In the appealing Canadian transgender dramedy Venus, Sid (Debargo Sanyal) is at a personal crossroads. Single after things didn’t work out with his closeted boyfriend Daniel (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), Sid has just begun to dress like a woman in public and to take hormones for his transition. Then, he is shocked to learn that he has a 14-year-old son Ralph (Jamie Myers). The boy thinks that having a transgender dad with Indian heritage is very cool and, unbeknownst to his mom, starts spending more and more time with Sid. Sid has to deal with this, along with the reactions of his more traditional Indian parents and a chance meeting with Daniel.
In her first narrative feature, writer-director Eisha Marjara has crafted a funny, touching and genuine story. Venus is successful largely because of Debargo Sanyal’s performance. Eschewing flamboyance, Sanyal’s Sid is a man driven to keep his dignity in the most inescapably awkward situations. It helps that Sanyal is a master of the comic take; Sid’s reactions to his mother’s and Ralph’s intrusiveness are very funny.
I predicted that Venus, at its US premiere at Cinequest, would become one of the most popular indies at the festival; indeed, it won the Cinequest award for best narrative feature. Venus is available for streaming from Amazon and iTunes.
OK – work with me here. On Wednesday, Turner Classic Movies is presenting a bunch of Lon Chaney films, and I think that Chaney’s charisma is worth sampling. And as a fun experience, not a “this is good for you” experience.
I will fess up that I am not a huge silent movie fan. I usually watch only one silent movie each year (out of the 250-300 movies that I see annually). I like the Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton comedies, but I find sitting through most of the silent dramas to be “eat your broccoli” experiences. But Lon Chaney really enlivens his films. It’s like he is acting in a more modern movie than are the other actors.
Chaney was an expert with makeup and is well-known for grotesque roles like Quasimodo, and the Phantom of the Opera. Accordingly, I had always thought of Chaney as his nickname, “Man of a Thousand Faces”.
But, for all his reliance on changing appearances, Chaney was NOT a gimmick actor. He was very naturalistic, a relaxed actor whose screen-acting was very modern. His course features and his charm combine for a unique magnetism. I think that he would have been very successful in today’s cinema.
Unfortunately, Chaney died suddenly at age 47, so he was able to make only one talkie – the 1930 remake of his 1925 silent The Unholy Three. You can find snippets of the remake on YouTube and hear his voice.
On October 3, Turner Classic Movies will present The Unknown and five other Lon Chaney films. I also recommend the 1925 silent The Unholy Three, like The Unknown directed by Tod Browning. (After Chaney’s death, horror master Browning went on to make Dracula and Freaks.) TCM will also air Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera, which I’ve seen, and three flicks I haven’t seen: The Monster, The Penalty and He Who Gets Slapped.
The Unknown has a completely outlandish plot. Chaney plays Alonzo, a circus freak with no arms, who throws knives and shoots rifles with his feet. But actually, Alonzo is a criminal on the lam who is merely PRETENDING to be armless. He’s love with his much younger assistant, played by 21-year-old Joan Crawford (already in her 18th film), who spends much of the movie in a bikini top. The thing is, she has a phobia and only feels comfortable with Alonzo because she think he has no arms. Alonzo starts contemplating amputation to get her to marry him. Yep, this is about a farfetched as a plot can get, but Chaney’s expressive face transcends the weirdness.
(Don’t confuse him with his son Lon Chaney, Jr., who also counted many horror pictures among his 197 screen roles. I remember Lon Jr. most for playing Lennie in Of Mice and Men and the old retired sheriff in High Noon.)
Adam Driver and John David Washington in BLACKKKLANSMAN
This is the time make sure you’ve seen, the highlights of the summer, BlacKkKlansman and Crazy Rich Asians, before the onslaught of the Fall movies. To preview the year’s biggest movies, make your plans to attend the Mill Valley Film Festival.
OUT NOW
Spike Lee’s true story BlacKkKlansmanis very funny and, finally, emotionally powerful.
