Rants and Ruminations

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

by
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!

by
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

by
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.

KIRK DOUGLAS: icon of explosive virility

by
Kirk Douglas in SEVEN DAYS IN MAY

Kirk Douglas has died at age 103, having outlived his co-stars John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Laurence Olivier, Lana Turner, Robert Mitchum, Dick Powell, Gloria Grahame, Jean Simmons, Tony Curtis, Fredric March and Patricia Neal.

Douglas’ distinctive talent was the intensity and power that he could project. He was an icon of explosive virility. It seemed that ferocity was always about to erupt from his buffed chest and piercing eyes. This was one dangerous dude.

Douglas was recruited from the New York stage for The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in 1946, and followed it with Out of the Past, a masterpiece of film noir. Those performances soon got him leading roles that took advantage of his ability to be sexy and despicable at the same time – the news media noir Ace in the Hole and the showbiz noir The Bad and the Beautiful.

As a pioneering indie producer, Douglas made – and starred in – the blockbuster epic Spartacus. His decision to openly credit screenwriter Dalton Trumbo helped to end the Hollywood blacklist (and also it really helped that Spartacus was a massive financial success).

Along with Spartacus and Ace in the Hole, my two favorite Kirk Douglas performances came in the 1960s:

  • Seven Days in May (1964): In this political thriller, Douglas showd his range by playing a profoundly decent man, for whom “patriotic” meant “devoted, dutiful and loyal to the nation’s principles”, not “jingoistic”.
  • In Harm’s Way (1965): Douglas dominates this star-studded WW II epic, playing a heroic guy who does something really, really bad and then seeks to redeem himself with an act of sacrifice.

Douglas filled Spartacus, Ulysses and The Vikings with shirtless virile charisma. There’s really nothing to The Vikings except for action adventure (and a scary contact lens for Kirk), but it’s been a guilty pleasure of mine since the first time it played on TV.

Kirk Douglas in SPARTACUS

NOIR CITY’S fiesta of Mexican noir

by
Anita Blanch and Pedro Armendáriz in NIGHT FALLS (LA NOCHE AVANZA)

This year’s Noir City had an international theme and was highlighted by an all day noirathon of four, count ’em, FOUR classics from a storied era in Mexican cinema. This Fiesta of Mexican Noir was hosted by the Film Noir Foundation’s Eddie Muller and Daniela Michel, an expert preservationist and historian of Mexican cinema and the founder and Director General of the Morelia International Film Festival.

Michel presented films by all three of the pillars of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema – Julio Bracho, Emilio Fernandez, and the Mexican director most identified with noir – or cine negro – Roberto Gavaldón.

Daniela Michel and Eddie Muller

Here’s the program:

  • In the deliriously entertaining Night Falls (La Noche Avanza) (1952), Pedro Armendáriz plays a ladykiller who treats his women horribly – and is begging for a noirish downfall. Night Falls was directed by Roberto Gavaldón, the Mexican director most well-known for film noir. In a uniquely Mexican touch of noir torture, waterboarding is performed with tequila. Stay to the end for for cinema’s act of greatest canine revenge.
  • Julio Bracho’s Another Dawn (Distinto Amancer) (1943) is a paranoid thriller about a heroic labor organizer (Pedro Armendáriz again) who has the evidence to expose corruption by the PRI, Mexico’s ruling party for 70 years.
  • In Bracho’s Twilight (Crepusculo) (1945), a surgeon is tormented by an obsession, and then by guilt. When former lovers – now married to others – are isolated together in a weekend house party during a thunderstorm, it’s inevitable this concentrated passion, obsession and betrayal is going to explode.
  • Salón México(1949) is an unusual contemporary noir directed by Emilio Fernandez, more often known for movies with rural and historical settings, Salon Mexico is a cabaretera, a uniquely Mexican genre about a woman with a heart of gold (Marga López here) who is forced by poverty to work as a singer in a sketchy nightspot or even as a prostitute. It’s also a time capsule of 1949 Mexico City.

Follow the links for my commentary on the films, images and where to find them.

Miguel Inclán and Marga López in SALON MEXICO

NOIR CITY 2020 is here

by
PALE FLOWER – in this year’s Noir City

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, opens this weekend in San Francisco. 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 movies not available on DVD or streaming. And we get to watch them in a vintage movie palace (San Francisco’s Castro Theatre) with a thousand other film fans.

Eddie Muller, whom you should recognize as the host of Turner Classic Movies’ Noir Alley series, has programmed this year’s version as Noir City: International II, with vintage film noir from Argentina, France, Germany, Korea, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Italy, England, West Germany, Sweden and Poland. Noir City’s first intentional foray, six years ago, was one of my favorites, highlighted by the Argentine Bitter Stems and the Swedish Girl with Hyacinths.

