Movies to See Right Now

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Roma is now available to stream on Netflix. I think that it’s a masterpiece. Your best choice in theaters is Green Book (link goes live this weekend).

And tickets are on sale (and going fast) for Silicon Valley’s best Holiday movie experience – the Stanford Theatre’s Christmas Eve screening of It’s a Wonderful Life.

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.
  • Green Book (link goes live this weekend): 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.
  • Bitter Melon, H.P. Mendoza’s dark indie comedy on an issue that a Bay Area family must finally face.
  • The masterful documentary Monrovia, Indiana is a fascinating movie about a boring subject.
  • Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes provides insight into of the man who founded Fox News and thus defiled the American body politic and made possible our venerable nation’s descent into Trump’s America.
  • The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen Brothers’ anthology of darkly funny Western vignettes, is recommended only for Westernphiles and Coen Brothers fans. It is streaming on Netflix.
  • The Favourite (link goes live this weekend): Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue are not enough; this critically praised film didn’t work for me.
  • The Outlaw King, with Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce, exists for those who need a dose of medieval slaughter and a spunky queen, but there’s not enough there for the rest of us.
  • Skip First Man – a boring movie about a fascinating subject.

 

ON VIDEO

THE RIDER

My Streams of the Week are the eight of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far that are already available to stream: Leave No Trace, The Rider, The Death of Stalin, Beast, Custody, Monrovia, Indiana, Three Identical Strangers, Quality Problems and Outside In.

ON TV

On December 17, Turner Classic Movies will broadcast the top heist film ever, the pioneering French classic Rififi: After the team is assembled and the job is plotted, the actual crime unfolds in real-time – over thirty minutes of nerve-wracking silence.

RIFIFI

Streams of the Week: the year’s best

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THE RIDER

Eight of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far are already available to stream. Here they are, and this week I’m featuring The Rider: a life’s passion is threatened. A young man’s rodeo injury threatens to keep him from his passions. Filmed in South Dakota with non-professional actors, The Rider is emotionally powerful and genuine – and not a bit corny. It’s also visually beautiful. You can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Also available to stream:

  • Leave No Trace: his demons, not hers. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • The Death of Stalin: gallows humor from the highest of scaffolds. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Beast: finally unleashed … and untethered. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Custody: the searing essence of domestic violence. 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.

STYX: a confident woman with no good choices

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Susanne Wolff in STYX

In the gripping drama, Rieke (Susanne Wolff) is a woman who intends to pilot her sailboat on a solo voyage from Europe to Ascension Island off the coast of Africa. That’s one woman, all alone on her boat for 3,000 miles of open ocean.

Oozing matter of fact confidence, Rieke seems well-equipped for the adventure. She is fit, highly skilled, an experienced sailor and provisioned up with top quality gear and supplies. Rieke’s day job is as an emergency physician, and we see that no crisis situation seems to faze her.

In the first part of Styx, we think we’re watching a survival tale – woman against nature. But when a dramatic storm hits, we’re afraid for her but she’s not.

After the storm, she faces the first situation that she can’t handle on her own – one of life-and-death that has been spawned by a humanitarian crisis bigger than any individual. Frustratingly, she knows exactly what must be done, but she can’t do it herself; she must rely on civilized nations behaving according to expected norms. But are those expected norms available to everyone? And will it come?

Rieke’s persona is based on acting to solve every problem. But here, there are no good choices.

This is a German film about a German character, but almost all the dialogue is in English, the international language of navigation.

The second feature for director Wolfgang Fischer, Styx has won film festival awards, including at the Berlin International Film Festival. I saw Styx before its release at Silicon Valley’s Cinema Club. I’ll let you know when it becomes widely available.

Bernardo Bertolucci

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THE DREAMERS

Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian writer-director, dies recently after making 25 films over 51 years. He is most renowned for The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972) and the 9-Oscar winner The Last Emperor (1987). Bertolucci’s body of work benefitted from his longtime collaboration with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.

Of course, his most notorious film was Last Tango in Paris. I rewatched Last Tango in Paris in the last few years, and concluded that it just doesn’t stand up. In fact, I found parts of the vaunted Marlon Brando performance risible and, knowing what we know now about how Bertolucci and Brando treated actrees Maria Schneider, the famed butter scene is disturbingly unwatchable.