Crazy Rich Asians is wildly popular for a reason – it’s damn entertaining and probably the year’s most appealing date movie. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll wait for the chance to see Awkwafina in her next movie.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the indie relationship drama Starlet from writer-director Sean Baker (Tangerine and The Florida Project). Starlet is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
On September 29, Turner Classic Movies will air one of my Overlooked Noir. It’s The Gangster, where a minor crime lord (Barry Sullivan) rules Brooklyn’s Neptune Beach, a sketchy beachfront boardwalk area near subway tracks. It may be a Coney Island for bottom feeders, but he’s its master. Then another gangster (Sheldon Leonard) tries to move in on his territory…The Gangster is a fine character-driven noir, a portrait of a tragic flaw. The Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller, will provide the intro and the outro.
Writer-director Sean Baker has created two indie hits in the past three years – the hilarious shot-on-an-iPhone trans comedy Tangerine and the crushingly authentic wild child drama The Florida Project. Here is Baker’s lesser known gem.
In the indie relationship drama Starlet, a 21-year-old woman is living in a seedy part of the San Fernando Valley and working in an even sketchier industry, when she buys an old thermos from a woman sixty years older than she. She finds a considerable sum of cash hidden within the thermos, keeps it, and, out of guilt, insinuates herself into the old woman’s life. The octogenarian is initially resistant, but a bond grows between them; each has a need that is revealed during the movie. It’s worth sitting back and going with the leisurely story, because the payoff at the end is surprisingly moving.
In her first movie credit, Besedka Johnson is astonishingly good as the older woman, both formidable and vulnerable. Sean Baker has, of course, gotten amazing performance out of non-actors in Tangerine and The Florida Project – it’s his gift, and it’s become his signature.
Dree Hemingway in STARLET
Model Dree Hemingway (daughter of Mariel and great-granddaughter of Ernest) demonstrates an engaging screen presence as the young woman. Stella Maeve is very convincing as the young woman’s nogoodnik roommate.
Starlet is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The fact that Moe Berg’s is the only baseball card displayed at CIA headquarters tells us that he was a candidate for The Most Interesting Man in the World. Berg was a graduate of Princeton and Columbia Law who played 15 years in the Major Leagues, one of the few Jews in pre-war baseball. While a pro player in the early 1930s, he visited Japan twice, learned Japanese and surreptitiously photographed Tokyo for US intelligence. During World War II, he performed secret missions in Europe for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA.
That’s quite a life. Unfortunately, The Catcher Was a Spy drains the interest out of it by trying to portray that most cerebral of real-life characters, Moe Berg, in kind of an actiony movie. The climax is a will-he-or-won’t-he decision that Berg has to make on a secret mission. If you are still awake by then…
Most of The Catcher Was a Spy is Paul Rudd as Moe Berg being watchful. Berg was an enigma and notoriously closed-mouthed – so we see him being enigmatic and silent. Not very cinematic.
The cast is remarkably talented: Mark Strong, Sienna Miller, Jeff Daniels, Tom Wilkinson, Guy Pearce and Paul Giamatti, Connie Nielson, and Shea Whigham. Strong has a pivotal role, but we only glimpse the others, and I still can’t place who Connie Nielsen played; it must have been that other female character…
If you’re a history geek like me, you might stream this. But don’t expect an espionage thriller.
Henry Golding and Constance Wu in CRAZY RICH ASIANS
This week have two reliable audience pleasers that have been in theaters for a while. To preview the year’s biggest movies, make your plans to attend the Mill Valley Film Festival.
OUT NOW
Spike Lee’s true story BlacKkKlansmanis very funny and, finally, emotionally powerful.
Crazy Rich Asians is wildly popular for a reason – it’s damn entertaining and probably the year’s most appealing date movie. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll wait for the chance to see Awkwafina in her next movie.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the psychological thriller Beast, with its blazing, breakout performance by Jessie Buckley. It’s a heckuva ride. You can stream Beast on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
On September 24, Turner Classic Movies airs my choice as the best ever concert movie, The Last Waltz. (OK, Monterey Pop, Woodstock and Stop Making Sense are all in the conversation, too.) The Last Waltz is the documentary of The Band’s 1976 farewell concert at San Francisco’s legendary Winterland venue.
This was a big deal because The Band was one of the most respected and influential rock bands of the late 1960s and 1970s. They are primarily remembered for being Bob Dylan’s electric band and for their own hits Up on Cripple Creek, The Weight and The Night They Drove Dixie Down, Stage Fright and The Shape I’m In.