The Film Noir Foundation restored the Argentine films The Beast Must Die and The Black Vampire, which open the fest on Friday night. This is your only chance to see these and sixteen other Noir City films, which cannot be streamed.

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. I predict that the Thursday night Castro Theatre audience will be THRILLED.
  • Any Number Can Win: In this Perfect Crime flick, Jean Gabin plays a veteran crook who plans One Last Big Job – the heist of a Cannes casino. He trains a raw former cell-mate (Alain Delon) to perform the key role. There’s incredible suspense in the heist, the getaway and the recovery of the loot, with an ending worthy of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
  • The Long Haul: This British noir was a vehicle for the 25-year-old curvy blonde Diana Dors, who could Wear A Dress (and look up her real life!). Victor Mature stars as a GI who stayed in Britain after WW II because his English wife doesn’t want to emigrate; he is stuck in a job as a truck driver and becomes entangled in a hijacking ring. Mature, whose best work was in film noir, was an underrated actor; if acting is reacting, Mature does it all here – his eyes and face reflect his weariness, disgust, desperation and adherence to a code. The snarling villain (Patrick Allen) meets a uniquely fitting fate.
  • 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.

Trench coats and fedoras are not required (and no smoking, please), but, other than that, you’ll get the full retro experience in the period-appropriate Castro. Noir City runs from Friday, January 24 through Sunday, February 2. To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here. I’ll be there myself on both weekends.

NOIR CITY: the great San Francisco festival of film noir

by
PALE FLOWER

Here’s a once-in-a-lifetime film noir experience, the opportunity to be a part of an audience to see films that haven’t been projected in a theater in over sixty years. Make plans to attend the Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, in San Francisco January 24-February 2. Noir City has become an irreplaceable Bay Area cultural treasure like Alcatraz or John’s Grill.

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. And we get to watch them in a vintage movie palace, San Francisco’s Castro Theatre, with a thousand other film fans.

The 2020 Noir City will focus 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, England, West Germany, Sweden and Poland.

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

  • The Beast Must Die (Argentina 1952)
  • The Black Vampire (Argentina 1953)
  • Panique (France 1947)
  • Razzia (France 1955)
  • Any Number Can Win (France 1963),
  • Black Hair (South Korea 1964)
  • The Facts of Murder (Italy 1959)
  • …And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear (Czechoslovakia 1965)
  • 90 Degrees In the Shade (Czechoslovakia 1965)
  • The Long Haul (England 1957)
  • Never Let Go (England 1965)
  • The Devil Strikes at Night (West Germany 1957)
  • Black Gravel (West Germany 1961)
  • Another Dawn (Mexico 1943)
  • Twilight (Mexico 1945)
  • Night Falls (1952)
  • Salon Mexico (Mexico 1949)
  • Ashes and Diamonds (Poland 1958)

The films on this year’s program are SO difficult to find that only one of them (Pale Flower) is even on The Movie Gourmet’s list of Overlooked Noir.

“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, Peter Sellers, Emilio Fernandez, Victor Mature and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

The Film Noir Foundation has restored the Argentine films The Beast Must Die and The Black Vampire, and the opening night will feature these films. (These are coincidentally the most lurid titles on this year’s program.) Think about it – you can be in the first movie theater audience to see these films in over sixty years – and perhaps the first US movie audience ever.

This year, I predict that the Thursday night Castro Theatre audience will be THRILLED by the Japanese neo-noir 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.

Noir City runs from Friday, January 24 through Sunday, February 2. To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here. Incidentally, the woman escaping with the loot on this year’s Noir City poster is Victoria Mature, daughter of movie star Victor Mature, whose best work was in film noir.

I’ll be posting a comprehensive Noir City preview on January 20. And you may run into me at Noir City as I cover both weekends.

2019 at the movies: great experiences

by
Peter Bogdanovich with Jesse Hawthorne Ficks at the Roxie screenings of THE LAST PICTURE SHOW and SAINT JACK

I’ve probably never had as many unforgettable cinematic experiences in one year before. The highlights of 2019:

