Weekly Movie Recommendations

This week on The Movie Gourmet – for a three-day weekend movie binge, try my your own international film festival – free on kanopy. And the captivating Spanish drama Romeria is now affordable on the major streaming platforms.

Don’t overlook the long-lost Iranian film Chess of the Wind, a masterpiece of family treachery. Recently rediscovered and restored, it’s now available to stream.

CURRENT MOVIES

• Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma: witty, bizarre and riotously funny. In theaters.
• Tony: a brat unspoiled. In theaters.
• The Odyssey: epic filmmaking at its best. In theaters.
• Romeria: when the dots don’t connect right away. Amazon, Fandango, AppleTV.
• Over/Under. sweet and uncommonly authentic. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
• I Want Your Sex: good, naughty fun. In theaters, but hard to find.
• The Last Viking: hidden loot amidst the deluded. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
• Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.

ON TV

On September 7, Turner Classic Movies presents a Ricardo Montalban double bill from 25 years before Ricardo hawked the Chrysler Cordoba by purring ‘rich Corinthian leather“. In Border Incident (1949), he plays a Mexican cop teamed with an American cop (George Murphy) chasing an illegal human smuggling ring.; Border Incident is memorable chiefly for the Murphy character’s harrowing demise, guaranteed to make you fidget in your seat. In Mystery Street (1950), Ricardo plays a Massachusetts State detective who teams with a Harvard Medical School researcher (Bruce Bennett) to solve a murder case with forensic science; it’s the granddaddy of all the CSI-type forensic procedurals.

It’s been a massive week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of Jane Schoenbrun’s witty and bizarre Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the Anthony Bourdain coming-of-age biopic Tony, and the sweet and authentic female coming-of-age film Over/Under.

Don’t overlook the long-lost Iranian film Chess of the Wind, a masterpiece of family treachery. Recently rediscovered and restored, it’s now available to stream.

REMEMBRANCES

We remember Dolly Parton acting in the movies 9 to 7 and Steel Magnolias, but she made a massive contribution to the movies behind the camera, with 62 composer credits and and an unfathomable 702 soundtrack credits.

In The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Tim Curry charismatically exploded off the screen as Dr. Frank-N-Furter – A Scientist, the “sweet transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania.” As Frank-N-Furter, Curry created a movie character as unforgettable as Michael Corleone, George Bailey, Rhett Butler, Hannibal Lector or Indiana Jones.

CURRENT MOVIES

• Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma: witty, bizarre and riotously funny. In theaters.
• Tony: a brat unspoiled. In theaters:
• Over/Under. sweet and uncommonly authentic. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
• Late Fame: will he stay comfortable in his own skin? In theaters.
• The Odyssey: epic filmmaking at its best. In theaters.
• Romeria: when the dots don’t connect right away. Amazon, Fandango and on September 1, AppleTV.
• I Want Your Sex: good, naughty fun. In theaters.
• The Last Viking: hidden loot amidst the deluded. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
• Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters, but hard to find.

ON TV

On August 30, Turner Classic Movies will be presenting a film recognized as the masterpiece of a great filmmaker, but one that has slipped from the current conversation – Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels. Sturges was the first workaday Hollywood screenwriter to transition into a major writer-director, and between the ages of 42 and 46, he churned out The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, Sullivan’s Travels, Hail the Conquering Hero and The Great McGinty, an impressive body of work. Unfortunately, his turbulent personality led to conflict in his business affairs, which exacerbated his drinking. He burned out and was dead at age 60, but he left behind some of the very, very smartest and funniest movie comedies. Sullivan’s Travels is a fast-paced and cynical comedy about a pretentious movie director who goes on the road to be inspired by The Average Man – and gets more of an adventure than he expects. There has never been a better movie about Hollywood. Sullivan’s Travels is on It’s on my own 50 Greatest Movies of All Time list.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of Willem Dafoe’s tour de force in Late Fame and the long lost Iranian film Chess of the Wind, a masterpiece of family treachery.

Next week: Jane Schoenbrun follows their astonishingly original I Saw the TV Glow with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony and the sweet and authentic female coming of age film Over/Under.