The occasion brought a Mt Olympus of rock musicians: Dylan himself, of course, and also Eric Clapton, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, Ringo Starr, Dr. John, Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield, Ronnie Wood and The Staple Singers – and even Neil Diamond. Van Morrison is unforgettable in his unflatteringly tight scoop-neck t-shirt under an oddly sparkly burgundy cowboy leisure suit.
My favorite song is The Band backing Neil Young on his Helpless. A silhouetted Joni Mitchell provides ethereal backing vocals from offstage. It’s spine tingling.
The Last Waltz was directed by no less than Martin Scorsese (between Taxi Driver and Raging Bull!). The great cinematographers László Kovács and Vilmos Zsigmond operated cameras.
Of The Band’s original members – Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel – Robertson and Hudson still survive.
The interviews with the charming and authentic Levon Helm are delightful highlights in The Last Waltz. I’ve written about Levon’s later acting career, with his performances in Coal Miner’s Daughter, In The Right Stuff, and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
Levon Helm in THE LAST WALTZDr. John, Neil Diamond, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Rick Danko, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson in THE LAST WALTZ
The psychological thriller Beast is set on the British Channel Island of Jersey, where the young woman Moll lives with her affluent family. Moll (Jessie Buckley) is the disregarded and put-upon step-sister in her own family – ignored except when being assigned the task de jour. Only the local cop is sweet on Moll, which brings her revulsion. Moll is dramatically rescued from a bad situation by the scruffy, somewhat feral, dreamy-eyed Pascal (Johnny Flynn). Moll and Pascal fall in love.
It turns out that Moll has within herself confidence, strength and passion – all long and cruelly suppressed by her mother. Pascal pulls Moll from her horrid family and unleashes, for better and for worse, Moll’s true persona. So this is a pretty fair romance to this point, but I did mention that Beast is psychological thriller. A serial killer has been prowling Jersey, raping and murdering young women and girls. The police suspect…Pascal.
Now we experience some unsettling ambiguity. Does Moll protect Pascal because she thinks him innocent? Or because she thinks that he’s the murderer? In his impressive first feature, writer-director Michael Pearce finally reveals something in Pascal’s past that gives us pause. And, even later, we learn something about Moll’s past, too. Holy shit. And we’re off on a roller coaster, wondering what Moll is going to do next and why, all the way to the shocking ending.
Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn in BEAST
The reason that Beast works so well is the stunning performance of Jessie Buckley. As an audience, we’re always drawn to Buckley’s Moll, at first understanding and relating to her defeatedness, inner rage and lust. But then Buckley keeps us from knowing exactly what’s going on inside, although we learn to accept that it sure is unpredictable. Buckley is Irish, and her singing career was launched on an American Idol-type show in Britain. She’s since acted in some British Isles television series. She is an incredible force of nature in this role.
Geraldine James in BEAST
Veteran actress Geraldine James gets the juicy role of the controlling and oppressive mother, her every remark filled with manipulation, shaming and the inducement of guilt. The mom is by FAR the least sympathetic character – and this story also has a serial killer in it. Johnny Flynn is very good as Pascal.
But it’s Jessie Buckley’s performance and Michael Pearce’s story that should bring you to see Beast. It’s a heckuva ride. You can stream Beast on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Spike Lee’s true story BlacKkKlansmanis very funny and, finally, emotionally powerful.
Crazy Rich Asians is wildly popular for a reason – it’s damn entertaining and probably the year’s most appealing date movie. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll wait for the chance to see Awkwafina in her next movie.
Wyeth, the latest documentary in the PBS American Masters series, takes on the odd case of the great painter Andrew Wyeth and explores the question, what is a muse? And how can great art come from the most unlikely and obscure subjects?
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exuberance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke and Chris O’Dowd sparkle in the affable romantic comedy Juliet, Naked; it’s an okay rom com with a fresh premise – boy loses girl and finds her pursued instead by his lifelong idol.
The hyper-violent and stylized Belgian thriller Let the Corpses Tan is a contemporary thriller that pays loving homage to the Sergio Leone canon. Essentially a soulless exercise in style, more interesting than gripping. It’s a visual stunner, though, and the Leone references are fun.
The coming-of-age drama We the Animals is imaginative, but it’s a grind.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the Korean drama Poetry, where an older woman takes a poetry class that unlocks her ability to observe. This unhurried film is troubling, uncomfortable and very, very good. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2011. You can stream Poetry from Amazon and Vudu.
