This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of the year’s best film so far – Possible Love on Netflix. It’s the time of year when the most aspirational movies are rolling out, and I’ve also posted new reviews of the Pedro Almodovar melodrama Bitter Christmas and the James Stewart wartime biopic Jimmy.
REMEMBRANCE
The prolific actor Stacy Keach turned out over 200 screen performances from the late 1960s to Nebraska and last year’s Ned Kelly. And, as his NYT obit details, that was between Shakespearean stage performances. As I’ve written many times, my favorite Stacy Keach performance was as the over-the-hill Stockton boxer in Fat City.
CURRENT MOVIES
- Possible Love: four people, social inequality and trauma. In theaters.
- You Can See Everything: the truth and nothing but the truth. In theaters.
- The Only Living Pickpocket in New York: desperate, not for survival, but for redemption. In theaters.
- Bitter Christmas: melodrama within melodrama. In theaters.
- The Marching Band: an emotionally powerful Feel Good. Amazon, AppleTV.
- Queen at Sea: no good deed. In theaters.
- Jimmy: Jimmy deserved a better biopic. In theaters.
- Wardriver: techno-noir. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
- The Scout: not what she signed up for. In arthouse theaters.
- John Boorman and the Devil: anatomy of a fiasco. Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango.
ON TV
On November 14, Turner Classic Movies presents The Exiles, a gritty 1961 documentary on the plight of 20-something impoverished Native Americans who have moved from reservations to Los Angeles. There’s partying, there’s violence and not a lot of hopes and dreams. These kids are the least self-conscious documentary subjects I’ve seen – utterly indifferent to the camera.
It’s the first movie looking at the indigenous Americans in an urban, not a traditional, setting. This is before the Native American politicization of the late 1960s. The Exiles also offers snapshots of Los Angeles and its youth culture of the period, drive-in burger joints and all.
These were the last days of LA’s Bunker Hill neighborhood, which was already run down 10-15 years before The Exiles, in the classic film noir era of the late 40s and 50s; Bunker Hill was razed for LA’s gleaming Museum District (MOCA, the Broad, Walt Disney Concert Hall, etc,).
In 1961, The Exiles premiered at the Venice Film Festival , but was NEVER reeased theatrically. It was essentially a Lost Film until a restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archive was presented at the 2008 Berlinale and became available on DVD. The Exiles has now been included in the National Film Registry. If you miss it on TCM, you can stream it on Criterion, kanopy (free), hoopla (free), Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.