I actually prefer Bertolucci’s more recent work, beginning with the underrated The Sheltering Sky (1990) with John Malkovich and Debra Winger. I thought that his The Dreamers was the best film of 2003.

I especially like Bertolucci’s final film, Me and You which he made in 2012 at the age of 72. I saw Me and You at the San Francisco International Film Festival, but it has never been widely available, and sadly, can only be streamed with a Realeyz subscription.

ME AND YOU

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND: Welles’ brilliance from beyond the grave

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John Huston in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, finally completed and released thirty years after Welles’ death, centers on the fictional cinema auteur Jake Hannaford (John Huston).  Not unlike Welles himself, Hannaford is widely recognized as brilliant and self-indulgent, as both a genius and impossible to work with, having a lifetime of relationship carnage strewn behind him.  For the zillionth time, Hannaford is broke and needs to find money to finish his latest movie.  He holds a screening party in hopes of snaring financial support from his now more successful protégé Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich).

The backdrop is the sort of 1970s Hollywood hedonism where the party includes naked models, midgets (“The midgets broke into the wine cellar and got their tiny hands on the fireworks”) and female manikins for target practice. And, oh, they invited the mid-70s version of Dennis Hopper.

Peter Bogdanovich and John Huston in Orson Wells’ THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

Hannaford is surrounded by his own posse of collaborators and hangers-on, and a cynical bunch they are.  That rampant and matter-of-fact cynicism is very witty, and things are funniest when things go badly – the money pitch is prematurely exposed and the screening of an art film has to be re-located to a drive-in!

John Huston’s performance is wonderful, especially when Hannaford is not suffering fools gladly.  Hannaford’s team of scoundrels is played by Mercedes McCambridge, Tonio Selwirt as the Baron, Gregory Sierra, Paul Stewart and Edmond O’Brien, with Lili Palmer as an ex and Susan Strasberg as a provocateur of the press.  In fact, virtually every actor delivers an excellent performance, except for Cameron Mitchell with his odd, apparently Southern, accent.

I was surprised by brilliance of Norman Foster’s performance as Hannaford’s gofer Billy, loyal, weary and crapped-upon; Foster is known for 57 screen credits as a director, but he also acted, supporting Walter Huston in one of the first talkies in 1929.

Norman Foster in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

And then there’s the surreal film-within-the-film – the unfinished Hannaford movie that is being screened at the party.  The star of that film is Welles’ real-life girlfriend, the Croatian actress Oja Kodar, who co-wrote The Other Side of the Wind.  Kodar’s character strides around empty vistas naked and dominates the pretty boy leading man (Robert Random).  This film is pure eye candy, with the most vivid colors and the most dramatic camera angles.  Kodar’s almost silent performance is exceptional – she has the gaze of a predator, always direct and in command. She looks great naked, and her sex scene in a moving car is exceptionally erotic.

Some critical comment suggests that the film-within-the-film is Welles’ satire on European art films. But, to my eyes, it’s consistent with a good art film of the 1970s, too.  Either way, you can’t stop watching it.

Oja Kodar in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

The Other Side of the Wind has been famous for decades as a Lost Film (and now as a recovered film).  But it’s best viewed without that baggage – by just absorbing what’s up on the screen.

Not everyone will like The Other Side of the Wind, especially those who like their movies to be linear.   Is The Other Side of the Wind a mess, as some have described it?   I don’t think so because the party scenes are SUPPOSED to be frenetic – Welles dips deeply into chaos and ambivalence and obscurity with intentionality.

The Other Side of the Wind is Welles’ unsparing glimpse into his own personality – a personality that self-sabotages his art and cruelly mistreats those closest and most necessary to him.  The question he seems to ask himself is whether the self-created tumult is a REQUISITE for his art or an IMPEDIMENT?

The Other Side of the Wind is available for streaming on Netflix. It is accompanied by two documentaries on Orson Welles and his final movie: They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead and A Final Cut for Orson: Forty Years in the Making, also both available to stream on Netflix.

