Weekly Movie Recommendations

Movies to See Right Now

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LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

OUT NOW

  • The brilliantly original Chinese neo-noir Long Day’s Journey into Night is a Must See.
  • The Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience.
  • Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen are pleasantly entertaining in the improbable Beauty-and-the-Beast romantic comedy Long Shot.
  • In The Chaperone, Downton Abbey’s writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern reunite for a pleasing character study of self-discovery in 1921 America – it’s deeper than it first appears to be.
  • Ramen Shop is a lightly-rooted dramedy about a Singaporean-Japanese family’s reconciliation. There’s also a metaphorical foodie angle.
  • The bio-documentary An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy is available from PBS.

ON VIDEO

This Memorial Day weekend, I’m recommending that you binge OJ: Made in America., the  eight-hour ESPN documentary series.  It made my list of Best Movies of 2016.  The trailer is on the film’s homepage. You can watch the entire movie on ESPNWatch and on some other streaming platforms such as iTunes and Hulu.

Elisabeth Moss’ powerhouse performance as a monstrously narcissistic and drug-deranged rock star Her Smell is the acting tour de force of 2019. The movie could have been a great one if shorter, but Moss makes it worthwhile watch nonetheless. Her Smell is out of theaters, but it’s already streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play, an available on DVD from Redbox. 

And I just caught up to the hypnotically compelling Burning.  This 2 hour, 28 minute slow burn begins as a character study, evolves into a romance and then a mystery, and finally packs a powerful punch with a thriller climax. It’s a superb achievement for director and co-writer Chang-dong Lee. You can stream Burning from Netflix, Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

ON TV

On May 27, Turner Classic Movies brings us two particularly authentic war films, both set in the Korean War. In Men in War (1957), an infantry lieutenant (Robert Ryan) must lead his platoon out of a desperate situation. He encounters a cynical and insubordinate sergeant (Aldo Ray) loyally driving a jeep with his PTSD-addled colonel (Robert Keith). In conflict with each other, they must navigate through enemy units to safety. Director Anthony Mann is known for exploring the psychology of edgy characters, and that’s the case with Men in War.

The Steel Helmet (1951) is a gritty classic by the great writer-director Sam Fuller, a WWII combat vet who brooked no sentimentality about war. Gene Evans, a favorite of the two Sams (Fuller and Peckinpah), is especially good as the sergeant. American war movies of the period tended toward to idealize the war effort, but Fuller relished making war movies with no “recruitment flavor”. Although the Korean War had only been going on for a few months when Fuller wrote the screenplay, he was able to capture the feelings of futility that later pervaded American attitudes about the Korean War.

For something completely different, there’s Slap Shot (1977) on TCM on May 29. Paul Newman plays the dissolute player-coach of a failing minor league hockey team in a failing Rust Belt mill town. Things look hopeless until the Hanson brothers show up – three kids who look like nerds and play like goons. Very funny and a great performance by Newman.

Paul Newman (center) in SLAP SHOT

 

SLAP SHOT

Stream of the Week: OJ: MADE IN AMERICA: finally, the sensational story stripped of the sideshow

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oj-made-in-america
This week’s video choice is perfect for binging over the upcoming holiday weekend:  OJ: Made in America.  Initially, I hadn’t thought of putting it on my Best Movies of 2016 because it’s an eight-hour ESPN documentary series, but, after it wound up on lots of critic’s year-end lists, I put it on mine because it’s good enough to merit it.

I remember the OJ saga with distaste because it became a sideshow – the Bronco ride, the Trial of the Century, the bloody glove (“if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”), Kato Kaelin, Judge Lance Ito and the seemingly unfathomable verdict. The genius of director Ezra Edelman is that OJ: Made in America rights a media wrong by keeping a laser focus on the crime itself and setting out the societal factors that explain how this all went so far off track. The sideshow elements are shown to be what they really were – distractions from the greater truth of a domestic violence murder.

OJ: Made in America is an unflinching look at a marriage that disintegrated because of chronic domestic violence, and then evolved into a terrifying stalker situation. We also see glimpses of crime scene photos, grisly but not exploitative, that reinforce the gravity of the crime.