ON TV
Yesterday I wrote about Stranger on the Third Floor from 1940, recognized as the very first film noir because of the pioneering cinematography of Nicholas Musaraca. It plays on Turner Classic Movies on September 18.
There has to be a first of everything, and more scholars name Stranger on the Third Floor as the first film noir than any film. (Personally, I go with the more popular and influential The Maltese Falcon, released 14 months later.) Indeed, due to the groundbreaking cinematography of Nicholas Musaraca, Stranger on the Third Floor did pioneer the look of German Expressionism in an urban American crime drama – so it has the look of a film noir.
A go-getter reporter (John Maguire) is the witness who placed a murder defendant (Elisha Cook, Jr.) at the scene of the crime. The reporter’s fiance (Margaret Tallichet), however, can’t stop worrying that an innocent man is going to the air, so the reporter turns detective to find exculpatory evidence. Mid-story, a creepy loner (Peter Lorre) shows up – is he the real murderer, and a serial killer to boot?
The engaged couple is sickeningly lovey-dovey. This sappiness and the corny ending almost disqualfy Stranger on the Third Floor from noirdom. But the story does has some noir aspects.
For one thing, it is very cynical about the American justice system. Elisha Cook, at his most loserly, is convicted by an apathetic court jury. Everyone involved in the trial, including his own lawyer and the judge, can’t wait to send him to the chair so they can go to lunch.
Then there’s Lorre, sneaking around like a malevolent elf. It’s almost as if he is sending up his serial killer role in M. He practically holds up an “I Am a Serial Killer placard”.
Peter Lorre in STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR
And the bland reporter hates his obnoxious neighbor so much that he has his own murder fantasies. His torment leads to a surreal nightmare. Most of the 1940 audience had probably never seen anything as bizarre as this dream sequence.
There’s also the voiceover interior dialogue so typical of film noir.
Margaret Tallichet, however, is very engaging. Her performance comes less than two years into her 43 year marriage to William Wyler, just before she left the movies to raise her kids.
And then there is Musaraca’s cinematography. There are shadows everywhere, most exaggerated during the nightmare scene. The faces are dramatically uplit. Musaraca really gives the film what was in 1940 an entirely fresh look.
In 1940, the Italian-born Nicholas Musaraca was already a Hollywood veteran, having operated cameras since 1923. Soon after Stranger on the Third Floor, Musaraca shot Val Lewton’s seminal horror films Cat People, The Seventh Victim and The Curse of the Cat People; the dark, dark look of those films also highly influential. Then Musaraca returned to noir with The Fallen Sparrow, Deadline at Dawn, The Locket, Out of the Past, Born to Be Bad, Roadblock, Clash by Night, The Hitch-Hiker, The Blue Gardenia, and Where Danger Lives. Along the way he shot films for Jacques Tourneur, Ida Lupino and Fritz Lang. All of these movies were before 1953. After 1955, Musaraca only worked in television, except for the 1957 noirMan on the Prowl.
In contrast, John Alton, the other great master film noir cinematographer didn’t get started in noir until noir’s high point of 1947-49, with his The Big Combo coming in 1954.
Turner Classic Movies will be airing The Stranger on the Third Floor on September 18. Or you can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube or Google Play.
the electric chair dream sequence in STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR
Early in his film, Korean writer-director Chang-dong Lee tells us his theme. Holding an apple, the teacher tells his students that, to write poetry, you must first see, really see the world around you. Mija is a 66-year-old pensioner in his class who works part-time as a caregiver for a stroke victim and is raising her sullen slob of a teenage grandson. She struggles with the poetry, but she does begin to see the people in her world with clarity – and it’s not a pretty picture. What she learns to see is human behavior ranging from the venal to the inhumane.
The key to the film’s success is the performance of Jeong-hie Yun as Mija, a protagonist who spends the entire movie observing. Her doctor tells her that her failing memory is the start of something far worse. Sometimes she doesn’t see what we see because she is distracted. But sometimes she doesn’t act like she sees because of denial or avoidance. Sometimes she is disoriented. But she has moments of piercing lucidity, and those moments are unsparing.
This unhurried film is troubling, uncomfortable and very, very good. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2011. You can stream Poetry from Amazon and Vudu.
