Three more days to enjoy these films from SXSW – included with Amazon Prime

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FACE TO FACE TIME

This year’s SXSW Film Festival, set to play in March, was cancelled due to COVID-19, but SXSW and Amazon are teaming to showcase over thirty of the films through this Wednesday, May 6. I’ve seen six of them (five shorts and a feature) that I can recommend.

Fate to Face Time is a 7-minute comedy about how any date can lead to misadventure, even a remote one. She’s gone out with him twice and is looking to accelerate things with a surprise FaceTime call, but he may not be that much into her…

We’ve all over-invested in a certain date (and, since teenage years, we’ve all known better, but have done it anyway). Face to Face Time begins as a cringe comedy, but the finale is a howler.

Face to Face Time is written and directed by (and stars) Izzy Shill. As Shill herself notes in the intro, this short is especially timely while we are all sheltering at home and many are dating remotely.

Here are some some more recommendations from Prime’s SXSW 2020 Film Festival Collection:

  • Quilt Fever – an affectionate documentary abou the Olympics of quilting, held annually in Paducah, Kentucky (who knew? And who knew that there was a Quilting Channel?) (16 minutes.)
  • No Crying at the Dinner Table – Filmmaker Carol Nguyen recorded separate interviews with her mom, dad and adult sister about losses they have suffered but never talked about, and then shared all three interviews with all three family members. It’s authentic, and it’s a weeper. (16 minutes)
  • The Voice Inside Your Head – a bizarre comedy is which the inner voice that is stripping you of confidence and self worth is personified in a guy who follows you around all day. (12 minutes).
  • Daddio – Casey Wilson of SNL wrote, directed and stars in this comic short about how she and her zany dad (Michael McKean) navigated their grief after the death of her mom. (18 minutes.)
  • Selfie – This French feature film is a collection of astute parodies that comment on digital online culture, from obsession with view/likes on social media to Internet dating to security breaches. Some of the vignettes are smarter and funnier than others. I especially enjoyed the guy who is bragging about how his life is made better by targeted ads (the algorithms really get him!) until he receives a targeted ad for Viagra. (1 hour 48 minutes.)

Search on Amazon for the title of the film – or “SXSW” for the entire menu of 2020 SXSW films on Amazon Prime thru May 6. If you have Amazon Prime, they’re free.

THE HANDMAIDEN – gorgeous, erotic and a helluva plot

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THE HANDMAIDEN
THE HANDMAIDEN

After a few minutes of The Handmaiden, we learn that it’s a con artist movie. After 100 minutes, we think we’ve watched an excellent con artist movie, but then we’re surprised by a huge PLOT TWIST, and we’re in for two more episodes and lots of surprises in a gripping and absorbing final hour. It’s also one of the most visually beautiful and highly erotic films of the year.

Director and co-writer Chan-wook Park sets the story in 1930s Korea during Japanese occupation (Japanese dialogue is subtitled in yellow and Korean dialogue in white). A young heiress has been secluded from childhood by her guardian uncle, who intends to marry her himself for her fortune. A con man embarks on a campaign to seduce and marry the wealthy young woman to harvest her inheritance himself. The con man enlists a pickpocket to become handmaiden to the heiress – and his mole. I’m not going to tell you more about the plot, but the audience is in for a wild ride.

The Handmaiden takes its time revealing its secrets. Who is conning who? Who is attracted to whom? How naive is the heiress? How loyal is the handmaiden? Who is really Japanese and who is really Korean? What’s in those antique books? What’s in the basement? Is the uncle perverted or REALLY perverted? And what legendary sex toy will show up in the final scene?

THE HANDMAIDEN
THE HANDMAIDEN

Chan-wook Park’s 2003 US art house hit Oldboy is highly sexualized, trippy and disturbing. The Handmaiden is much more mainstream and accessible than Oldboy, but its sexuality packs a punch.

Gorgeous and erotic, The Handmaiden is one of the most gloriously entertaining films of the year. You can order the DVD from Netflix or stream it on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: behind the one percent

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CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Documentarian Justin Pemberton brings alive Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a critique of the concentration of wealth. There’s no more fundamentally important political topic than inequality, and this theme has resonated through the best of recent cinema, including Parasite and Knives Out.