  • In September, I was privileged to attend one of the year’s most stirring experiences of Bay Area cinema culture. The Roxie Theater screened the The Last Picture Show – with the legendary Peter Bogdanovich himself in attendance for two Q&A sessions, plus a screening of his hard-to-find Saint Jack (1979).
  • The thrill of discovering the neo-noir Pale Flower, thanks to Turner Classic Movies.
  • Noir City – special thanks to the team at the Film Noir Foundation, who went out of their way to help me with lodging. My favorite was the bracingly topical The Well, an unusual combination of a rescue procedural and a race riot noir. I was joined for my weekend at Noir City by The Wife despite her battling excruciating back pain.
  • The year’s best movie, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood – I caught the first Bay Area screening.
  • Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) with three films on my top ten list – Marriage Story, Jojo Rabbit, 63 Up – plus Frankie. Michael Apted himself appeared at the 63 Up screening.
  • Discovering two remarkably unexpected film triumphs – The Last Black Man in San Francisco and last year’s Burning.
  • As usual, I screened over thirty films at Cinequest. This year, my friend Keith visited from LA and joined me for five features in three days; our binge included including the Buster Keaton short The “High Sign” and Cinequest’s best film Buy Me a Gun.
  • San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), the highlight being the documentary Midnight Family.
  • Getting to see the virtually lost film Mr. Klein, thanks to the Rialto Pictures re-issue and the Roxie.
  • My first year covering Frameline, with Song Lang and Making Montgomery Clift.

Recapping all this, I’m amazed at what a great year I had at the movies. Onward.

Happy Anniversary to The Wife!

by
Linda Cardinelli as Dolores Vallelonga in GREEN BOOK – the year’s second best wife

Happy Anniversary to The Wife, also known as Lisa, The Love of My Life!

Once again, she tolerated my spending huge chunks of time at Cinequest, the San Francisco International Film Festival, Noir City, the SF Jewish Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival.

As usual, she joined me for many of my favorite cinema experiences, including driving to Marin and the Mill Valley Film Festival to a screening of 63 Up with Michael Apted in person. We relished seeing Green Book, Her Smell, Booksmart, Knives Out and Silicon Valley’s first screening of The Irishman. And we finished the year with the Christmas Eve screening of It’s a Wonderful Life at the Stanford Theatre.

But most impressively, battling back pain, she got off a hellish transcontinental airline flight to join me for a weekend of Noir City. That’s taking one for Team Movie Gourmet.

I got to introduce her to All That Jazz, Double Indemnity and 99 River Street. (We have the steamy 99 River Street poster in our living room, complete with Evelyn Keyes’ fingernails scratching tracks across John Payne’s beefy back.)

This year we binged more episodic television together than ever: True Detective, Victoria, Tales of the City, Fosse/Verdon, One Mississippi, Modern Love, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and The Crown.

She’s the biggest fan and supporter of this blog, and I appreciate her and love her. Happy Anniversary, Honey!

10 overlooked movies of 2019

by
Luke Lorentzen’s MIDNIGHT FAMILY. Courtesy of SFFILM

I posted my traditional Top Ten list – Best Movies of 2019. Now here are some gems that you probably haven’t heard of.

  • Midnight Family. This gripping documentary takes us on ridealongs with an all-night ambulance crew in Mexico City. It’s even wilder than you may expect. Midnight Family is just finishing a brief theatrical release, and I expect it will be available to stream soon.
  • Light from Light. Three portraits of personal awakening are ingeniously embedded into what looks like a familiar haunted house movie. I’ll let you know when it’s streamable.
  • Sword of Trust. This is a wickedly funny comedy with an emotionally powerful personal story underneath it all. Great performances by Marc Maron and the film’s director Lynn Shelton. You can buy, but not yet rent, Sword of Trust. I’ll let you know when it’s available.
  • Auggie. In this superb indie, augmented reality glasses fulfill every need and insidiously trigger even more inner desires.  Stream from Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.
  • The Sound of Silence. Peter Sarsgaard stars in this novel and engrossing character study about obsession. Stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Rojo. Set just before Argentina’s bloody coup in the 1970s, this moody, atmospheric film works as a slow-burn thriller. Stream from Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.
  • Mine 9. This race-against-the-clock rescue thriller is both a mine safety exposé and a mining procedural.  I’ll let you know when it’s available to stream.
  • Jirga. A man goes on a quest in this parable of atonement. The film was shot guerilla-style, under cover in wartorn, terrorist infested Afghanistan. Stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Redbox.
  • Making Montgomery Clift. This biodoc is an unexpectedly insightful and nuanced probe into the life of Montgomery Clift, and it explodes some of the lore that has shaped popular understanding of the movie star. Stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Redbox.
  • Long Day’s Journey into Night. This brilliantly original film explores memory – a man obsessed with a doomed romance from twenty years ago plunges into a neo-noir underworld.  After a slow burn beginning, his search reaches its climax in a spectacular ONE-HOUR single shot. It can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.
  • Mr. Klein. This is actually a reissue of a 1976 film that almost nobody has seen in 43 years. Joseph Losey’s slowburn thriller is a searing critique of French collaboration with the Nazis. Mr. Klein stars Alain Delon as a predator trapped by his own obsession. It is not currently available on the major streaming platforms, nor can it be found on DVD, except for some bootlegs from Asia.

Yes, two of my Overlooked movies are also on my Best of 2019 list. I’ll let you know when you can stream the ones that aren’t yet available.

Marc Maron in SWORD OF TRUST