With more clarity than in any other film treatment of this case, we see OJ Simpson’s abandonment and even rejection of the African-American community and of his own racial identity – “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.”. We see OJ creating a new community for himself of wealthy white men and refusing to perform advocacy, fundraising or even lending his name for African-American causes. And so we are left with the sickening irony of OJ becoming a posterchild for black victimhood and a rallying point for resistance to white oppression.

To set the stage for the trial, Edelman shows us the historic racist oppression by the LAPD and the missteps by prosecution that created an environment that the legal team for a celebrity could exploit. Through file footage and talking head witnesses, Edelman takes us through the trial to explain the critical choices that resulted in the verdict. Finally, we see the surveillance video of the bumbling, thuggish crime that OJ was imprisoned for until last year.

OJ: Made in America benefits from an impressive group of witnesses, including prosecutor Marcia Clark, detective Mark Fuhrman, defense lawyer Barry Scheck, DA Gil Garcetti, former OJ confidantes Ron Shipp and Mike Gilbert and Nicole Brown Simpson’s sister.

ESPN, with its reliably solid 30 for 30 series, is, along with PBS and HBO, one of the most prolific sources of excellent documentaries. With OJ: Made in Americas, ESPN has produced one of the top three or four documentaries of the year.

The trailer is on the film’s homepage. You can watch the entire movie on ESPNWatch and on some other streaming platforms such as iTunes and Hulu.

Movies to See Right Now

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LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

Don’t miss the documentary An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy on PBS in May 20.

OUT NOW

  • Elisabeth Moss’ powerhouse performance as a monstrously narcissistic and drug-deranged rock star Her Smell is the acting tour de force of 2019.
  • The brilliantly original Chinese neo-noir Long Day’s Journey into Night is a Must See.
  • The Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience.
  • Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen are pleasantly entertaining in the improbable Beauty-and-the-Beast romantic comedy Long Shot.
  • In The Chaperone, Downton Abbey’s writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern reunite for a pleasing character study of self-discovery in 1921 America – it’s deeper than it first appears to be.
  • Ramen Shop is a lightly-rooted dramedy about a Singaporean-Japanese family’s reconciliation. There’s also a metaphorical foodie angle.

ON VIDEO

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Love & Mercy, the emotionally powerful biopic of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson. Love & Mercy is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes and Vudu.

ON TV

On May 18, Turner Classic Movies will show The Last Hurrah (1958): The master director John Ford is famous for westerns, but this portrait of an embattled incumbent is a classic of political cinema. Spencer Tracy plays the leader of an urban political machine. He’s got years of accomplishments and a machine in his favor, but his newspaper-owning antagonist is running an empty suit against him in a campaign that is increasingly fought on the newfangled medium of television. He’s been so successful for so long that his ward heelers have become complacent, and he’s smelling the campaign getting away from him…

Spencer Tracy (center) in THE LAST HURRAH

DVD/Stream of the Week – LOVE & MERCY: a tale of three monsters and salvation

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Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in LOVE & MERCY
Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in LOVE & MERCY

Love & Mercy, the emotionally powerful biopic of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, is the true life story of an extraordinarily gifted person facing three monsters. Wilson is a musical genius, one of the great songwriting, arranging and producing talents of his century. But his art and his very survival were tested by his tormentors until unselfish love found him an escape route to treatment, and, ultimately, his salvation.

In his first feature as a director, veteran producer Bill Pohlad chose to depict two phases of Wilson’s life, with Wilson played by Paul Dano and John Cusack.

The first monster is Wilson’s father Murry (Bill Camp), an abusive father whose adult sons still fear after they have fired him as their manager. What kind of father needs to belittle and sabotage his sons so he doesn’t have to acknowledge that their success surpasses his own? Brian Wilson is deaf in one ear from his father’s punches, but the psychological scars are even more deeply felt.

The second monster is Brian’s own schizoid affective disorder, a condition causing auditory hallucinations. Brilliantly, Pohlad has chosen to let the audience hear what Brian hears. This can be thrilling in moments of musical inspiration. And, of course, it is terrifying most of the time.

The third monster is charlatan psychologist Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), a Svengali-like manipulator, who over-medicates Brian, then confines him, while controlling and watching his every move. Landy leeches off Brian’s fortune and is ruthlessly protective of his racket.

Murry and Landy are so scary that Beach Boy Mike Love, known to be (and portrayed here as) a colossal jerk, almost seems sympathetic by comparison.

