Movies to See Right Now

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Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen in GREEN BOOK

Roma on Netflix and Green Book in theaters are still my top picks.   And here’s my remembrance of actress Verna Bloom, with a recommendation for her The Hired Hand.

OUT NOW

  • Roma is an exquisite portrait of two enduring women and the masterpiece of Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). Will win multiple Oscars. It is streaming now Netflix.
  • Green Book: Tony Lip is a marvelous character, and Viggo Mortensen’s performance is one of the great pleasures of this year in the movies.
  • Shoplifters won the Palm d’Or at Cannes. This is a witty, and finally heartbreaking, look at a family that lives on the margins – and then is revealed to be not what it seems.
  • Stan & Ollie: Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel and John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy deliver remarkable portraits of a partnership facing the inevitability of showbiz decline.
  • Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind and its companion documentaries, all available to stream on Netflix.
  • The masterful documentary Monrovia, Indiana is a fascinating movie about a boring subject.
  • Pawel Pawlikowski’s sweeping romantic tragedy Cold War is not as compelling as his masterpiece Ida.
  • The Favourite: Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue are not enough; this critically praised film didn’t work for me.
  • Skip First Man – a boring movie about a fascinating subject.

ON VIDEO

Here’s a really fun movie. Land Ho! features a vibrant and irascible geezer who conscripts an old friend into a rowdy road trip to – of all random places – Iceland. Land Ho! is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, and Google Play.

ON TV

On January 19, Turner Classic Movies will show The Last Hurrah (1958): The master director John Ford is famous for westerns, but this portrait of an embattled incumbent is a classic of political cinema. Spencer Tracy plays the leader of an urban political machine. He’s got years of accomplishments and a machine in his favor, but his newspaper-owning antagonist is running an empty suit against him in a campaign that is increasingly fought on the newfangled medium of television. He’s been so successful for so long that his ward heelers have become complacent, and he’s smelling the campaign getting away from him…

And on January 23, TCM will air the 1967 biker exploitation movie Born Losers, in which Tom Laughlin originated the character of Billy Jack – all discussed in my post about TCM’s recent Billy Jack Extravaganza.

Also on January 23, TCM will cablecast a film from my Bad Movie Festival – Psych-Out, a hippie exploitation movie from 1968. Features Bruce Dern as a schizophrenic Jesus and Jack Nicholson with a ponytail glued onto his head. Hilarious.

Spencer Tracy (center) in THE LAST HURRAH

DVD/Stream of the Week: LAND HO! – rowdy geezer roadtrip to Iceland

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Paul Eenhoorn and Earl Lynn Nelson in LAND HO!
Paul Eenhoorn and Earl Lynn Nelson in LAND HO!

Here’s a really fun movie. Land Ho! features a vibrant and irascible geezer who conscripts an old friend into a rowdy road trip to – of all random places – Iceland. It’s a showcase for Earl Lynn Nelson, who essentially plays himself in the movie. Nelson is a 72-year-old Kentucky doctor who is a force of nature and has possibly an even dirtier mind than The Movie Gourmet’s. He is a friend of the 29-year-old writer director Martha Stephens who was INSPIRED to see the possibilities in sending him off on an adventure and filming the results. His friend (and ex-brother-in-law) is played by an actor, Paul Eenhoorn.

It all works. Nelson – an unapologetic hedonist – is funnier than hell, and Eenhoorn stays right with him as the more reserved and sometimes aggrieved buddy. Land Ho! is a string of LOL moments, whether Nelson is providing politically incorrect fashion advice to young women or unsolicited marital advice to a honeymooning couple or pulling out a joint and proclaiming “It’s time for some doobiefication”.

This is a geezer comedy that doesn’t make the geezers cute. Nelson may be a piece of work, but there’s nothing in Land Ho! that isn’t genuine.

I just have two knocks on the movie. It’s only 95 minutes long, but it would be crisper at about 87. And, as The Wife pointed out, there’s really no need for the huge jarring subtitles to let us know precisely where these guys are in Iceland.

Nevertheless, it’s worth a watch. The audience at Sundance loved this movie, and I think Land Ho! is a hoot-and-a-half. Land Ho! is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, and Google Play.

{Note: I got the meet and spend some time with Paul Eenhorn at Cinequest 2015, when he was premiering his film In the Company of Women. Great guy.]

Verna Bloom

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Verna Bloom in THE HIRED HAND

Actress Verna Bloom, who died last week, didn’t make a lot of movies, but she starred in some of the most memorable movies of the 1970s. Her run began with Haskell Wexler’s groundbreaking Medium Cool and traveled through Clint Eastwood’s mysterious High Plains Drifter. She will be best remembered  as Mrs. Dean Wormer in Animal House.