REMEMBRANCE

Mark Rydell directed The Cowboys, Cinderella Liberty, The Rose and his triple-Oscar winner, On Golden Pond.

CURRENT MOVIES

• Late Fame: will he stay comfortable in his own skin? In theaters.
• The Odyssey: epic filmmaking at its best. In theaters.
• Romeria: when the dots don’t connect right away. In art house theaters, but hard to find.
• I Want Your Sex: good, naughty fun. In theaters.
• The Last Viking: hidden loot amidst the deluded. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
• Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters, but hard to find.

ON TV

On August 24, Turner Classic Movies brings us Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, with its ending of unsurpassed irony. Seeking to discredit capital punishment, a cocksure novelist (Dana Andrews) gets himself charged with and CONVICTED of a murder, planning to then reveal proof that he couldn’t have done it. But then the evidence of his innocence suddenly disappears! Crackerjack (and deeply noir) surprise ending. Another film noir from The great German auteur Fritz Lang directed the cinematic masterpieces Metropolis and M before fleeing the Nazis; Beyond a Reasonable Doubt was the last in his remarkable string of Hollywood film noir: The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, House by the River, Clash by Night, The Blue Gardenia, The Big Heat, Human Desire and While the City Sleeps.

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This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of the captivating Spanish family drama Romeria.

CURRENT MOVIES

• The Odyssey: epic filmmaking at its best. In theaters.
• Romeria: when the dots don’t connect right away. In art house theaters, but hard to find.
• I Want Your Sex: good, naughty fun. In theaters.
• The Last Viking: hidden loot amidst the deluded. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
• Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters.

ON TV

On August 18, Turner Classic Movies airs a curiosity from 1965, The Chase, which illustrates the truth that talent alone can’t save lousy source material. Directed by the great Arthur Penn, The Chase stars Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Robert Duvall and Angie Dickinson, not to mention Janice Rule, E.G. Marshall, James Fox, Martha Hyer, and from Hollywood’s earlier golden days, Miriam Hopkins and Bruce Cabot. And it stinks.

Brando plays the sheriff in a redneck Texas town stewing about the expected return of a recently escaped convict named BUBBER (Redford). Bubber’s wife (Fonda) is now having an affair with the son (Fox) of the banker who runs the town (Marshall). Before Bubber sneaks back into the town junkyard, everyone drinks, fusses, and commits more adultery. Emily (Rule) openly humiliates her cuckolded hubbie (Duvall). All the while, the minor characters act really racist and conspire to lynch Bubber, who is white.

What I find bizarre is that Arthur Penn was at the height of his powers in 1966. He had already been Oscar-nominated for The Miracle Worker, as he would be for his next movie, the iconic, groundbreaking Bonnie and Clyde, to be followed by Alice’s Restaurant (yet another Oscar nod), Little Big Man and Night Moves.

I put the blame on the source material and the casting. Lillian Hellman adapted the screenplay from a Horton Foote play, in turn adapted from a Foote novel. It all seems like a over-wrought Southern melodrama in which everyone speaks like they’re pronouncing Big Daddy’s lines in Cat on a Hot tin Roof.

Brando does what he can with a character who is alienated and keeps getting beaten up. Janice Rule and Angie are especially good. But Redford and Fonda are horribly – and distractingly – miscast as white trash, and we just can’t get past that. Plus there’s a racism thread slapped on to be topical, and it’s so sjallow as to be disrespectful of the real Civil Rights movement.

Here’s a curiosity: The Chase was the second of Paul Williams’ 96 screen acting credits, mostly in fairly silly roles that are entirely divorced from his highly successful career as a composer (six Oscar nominations),

A decade later, no studio could have afforded to make a movie with Brando, Redford, Fonda and Duvall all on the payroll. It may not be good, but The Chase can be fun to watch if you mock the cliches and laugh at the miscasting. And Janice Rule is a force of nature in this film.

Note: many films share the title The Chase, but this is the one made by Arthur Penn in 1966.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of Anders Thomas Jensen’s dark comedy The Last Viking and an essay on five other wickedly witty Jensen films. The Last Viking, along with I Want Your Sex and Maddie’s Secret, is a smart and satisfying comedy. But don’t miss the summer’s epic blockbuster epic The Odyssey.

