Weekly Movie Recommendations

Movies to See Right Now

by
Sylvie Mix and Bobbi Kitten in POSER, playing at the Nashville Film Festival, Photo courtesy of the Nashville Film Festival.

I’m in Music City for the Nashville Film Festival, which is both an in-person and on-line event. Check out my coverage so far:

IN THEATERS

Without Getting Killed or Caught: This lyrical documentary traces the lives of singer-songwriter Guy Clark and his painter-songwriter wife Susanna. Their roommate was troubled songwriter Townes Van Zandt, Guy’s best friend and Susanna’s soulmate. This is a film about an unusual web of relationships amidst the creative process. It’s already slipped out of Bay Area theaters, but I’ll let you know when it streams.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

Wildland: A teenage girl is orphaned and is placed with relatives that she doesn’t really know. She gradually learns that the family, headed by her mom’s estranged sister is a ruthless criminal enterprise. Wildland simmers and evolves into a nail biter right up to its noir-stained epilogue. Laemmle.

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

ON TV

Levon Helm at left and Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter

Turner Classic Movies is aligned with my trip to Nashville, the Ground Zero of Country music. On October 4, TCM airs Coal Miner’s Daughter, one of my 5 Great Hillbilly Movies. Sissy Spacek won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Loretta Lynn in this successful biopic.  In an early major role, Tommy Lee Jones plays Loretta’s husband Mooney.  Levon Helm, the Arkansas-bred drummer for The Band has one of his rare but compelling film roles as Loretta’s Daddy.  Besides the performances, the movie works because Loretta must grow from nobody to star, girl to woman and hick to worldly.

Coal Miner’s Daughter was one of the big Hollywood movies directed by Michael Apted, whose 7 Up series is one of the most significant documentary series in cinema history.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Jessica Chastain in THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE

This week, there are a few good choices in theaters, and it may be your last chance to catch The Lost Leonardo until it streams. Plus more watch-at-home choices. Stay tuned for my preview coverage of the Nashville Film Festival – both in-person and virtual cinema.

IN THEATERS

The Eyes of Tammy Faye: Jessica Chastain’s powerhouse performance in humanizes and brings dignity to the disgraced, over-made-up televangelist.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

Kansas City Bomber: self-discovery at the roller derby track. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael: the remarkably thorough and insightful biodoc of the iconic film critic Pauline Kael and her drive for relevance. On TCM on September 26, and rentable from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.

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

ON TV

88 years ago, only four years into the Talking Picture Era, there were dramedies (even though the word dramedy had yet to be coined). On September 26, Turner Classic Movies airs George Cukor’s Dinner at Eight, an all-star 1933 Hollywood dramedy that mostly still stands up today. Jean Harlow is hilarious as the trophy bride of the course noveau-millionaire played by Wallace Beery. Marie Dressler is at least as funny as a former star yearning to relive an old romance. John Barrymore adds a heartbreaking performance as a man facing disgrace. If all this weren’t enough, we also get Lionel Barrymore, some ditziness from Billie Burke and a splash of sarcasm from quick-patter artist Lee Tracy. Harlow, who died at 26, is usually remembered as a platinum blonde sex symbol, but Dinner at Eight reminds us of her comic brilliance.

WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL – the drive for relevance

by
Pauline Kael in WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael is the remarkably thorough and insightful biodoc of the iconic film critic Pauline Kael and her drive for relevance. It’s coming up September 26 on Turner Classic Movies.

Documentarian Rob Garver has sourced What She Said is well-sourced with the memories of Kael’s colleagues, rivals and intimates. Garver’s portrait of Kael helps us understand her refusal to conform to social norms as she basically invented the role of a female film critic and what today we might call a national influencer on cinema.

Of course, one of Kael’s defining characteristics was her all-consuming love of movies, a trait shared by many in this film’s target audience. Fittingly, Garver keeps things lively by illustrating Kael’s story with clips from the movies she loved and hated. Garver’s artistry in composing this mosaic of evocative movie moments sets What She Said apart from the standard talking head biodocs.