In the younger Dano segments, we see Brian at his creative peak, emotionally tortured by Murry and about to be driven into a breakdown by his condition. In the middle-aged Cusack parts, we see Brian, broken down by his illness, utterly helpless against and captive to Landy’s web of control.

Dano shows us Brian’s vulnerable genius. Cusack shows us Brian as gentle and genuine. The story of Love & Mercy is about how he escapes being under the thumb of his monsters, chiefly from the perspective of Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), the woman who would become his second wife. As good as are Dano and Cusack, Banks is absolutely stellar; her character must continually react to the unpredictability of Brian’s illness and the increasing horror of Landy’s tyranny.

From the beginning, Love & Mercy sweeps us up into the highs and lows of Brian Wilson’s life – and it’s a helluva life. Love & Mercy is one of the Best Movies of 2015 – So Far. Watch the end credits all the way to the end.

Love & Mercy is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes and Vudu.

Movies to See Right Now

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Hong-Chi Lee in a scene from Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Photo by Liu Hongyu, courtesy Kino Lorber.

The Must See for cinephiles is Long Day’s Journey into Night.

7’3″ tall actor Peter Mayhew died last week. His screen career centered around one unforgettable role, under a mask and bushel of fur as Chewbacca in the Stars Wars franchise.

OUT NOW

  • Elisabeth Moss’ powerhouse performance as a monstrously narcissistic and drug-deranged rock star Her Smell is the acting tour de force of 2019.
  • The brilliantly original Chinese neo-noir Long Day’s Journey into Night is a Must See.
  • The Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience
  • In The Chaperone, Downton Abbey’s writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern reunite for a pleasing character study of self-discovery in 1921 America – it’s deeper than it first appears to be.
  • Ramen Shop is a lightly-rooted dramedy about a Singaporean-Japanese family’s reconciliation. There’s also a metaphorical foodie angle.

ON VIDEO

My Stream of the Week is the slow burn thriller Hunting Lands, an indie from the 2018 Cinequest. Now everyone can stream Hunting Lands from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

On May 13, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1964 serial killer movie The Strangler, with its brilliant and eccentric performance by Victor Buono.
And on May 14, TCM presents Orson Welles’ Shakespearean masterpiece Chimes at Midnight. Welles’ genius was in braiding together parts of Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, some Richard III, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor into a cohesive story of what he called “betrayal of friendship”.
Orson Welles and Keith Baxter in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

Stream of the Week: HUNTING LANDS – in this thriller, we watch the watcher

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Marshall Cook in HUNTING LANDS

In the slow burn thriller Hunting Lands, Frank (Marshall Cook) is living a solitary life as a subsistence hunter in a forest cabin, a long pickup drive outside his northern Michigan hometown. Frank is a guy with serious wilderness skills, loading his own ammo and field dressing the large mammals that he fells with a single shot. He witnesses a serious crime in the woods and is immediately driven to make things right – but not in the way we expect.

Frank has nobody to talk to, and we see him silently triage the situation and begin a hunt for the perpetrator. Silent observation comes naturally to a hunter, and we see him wordlessly patrolling the small towns in his pickup, as he tracks down his human prey. We see what Frank sees, and one of the most pivotal characters is only seen in long shot until the last 15 minutes or so.

HUNTING LANDS

HUNTING LANDS

Hunting Lands is the first feature from writer-director Zack Wilcox, a story-teller who is thankfully willing to let the audience connect the dots. Because Hunting Lands is only 83 minutes long, Wilcox can take his time watching Frank watch others. Even as Frank is still and quiet, the audience is gripped by what he is going to do next.

An original character, Frank seems unusually self-aware for a hermit. When he finally gets in a conversation, he turns out to be an articulate guy who understands and can explain why he has become a recluse.

Wilcox follows Billie Wilder’s screenwriting advice – “don’t hang around”; the ending is not even one second too long. And Wilcox knows that a little ambiguity about what happens afterwards can pack a punch.

Cinequest hosted the word premiere of Hunting Lands. You can stream it now on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

HUNTING LANDS

Movies to See Right Now

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Elisabeth Moss in HER SMELL

I am aware that the new Avengers movie is taking up about forty percent of Bay Area movie screens. Be on the lookout for Her Smell, which is playing hardly anywhere, and the brilliant new release Long Day’s Journey into Night, along with Aretha Frankin’s gospel concert film Amazing Grace. 