CURRENT MOVIES

• The Odyssey: epic filmmaking at its best. In theaters.
• I Want Your Sex: good, naughty fun. In theaters.
• The Last Viking: hidden loot amidst the deluded. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
• Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters.
• Pressure: engrossing study of high-stakes decision-making. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Power Ballad: what (and who) makes a hit song? Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Exit 8: nightmare on a loop. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Mirrors No. 3: two enigmas explained. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Is God Is: an extraordinary new story-teller. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• The Last One for the Road: the party never ends. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Marty, Life Is Short: an engaging profile. Netflix.
• The Christophers: twisty, watchable and disposable. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.

ON TV

On August 9, Turner Classic Movies presents the unsettling classic noir Leaver Her to Heaven – and it’s in technicolor! Poor Cornell Wilde falls for the exquisitely gorgeous Gene Tierney, but she is MESSED UP. When I see Leave Her to Heaven, I think of my best friend Steve’s advice – “Never [date] anyone crazier than you are”. MUCH, MUCH more cautionary than Fatal Attraction. Tierney said that she played the role as an insane person desperately trying to appear sane.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of Christopher Nolan’s spectacular epic The Odyssey, Gregg Araki’s naughty sex farce I I Want Your Sex and the 2023 jaw-dropping documentary Tickled. I also highlighted the groundbreaking indies with an indigenous American lens, Powwow Highway and Smoke Signals.

Take advantage of my summer special feature – your own international film festival – free on kanopy. And here are my recommendations for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, still underway.

REMEMBRANCES

Brenda Fricker won an Oscar as the resolute mother in My Left Foot and appeared in The Field, Angels in the Outfield, Veronica Guerin, Omagh and Albert Nobbs. She stole Home Alone II: Lost in New York as the Pigeon Lady.Her first leading role came at age 68, co-starring with Olympia Dukakis in the delightful Canadian indie Cloudburst.

Glen Hansard won an Oscar for co-composing the song Falling Slowly for the wonderful romance Once, in which he also starred. Hansard was primarily a musician, frontman for The Frames, but his first screen-acting role was in another of my very favorite movies, The Commitments.

CURRENT MOVIES

• The Odyssey: epic filmmaking at its best. In theaters.
• I Want Your Sex: good, naughty fun. In theaters.
• Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters.
• Pressure: engrossing study of high-stakes decision-making. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Power Ballad: what (and who) makes a hit song? Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Exit 8: nightmare on a loop. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Mirrors No. 3: two enigmas explained. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Is God Is: an extraordinary new story-teller. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• The Last One for the Road: the party never ends. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Marty, Life Is Short: an engaging profile. Netflix.
• The Christophers: twisty, watchable and disposable. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.

ON TV

On August 2, Turner Classic Movies presents an oddity from 1950, Storm Warning, certainly the only film noir where Doris Day gets shot by the KKK. A NYC model (Ginger Rogers) arrives in a Southern town to visit her sister (Day) and immediately witnesses the Klansmen murder a journalist and then, not seeing that she is a witness, take off their hoods. She gets to the sister’s house and is shocked to recognize her sister’s husband (Steve Cochran) as one of the murderous Klansmen. Will she testify to the anti-Klan DA (Ronald Reagan)? This is supposed to be a an allegory about the red baiting HUAC. Weirdly, there is no mention of the KKK’s hated of blacks, Catholics and Jews, and there are hardly any black people in the movie. The film certainly doesn’t work in 2025, but the bizarre casting of Doris Day, Ginger Rogers and Ronatd Reagan in a noir is fun, and Rogers and Day give excellent performances.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – my recommendations for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, just underway, and the movies on my list of Least Convincing Movie Monsters shown by Turner Classic Movies last night and this morning.

Take advantage of my July special – your own international film festival – free on kanopy, including We Shall Not Be Moved (pictured above)..