In each of four decades Orson Welles produced unforgettable works of art. Citizen Kane is an undisputed masterpiece, and I consider A Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight to be great movies. The Other Side of the Wind is in that class. Thirty-three years after it’s creator’s death, it’s one of the best movies of 2018.

or decades

Two documentary companions to THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

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John Huston, Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich in THEY’LL LOVE ME WHEN I’M DEAD

The release of The Other Side of the Wind is accompanied by two documentaries on Orson Welles and his final movie: They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead and A Final Cut for Orson: Forty Years in the Making. And they’re both available to stream on Netflix.

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is a feature-length documentary. We hear from the two guys involved with The Other Side of the Wind during its forty-year journey. Producer Frank Marshall was one of the four-person crew during the four years of shooting, along with Orson Welles, co-writer and star Oja Kodar and cinematographer Gary Graver.  Director Peter Bogdanovich began acting in one role and shifted to another during the shoot – and then played a pivotal off-camera role in the film’s completion.

Here’s what They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead helps you understand about The Other Side of the Wind:

  • How essential director of photography Gary Graver was to the project, one of the few non-porn flicks in his filmography.
  • Why impressionist Rich Little oddly shows up in the party in The Other Side of the Wind and what was his original role in the film;
  • How Welles treated his confidant Bogdanovich in real life, which gives a major insight into The Other Side of the Wind.
  • What The Other Side of the Wind insiders think is the intended meaning of the movie.
  • Just how charismatic and witty Welles was in real life – even more quick and refreshing than on his talk show appearances.

You can stream They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead on Netflix.

A Final Cut for Orson: Forty Years in the Making is a 38-minute “Making Of’ doc about the restoration and completion of The Other Side of the Wind. It’s a procedural that offers insight into all aspects of the final cut, including the editing and the music. A highlight is actor Danny Huston describing the looping of his father’s voice.  The story of rescuing the actual cans of film is a helluva detective story in itself.

Netflix offers A Final Cut for Orson: Forty Years in the Making, but makes it unnecessarily tough to find. Instead of using the Netflix SEARCH feature, go right to The Other Side of the Wind and scroll down and click on MORE TRAILERS.

Frank Marshall, Oja Kodar and Orson Welles in A FINAL CUT FOR ORSON: FORTY YEARS IN THE MAKING

ZAMA: the corruption of colonialism (as if we needed to know)

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Daniel Giménez-Cacho in ZAMA

The protagonist of Zama is a colonial magistrate in the late 1700s, a low-level functionary of the Spanish crown in a remote backwater of South America. A pretty decent guy for a colonizer who enslaves other humans, Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez-Cacho) has been loyally performing his duties, and his sole ambition is to get a transfer and return to his family.

But his bosses just won’t give him that transfer, even when he performs a morally painful task. Worse than that, his life is an unending sequence of indignities. While de Zama can’t get relieved, the underling who has been fired for insubordination gets the assignment of his choice; de Zama lusts for the Spanish colonial woman who teases him, but she only will bed the same insubordinate underling. De Zama can’t even get his indigenous mistress to wash his shirt.

The Wiley Coyote of Spanish colonialism, De Zama is frustrated, humiliated – and finally, far worse. Zama’s descent leads to his final act of refusing to give what he sees as false hope to even his tormentors. As the indignities pile up on Zama, the absurdity becomes wry; I kept thinking of the Job-like misfortunes of the protagonist in the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man, which is funny as hell, unlike Zama.

The finest screen actors are best when they are silently watching, observing and assessing their own situations. The Spanish-born Mexican actor Giménez-Cacho is particularly adept at this, and throughout the film we see “I am so screwed” in his eyes.

This is all meant to show us the fundamental corruption of colonialism, and that colonialism ultimately destroys the colonizer as well as the colonized. (Yes, this really hasn’t been controversial for the past 50 years.)

This is a one-note movie. Zama has a score of 89 from Metacritic and is beloved by many admirable critics, including the great Manohla Dargis. But the repetitive tedium and the Message worn on its sleeve didn’t pay off for me. You can stream it if you insist.