Pinketty traces the economics of wealth from feudal times to the present, and Pemberton keeps all the economic history lively with plenty of eye candy. Capital in the Twenty-First Century covers a lot of ground – globalization and movable capital, deregulation and privatization, defanging of organized labor, China state capital, and the impact on today’s youngest generations.

Piketty’s proffered solutions are simple and intellectually sound (stopping off-shore tax dodges, taxing inheritance, incentivizing wealth to be invested in productive risk instead of moving around a closed-loop of financial instruments). But, given the political power of great wealth, this is a very heavy political lift.

CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century pops along fairly briskly, but, as an entertaining popularizer, it’s no The Big Short or An Inconvenient Truth. Still, about an hour in, there’s a jaw-dropping psych experiment in which people benefiting from pure luck believe and act as though they are entitled.

During its Bay Area virtual run at the Roxie, you can stream Capital in the Twenty-First Century at Roxie Virtual Cinema, or at distributoe Kino Lorber’s new virtual platform Kino Marquee.

Movies to Watch Right Now (at home)

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THE DEEP

This week, The Movie Gourmet adds more three overlooked gems to watch at home: a real life survival story, an irresistible glimpse into The New Yorker cartoons and a forgotten anti-war classic.

ON VIDEO

The compelling The Deep tells the fact-based survival story of a shipwrecked Icelandic fisherman’s ordeal in frigid waters.   You can stream The Deep on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

If you’re like me and you worship the cartoons in The New Yorker, then the documentary Very Semi-Serious is a Must See. You can stream it from Amazon (free with Prime), iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

In the absorbing crime thriller The Whistlers, a shady cop and a mysterious woman are walking a tightrope of treachery. The Whistlers was a hit at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, but COVID-19 impaired its 2020 theatrical release in the US. You can stream it from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Other recent streaming recommendations:

Buck Brannaman in BUCK

ON TV

On May 3, Turner Classic Movies will present an overlooked masterwork. Set in England just before the D-Day invasion, The Americanization of Emily (1964) is a biting satire and one of the great anti-war movies. James Garner plays an admiral’s staff officer charged with locating luxury goods and willing Englishwomen for the brass. Julie Andrews plays an English driver who has lost her husband and other male family members in the War. She resists emotional entanglements with other servicemen whose lives may be put at risk, but falls for Garner’s “practicing coward”, a man who is under no illusions about the glory of war and is determined to stay as far from combat as possible.

Unfortunately, Garner’s boss (Melvyn Douglas) has fits of derangement and becomes obsessed with the hope that the first American killed on the beach at D-Day be from the Navy. Accordingly, he orders Garner to lead a suicide mission to land ahead of the D-Day landing, ostensibly to film it. Fellow officer James Coburn must guarantee Garner’s martyrdom.

It’s a brilliant screenplay from Paddy Chayefsky, who won screenwriting Oscars for Marty, The Hospital and Network. Today, Americanization holds up as least as well as its contemporary Dr. Strangelove and much better than Failsafe. Reportedly, both Andrews and Garner have tagged this as their favorite film.

One of the “Three Nameless Broads” bedded by the Coburn character is played by Judy Carne, later of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.

Jule Andrews and James Garner in THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY

THE DEEP – true life survival

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THE DEEP

The compelling The Deep tells the fact-based survival story of a shipwrecked Icelandic fisherman’s ordeal in frigid waters.   Amazingly, all of the footage was shot in the ocean (no tanks) without stunt professionals.  The lead actor Ólafur Darri Ólafsson makes the protagonist endearing, and he must be a hell of a good sport to spend all that time in icy water. 

Writer-director Baltasar Kormákur made the unconventional and successful choice not to end the movie with a climactic rescue, but to instead explore the impact of the incident and the attempts to explain how it was possible.

Kormákur also wrote and directed a very different and even better 2006 film, the very dark neo-noir police procedural Jar City, available on DVD and streaming.

