Adam Driver and John David Washington in BLACKKKLANSMAN
This is the time make sure you’ve seen, the highlights of the summer, BlacKkKlansman and Crazy Rich Asians, before the onslaught of the Fall movies. To preview the year’s biggest movies, make your plans to attend the Mill Valley Film Festival.
OUT NOW
Spike Lee’s true story BlacKkKlansmanis very funny and, finally, emotionally powerful.
Crazy Rich Asians is wildly popular for a reason – it’s damn entertaining and probably the year’s most appealing date movie. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll wait for the chance to see Awkwafina in her next movie.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the indie relationship drama Starlet from writer-director Sean Baker (Tangerine and The Florida Project). Starlet is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
On September 29, Turner Classic Movies will air one of my Overlooked Noir. It’s The Gangster, where a minor crime lord (Barry Sullivan) rules Brooklyn’s Neptune Beach, a sketchy beachfront boardwalk area near subway tracks. It may be a Coney Island for bottom feeders, but he’s its master. Then another gangster (Sheldon Leonard) tries to move in on his territory…The Gangster is a fine character-driven noir, a portrait of a tragic flaw. The Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller, will provide the intro and the outro.
Writer-director Sean Baker has created two indie hits in the past three years – the hilarious shot-on-an-iPhone trans comedy Tangerine and the crushingly authentic wild child drama The Florida Project. Here is Baker’s lesser known gem.
In the indie relationship drama Starlet, a 21-year-old woman is living in a seedy part of the San Fernando Valley and working in an even sketchier industry, when she buys an old thermos from a woman sixty years older than she. She finds a considerable sum of cash hidden within the thermos, keeps it, and, out of guilt, insinuates herself into the old woman’s life. The octogenarian is initially resistant, but a bond grows between them; each has a need that is revealed during the movie. It’s worth sitting back and going with the leisurely story, because the payoff at the end is surprisingly moving.
In her first movie credit, Besedka Johnson is astonishingly good as the older woman, both formidable and vulnerable. Sean Baker has, of course, gotten amazing performance out of non-actors in Tangerine and The Florida Project – it’s his gift, and it’s become his signature.
Dree Hemingway in STARLET
Model Dree Hemingway (daughter of Mariel and great-granddaughter of Ernest) demonstrates an engaging screen presence as the young woman. Stella Maeve is very convincing as the young woman’s nogoodnik roommate.
Starlet is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Henry Golding and Constance Wu in CRAZY RICH ASIANS
This week have two reliable audience pleasers that have been in theaters for a while. To preview the year’s biggest movies, make your plans to attend the Mill Valley Film Festival.
OUT NOW
Spike Lee’s true story BlacKkKlansmanis very funny and, finally, emotionally powerful.
Crazy Rich Asians is wildly popular for a reason – it’s damn entertaining and probably the year’s most appealing date movie. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll wait for the chance to see Awkwafina in her next movie.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the psychological thriller Beast, with its blazing, breakout performance by Jessie Buckley. It’s a heckuva ride. You can stream Beast on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
On September 24, Turner Classic Movies airs my choice as the best ever concert movie, The Last Waltz. (OK, Monterey Pop, Woodstock and Stop Making Sense are all in the conversation, too.) The Last Waltz is the documentary of The Band’s 1976 farewell concert at San Francisco’s legendary Winterland venue.
This was a big deal because The Band was one of the most respected and influential rock bands of the late 1960s and 1970s. They are primarily remembered for being Bob Dylan’s electric band and for their own hits Up on Cripple Creek, The Weight and The Night They Drove Dixie Down, Stage Fright and The Shape I’m In.
The occasion brought a Mt Olympus of rock musicians: Dylan himself, of course, and also Eric Clapton, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, Ringo Starr, Dr. John, Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield, Ronnie Wood and The Staple Singers – and even Neil Diamond. Van Morrison is unforgettable in his unflatteringly tight scoop-neck t-shirt under an oddly sparkly burgundy cowboy leisure suit.
My favorite song is The Band backing Neil Young on his Helpless. A silhouetted Joni Mitchell provides ethereal backing vocals from offstage. It’s spine tingling.
