This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of the absolutely wild Heel and the lyrical La Grazia, plus a revamped CURRENT MOVIES section below.
As Cinequest enters its final weekend, I’ve posted Wrapping Up Cinequest and Cinequest Movies Go On-line Today. You can watch some very good Cinequest movies through Sunday night, and I recommend that you do so.
Note: The engrossing indie family drama East of Wall and the historical psychodrama Nuremberg are now both on Netflix.
REMEMBRANCE
Valerie Perrine always had a sex kitten image, but she held her own in some seriously good movies: Slaughterhouse-Five, Lenny, Superman, The Electric Horseman.
CURRENT MOVIES
- Heel: don’t try this at home. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
- La Grazia: it’s time to get past his malaise. Amazon, AppleTV.
- The Bride!: a funnier Bonnie and Clyde, with monsters.In theaters.
- Fackham Hall: silly, low-brow, and that’s okay. HBO Max (free), Amazon, AppleTV.
- A Private Life: a shrink and her own issues. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
ON TV
On March 29, TCM airs a milestone in LGBTQ cinema, the 1976 madcap comedy The Ritz. A straight and very square suburban businessman (Jack Weston) is fleeing from his homicidal mobster brother-in-law (Jerry Stiller) and hides out in the very last place one would look for him – a gay bathhouse in Manhattan. The Ritz is a fish-out-of-water farce with lots of comic mistaken identities. Today, it’s plenty dated, and a handsome but squeaky-voiced detective (Treat Williams) falls especially flat. But it’s one of the first movies with a decidedly queer setting, and F. Murray Abraham plays one of the first entirely sympathetic and relatable gay movie characters. Rita Moreno is all in as Googie Gomez, the house entertainer. Watch for John Ratzenburger (Cliff the mailman in Cheers and the voice of many Pixar movies) as a bathhouse patron.