My favorite Verna Bloom movie was also her favorite – Peter Fonda’s grievously underrated Western The Hired Hand. Bloom plays a woman abandoned on her hardscrabble ranch by her roaming husband (Fonda). When he returns with his trail buddy (Warren Oates), she will only allow him back as a hired hand. It’s a moody and captivating film, beautifully shot by Vilmos Zsigmond.  The Hired Hand is available on DVD from Netflix; the DVD is also available for purchase.

Verna Bloom in ANIMAL HOUSE

Movies to See Right Now

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Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen in GREEN BOOK

Make plans to attend San Francisco’s great festival of film noir, Noir City, opening on January 25.

OUT NOW

  • Roma is an exquisite portrait of two enduring women and the masterpiece of Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). Will win multiple Oscars. It is streaming now Netflix.
  • Green Book: Tony Lip is a marvelous character, and Viggo Mortensen’s performance is one of the great pleasures of this year in the movies.
  • Shoplifters won the Palm d’Or at Cannes. This is a witty, and finally heartbreaking, look at a family that lives on the margins – and then is revealed to be not what it seems.
  • Stan & Ollie: Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel and John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy deliver remarkable portraits of a partnership facing the inevitability of showbiz decline.
  • Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind and its companion documentaries, all available to stream on Netflix.
  • The masterful documentary Monrovia, Indiana is a fascinating movie about a boring subject.
  • Pawel Pawlikowski’s sweeping romantic tragedy Cold War is not as compelling as his masterpiece Ida.
  • The Favourite: Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue are not enough; this critically praised film didn’t work for me.
  • Skip First Man – a boring movie about a fascinating subject.

ON VIDEO

My Stream of the Week, the Canadian psychological thriller Lost Solace, takes a highly original premise and turns it into a pedal-to-the-metal thriller. Lost Solace was my personal favorite at Cinequest 2016 and can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

You really haven’t sampled film noir if you haven’t seen Out of the Past (1947), and it’s coming up on Turner Classic Movies on January 14. Perhaps the model of a film noir hero, Robert Mitchum plays a guy who is cynical, strong, smart and resourceful – but still a sap for the femme fatale…played by the irresistible Jane Greer. Director Jacques Tourneur told Greer, ” First half of the movie – Good Girl; second half – Bad Girl.”

OUT OF THE PAST
OUT OF THE PAST

STAN & OLLIE: comic geniuses facing the inevitable

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Left to right: Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel, John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy,
Photo by Nick Wall, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

In Stan & Ollie, Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel and John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy deliver remarkable portraits of a partnership facing the inevitability of showbiz decline. An iconic movie comedy team, Laurel and Hardy made 107 films, including 23 features. Their run started in 1926 and made the transition into the sound era more successfully than their peers in silent comedy. But by 1945, their popularity was over, and most of Stan & Ollie is set in 1951, when they are trying to rekindle their careers with a British live tour.

Coogan and Reilly’s impersonations (and Reilly’s makeup) are impressive. However, the most interesting aspect to Stan & Ollie is the depiction of the partnership, which like any partnership, is unequal and complementary; each individual has a different personality and a different role. Together, their act was so seamless that we forget that the two, one English and the other from Georgia, were veteran professionals already in their mid-thirties when they hooked up. Hardy was bossy on-screen, but Laurel was the business and creative leader of the team.

In a flashback (during the 1937 filming of Way Out West), we see the two at the height of their career arc. That sets us up to watch the two manage struggle and disappointment later on.

The technical highlight of the Coogan and Reilly performances is a dead-on re-creation of Stan and Ollie’s dance in front of an Old West saloon in Way Out West, a dance which is comic perfection; it’s worth finding Way Out West for the original version of the dance, which is much longer. My own favorite Laurel & Hardy film is the 1933 Pre-Code Sons of the Desert, where the duo mislead their wives to sneak off to the rowdy convention/drinkfest of the titular fraternal organization.

As usual I’ve embedded the trailer for you, but I recommend not watching it if you’re going to see Stan & Ollie – it gives too much away.

NOIR CITY: the great San Francisco festival of film noir

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Make plans to attend Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, in San Francisco January 25-February 3.  Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president, the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and movies not available on DVD or streaming. And we get to watch them in a vintage movie palace (San Francisco’s Castro Theatre) with a thousand other film fans.

The 2019 Noir City will focus on film noir in the 1950s – from just after the genre’s peak to its transition into neo-noir.  The festival tag line is, “Think the 1950s were buttoned-down and conservative? Think again.” The Film Noir Foundation has restored Trapped (1949), and the world premiere of the restored version will open the fest.  Think about it – you can be in the first movie theater audience to see Trapped in sixty-nine years.  Closing night will feature that most brutal and emotionally bleak of neo-noirs, Blast of Silence.

Three of the best films in the program are not available to stream, and five more are impossible to see outside of Noir City in any format. This year’s program features eight movies on The Movie Gourmet’s list of Overlooked Noir.

