Mascots is the latest mockumentary from Christopher Guest (Best in Show) and it’s very funny. Mascots is playing in very few theaters, but it’s streaming on Netflix Instant, too.
The end of the thriller The Girl on the Train (starring Emily Blunt) is indeed thrilling. But the 82 minutes before the Big Plot Twist is murky, confusing and boring.
My Stream of the Week is also the Most Overlooked Movie of 2016: Chevalier is a sly and pointed exploration of male competitiveness. Director Athina Rachel Tsangari is obviously a keen observer of male behavior. Both men and women will enjoy laughing at male behavior taken to extreme. I sure did. Chevalier is perhaps the funniest movie of 2016, and it’s on my list of Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. I’m hoping that its popularity explodes now that it’s available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
We seem to have a major election coming up, so Turner Classic Movies is blessing us on October 26 with four of the absolute best political movies ever: The Last Hurrah, All the President’s Men, The Best Man and The Candidate.
And several rungs down in movie quality, on October 22 TCM will play The Killer Shrewsfrom my list of Least Convincing Movie Monsters, in which the voraciously predatory mutant shrews are played by dogs in fright masks. Yes, dogs.
THE CANDIDATE – Robert Redford learns that running for elected office has its disadvantages
Don Lake, Ed Begley, Jr., Jane Lynch and Michael Hitchcock in MASCOTS
Mascots is the latest from Christopher Guest, the king of the mockumentary. After co-writing This Is Spinal Tap, Guest wrote and directed Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show (his masterpiece), A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration, and ten years after For Your Consideration, Mascots. Guest has set his stories in the worlds of amateur theater, competitive dog shows, the folk singing moment of the 1960s and indie filmmaking. His comedy is based on people taking their passions way too seriously. This time, in Mascots, he has set the story in a world that NO ONE could take seriously – a fictional championship competition among mascots for sports teams.
Guest doesn’t really make fun of the subject matter as much as the human behavior that is exposed and accentuated by competition, especially Big Fish In Little Pond competition: officiousness, self-importance, striving, insecurity and self-delusion.
Guest brings along his repertory company of master-improvisers: Parker Posey, Ed Begley, Jr., Fred Willard, Jane Lynch, Don Lake, John Michael Higgins, Jim Piddock, Bob Balaban, Jennifer Coolidge, Michael Hitchcock, Harry Shearer and Guest himself. They all play their characters with complete commitment – these folks are earnestly devoting their entire lives to the silliest possible passion.
This time, he’s added the always hilarious Zach Woods (Silicon Valley) and Chris O’Dowd. Another mockumentary newcomer, Susan Yeagley is especially good as the gum-chomping, nymphomaniacal sister of Alvin the Armadillo.
The Jack the Plumber routine must be seen to be believed, there’s a surprise Bollywood number, and a very sly running gag about furries.
Mascots is playing in a few theaters but easier to find streaming on Netflix Instant, where I viewed it.
The BBC has surveyed film critics and came up with BBC’s list of 100 Greatest American Films. I’m a sucker for lists, and this is a rare “Best List” that’s focused only on American Cinema. American films only constuitute about 50-65% of the movies on my list of Greatest Movies of All-Time and my yearly “Best”lists, and I relish this chance to delve into the canon of American films.
Naturally, I have opinions, having seen 96 of the 100 (all but The Band Wagon, Love Streams, Letter from an Unknown Woman and the 1959 Imitation of Life). (Confession – I had never heard of the short film Meshes of the Afternoon, but was able to view it on YouTube.) The list has gotten some notoriety because Gone With the Wind is only #97 (which is okay with me).
Bottom line: it’s a really good list. I especially appreciate the inclusion of some films that are truly great but tend not to get recognized on “great” lists: 25th Hour, In a Lonely Place, Deliverance, Groundhog Day, The Right Stuff, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, It’s a Wonderful Life and Pulp Fiction. I also was tickled by the inclusion (at #85) of George Romero’s 1968 seminal zombie classic Night of the Living Dead, which really was a groundbreaking film.
I do have some quibbles. I can’t fathom why anyone would think that Marnie and Johnny Guitar would rise to this list. Michael Cimino’s cinematic disaster Heaven’s Gate was reassessed by critics a couple of years ago; I rewatched it again, too, but I still found it laughably awful today. Just as indefensible as including Heaven’s Gate was the omission of Cimino’s REAL masterpiece The Deer Hunter.
Though I personally loathe Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, a critic can make a plausible argument for them. Still, the list is too reverential to Kubrick, Malick and David Lynch (both Mulholland Drive AND Blue Velvet?).
Documentaries are represented here by Killer of Sheep and Grey Gables, two groundbreaking films from the late 60s/early 70s that have been seen by everyone who’s taken a film course between 1980 and 2000. But I actually prefer Salesman from that period. And there are much better American documentaries that I would include instead: Harlan County USA, Hoop Dreams and the entire work of Errol Morris, especially Gates of Heaven and/or The Thin Blue Line.