Writer-director John Singleton, who died this week, was the first African-American nominated for the Best Director Oscar (for Boyz in the Hood) and remains the youngest person ever nominated for that award.

OUT NOW

  • Elisabeth Moss’ powerhouse performance as a monstrously narcissistic and drug-deranged rock star in Her Smell is the acting tour de force of 2019.
  • The brilliantly original Chinese neo-noir Long Day’s Journey into Night is a Must See.
  • Werner Herzog’s admiring biodoc Meeting Gorbachev is uncritical but insightful, especially as we meet the unfiltered Gorbachev himself in 2018 interviews.
  • The Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience.
  • In The Chaperone, Downton Abbey’s writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern reunite for a pleasing character study of self-discovery in 1921 America – it’s deeper than it first appears to be.
  • In Teen Spirit, Elle Fanning plays an underdog teenager who has the chance to win a talent contest and become an instant pop star – yes, it’s a genre movie, but it’s a pretty fair one.
  • Ramen Shop is a lightly-rooted dramedy about a Singaporean-Japanese family’s reconciliation. There’s also a metaphorical foodie angle.
 

ON VIDEO

The ingeniously original Prospect is a frontier coming-of-age movie. It’s just set in space, not in the Old West.  A consistently unpredictable plot and superb performances by Pedro Pascal and young Sophie Thatcher make Prospect well worth streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube or Google Play.

 

ON TV

On May 7, Turner Classic Movies brings us a fantastic comedy, My Man Godfrey (1936). An assembly of eccentric, oblivious, venal and utterly spoiled characters make up a rich Park Avenue family and their hangers-on during the Depression. The kooky daughter (Carole Lombard) brings home a homeless guy (William Powell) to serve as their butler. The contrast between the dignified butler and his wacky employers results in a brilliant screwball comedy that masks searing social criticism that is sharply relevant today. The wonderful character actor Eugene Pallette (who looked and sounded like a bullfrog in a tuxedo) plays the family’s patriarch, who is keenly aware that his wife and kids are completely nuts.

William Powell and Carole Lombard in MY MAN GODFREY William Powell and Carole Lombard in MY MAN GODFREY

Stream of the Week: PROSPECT – a girl’s battle of wits in outer space

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PROSPECT

The ingeniously original Prospect is a frontier coming of age movie. It’s just set in space, not in the Old West. The teenage girl Cee (Sophie Thatcher) accompanies her dad (Jay Duplass) as he pilots their tired spaceship from planet to planet, seeking to extract something precious (hence the title Prospect as in prospectors). It’s an enterprise for misfits and hustlers. She has grown into an able assistant. He is a skilled pilot and prospector, but is very erratic in his judgment.

Sure, this is a future version of our world, but these characters live in a bottom-feeding sub-culture; their space travel hardware comes from the surplus store and has the look of NASA’s Mercury program – far less sleekly hi tech than the dashboard of a 2013 Prius. It’s a choice by co-writer and co-directors Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl to reinforce that we’re dealing with folks living on the margins.

Isolated by circumstance on a planet that is only populated by a few other sketchy transients and some disturbing settlers, Cee is thrown into a series of life-and-death situations. She must depend on her wits to survive a sequence of that can only be resolved through negotiation. I saw Prospect before its release at Silicon Valley’s Cinema Club. In the screening’s Q&A, co-writer filmmakers Caldwell and Earl affirmed that the story is centered on negotiation and that they drew from that under-recognized subgenre, the “loquacious Western”.

Pedro Pascal and Sophie Thatcher in PROSPECT

A key character that Cee must deal with is another rogue prospector Ezra (Pedo Pascal), a man of wit, charm, lethality and devoted self-interest. Pascal (Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones) makes Ezra one of the most compelling and funniest movie characters of the year.

