Weekly Movie Recommendations

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Jean Gabin in TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – the relentlessly entertaining French epic The Count of Monte-Cristo, the insightful documentary John Singer Sargent: Fashion and Swagger and the classic film noir Sudden Fear, with its nearly perfect final twelve minutes.

The surprisingly uplifting documentary Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s shines a light on Parkinson’s disease, and what we need to know about it. An estimated one million Americans are living with Parkinson’s, and the key to Matter of Mind’s success is in introducing us to three of them – a Brooklyn optician, a San Francisco fitness trainer and an Alaskan cartoonist – and their families. All three films in the Matter of Mind trilogy, including My ALS and My Alzheimer’s will be available to stream between May 15 to June 3, 2025.

I am looking forward to Matt Wolf’s HBO biodoc Pee Wee Herman as Himself, which begins airing on the weekend after next. The week after, theaters will offer Caught by the Tides, from the Chinese master filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke and his muse and leading lady Tao Zhao and the buzzed-about The Life of Chuck.

Note: I recommended the highly innovative The Accident after screening it for the 2024 Slamdance, and it’s now streaming on Fandor.  The Accident went on to win the Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance.

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Lino Ventra, Jean Gabin and Jean Moreau in TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI.

Tomorrow night, May 17, Turner Classic Movies is airing a great and underappreciated film, the French film noir Touchez pas au grisbi on its Noir Alley with intro and outro by the czar of noir, Eddie Muller. A seasoned and very, very cool gangster (Jean Gabin) has hidden a massive haul of stolen gold bullion as his retirement fund. The gold is from a notorious heist that he has never acknowledged masterminding, and the movie’s title translates as “don’t touch the loot”. He has kept his secret with remarkable discipline and cleverness, but his longtime partner may become the weak link.

Probably the greatest male French movie star ever, Jean Gabin had dominated prewar French cinema, and, after the war, he aged into noir and, in the 1960s, into neo-noir.  Gabin oozed a seasoned cool (like Humphrey Bogart) and imparted a stately gravitas to his noir and neo-noir characters. Jean Gabin is on my very short list of the most perpetually cool humans to ever walk the planet, along with Dean Martin, Ben Gazzara, Joan Jett and Barack Obama.

Jeanne Moreau appears in an early role. So does that most watchable of French stars, Lino Ventura, whose bloodhound face had been reshaped by his earlier careers as a professional wrestler and boxer. Touchez pas au grisbi is one of my top five film noirs and one of my top fifty movies of all time.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Asahi Hirano and Sabrina Jie-A-Fa in EGGHEAD & TWINKIE. Credit: Olivia Wilson, Courtesy of CanBeDone Films and Orange Cat Films.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – I’m trying to get you thru the movie doldrums with the delightful coming of age story Egghead & Twinkie and the genre-busting reenactment doc Starring Jerry as Himself. May is Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and both movies feature Asian American filmmakers and lead characters.

I am looking forward to Matt Wolf’s HBO biodoc Pee Wee Herman as Himself, which begins airing on the weekend after next. The week after, theaters will offer the buzzed-about The Life of Chuck and Caught by the Tides, from the Chinese master filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke and his muse Tao Zhao.

Note: I recommended the highly innovative The Accident after screening it for the 2024 Slamdance, and it’s now streaming on Fandor.  The Accident went on to win the Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance.

REMEMBRANCES

Mariko Kaga and Ryô Ikebe in PALE FLOWER

Director Masahiro Shinoda was a groundbreaking auteur, best known for his bracing neo-noir Pale Flower.

Character actor Craig Richard Nelson’s first film role was as a snobby, fastidious preppy in The Paper Chase (1973), and he nailed a similar character in Robert Altman’s A Wedding (1978). In this period, he had small roles in Altman’s 3 Women (1977) and Tony Bill’s My Bodyguard (1980). Even though he worked in TV and film through 1998, his performances were increasingly less memorable.

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Gene Hackman in the 1975 NIGHT MOVES

On May 13, Turner Classic Movies is honoring Gene Hackman by airing Night Moves, along with his better known movies, The French Connection, Hoosiers and Mississippi Burning. In the1975 character-driven neo-noir Night Moves, Hackman plays an LA private eye who follows a trail of evidence to steamy Florida. Hackman shines in the role – the detective is deeply in love with his estranged wife (Susan Clark), but unsuited for marriage. Night Moves also features Melanie Griffith’s breakthrough role as the highly sexualized teen daughter in the Florida family; Griffith was right around eighteen-years-old when this was filmed, and had already been living with Don Johnson for three years. Night Moves features an impressive ensemble of supporting actors: Harris Yulin, James Woods, Edward Binns, Max Gail (Wojo on Barney Miller) and the sui generis Kenneth Mars.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Neil Young in COASTAL. Courtesy of SLO Film Fest.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of the British farce The Trouble with Jessica and extended coverage of the San Luis Obispo Film Festival – a film fest that punches above its weight:

Note that the delightful doc We Want the Funk is available for free on the PBS YouTube channel.

