the movies in 2020

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BEFORE THE FIRE: a flu pandemic movie premiering at Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

In the current health environment, it is not a good idea to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with an auditorium full of strangers for two hours. (And it’s not a good idea to stand in line with folks before the movie, either.) The Movie Gourmet sees about 250 movies each year, including about 100 in theaters, and I recommend that you help suppress the community transmission of COVID-19 by staying away from movie theaters for a while.

Cinequest has been suspended, with its second week to resume in mid-August. (Ironically, the best American film in this year’s fCinequest is Before the Fire, in which the plot is triggered by a flu pandemic).

This month’s SXSW has already been cancelled, and I expect April’s San Francisco International Film Festival to cancel or postpone.

On Thursday night I did see a film at Cinequest, but I knew that it was going to draw a crowd of no more than 300 in an 1100 seat theater. Instead of waiting in line, I waited until everyone else was seated and then slipped into a section of unoccupied seats so no other patron was within 15 feet of me. There are a couple of promising films coming out soon that I’ve been waiting months to see (The Whistlers and The Wild Goose Lake). I’m probably going to use the same strategy and see them at a sparsely-attended weekday matinee.

But I’m generally going to be STAYING AWAY from movie theaters for a couple months – but not staying way from movies themselves. Fortunately, there are plenty of good movies to watch on video at home. I think that The Movie Gourmet will be emphasizing video choices until this pandemic peaks. Safety first.