Noir City runs from Friday, January 25 through Sunday, February 3. To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here.

I’ll be posting a comprehensive Noir City preview on January 23. And you may run into me at Noir City as I cover the opening weekend.

NIGHTFALL, one of NOIR CITY’S highlights

Stream of the Week: LOST SOLACE – a psychopath afflicted by empathy

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LOST SOLACE
LOST SOLACE

The Canadian psychological thriller Lost Solace takes a highly original premise and turns it into a pedal-to-the-metal thriller. It’s an astonishingly successful debut for director and co-writer Chris Scheuerman.

Co-writer Andrew Jenkins stars as the psychopath Spence, whose life is devoted to exploiting women, stealing their stuff and emotionally devastating them to boot. Spence is remarkably skilled and seems unstoppable until he unwisely ingests a recreational drug – he starts suffering hallucinatory episodes that are intensely emotional. Here’s the brilliantly original core of Lost Solace – having the occasional fit of feelings and empathy really gets in the way of being a coolly cruel psychopath.

Spence targets the emotionally fragile rich girl Azaria (Melissa Roxburgh). Melissa is burdened both by the care for her violently psychotic brother Jory (Charlie Kerr) and by years of verbal evisceration by her prick of a father, Chuck (Michael Kopsa). Able to peg Spence as a scumbag, Jory offers Spence a share of his inheritance to kill Chuck. It’s a plan hatched by a psychotic – what could possibly go wrong? Add an ambitious physician (Leah Gibson) who is eager to cash in on a cure for psychopathy, and we’re off to the races.

Scheuerman is an economical story-teller who lets the audience connect the dots. Spence doesn’t even speak until well into the movie. But Scheuerman spins a great tale, and as he reveals his characters, we see that Chuck may be every bit as fiendish as Spence and that Betty the doctor, may be just as greedy. There’s plenty that can unravel Spence’s Perfect Crime, and that’s what keeps us on the edges of our seats.

Andrew Jenkins is completely believable as both the supremely confident Spence and, later, as the Spence determined to steel his way through his unexpected confusion. The rest of the cast is exceptional, too, especially Kopsa and Gibson.

Lost Solace was my personal favorite at Cinequest 2016 and can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

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John Huston in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

In case you’ve been absorbed in the Holidays, here is my annual Best Movies of 2019, farewells to filmmakers, both those behind the camera and those on screen. And my anniversary tribute to The Wife. And here’s my recent 42-minute podcast with Sara Vizcarrondo of Silicon Valley’s Cinema Club.

OUT NOW

  • Roma is an exquisite portrait of two enduring women and the masterpiece of Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). Will win multiple Oscars. It is streaming now Netflix.
  • Green Book: Tony Lip is a marvelous character, and Viggo Mortensen’s performance is one of the great pleasures of this year in the movies.
  • Shoplifters won the Palm d’Or at Cannes. This is a witty, and finally heartbreaking, look at a family that lives on the margins – and then is revealed to be not what it seems.
  • Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind and its companion documentaries, all available to stream on Netflix.
  • The masterful documentary Monrovia, Indiana is a fascinating movie about a boring subject.
  • Pawel Pawlikowski’s sweeping romantic tragedy Cold War is not as compelling as his masterpiece Ida.
  • The Favourite: Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue are not enough; this critically praised film didn’t work for me.
  • Skip First Man – a boring movie about a fascinating subject.

ON VIDEO

Along with Roma, you can now stream TEN of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far:

  • Leave No Trace: his demons, not hers. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • The Rider: a life’s passion is threatened. n Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • The Other Side of the Wind: Welles’ brilliance from beyond the grave. Available to stream, along with its two companion documentaries, on Netflix.
  • The Death of Stalin: gallows humor from the highest of scaffolds. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Custody: the searing essence of domestic violence. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Beast: finally unleashed … and untethered.  Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Three Identical Strangers: a Feel Good until we peel back the onion. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Quality Problems: a screwball comedy for the sandwich generation. My favorite film from last year’s Cinequest has been released on video this year: Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Outside In: she finds herself finally ready. Streaming on Netflix.

ON TV

Tomorrow night and Sunday morning, Turner Classic Movies will air one of my Overlooked Noir, this time introduced by the Czar of Noir Eddie Muller.  In His Kind of Woman. Robert Mitchum plays a down-and-out gambler who is offered a deal that MUST be too good to be true; he’s smart enough to be suspicious and knows that he must discover the real deal before it’s too late. He meets a on-the-top-of-the-world hottie (Jane Russell), who is about to become down on her luck, too. Top notch.

HIS KIND OF WOMAN
HIS KIND OF WOMAN

Happy Anniversary to The Wife

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Donna Reed in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE – the second best wife ever

Happy Anniversary to The Wife, also known as Lisa The Love of My Life!