REMEMBRANCE

Val Kilmer in TOMBSTONE.

I’ve been on vacation, so this is my first chance to write about the late Val Kilmer. Kilmer applied his magnetism in unforgettable performances: Iceman in Top Gun, Jim Morrison in The Doors and Batman in Batman Forever. My favorite Val Kilmer turn was as an insouciant Doc Holliday in Tombstone.

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Robert De Niro and Vincent Gardenia in BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY.

On April 29, Turner Classic Movies plays the Bang the Drum Slowly from 1973. A worldly MLB pitcher (Michael Moriarity) helps his slow-witted catcher (Robert De Niro), afflicted with aterminal illness, finish the season. It’s a weeper, but a very genuine one. This was the performance that got De Niro noticed. His next three movie roles were Johnny Boy in Mean Streets, Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II and Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.

Movies to See Right Now

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CHEVALIER. Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing and SFFILM.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – The 2025 SFFILM is beginning, so here are my recommendations in Under the Radar at SFFILM. Plus, here are two great choices to watch at home: the engrossing 2002 French drama Man on the Train (Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango, YouTube) and Athina Rachel Tsangari’s sly and pointed exploration of male competitiveness, Chevalier (Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango, YouTube).

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Anthony Quinn in BARABBAS

Easter always triggers television networks to pull out their Biblical epics. If you’re going to watch just one Sword-and-Sandal classic, I recommend going full tilt with Barrabas, broadcast by Turner Classic Movies on April 20. This 1961 cornball stars Anthony Quinn as the Zelig-like title character.

The story begins with the thief Barabbas avoiding crucifixion when Pontius Pilate swaps him out for Jesus (this part is actually in the Bible). Because the Crucifixion isn’t enough action for a two-hour 17-minute movie, Barabbas is soon sent off as a slave to the salt mines, where he is rescued by a miraculously timely earthquake. He then joins the Roman gladiators, complete with a javelin-firing squad, gets lost in the catacombs and emerges to the Burning of Rome. He has encounters with the Emperor Nero and the Apostle Peter before he converts to Christianity – just in time for the mass crucifixion. Watch for an uncredited Sharon Tate as a patrician in the arena.

CHEVALIER – male competitiveness, brilliantly skewered

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CHEVALIER. Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing and SFFILM.

To celebrate this week’s opening of SFFILM, here’s a gem from the 2016 SFFILM, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Chevalier, a sly and pointed exploration of male competitiveness, with the moments of drollness and absurdity that we expect in the best of contemporary Greek cinema. Tsangari is bringing her newest film Harvest, starring Caleb Landry Jones and Harry Melling, to to the 2025 SFFILM.

In Chevalier, six guys are taking a holiday week on a yacht in the Aegean Sea. Each has his own stateroom, and the crew includes a chef. They spend their days scuba diving, jet skiing and the like. After a post-dinner game of charades, one suggests that they play Chevalier, a game about “Who is best overall?”. Of course, men tend to be competitive, and their egos are now at stake. The six guys began appraising each other, and their criteria get more and more absurd. “How many fillings do you have?”

In one especially inspired set piece, the guys race each other to construct IKEA bookcases, which results in five phallic towers on the boat’s deck (and one drooping failure). Naturally, some of the guys are obsessed with their own erections, too.

Athina Rachel Tsangari, director of CHEVALIER . Photo courtesy of SFFILM.

Director Athina Rachel Tsangari is obviously a keen observer of male behavior. Both men and women will enjoy laughing at male behavior taken to extreme. I sure did. Chevalier is perhaps the funniest movie of 2016, and it’s on my list of Best Movies of 2016.

I saw Chevalier at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), where I pegged it as the Must See of the fest. (In 2011, Tsangari brought her hilariously offbeat Attenberg to SFFILM.)

Make sure you get the 2015 Greek Chevalier, not the 2023 Hollywood bodice-ripper.