I saw The Deep at the 2013 Cinequest. You can stream The Deep on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

VERY SEMI-SERIOUS – glimpsing inside The New Yorker cartoons

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VERY SEMI-SERIOUS

If you’re like me and you worship the cartoons in The New Yorker, then the documentary Very Semi-Serious is a Must See. Very Semi-Serious takes us inside The New Yorker for a glimpse inside the process of creating and selecting the cartoons, chiefly from the perspective of cartoonist and twenty-year New Yorker Cartoon Editor Bob Mankoff. You will know Mankoff from his cartoon with the caption, “How about never? Is never good for you?”. (Mankoff has since left The New Yorker for Esquire and the website Cartoon Collections.)

We also meet rock star cartoonists that include Roz Chast and George Booth, along with The New Yorker Editor David Remnick and some aspiring cartoonist newcomers. We are boggled by the tens of cartoons each cartoonist pitches each week and the hundreds that the Cartoon Editor must review. Rejection is a major part of the cartoon life.

We also learn how Mankoff scientifically studies the eye movements of readers to see how/when/if we “get” the jokes. And we get to laugh again at HUNDREDS of cartoons.

I saw Very Semi-Serious at the 2015 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), and now you can stream it from Amazon (free with Prime), iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to Watch Right Now (at home)

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THE WHISTLERS

We’re still watching our movies at home, so here are plenty of choices. Of the recently released, I am still recommending The Whistlers.

I also wrote about The Dark Horse, an extremely cynical and hilarious comment on American politics from 88 yer ago (and still timely), If you missed it yesterday on TCM, at least watch the clip in my post.

ON VIDEO

In the absorbing crime thriller The Whistlers, a shady cop and a mysterious woman are walking a tightrope of treachery. The Whistlers, was a hit at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, but COVID-19 impaired its 2020 theatrical release in the US. You can stream it from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

And here’s one that I KNOW you haven’t seen – the droll comedy Radio Dreams. This indie set in the Bay Area explores the ambivalence of the immigrant experience through the portrait of a flamboyant misfit, a man who rides the roller coaster of megalomania and despair. Radio Dreams is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes and kanopy.

RADIO DREAMS

Other recent streaming recommendations:

ON TV

Lon Chaney in THE UNKNOWN

On April 29, Turner Classic Movies airs The Unknown, a Lon Chaney silent, and I think that Chaney’s charisma is worth sampling. And as a fun experience, not a “this is good for you” experience.

REMEMBRANCE

The actor Brian Dennehy stood a bear-like 6’3”and could have filled his career by playing menacing heavies (and he had his share of those). But Dennehy had uncommon range, as evidenced by his most well-remembered roles – Rambo’s nemesis in First Blood and the alien in Cocoon. My favorite Dennehy movie roles were the crooked sheriff in Silverado and Harrison Ford’s morally complicated boss in Presumed Innocent. Dennehy was even a bigger star on stage – he won Tony Awards for his Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman and his James in Long Day’s Journey into Night (the role Ralph Richardson played in the movie).

Brian Dennehy

RADIO DREAMS – stranger in a strange and funny land

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RADIO DREAMS

The droll dark comedy Radio Dreams explores the ambivalence of the immigrant experience through the portrait of a flamboyant misfit, a man who rides the roller coaster of megalomania and despair. That misfit is Hamid Royani (Mohsen Namjoo), the director of programming at an Iranian radio station in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Hamid, an author in Iran, is a man of great certainty, with an unwavering sense of intellectual superiority He assumes that everyone should – and will – buy in to his idiosyncratic taste. This results in extremely random radio programming, and Hamid tries to sabotage everything that he finds vulgar (which is everything that might bring more listeners and revenue to the station.)

With his wild mane and indulgent programming, we first think that Hamid is simply batty. But immigrants to the US generally forge new identities, and we come to understand that Hamid has not, perhaps will not, forge that new identity. His despair is real but it’s hard to empathize with – he might be a legitimate literary figure in Iran, but he’s probably a pompous ass over there, too.

The highlight of Radio Dreams is Hamid’s reaction when he is surprised that Miss Iran USA, whom he has dismissed as a bimbo, might have literary chops that rivaling his.