Someone has labeled Prospect at “True Grit in space”, which isn’t far off. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is also evoked. A consistently unpredictable plot and superb performances by Pascal and young Ms. Thatcher make Prospect well worth streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube or Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

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Aretha Franklin in AMAZING GRACE

OUT NOW

  • The Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience.
  • In The Chaperone, Downton Abbey’s writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern reunite for a pleasing character study of self-discovery in 1921 America – it’s deeper than it first appears to be.
  • The Man Who Killed Don Quixote: after 25 years of misfortune and missteps, Terry Gilliam has succeeded in making a Don Quixote movie – and it’s good.
  • In Teen Spirit, Elle Fanning plays an underdog teenager who has the chance to win a talent contest and become an instant pop star – yes, it’s a genre movie, but it’s a pretty fair one.
  • The Brink is documentarian Alison Klayman’s up-close-and-personal portrait of Steve Bannon, the outsized personality who coached Donald Trump’s race-baiting right into the White House. As Bannon unintentionally reveals himself to be pathetically craving relevance, I found The Brink to be irresistible, and I watched with fascination.
  • For the first hour-and-a-half of Sunset, I was convinced that I was watching the best movie of the year. Then the coherence unraveled, but I still recommend Sunset, even with its flaws, for its uncommon artistry.
  • The puzzling thriller Transit, with all its originality, just isn’t director Christian Petzold’s best.
  • Ramen Shop is a lightly-rooted dramedy about a Singaporean-Japanese family’s reconciliation. There’s also a metaphorical foodie angle.
  • Skip The Hummingbird Project – two good scenes just isn’t enough.

Elle Fanning in TEEN SPIRIT

ON VIDEO

My video choice, the psychological suspense movie Una, revolves around two twisted people who make for two unreliable narrators  (Rooney Mara and Ben Mendelsohn).  I originally saw Una at the 2017 Cinequest.  You can stream it from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

On April 27, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1950 version of M, directed by Joseph Losey. This is a remake of Fritz Lang’s great 1931 M with Peter Lorre. The Losey version is not a masterpiece like the original, and I find it pretty odd. However, Los Angeles’ storied Bradbury Building, which has been in many a movie, was never been as gloriously revealed from basement to roof as in M. The Bradbury Building and the film as a whole benefit from the cinematography of Ernest Laszlo; Laszlo also shot D.O.A., The Well, The Steel Trap, Stalag 17, The Naked Jungle, Kiss Me Deadly and While the City Sleeps, before being Oscar-nominated eight times for more respectable, but lesser films. The cast is filled with film noir faves – Raymond Burr, Norman Lloyd, Howard Da Silva, Steve Brodie and Luther Adler. M is playing on TCM’s Noir Alley series, and I look forward to Eddie Muller’s intro and outro.

On May 1, TCM airs The Rack (1956): A returning US army captain (Paul Newman) is court-martialed for collaborating with the enemy while a POW. He was tortured, and The Rack explores what can be realistically expected of a prisoner under duress. It’s a pretty good movie, and Wendell Corey and Walter Pidgeon co-star.

Joseph Losey’s M

Stream of the Week: UNA – two twisted people

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UNA
UNA

The psychological suspense movie Una revolves around two twisted people, one of whom has been damaged by trauma. Here’s what the audience can be confident really happened: at age 14, Una (Rooney Mara) was seduced by a much older man, Ray (Ben Mendelsohn); she became infatuated with Ray and they carried on a sexual relationship for three months until he was caught and imprisoned for four years. Upon leaving prison, he changed his name and started a new life. It’s now fifteen years after the original crime and Una has tracked him down.

We can tell that Una is obsessed with Ray. What we don’t know is whether Una is seeking vengeance or whether she is in love with him – or both. She’s so messed up that even she may not know.

Lolita was a novel with a famously unreliable narrator. Una presents us with TWO unreliable narrators. Almost every statement made by Ray COULD be true, but probably isn’t. He was in love with her, he came back for her, she was his only underage lover, he’s not “one of them”, he’s told his wife about his past – we just can’t know for sure. Ben Mendelsohn delivers a performance that tries to conceal whatever Ray is thinking and feeling but allows his desperation to leak out.

The excellent actor Riz Ahmed (Four Lions, The Reluctant Terrorist) is very good as Ray’s work buddy, who must deal with one totally unforeseeable surprise after another.

Una really relies on Rooney Mara to portray a wholly unpredictable character in every scene, and she succeeds in carrying the movie. Mara’s face is particularly well-suited when she plays a haunting and/or haunted character, and it serves her well here.

I originally saw Una at Cinequest.  You can stream it from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.