Movies to See Right Now

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LEAVE NO TRACE

The Must Sees are Roma, Shoplifter and the best 2018 films that you can stream today, especially Leave No Trace.

 

BITTER MELON

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.
  • 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.
  • Bitter Melon, H.P. Mendoza’s dark indie comedy on an issue that a Bay Area family must finally face.
  • The masterful documentary Monrovia, Indiana is a fascinating movie about a boring subject.
  • Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes provides insight into of the man who founded Fox News and thus defiled the American body politic and made possible our venerable nation’s descent into Trump’s America.
  • Just in case you haven’t gotten around to seeing it yet – Lady Gaga illuminates Bradley Cooper’s triumphant A Star Is Born. Don’t bring a hankie – bring a whole friggin’ box of Kleenex.
  • What They Had is an authentic and well-crafted dramatic four-hander with Hilary Swank, Michael Shannon, Blythe Danner and Robert Forster.
  • The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen Brothers’ anthology of darkly funny Western vignettes, is recommended only for Westernphiles and Coen Brothers fans. It is streaming on Netflix.
  • The Outlaw King, with Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce, exists for those who need a dose of medieval slaughter and a spunky queen, but there’s not enough there for the rest of us.
  • Skip First Man – a boring movie about a fascinating subject.

ON VIDEO

My Streams of the Week are the eight of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far that are already available to stream: Leave No Trace, The Rider, The Death of Stalin, Beast, Custody, Monrovia, Indiana, Three Identical Strangers, Quality Problems and Outside In.

ON TV

I don’t want to make a television recommendation this week. I guess you could watch The Prowler on Turner Classic Movies on December 13. But you should really be watching the best movies of the year in theaters or via streaming.

BITTER MELON: a family finally has to face up

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BITTER MELON

Bitter Melon is H.P. Mendoza’s dark indie comedy on an issue that a Bay Area family must finally face. The dad has long abandoned the family, and it’s almost like he has moved to a different city (but he hasn’t). Two of the adult sons have moved to New York City and Philadelphia. The third son, Troy, lives in the mom’s family home with his wife and kid – and this guy is a nightmare. Troy (Patrick Epino) has a delusional self-image that he is somehow super-talented, even though he is unemployed and living off his wife and mom; worse, he has an anger management problem, and the entire family tiptoes around on eggshells – trying to avoid any disagreement with him.

It should be no surprise that Troy, who thinks he is entitled to his way all of the time, also beats his wife. The wife is too traumatized to seek help, Troy’s mom is in denial and the siblings, having put the family’s day-to-day life in their rearview mirrors, all combine to enable the abuse. When the two brothers return for the Christmas Holiday, the situation becomes unbearable and the family members decide that they must take an extreme step to deal with Troy.

I’ve just described a pretty grim story line, but Bitter Melon is very funny.

Bitter Melon invites us into a Filipino-American family, which is a welcome look at an underrepresented subject. But Bitter Melon is much more than cultural tourism – the characters and story here are universal, from the adult kids coming back to sleep in their childhood rooms for the holidays, the differences between first and second generation immigrants and the family issues of abuse and denial.

H.P. Mendoza is a Bay Area treasure, having written the screenplay and music for the rollicking and refreshing comedy Colma: The Musical and written and directed the genre-bending art film I Am a Ghost. I recommend the delightful Colma: The Musical for anyone, especially Bay Area residents; you can stream it from Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Bitter Melon begins a Bay Area theatrical run tomorrow.

Streams of the Week: the year’s best

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Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE

Eight of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far are already available to stream. Here they are, and this week I’m featuring Leave No Trace: his demons, not hers.   Leave No Trace is Debra Granik’s first narrative feature since her 2010 Winter’s Bone (which I had rated as the best film of that year). Leave No Trace is a brilliant coming of age film that stars Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie as a dad-daughter team who challenge conventional thinking about homelessness and healthy parenting. Winter’s Bone launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence, and Leave No Trace might do the same for newcomer McKenzie. Leave No Trace may be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Also available to stream:

  • The Rider: a life’s passion is threatened. n Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • The Death of Stalin: gallows humor from the highest of scaffolds. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Beast: finally unleashed … and untethered. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Custody: the searing essence of domestic violence. 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.