Kael was astonishingly confident in her taste (which was not as snooty as many film writers). For the record, I think Kael was right to love Mean Streets, Band of Outsiders, Bonnie and Clyde, and, of course, The Godfather. It meant something to American film culture that she championed those films. She was, however, wrong to love Last Tango in Paris. She was also right to hate Limelight, Hiroshima Mon Amour and The Sound of Music. But Kael was just being a contrarian and off-base to hate Lawrence of Arabia and Shoah.

Kael was by necessity an intrepid self-promoter and filled with shameless contradictions. She famously dismissed the auteur theory but sponsored the bodies of work of auteurs Scorsese, Peckinpah, Coppola and Altman. She loved – even lived – to discover and support new talent.

Most of the people we like and admire possess at least some bit of selflessness and empathy. Kael’s daughter Gina James says that Kael turned her lack of self awareness into triumph. This observation, of course, cuts both ways.

I first screened What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael for the 2019 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Again, TCM will air it on September 26, and you can rent it from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Oscar Isaac and Tye Sheridan in THE CARD COUNTER. Photo courtesy of Focus Features / ©2021 Focus Features, LLC

I’ve got about eight solid movie-going options in theaters for you this week. I’ll be seeing at least three more new movies this week, so stay tuned for yet more recommendations.

IN THEATERS

The Card Counter: Oscar Isaac stars in Paul Schrader’s dark portrait of highly disciplined loner who lives by a code but can’t submerge his past.

Best Sellers: Michael Caine and Aubrey Plaza star in a breezy comedy about a marketing campaign that takes off when bad behavior goes viral on social media.

Also in theaters:

REMEMBRANCE

Nino Castelnuovo in THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG

Actor Nino Castelnuovo matched up with the then 20-year-old Catherine Deneuve for a doomed romance in the innovative French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). In the epilogue, when Castelnuovo gazes out the window of his gas station, it’s one of the great weepers in cinema history.

ON VIDEO

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

ON TV

Gloria Grahame and Broderick Crawford in HUMAN DESIRE

On Saturday and Sunday, Turner Classic Movies’ Noir Alley features Human Desire with Gloria Grahame. Grahame is one of the enduring figures of film noir because of her performances In a Lonely Place and The Big Heat. But she’s at least as good in this less well-known turn. Grahame plays Vicki, married to a brutish wife-beater (Broderick Crawford). Vicki is no saint – she accompanies hubby on a murder and helps him cover his tracks by coming on to a hunky railroad engineer (Glenn Ford). Vicki then suggests to her lover that if only her husband were dead…But Vicki, while morally flexible, isn’t bad to the core. She’s complicated. TCM will provide an Intro and Outro by Eddie Muller, the Czar of Noir.

And, on September 21, TCM airs the little seen All Night Long, one of my Overlooked Neo-noir. It’s Shakespeare’s Othello, set in the jazz world of 1962 London – and with music performed by Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck and other real jazz musicians.

Patrick McGoohan and Paul Harris in ALL NIGHT LONG

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: THE LOST LEONARDO

This week, I still like The Lost Leonardo and Ma Belle, My Beauty in theaters – and a host of watch-at-home suggestions.

REMEMBRANCES

Jean-Paul Belmondo

Jean-Paul Belmondo, with his flattened nose and a cigarette dangling from his full lips, was the personification of European cinema in the early 1960s, from the French New Wave to Jean-Paul Melville neo-noirs to Italian art films. Projecting an insouciant sexiness, he starred with Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, which basically kicked off the Nouvelle Vague with Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. Breathless was released in 1960, the same year that Belmondo co-starred with Oscar-winner Sophia Loren in Vittorio de Sica’s Two Women, co-starred with Jena Moreau in Seven Days, Seven Nights, and starred in four other films, to boot.

Michael Constantine in MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING

Super-prolific character actor Michael Constantine appeared in hundreds of television episodes (113 in Room 222 alone). I liked him in his movie comedies – as the grumpy former GI in If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium and as the Windex-obsessed dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

IN THEATERS

ON VIDEO

On Being a Human Person: A documentary on Roy Andersson, an auteur who makes very, very odd movies that are deeply profound, humanistic and mostly funny. Laemmle.