Once again, she tolerated my spending huge chunks of time at Cinequest, the San Francisco International Film Festival, Noir City, the SF Jewish Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival.

We shared some of my favorite movie experiences this year.

  • In early October, she accompanied me to the Mill Valley Film Festival screening of Roma with the lead actresses and two of the producers in attendance – perhaps my best movie night of 2018.
  • Together, we loved A Star Is Born,  BlacKkKlansman and One Voice, (and together we had a meh reaction to First Man).
  • She tagged along for Man Who Cheated Himself at Noir City and Venus at Cinequest.
  • We power-binged through seasons of Victoria , Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and The Fall.
  • And we finished the year with the Christmas Eve screening of It’s a Wonderful Life at the Stanford Theater.

She’s the biggest fan and supporter of this blog, and I appreciate her and love her. Happy Anniversary, Honey!

2018 Farewells – in front of the camera

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Peggy Cummins, who died at age 92, was an English actress known for that most American of roles, a pretty gal who gets a sexual thrill out of gun violence.  That was in 1950’s Gun Crazy, a low budget B movie that has become a film noir cult classic.

In dismissing the movie, one contemporary critic wrote, “Looking as fragile as a Dresden doll, Miss Cummins bites into her assignment like a shark.”  If you watch the famous 3-minute shot of the bank heist from the back seat of the getaway car, wait for the moment John Dall asks Cummins to look back for pursuers – when she turns to look, she presses up against him and her face reveals an excitement that is both sexual and predatory.  By all accounts a delightful person, Peggy attended a Film Noir Foundation event in San Francisco in 2013. And she could eat a hamburger, too.

 

Dorothy Malone and Humphrey Bogart in THE BIG SLEEP

Actress Dorothy Malone has died at age 93. She began making films in 1943 with a series of small parts, of which the most indelible came in 1948’s The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart. Malone plays a bookstore clerk who takes a liking to Bogie’s Sam Spade and initiates a quickie. As has been noted by many, it’s one of the sexiest moments in cinema and all she takes off is her glasses.

 

Stéphane Audran in LE BOUCHER

Actress Stéphane Audran was best known for best known for the surreal Buñuel masterpiece The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and the art house hit Babette’s Feast (scroll down from link).  But her best performance may have come in her husband Claude Charbol’s 1970 serial killer classic Le Boucher; she plays a teacher in a small village who is courted by the local butcher who may be the serial killer.  Audran brought a singular austere beauty and dignity to her roles.

 

Susan Anspach in FIVE EASY PIECES

Actress Susan Anspach starred in some of the most audacious films of the 1970s, most notably Five Easy Pieces.

 

Actor David Ogden Stiers will always be remembered as Major Charles Emerson Winchester III in TV’s M*A*S*H* . Stiers’ voice was often heard in the movies, such as when he narrated THX 1138 and voiced Cogsworth the clock in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

 

The actress Margot Kidder starred in the extremely popular Superman franchise and The Amityville Horror. More impressively to me, she rebounded to amass over fifty screen credits after her very public breakdown from bipolar disorder.

 

The actress Barbara Harris is best remembered for the memorable finale of Robert Altman’s masterpiece Nashville, where her seemingly loser character Albuquerque takes advantage of her one big break. She also got the most out of what is usually a thankless role, the scorned wife, in The Seduction of Joe Tynan. In Freaky Friday, she was the mom involuntairly switchng bodies with her teen daughter Jodi Foster. And she shone in Peggy Sue Got Married, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Who Is Harry Kellerman yada yada – remember, comedy is hard.

 

Scott Wilson with Ashley Judd in COME EARLY MORNING

Character actor Scott Wilson’s 81 screen credits spanned from Robert Blake’s partner in 1967’s In Cold Blood to the role of Sam Braun, the casino owner dad of Katharine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) in CSI. My favorite Scott Wilson role was as Ashley Judd’s father in the alcoholism drama Come Early Morning.

 

Burt Reynolds in DELIVERANCE

I’m gonna miss Burt Reynolds – both for being a movie icon and for being one of the greatest guests ever on Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He solidified that icon status in Deliverance, brandishing a bow-and-arrow and clad in a sleeveless neoprene vest – there has never been a more studly image in the history of cinema.

The key to Burt Reynolds’ appeal is that unique combination of virility and charm, his stunning physicality leavened by his not taking himself too seriously. I’m ridiculously handsome, and isn’t that just ridiculous?

To celebrate Burt’s rollicking Smokey and the Bandit era, I recommend The Bandit, a documentary about Burt’s collaboration with stuntman/director/roommate Hal Needham. You can stream The Bandit from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

In his last film, this year’s The Last Movie Star, an aged action movie star (Burt Reynolds playing someone very similar to Burt Reynolds) examines his life choices. It’s very funny and sentimental (in a good way), and you can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.