Unfortunately, in the Bay Area, Chevalier only got a blink-and-you’ve-missed-it release in 2016. Chevalier is now available to stream from Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Catrinel Marlon and Vlad Ivanov in THE WHISTLER. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – I’m busy preparing for the San Francisco and San Luis Obispo film festivals that dominate my Aprils. Just like last week, the best six new movies are documentaries; five are about musical, performance and visual artists and the sixth is about a psycho killer. I’ve also highlighted The Whistlers, a neo-noir thriller currently free on Max. Here are my film festival previews:

Reminder: A Complete Unknown now rents for under $6 on Amazon and is free on Hulu. You can also pay more to watch it on AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

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Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw in THE GETAWAY

Tomorrow, Turner Classic Movies presents The Getaway, a 1972 crime thriller starring the charismatic Steve McQueen and his real-life squeeze Ali MacGraw.  McQueen and MacGraw are delightful to watch as they move between violent clashes and double- and triple-crosses. As befits a Sam Peckinpah film, there’s an intense shootout at the end.  The grossly underrated character actor Al Lettieri (Sollozzo the Turk in The Godfather) gets to play perhaps his most delicious villain; when he comes across a oddly matched married couple – the nubile Sally Struthers and the nerdy Jack Dodson (county clerk Howard Sprague in The Andy Griffith Show). Lettieri layers on some glorious sexual perversity.  

Speaking of character actors, we also get to enjoy the crew of Peckinpah favorites: Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Dub Taylor, Bo Hopkins and Richard Bright. My friend Sandy lets Ali McGraw’s lack of acting range get in the way of enjoying The Getaway, but IMO Al Lettieri more than makes up for it.

Sally Struthers, Al Lettieri and Jack Dodson in THE GETAWAY

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: George Clinton in WE WANT THE FUNK. Courtesy of Firelight Films.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of the insightful Andy Kaufman biodoc Thank You Very Much, the delightful music doc We Want the Funk and the indie drama Nora. The best six new movies are documentaries; five are about musical, performance and visual artists and the sixth is about a psycho killer.

A Complete Unknown now rents for under $6 on Amazon and is free on Hulu. You can also pay more to watch it on AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

REMEMBRANCE

Richard Chamberlain (right) in THE THREE MUSKETEERS with Michael York, Oliver Reed and Frank Findlay.

Richard Chamberlain burst into the culture as TV’s dreamy Dr. Kildare, went to the English stage to hone his acting skills and returned to dominate the genre of television miniseries with Centennial, Shogun and The Thornbirds. Chamberlain made his share of movies, and my favorite is his role as Aramis in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers.

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Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN

On April 6, Turner Classic Movies will present The Narrow Margin, a taut 71 minutes of tension from my Overlooked Noir. Growly cop Charles McGraw plays hide-and-seek with a team of hit men on a claustrophobic train. Marie Windsor is unforgettable as the assassins’ target. McGraw and Windsor’s performances are first-rate, and their hardboiled dialogue is terrific. Director Richard Fleisher, early in his career, imaginatively stages the woman-hunt up and down the tight corridors and compartments of the moving train. I just rewatched The Narrow Margin at Noir City in January, and it’s still a masterpiece.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Thomas Kinkade in ART FOR EVERYBODY. Courtesy of Tremolo Productions.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of two absorbing biodocs, Art for Everybody and Janis Ian: Breaking Silence.

Cinequest movies can be watched at home through midnight on March 31 for less than ten bucks per movie. Here are my recommendations. I highly recommend the Kenyan thriller The Dog and the Mexican drama The Move In. Find them on Cinequest’s on-line festival, Cinejoy.

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Ava Gardner and Robert Taylor in THE BRIBE

On March 29, Turner Classic Movies airs the overlooked film noir, The Bribe. A federal agent (Robert Taylor) goes undercover to investigate a war surplus scam.  His one clue is that an American ex-pat couple in a Mexican seaside resort may be involved.  The husband (John Hodiak), frustrated that a medical diagnosis has ended his career as a pilot, has taken to the bottle.  That means that his nightclub singer wife (Ava Gardner) is often unaccompanied.  Posing as a tourist, the agent befriends them and tries to figure out which of the local shady characters (including the oily Vincent Price) is Mr. Big.  Of course, he falls for the wife, and she reciprocates – but is it because she’s made him as a cop? As the double crosses mount, everybody is bathed in tropical sweat.

Gardner, who broke through at age 24 in The Killers just three years before, is still at her most ravishing.   Her off-the-shoulder tops and two-piece swim suit get our attention, but she especially rocks the bare-midriff outfit in the photo above.

But the best reason to watch The Bribe is Charles Laughton, an acting legend never better than here as a professional briber.  His character often acts like a coward, but he is flush with confidence when it’s time to make a deal.  A master of manipulation and persuasion, this guy is a great negotiator.  In turn ingratiating and menacing, Laughton’s performance lights up the last half of The Bribe.