The Last Waltz was directed by no less than Martin Scorsese (between Taxi Driver and Raging Bull!). The great cinematographers László Kovács and Vilmos Zsigmond operated cameras.
Of The Band’s original members – Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel – Robertson and Hudson still survive.
The interviews with the charming and authentic Levon Helm are delightful highlights in The Last Waltz. I’ve written about Levon’s later acting career, with his performances in Coal Miner’s Daughter, In The Right Stuff, and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
Levon Helm in THE LAST WALTZDr. John, Neil Diamond, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Rick Danko, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson in THE LAST WALTZ
The psychological thriller Beast is set on the British Channel Island of Jersey, where the young woman Moll lives with her affluent family. Moll (Jessie Buckley) is the disregarded and put-upon step-sister in her own family – ignored except when being assigned the task de jour. Only the local cop is sweet on Moll, which brings her revulsion. Moll is dramatically rescued from a bad situation by the scruffy, somewhat feral, dreamy-eyed Pascal (Johnny Flynn). Moll and Pascal fall in love.
It turns out that Moll has within herself confidence, strength and passion – all long and cruelly suppressed by her mother. Pascal pulls Moll from her horrid family and unleashes, for better and for worse, Moll’s true persona. So this is a pretty fair romance to this point, but I did mention that Beast is psychological thriller. A serial killer has been prowling Jersey, raping and murdering young women and girls. The police suspect…Pascal.
Now we experience some unsettling ambiguity. Does Moll protect Pascal because she thinks him innocent? Or because she thinks that he’s the murderer? In his impressive first feature, writer-director Michael Pearce finally reveals something in Pascal’s past that gives us pause. And, even later, we learn something about Moll’s past, too. Holy shit. And we’re off on a roller coaster, wondering what Moll is going to do next and why, all the way to the shocking ending.
Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn in BEAST
The reason that Beast works so well is the stunning performance of Jessie Buckley. As an audience, we’re always drawn to Buckley’s Moll, at first understanding and relating to her defeatedness, inner rage and lust. But then Buckley keeps us from knowing exactly what’s going on inside, although we learn to accept that it sure is unpredictable. Buckley is Irish, and her singing career was launched on an American Idol-type show in Britain. She’s since acted in some British Isles television series. She is an incredible force of nature in this role.
Geraldine James in BEAST
Veteran actress Geraldine James gets the juicy role of the controlling and oppressive mother, her every remark filled with manipulation, shaming and the inducement of guilt. The mom is by FAR the least sympathetic character – and this story also has a serial killer in it. Johnny Flynn is very good as Pascal.
But it’s Jessie Buckley’s performance and Michael Pearce’s story that should bring you to see Beast. It’s a heckuva ride. You can stream Beast on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Spike Lee’s true story BlacKkKlansmanis very funny and, finally, emotionally powerful.
Crazy Rich Asians is wildly popular for a reason – it’s damn entertaining and probably the year’s most appealing date movie. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll wait for the chance to see Awkwafina in her next movie.
Wyeth, the latest documentary in the PBS American Masters series, takes on the odd case of the great painter Andrew Wyeth and explores the question, what is a muse? And how can great art come from the most unlikely and obscure subjects?
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exuberance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke and Chris O’Dowd sparkle in the affable romantic comedy Juliet, Naked; it’s an okay rom com with a fresh premise – boy loses girl and finds her pursued instead by his lifelong idol.
The hyper-violent and stylized Belgian thriller Let the Corpses Tan is a contemporary thriller that pays loving homage to the Sergio Leone canon. Essentially a soulless exercise in style, more interesting than gripping. It’s a visual stunner, though, and the Leone references are fun.
The coming-of-age drama We the Animals is imaginative, but it’s a grind.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the Korean drama Poetry, where an older woman takes a poetry class that unlocks her ability to observe. This unhurried film is troubling, uncomfortable and very, very good. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2011. You can stream Poetry from Amazon and Vudu.
ON TV
Yesterday I wrote about Stranger on the Third Floor from 1940, recognized as the very first film noir because of the pioneering cinematography of Nicholas Musaraca. It plays on Turner Classic Movies on September 18.
