It’s prime movie season and this week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of the superb drama Train Dreams, Kelly Reichardt’s dark comedy The Mastermind, the new biodoc Orwell: 2+2=5 and the affecting indie drama Burt, which screened at three Laemmle theaters this week.
Of my Best Movies of 2025 – So Far, you can see It Was Just an Accident and Sentimental Value in theaters now and THE REST ARE STREAMING.
Last week, I also posted notes on The American Revolution, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues and Being Eddie.
CURRENT MOVIES
- It Was Just an Accident: trauma, justice and complications. In theaters.
- Train Dreams: quietly thinking and quietly feeling. Netflix.
- Left-Handed Girl: a family’s path to to catharsis. Netflix.
- Sentimental Value: generational healing. In theaters.
- The Mastermind: when selfishness exceeds talent. In theaters.
- Orwell: 2+2=5: we didn’t get the message. In arthouse theaters, but hard to find.
- Nouvelle Vague: a subversive trickster bets that he is an artist, too. Netflix.
- Jay Kelly: finding that the ship has sailed. Netflix.
- Frankenstein: who is the real monster? In theaters and on Netflix.
- A House of Dynamite: a master filmmaker reminds us of the terrifyingly plausible. Netflix.
- Eleanor the Great: grief, an appalling lie, redemption. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
- One Battle After Another: sometimes hilarious, sometimes thrilling, always outrageous. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
- Death By Lightning: a statesman, a hack, a lunatic and one great story. Netflix.
- The Baltimorons: vulnerability, recovery, good-hearted laughs. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube Fandango.
ON TV
Turner Classic Movies has gift-wrapped a present for us on December 13 and 14. Cash on Demand, made in 1962 by the British horror schlock studio Hammer Films, is a ticking bomb suspenser and a Perfect Crime movie. It’s also an unlikely Christmas movie, with characters that evoke Dickins’ A Christmas Carol.
The Scrooge is the manager of a bank branch (Peter Cushing) – everyone’s most despised boss. He revels in the tyranny of his miniature fiefdom and never misses a chance to make the jobs of his underlings unnecessarily onerous or humiliating. The Bob Cratchit (Richard Vernon) is the dedicated and able bank clerk, who is doing his best while under the manager’s sadistic thumb.
The manager gets his comeuppance when a posh customer (André Morell) arrives. The manager’s kowtowing and boot-licking is interrupted by the discovery that the customer is actually pulling a heist and forcing the manager – by threatening his family – to help.
The crook has apparently thought of every possibility and devised a perfect heist. Cash on Demand becomes a bank procedural as we learn about 1862 state-of-the-art vault security.
There’s a deadline – the vault needs to be emptied at a certain time or the manager’s family will come to grief. All of Cash on Demand occurs in real time and all inside the bank, under the inescapable face of the wall clock.
Andre Morell’s bank robber, while ruthless, is generally jovial – the very model of clubby affability. Cash on Demand is a study in contrast between the cool-as-a-cucumber crook and the bank manager, who looks absolutely stricken throughout the movie.
Cash on Demand will be aired on TCM’s Noir Alley, with the intro and outro by Eddie Muller.