The Unknown Saint: Here’s another pitch for this delightful crime comedy from Morocco. It’s a deadpan dive into human foibles and really, really bad luck. Netflix.

THE UNKNOWN SAINT. Photo courtesy of The Match Factory.

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

ON TV

Timothy Bottoms (standing) in THE PAPER CHASE

On September 14, Turner Classic Movies airs one my personal favorite movies, The Paper Chase, which traces a young man’s (Timothy Bottoms) first year at Harvard Law School and is based on the memoir of a recent grad. Although IMDb labels The Paper Chase as 1973 movie, I saw it in the summer of 1975, just as I was about to enter law school myself.   It’s such a personal favorite because just about EVERYTHING in the movie is something that I experienced myself at in my first year at Georgetown Law – everything, that is, EXCEPT dating Lindsay Wagner.  It’s a compelling story and the great producer John Houseman won an acting Oscar for his performance as the mentor/nemesis law professor; Houseman immediately cashed in with his ”They make money the old fashioned way… they EARN it” commercials for Smith Barney.

The Paper Chase is also notable as the first feature film credit for actors Craig Richard Nelson, Graham Beckel (Brokeback Mountain, L.A. Confidential)  and Edward Herrmann (known for many portrayals of FDR).  All three are stellar as members of the law school study group, and these guys have now combined for over 300 screen acting credits.  The Paper Chase is also available to stream from Amazon, Vudu and YouTube.

John Houseman in THE PAPER CHASE

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Idella Johnson, Sivan Noam Shimon and Hannah Pepper in Marion Hill’s film MA BELLE, MY BEAUTY. Courtesy of SFILM.

This week – an expectation-busting documentary in theaters and two new audience-pleasers to watch at home.

IN THEATERS

499: Photo courtesy of Cinema Guild.

499: In this critique of contemporary Mexico, director Rodrigo Reyes has invented the medium of “docu-fable”. It is all as real as real can be (the documentary), except for the fictional, 500-year-old conquistador (the fable). Opens today at San Francisco’s Roxie with Reyes in attendance and plays through September 8.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

The Unknown Saint: I loved this crime comedy from Morocco. It’s a deadpan dive into human foibles and really, really bad luck. Netflix.

Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed. This doc tells two improbable stories. The first is how Bob Ross, the soft-talking, permanent-coiffed painting instructor on PBS, could become such a cultural phenomenon. The second is a sordid tale of bone-picking exploitation. Netflix.

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

ON TV

Clint Eastwood in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

On September 6, Turner Classic Movies gives us a helluva choice, depending on how you prefer your movie violence. For stylized movie violence (and stylized movie music, camerawork and everything else, there’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Then there’s the serious-as-a-heart-attack Battle of Algiers.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly completes Sergio Leone’s hugely influential triad of Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. The wonderfully idiosyncratic score by Ennio Morricone is indelible.

The Battle of Algiers is the story of 1950s French colonialists struggling to suppress the guerrilla uprising of Algerian independence fighters.  Although it looks like a documentary, it is not.  Instead, filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo recreated the actual events so realistically that we believe that we are watching strategy councils of each side. Among the great war films, it may be the best film on counter-insurgency.  In 2003, the Pentagon screened the film for its special operations commanders.

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin in RESPECT.

Five new movies this week, plus a seminal neo-noir on TV.

IN THEATERS

Ma Belle, My Beauty: This simmering romantic drama is a gorgeous, sexy, character-driven film. I screened Ma Belle, My Beauty at the 2021 SFFILM.

Respect: Jennifer Hudson is up to the challenge of portraying Aretha Franklin in this revealing biopic, especially her struggles to wrest command of her own creativity from both well-intentioned and ill-intentioned men. A little too long, but then there’s I Never Loved a Man (Like the Way I Love You), Respect, Think, Natural Woman and Amazing Grace.

The Lost Leonardo: This documentary peels back the onion on an ever surprising tale of discovery, scholarship, fraud, commerce and politics in the refined and pretentious art world. Is a rediscovered Renaissance masterpiece authentic, and does it matter?

Searching for Mr. Rugoff: The story of a now-unknown giant in independent cinema – a guy with the best possible movie taste and the most elevated artistic sensibilities who was personally a barbarian. Will also be streaming from the Roxie.