Early in his film, Korean writer-director Chang-dong Lee tells us his theme. Holding an apple, the teacher tells his students that, to write poetry, you must first see, really see the world around you. Mija is a 66-year-old pensioner in his class who works part-time as a caregiver for a stroke victim and is raising her sullen slob of a teenage grandson. She struggles with the poetry, but she does begin to see the people in her world with clarity – and it’s not a pretty picture. What she learns to see is human behavior ranging from the venal to the inhumane.
The key to the film’s success is the performance of Jeong-hie Yun as Mija, a protagonist who spends the entire movie observing. Her doctor tells her that her failing memory is the start of something far worse. Sometimes she doesn’t see what we see because she is distracted. But sometimes she doesn’t act like she sees because of denial or avoidance. Sometimes she is disoriented. But she has moments of piercing lucidity, and those moments are unsparing.
This unhurried film is troubling, uncomfortable and very, very good. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2011. You can stream Poetry from Amazon and Vudu.
Adam Driver and John David Washington in BLACKKKLANSMAN
Wyeth, the latest documentary in the PBS American Masters series, takes on the odd case of the great painter Andrew Wyeth and explores the question, what is a muse? And how can great art come from the most unlikely and obscure subjects?
Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke and Chris O’Dowd sparkle in the affable romantic comedy Juliet, Naked; it’s an okay rom com with a fresh premise – boy loses girl and finds her pursued instead by his lifelong idol.
OUT NOW
Spike Lee’s true story BlacKkKlansmanis very funny and, finally, emotionally powerful.
Crazy Rich Asians is wildly popular for a reason – it’s damn entertaining and probably the year’s most appealing date movie. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll wait for the chance to see Awkwafina in her next movie.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exuberance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
The hyper-violent and stylized Belgian thriller Let the Corpses Tan is a contemporary thriller that pays loving homage to the Sergio Leone canon. Essentially a soulless exercise in style, more interesting than gripping. It’s a visual stunner, though, and the Leone references are fun.
The coming-of-age drama We the Animals is imaginative, but it’s a grind.
ON VIDEO
We’ve just seen another appalling Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, this one in Pennsylvania. In Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, documentarian Alex Gibney explores the Catholic Church’s decades-long cover-up of priest abuse from a Wisconsin parish to the top of the Vatican (and I mean the top). Deliver Us From Evil is the story of a serial pedophile priest moved from parish to parish in the Diocese of Stockton, California. This has become, sadly, a familiar narrative, but what distinguishes Deliver Us From Evil is its breathtaking interviews with the pedophile himself.
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God is available to stream from Amazon (included with Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and HBO GO. Deliver Us from Evil is available to stream from iTunes, Vudu and YouTube.
ON TV
On September 8, Turner Classic Movies presents a great Rudyard Kipling adventure yarn, gloriously brought to the screen by director John Huston – The Man Who Would Be King. Michael Caine and Sean Connery star as Peachy Carnahan and Daniel Dravot, two reprobates mustered out of the Queen’s army in colonial India. Rather than return to menial prospects in England, these cheeky and lovable scoundrels seek to make their fortune as mercenaries in the outskirts of the Raj. Fortune smiles, and they reach unforeseeable success – and then one of them overreaches…
John Huston had been trying to make this 1975 movie since the 1950s. His first choices for the roles of Carnahan and Dravot were Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable, but Bogart became ill. Then the casting of Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster fell through. When he was mulling over a pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, Newman advised him to use British actors for these British roles. Thank you Paul Newman – Caine and Connery are magnificent.
Huston told Caine that the movie was about friendship, and that Carnahan and Dravot are successful as long as they are united in single purpose.
Christopher Plummer plays Kipling. Saeed Jaffrey is excellent as the local fixer.
Sean Connery, Saeed Jaffrey and Michael Caine in THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KINGSaeed Jaffrey, Michael Caine and Sean Connery in THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
We’ve just seen another appalling Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, this one in Pennsylvania. In Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, documentarian Alex Gibney explores the Catholic Church’s decades-long cover-up of priest abuse from a Wisconsin parish to the top of the Vatican (and I mean the top). The film begins with the horrifying and disgusting abuse of the most vulnerable – children at a residential Catholic school for the deaf; the children’s devout parents could not communicate with the children through American Sign Language, making them even more easy to victimize.