Hamid has concocted a plan to have Afghanistan’s first rock band visit with the members of Metallica on air, and that’s the movie’s MacGuffin. As we wait to see if Metallica will really show up, the foibles of the radio station crew dot Radio Dreams with moments of absurdity. There are the cheesy commercials about unwanted body hair, Hamid’s obsession with hand sanitizer, a radio jungle played live on keyboards EVERY time, a new employee orientation that focuses on international time zones, along with a station intern compelled to take wrestling lessons.

Writer-director Babak Jalali is an adept storyteller. As the movie opens, we are wondering, why do these guys have musical instruments? Why are they talking about Metallica? What’s with the ON AIR sign? Much of the movie unfolds before Hamid Royani emerges as the centerpiece character.

Hamid is played by the well-known Iranian singer-songwriter Mohsen Namjoo, “Iran’s Bob Dylan”. This is only Namjoo’s second feature film as an actor. He’s a compelling figure, and this is a very fine performance.

Except for Namjoo, the cast is made up of Bay Area actors. Masters of the implacable and the stone face, all of the actors do deadpan really, really well.

As befits the mix of reality and absurdism, here’s a podcast by the characters in Radio Dreams. I saw Radio Dreams at the Cinema Club Silicon Valley, and Babak Jalali took Q&A after the screening by phone from Belgium. Radio Dreams is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes and kanopy.

THE DARK HORSE: cynical politics from 88 years ago

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Guy Kibbee and Warren William in THE DARK HORSE

On April 23, Turner Classic Movies plays the great political comedy The Dark Horse (1932).  If you think that political handlers, dumb candidates, spin and sex scandals are creations of contemporary politics, you need to see this gem from 88 years ago.  A political party resolves its convention stalemate by nominating an obscure party regular (the gleefully dim Guy Kibbee) as its gubernatorial candidate.  It happens that the dark horse is not merely a cipher, but is a vacuous buffoon who is challenged by the task of removing his own shoes.  His own campaign manager describes him thus:

He’s the dumbest human being I ever saw. Every time he opens his mouth he subtracts from the sum total of human knowledge.

That equally ruthless and amoral campaign manager, brilliantly played by Warren William (the “King of Pre-Code”), presages modern political handlers with his skill, cynicism and shameless insincerity. He teaches his dimwitted candidate to answer every question with “Yes…and, then again, no.”  William’s campaign manager is such a scoundrel that he must first get sprung from jail (by Bette Davis in one of her very first movie roles).  There’s spin, staged photo opportunities and even crisis management, when the candidate is about to blunder into a potentially campaign killer of a sex scandal.  And it’s still very, very funny today.

Here’s a sample:

Movies to Watch Right Now (at home)

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THE WHISTLERS

Yet more movies to watch at home, still topped by the excellent crime thriller The Whistlers.

ON VIDEO

In the absorbing crime thriller The Whistlers, a shady cop and a mysterious woman are walking a tightrope of treachery. The Whistlers was a hit at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, but COVID-19 impaired its 2020 theatrical release in the US. You can stream it from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Because the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) was supposed to be underway now (it’s been cancelled for the COVID-19 emergency), here’s a film from SFFILM’s 2017 program: The Lost City of Z revives the genre of the historical adventure epic, with all the spectacle of a swashbuckler, while braiding in modern sensitivities and a psychological portrait. This is a beautiful and thoughtful film. The Lost City of Z is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Other recent streaming recommendations:

ON TV

Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in Seven Days in May

“I’m suggesting Mr President, there’s a military plot to take over the Government of these United States, next Sunday…”

John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate) is a master of the thriller, and his 1964 Seven Days in May is a masterpiece of the paranoid political thriller subgenre.  Edmond O’Brien’s performance is best among outstanding turns by Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Frederic March and Whit Bissell.  Douglas showed his range by playing a profoundly decent man, for whom “patriotic” meant “devoted, dutiful and loyal to the nation’s principles”, not “jingoistic”. April 23 on Turner Classic Movie.

Kirk Douglas in SEVEN DAYS IN MAY