Eugenio Derbez in CODA

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

Curiosa: This French romantic drama is set in the Belle Epoque, when the Eiffel Tower was new and sexual liberation was burgeoning among literati. It would be more erotic if we cared about the characters. Laemmle.

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

ON TV

Lee Marvin in POINT BLANK

On August 28, Turner Classic Movies presents the seminal 1960s neo-noir Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin. Marvin stars as Walker, a heist man who is shot and left for dead by his partner Reese (John Vernon, Animal House’s Dean Wormer), who absconded with Walker’s share of the loot and Walker’s wife. When Walker recovers, he is hellbent on revenge, aided by his sister-in-law Chris (Angie Dickinson).

It turns out that Walker needs to trace the money through a cavalcade of Mr. Bigs (Lloyd Bochner, Keenan Wynn, Carroll O’Connor). There’s a great set piece where Walker invades a highrise penthouse, despite the heavily guarded elevator being the only entrance. It all ends in a thrilling nighttime finale at Fort Point.

Walker is a very uncomplicated character, all he wants is to kill Reese and reclaim his $93,000. Anyone in Walker’s situation would be pissed off, but Lee Marvin plays Walker in a constant state of cold rage. Lee Marvin’s unique charisma animates this relentless killing machine.

Marvin, just coming off The Dirty Dozen and having won an Oscar for Cat Ballou, was at the peak of his stardom. Marvin’s other contribution to the film was handpicking the then unheralded John Boorman to direct; (this was five years before Boorman’s masterpiece Deliverance). Boorman intentionally delivered a morally bleak story in the most deserted of locations: empty parking lots, the Los Angeles River channel. and San Francisco’s two icons of abandonment – Alcatraz and Fort Point.

Lee Marvin in POINT BLANK

If you’re wondering why Angie Dickinson was a movie star, Point Blank is for you. Angie was ballsy, sexy and always unashamedly very direct, and she rocked midcentury fashion. (She plays one unforgettable scene in a dress with bold horizontal stripes in the colors of Denny’s restaurants.)

Watch for James B. Sikking as the professional sniper; Sikking became well-known as the supercilious SWAT team commander Lt. Howard Hunter in Hill Street Blues. Future horror icon Sid Haig pops up as the security guard in the penthouse lobby.

Angie Dickinson and Lee Marvin in POINT BLANK

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Troy Kotsur and Marlee Matlin in CODA

This week, the Must See is the surprisingly textured CODA.

IN THEATERS

CODA: Writer-director Sian Heder’s screenplay has made CODA, which could have been simplistic, into that rare, feel-good family film that is authentic, fumy and thought-provoking. Also streaming in AppleTV.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

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

ON TV

Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer in GASLIGHT

On August 25, Turner Classic Movies will air Gaslight (1944), a classic suspense thriller that still has a lot to say about domestic violence and abusive power in relationships.

An evil husband (Charles Boyer) isolates his wife (Ingrid Bergman) and uses manipulation to convince her that she’s going crazy. He’s seeking to conceal his crimes and gain unfettered control of her house and fortune. He’s also dallying with the maid (a nubile 18-year-old Angela Lansbury). Fortunately, the wife’s longtime admirer (Joseph Cotton) works for Scotland Yard and starts to investigate…

Here’s my essay on Gaslight, Gaslight and gaslighting in domestic violence.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Dev Patel in THE GREEN KNIGHT. Photo courtesy of A24

This week – a thoughtful swords-and-sorcery fantasy and a spectacular misfire of an art movie. Plus my favorite film noir femme fatale.

IN THEATERS

The Green Knight: Dev Patel plays Sir Gawain of Arthurian legend in a movie more about a test of character than it is about a heroic quest. Thoughtful and character-driven – and great special effects, too.

Annette: This passionate and inventive art house musical is doomed by a flawed screenplay, bad pacing and a creepy puppet baby.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

SUMMERTIME. Photo courtesy of Frameline.

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

ON TV

Gloria Grahame with Director Jerry Hopper on the set of NAKED ALIBI; Photo courtesy of Mark A. Clark and Film Noir Photos.