Charles Laughton and Robert Taylor in THE BRIBE

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Robert Pattinson in MICKEY 17. Courtesy of Warner Bros.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of Mickey 17, Chaos: The Manson Murders and Bob Trevino Likes It. And my Cinequest coverage continues.

Next week: Art for Everybody, the dark biodoc of the “Painter of Light,” Thomas Kinkade.

Note: The Brutalist is now renting from the VOD platforms for under ten dollars.

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Turhan Bey and Lynn Bari in THE SPIRITUALIST.

Here’s a rarity – on March 23, Turner Classic Movies brings us The Spiritualist (also The Amazing Mr. X), a 1948 B-picture that I hadn’t heard of until I saw it at last year’s Noir City at Oakland. It’s only 78 minutes long, and it’s a lot of fun. A cunning phony psychic (Turhan Bey) has convinced a wealthy widow that he can communicate with the dead, and she’s moved him into her mansion. Her world-wise daughter (Cathy O’Donnell) isn’t buying his act. But, while he is a con artist, he’s a really, really skilled one, and he pulls off illusion after illusion to keep the gullible widow believing – it’s like watching a magic show. The Spiritualist was shot by John Alton, one of the two greatest film noir cinematographers, and he makes the mansion extra spooky and the tricks extra sinister.

This was a rare leading role for Turhan Bey, and he makes a very charismatic charlatan, oozing suave charm and faux authority. Bey, an Austrian with a Turkish father and a Jewish Czechoslovakian mother, knocked around Hollywood playing exotic characters and never getting the lead in an A-picture. He has a very interesting Wikipedia page.

Cathy O’Donnell, Turhan Bey and Lynn Bari in THE SPIRITUALIST.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Sergio Podeley in GUNMAN, world premiere at Cinequest next week. Courtesy of Cinequest.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – it’s pretty much all about Cinequest, especially The Best of Cinequest, with all my reviews and features linked on my Cinequest 2025 page. At least six more reviews and features will be coming out soon. But NEXT week, I’ll be back with reviews of Mickey 17, Chaos: The Manson Murders and Bob Trevino Likes It.

And then I’ll be back in festival mode, covering the SLO Film Fest and SFFILM.

Reminder – all of the big 2024 movies, including the big Oscar winner, Anora, are available to watch at home. They’re all under $6, except for The Brutalist ($20) and A Complete Unknown ($25).

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Barbara Stanwyck in WITNESS TO MURDER

On March 20, Turner Classic Movies is airing the gripping and hard-to-find Witness to Murder. Richter (George Sanders) and Cheryl (Barbara Stanwyck) live in neighboring apartments. Cheryl believes she has seen Richter murder someone, but Richter’s clever and ruthless duplicity makes it appear that Cheryl is just crazy. Will Police Lt. Larry Mathews (Gary Merrill) believe her before Richter can make Cheryl his second victim?

What a wowzer first scene! Witness to Murder opens with a gripping scene that economically sets up the plot. “Operator, get me the police! Hurry!” We know immediately and certainly that Richter really committed the murder and that Cheryl really saw it. Throughout the movie, the audience knows this and Richter knows this, but no one else does, and neither does Cheryl herself during segments of the story.

Cheryl reports the murder and the police (Larry Mathews and sidekick) respond. However, Richter has concealed the crime so well that cops can’t find any evidence that a crime occurred. Could Cheryl have been mistaken? Or dreamed it? or made it up? or hallucinated? Is she neurotic and mildly hysteric or is she psychotic and delusional?

Larry develops an immediate attraction to Cheryl, and, despite her apparent emotional instability, begins a courtship.

Richter (malevolently) and Larry (paternalistically) begin gaslighting Cheryl, trying to convince her that she really only imagined what she saw – trying to convince her that what seemed so real, was not. Cheryl starts doubting herself.

Of course, Richter knows that he committed the murder, and he knows that Cheryl knows. To get her out of the way, he schemes to have her seen as crazed stalker. His scheme drives her to an outburst that serves as a pretext for locking her up in a psychiatric facility (with an interview by an oddly brusque shrink). Richter’s attempts to murder Cheryl continue right into Witness to Murder’s Perils-of-Pauline ending.

See my complete post on Witness to Murder, for more on the filmmakers and supporting cast. It’s one of my Overlooked Noir.

On this weekend’s TCM broadcast of Witness to Murder, film historian Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir – will provide his always insightful intro and outro. Witness to Murder is not available to stream; I own the DVD. Be sure to DVR it when it airs on Turner Classic Movies.

George Sanders in WITNESS TO MURDER