This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of Willem Dafoe’s tour de force in Late Fame and the long lost Iranian film Chess of the Wind, a masterpiece of family treachery.
Next week: Jane Schoenbrun follows their astonishingly original I Saw the TV Glow with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony and the sweet and authentic female coming of age film Over/Under.
REMEMBRANCE
Mark Rydell directed The Cowboys, Cinderella Liberty, The Rose and his triple-Oscar winner, On Golden Pond.
CURRENT MOVIES
- Late Fame: will he stay comfortable in his own skin? In theaters.
- The Odyssey: epic filmmaking at its best. In theaters.
- Romeria: when the dots don’t connect right away. In art house theaters, but hard to find.
- I Want Your Sex: good, naughty fun. In theaters.
- The Last Viking: hidden loot amidst the deluded. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
- Maddie’s Secret: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama. In theaters, but hard to find.
ON TV
On August 24, Turner Classic Movies brings us Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, with its ending of unsurpassed irony. Seeking to discredit capital punishment, a cocksure novelist (Dana Andrews) gets himself charged with and CONVICTED of a murder, planning to then reveal proof that he couldn’t have done it. But then the evidence of his innocence suddenly disappears! Crackerjack (and deeply noir) surprise ending. Another film noir from The great German auteur Fritz Lang directed the cinematic masterpieces Metropolis and M before fleeing the Nazis; Beyond a Reasonable Doubt was the last in his remarkable string of Hollywood film noir: The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, House by the River, Clash by Night, The Blue Gardenia, The Big Heat, Human Desire and While the City Sleeps.
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