I also watched Kontinental ’25 by the unique Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude, who creates absurdist cinema that satirizes global capitalism, toxic masculinity and the behavioral and architectural legacy of Romanian communism. I loved the social criticism in his breakthrough Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn and liked his Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, but found his Dracula, despite its transgressive bawdiness, to get tiresome, as it beat one joke into the ground. Kontinental ’25 is Jude’s irony-packed homage to Roberto Rosselini’s Europa ’51, about a woman changed by a moral crisis. Despite a promising beginning, I found this film to peter out, again with the clever premise just not sustainable.

REMEMBRANCE

New Zealand actor Sam Neill broke through with another newcomer, Judy Davis, in My Brilliant Career (1979) and gained popularity when the British series Reilly, Ace of Spies was broadcast on PBS. Neill reliably played handsome, virile and complex characters, with a sexy menace when called for. He starred in ANZAC art films like My Brilliant Career, The Piano, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Neill was also matched up with big Hollywood stars in fare like \A Cry in the Dark, The Hunt for Red October, The Horse Whisperer, and, of course, the Jurassic Park franchise.

CURRENT MOVIES

• Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters.
• Pressure: engrossing study of high-stakes decision-making. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Power Ballad: what (and who) makes a hit song? Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Exit 8: nightmare on a loop. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Mirrors No. 3: two enigmas explained. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Is God Is: an extraordinary new story-teller. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• The Last One for the Road: the party never ends. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Marty, Life Is Short: an engaging profile. Netflix.
• The Christophers: twisty, watchable and disposable. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• In the Hand of Dante: the heist and the impenetrable. Netflix

ON TV

Turner Classic Movies is airing the hilarious Ruthless People on July 20. Judge Reinhold and Helen Slater play a meek couple who, having been ruined by a scumbag business man (Danny Devito), decide to get their money back by kidnapping his wife (Bette Midler). Trouble is, she’s a handful for the over-matched naifs, and he doesn’t really want her back. Nobody can play a dumbass better than Bill Pullman, and he’s one of the joys of this frolic. Along with Airplane!, Ruthless People is the masterwork of masterpiece of Jim Abrahama, and David and Jerry Zucker, who also gave us the Naked Gun franchise. We don’t hear much about their first film, Kentucky Fried Movie, a triumph of low brow parody sketches.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – binge your own international film festival – free on kanopy. One of these film is Afire (image above), directed by Christian Petzold, whose Mirrors No. 3 is one of this year’s best.

REMEMBRANCE

I first noticed Louise Lasser in her then-husband Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run, Bananas and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex etc.. I didn’t know that she had been the first actress win a Clio award for her work in commercials. She’s best remembered for starring in Norman Lear’s pioneering Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, but she also worked with other top movie directors Todd Solondz (Happiness) and Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream).

CURRENT MOVIES

• Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters.
• Pressure: engrossing study of high-stakes decision-making. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Power Ballad: what (and who) makes a hit song? Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Exit 8: nightmare on a loop. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Mirrors No. 3: two enigmas explained. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Is God Is: an extraordinary new story-teller. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• The Last One for the Road: the party never ends. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Marty, Life Is Short: an engaging profile. Netflix.
• The Christophers: twisty, watchable and disposable. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• In the Hand of Dante: the heist and the impenetrable. Netflix
• Earth, Wind & Fire: To Be Celestial and That’s the Weight of the World: underwhelming. HBO Max.

ON TV

On July 16th, Turner Classic Movies brings us the 1977 comedy Semi-Tough with Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson and Jill Clayburgh. It’s set in the world of pro football, but it’s really a romantic triangle and a send-up of est training. Real life football stars Paul Hornung, Ed “Too Tall” Jones and Joe Kapp appear, as do sportscasters Lindsey Nelson and Dick Schaap. Along with creating the role of Apollo Creed in Rocky, this was an early role for former Raiders linebacker Carl Weathers, who went on to amass 80 acting credits and become a top TV director (Law & Order, Chicago Med, The Mandalorian).

This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of the stinker In the Hand of Dante, plus the full Elvis with pure Presley in EPiC: Elvis in Convert and Elvis’ one really good movie, King Creole. I also previewed the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, coming up in mid-July. Feel free to binge this weekend with the unusually impressive slate of recent movies right now on Hulu.