At first it seems like just another story of Church leaders suppressing the truth to avoid bad publicity and lawsuits – and it is for the first few years. But then we learn about an American bishop trying to remove a pedophile from ministry, but being thwarted by superiors across the Atlantic. As Gibney pulls apart the onion, the focus of the story climbs the Church hierarchy. The brilliant and prolific Gibney’s work includes Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Casino Jack and the United States of Money and the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side.
I also recommend another documentary on this difficult subject, Deliver Us From Evil, which made my top ten list for 2006. That is the story of a serial pedophile priest moved from parish to parish in the Diocese of Stockton, California. This has become, sadly, a familiar narrative, but what distinguishes Deliver Us From Evil is its breathtaking interviews with the pedophile himself.
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God is available to stream from Amazon (included with Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and HBO GO. Deliver Us from Evil is available to stream from iTunes, Vudu and YouTube.
Crazy Rich Asians is wildly popular for a reason – it’s damn entertaining and probably the year’s most appealing date movie. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll wait for the chance to see Awkwafina in her next movie. Other choices in theaters:
OUT NOW
Spike Lee’s true story BlacKkKlansmanis very funny and, finally, emotionally powerful.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exuberance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
The hyper-violent and stylized Belgian thriller Let the Corpses Tan is a contemporary thriller that pays loving homage to the Sergio Leone canon. Essentially a soulless exercise in style, more interesting than gripping. It’s a visual stunner, though, and the Leone references are fun.
The coming-of-age drama We the Animals is imaginative, but a grind.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the cheeky and original sex comedy Threesomething, which I saw at its world premiere at this year’s Cinequest. Comedy is hard to write, especially comedy as smart and original as this. Threesomething is now available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
On September 1, Turner Classic Movies presents the iconic 1946 film noirThe Postman Always Rings Twice. An essential element in film noir is a guy’s lust for a Bad Girl driving him to a Bad Decision, and when John Garfield first sees Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice, you can tell that he’s hooked. She’s a Bad Girl, and a Bad Decision is on its way.
John Garfield’s first look at Lana Turner in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
Isabelle Chester and Sam Sonenshine in THREESOMETHING
In the cheeky and original comedy Threesomething, Charlie (Sam Sonenshine) and his buddy Isaac (James Morosini) invite Charlies’ friend Zoe (Isabelle Chester) to engage in a three-way sexual encounter. That pitch alone is one of the funniest three-minute, fifteen-second, openings to a film I’ve seen in years. But then Threesomething finds the ridiculous moments in both the sex itself and in the all-consuming passion of new infatuation. After a crisp 72 minutes, Threesomething‘s ending is very fresh and non-formulaic, posing just enough ambiguity about the characters’ futures.
Co-writers Morosini and Sonenshine have identified the comic possibilities within the notion that a threesome is more or less symmetrical. Let me explain it this way. What if your idea of a threesome is three participants, but it evolves into two participants and a spectator?
Lust and love are such ripe sources of comedy because we humans are our most ridiculous when we are the most absorbed and single-minded – and that is definitively the case while having sex. And everyone’s sexual fantasies and fetishes – even if shared with one’s sexual partner – are laughable or creepy to someone else. Threesomething reaps the laughs from these situations without being sit-commy.
This is the Are you good? generation. Threesomething’s commentary on the compulsive over-checking in and over-supportiveness is all very sharply witty. And over-sharing is the core of Charlie’s relationship with his mother (Dru Mouser, who steals all of her scenes).
Sonenshine is just about perfect in his reactions during the threesome. He is fantastically gifted at playing both awkward discomfort and contained frustration.
Chester’s performance has several highlights, beginning with Zoe’s takes on the initial proposition and a particularly ill-timed outburst of weeping (inspired). As the story concludes, watch Chester’s face as Zoe considers and reconsiders how comfortable she really is in her choice of partner(s).
Threesomething is Morosini’s directorial debut and the first feature screenplay for both Morodini and Sonenshine. Comedy is hard to write, especially comedy as smart and original as this. I saw Threesomething’s world premiere at this year’s Cinequest. It is available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