On August 17, Turner Classic Movies celebrates my favorite film noir actress, Gloria Grahame, with several Grahame films, including Human Desire, The Big Heat and In a Lonely Place. Grahame projected an uncanny mixture of sexiness, vulnerability and unpredictability. The fact that Gloria was a Bad Girl in real life doesn’t hurt.

The best of these films is In a Lonely Place, where Grahame falls for the troubled screenwriter Humphrey Bogart, a guy with a MAJOR anger management issue; once she’s hooked, she realizes that he might be a murderer after all… The flashiest Grahame role is in The Big Heat, where she is involved in an act of shocking cruelty and fitting retribution.

But I’m pitching her less well-known turn in Human Desire, where she plays Vicki, married to a brutish wife-beater (Broderick Crawford). Vicki is no saint, and accompanies hubby on a murder and helps him cover his tracks by coming on to a hunky railroad engineer (Glenn Ford). Vicki then suggests to her lover that if only her husband were dead…

Human Desire was directed by the great Fritz Lang, and is a remake of Jean Renoir’s classic La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) with Jean Gabin and Simone Simon.

I have the Australian version of the Human Desire poster in my living room. The tag line is “She was born to be bad…to be kissed..to make trouble“, and the Aussie authorities have labeled it “NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN“.

Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford in HUMAN DESIRE

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Sly Stone in SUMMER OF SOUL (…OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED)

This week, we have a new period drama, but the best bets in theaters are still Roadrunner and Summer of Soul. I’m off to see The Green Knight and the Cannes winner Annette, so stay tuned.

IN THEATERS

Casanova, Last Love: In another of Benoît Jacquot’s visually sumptuous powered-wig-and-harpsichord movies, Casanova gets his comeuppance. The seducer is seduced and it’s well, pathetic.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

CJ Hunt and RE Lee in NEUTRAL GROUND

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

  • Riders of Justice: Thriller, comedy and much, much more. It’s the year’s best movie so far. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube. #1 on my Best Movies of 2021 – So Far
  • Dirt Music: a gorgeous bodice-ripper with a WTF ending. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
  • No Sudden Move: Steven Soderbergh’s neo-noir thriller has even more double-crosses than movie stars – and it has plenty of movie stars. HBO Max.
  • Neutral Ground: the supremacist legacy of old statues. PBS.
  • Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation: Two gay Southern geniuses, revealing themselves. Laemmle.
  • The Dry: a mystery as psychological as it is procedural. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Brewmance: barley, hops, yeast and underdogs. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Louder Than Bombs: An intricately constructed family drama. Amazon (included with Prime), Vudu and YouTube.
  • That Guy Dick Miller: Putting the “character” in “character actor:” Amazon (included with Prime).
  • Sword of Trust: comedy and so, so much more. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Run Lola Run: you’ll never see a more kinetic movie. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Franka Potente in RUN LOLA RUN

ON TV

Tune into Turner Classic Movies on August 10 for director Robert Altman’s underappreciated California Split.  Elliott Gould plays a guy deep in the throes of gambling addiction, and George Segal plays another guy well on his way.  The two join up and play the LA-area card clubs before heading to Reno for a poker game that may be too big for them.  Gould is at his manic, wise cracking best, and plays off the more reserved Segal in a very funny adventure.  Of course, their decision-making is influenced by their addiction.

Actor Joseph Walsh wrote the screenplay about his own gambling addiction and plays the bookie you don’t want to owe money to.  Real card club and casino patrons play the poker players, so the verisimilitude of the poker games is unmatched.  The real Amarillo Slim elevates the big game.

California Split was the first non-Cinerama movie to use eight tracks for sound, which was perfect for Altman’s style of overlapping dialogue and tidbits of side and background conversations.

The poker is both authentic and entertaining.  The two guys “read a table”, analyzing the other players in one particularly funny moment.

Reliable character actor Bert Remsen has a memorable bit in drag.   Mickey Fox is memorable as a suspicious poker loser.  Look for a young Jeff Goldblum, too.

Elliott Gould (center left) and George Segal (center right) in CALIFORNIA SPLIT