REMEMBRANCE

Ann Blyth started acting in movies as a teenager, and her work in Mildred Pierce at age 17 earned her an Oscar nomination; she vividly played Joan Crawford’s bratty, ungrateful and ultimately murderous daughter. After less memorable movie roles, she retired at age 30.

CURRENT MOVIES

• Unidentified: a slow burn whodunit – until the shocker ending, In theaters.
• Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters.
• Pressure: engrossing study of high-stakes decision-making. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Power Ballad: what (and who) makes a hit song? In theaters.
• Coroner to the Stars: too transparent? In theaters.
• Exit 8: nightmare on a loop. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Mirrors No. 3: two enigmas explained. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Is God Is: an extraordinary new story-teller. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• The Last One for the Road: the party never ends. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Marty, Life Is Short: an engaging profile. Netflix.
• The Christophers: twisty, watchable and disposable. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• In the Hand of Dante: the heist and the impenetrable. Netflix
• Earth, Wind & Fire: To Be Celestial and That’s the Weight of the World: underwhelming. HBO Max.

ON TV

On July 6, Turner Classic Movies presents Muscle Beach Party, the second of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello’s four Beach Party movies; (Annette made a fifth one with Dwayne Hickman of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis). Muscle Beach Party is just as silly and formulaic as the others, but it has the best music. The genius of the surf guitar, Dick Dale, performs with his Del-Tones. So does 14-year-old Little Stevie Wonder, almost a decade before Superstition. There’s humor – both corny and zany – from Don Rickles, Morey Amsterdam, Buddy Hackett and Peter Lorre. One of the bodybuilders is Peter Lupus, who later supplied muscle to the Mission: Impossible team. Look for iconic rock music impresario Bill Graham as one of the “surfer boys”. And Annette “surfs” without disturbing her hairspray.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – it’s the last weekend of Frameline; here’s my festival preview and my recommended international films – Frameline Goes International. I also posted a new review of the documentary Coroner to the Stars. And I also reviewed the world premiere of the mesmerizing Memorizu at Tribeca; I’ll let you know when this remarkable film releases in the US.

Yesterday, I published a new review of John Early’s bracingly inventive comic melodrama Maddie’s Secret.

The best film in theaters now is the feminist Saudi Unidentified:, a whodunit with a jaw-dropping ending. The best movies recently available to watch at home are the wholly original revenge thriller Is God Is, the psychological thriller Exit 8, and the genial Italian comedy The Last One for the Road.

CURRENT MOVIES

• Exit 8: nightmare on a loop. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Unidentified: a slow burn whodunit – until the shocker ending, In theaters.
• Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters.
• Coroner to the Stars: too transparent? In theaters.
• Pressure: engrossing study of high-stakes decision-making. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Power Ballad: what (and who) makes a ht song? In theaters.
• Mirrors No. 3: two enigmas explained. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.Is God Is: an extraordinary new story-teller. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• The Last One for the Road: the party never ends. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Marty, Life Is Short: an engaging profile. Netflix.
• Sirat: gripping, hypnotic and devastating. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango and included with Hulu.
• The Christophers: twisty, watchable and disposable. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Omaha: in the best interest of the children. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
• Earth, Wind & Fire: To Be Celestial and That’s the Weight of the World: underwhelming. HBO Max.
• The Drama: the darkest romantic comedy that I’ve ever seen. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.

ON TV

On June 27, Turner Classic Movies will be presenting a film recognized as the masterpiece of a great filmmaker, but one that has slipped from the current conversation – Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels. Sturges was the first workaday Hollywood screenwriter to transition into a major writer-director, and between the ages of 42 and 46, he churned out The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, Sullivan’s Travels, Hail the Conquering Hero and The Great McGinty, an impressive body of work. Unfortunately, his turbulent personality led to conflict in his business affairs, which exacerbated his drinking. He burned out and was dead at age 60, but he left behind some of the very, very smartest and funniest movie comedies. Sullivan’s Travels is a fast-paced and cynical comedy about a pretentious movie director who goes on the road to be inspired by The Average Man – and gets more of an adventure than he expects. There has never been a better movie about Hollywood. Sullivan’s Travels is on It’s on my own 50 Greatest Movies of All Time list.