Here’s another serious beef. The only animated film on the list is The Lion King, which I think is an excellent movie, but probably not in my top ten of American animated films. The BBC list excludes the Toy Story series and Fantasia (and all of the other Disney movies from Disney’s classic period) – CRIMINAL!
There’s also an “Eat Your Broccoli, It’s Good For You” aspect to the list – as if every movie important to study in film class is “great”. There are some hard slogs on this list. I wouldn’t recommend that most movie fans run out and see, as important as they are, Sunrise, Greed, the Cassavetes films, Killer of Sheep, Meshes of the Afternoon or The Magnificent Ambersons. (By all reports, Orson Welles made a masterpiece in The Magnificent Ambersons – but none of us has seen it because it was mangled by studio editors; frankly, I have really tried to embrace the available version of Ambersons, but it’s never rung my chimes.) Hey, Bonnie and Clyde is a really important movie, too, and it’s not on the BBC list.
There are some missed opportunities, too. Any list of great American cinema MUST include: All About Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, Fargo, Out of the Past, Laura and last year’s masterpiece, Boyhood. The BBC also whiffed on the entire work of Clint Eastwood; I would have included Million Dollar Baby, but Mystic River and Unforgiven are deserving, too.
Woody Allen gets two of his deserving movies on the list, but how about Manhattan and Hannah and Her Sisters, too? Similarly, Robert Altman’s recognition should also include The Player(and Gosford Park, if it counts as an “American” film).
I could also make a case for: The Producers, High Noon, All the President’s Men, American Graffiti, All That Jazz, Bull Durham, Cool Hand Luke, Five Easy Pieces, My Man Godfrey, Best in Show and Sideways.
Still, I always enjoy haggling over a list, and it’s great to focus once in a while on purely American cinema.
One of the best films of the year, Chevalier is a sly and pointed exploration of male competitiveness, with the moments of drollness and absurdity that we expect in the best of contemporary Greek cinema. Chevalier is also now the Most Overlooked Movie of 2016, and I’m hoping that its popularity explodes now that it’s available on video.
In Chevalier, six guys are taking a holiday week on a yacht in the Aegean Sea. Each has his own stateroom, and the crew includes a chef. They spend their days scuba diving, jet skiing and the like. After a post-dinner game of charades, one suggests that they play Chevalier, a game about “Who is best overall?”. Of course, men tend to be competitive, and their egos are now at stake. The six guys began appraising each other, and their criteria get more and more absurd. “How many fillings do you have?”
In one especially inspired set piece, the guys race each other to construct IKEA bookcases, which results in five phallic towers on the boat’s deck (and one drooping failure). Naturally, some of the guys are obsessed with their own erections, too.
Director Athina Rachel Tsangari is obviously a keen observer of male behavior. Both men and women will enjoy laughing at male behavior taken to extreme. I sure did. Chevalier is perhaps the funniest movie of 2016, and it’s on my list of Best Movies of 2016 – So Far.
I saw Chevalier at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF), where I pegged it as the Must See of the fest. (In 2011, Tsangari brought her hilariously offbeat Attenberg to SFIFF.) Unfortunately, in the Bay Area, Chevalier only got a blink-and-you’ve-missed-it release in June. Chevalier is now available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Athina Rachel Tsangari, director of CHEVALIER . Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society
The end of the thriller The Girl on the Train, adapted from the popular novel by Paula Hawkins, is indeed thrilling. It’s about a woman (Emily Blunt) who is a complete mess, a black-out drunk who has clearly gone off the deep end in many ways. We watch her stagger from one dysfunctional moment to the next until she is entangled in a missing person case, serial marital infidelity and a murder. A Big Plot Twist near the end reshuffles the deck, and we find out that we are watching a different story than we had supposed.
The last 30 minutes of The Girl on the Train rocks, but I found the murky first 82 minutes to be confusing and boring. The Wife, however, enjoyed the whole thing. Neither of us had finished the novel and knew to expect the Big Plot Twist.
Blunt is very good as the protagonist. Justin Theroux, Lisa Kudrow and Edgar Ramírez (Carlos) stand out as well. Allison Janney is wonderful as a jaded, Seen It All police detective; at the end, her grin reveals “wait until I tell the guys that this really happened”.
Orson Welles in THE THIRD MAN – the most iconic smirk in cinema
The Mill Valley Film Festival is wrapping up this weekend. The closing night film is Oscar hopeful Loving, but it could be sold out on all five screens, so check first.
I’ll be writing about The Girl on the Train, the movie adaptation of the popular novel starring Emily Blunt. The last 30 minutes rocks, but I found the murky first 82 minutes to be confusing and boring. The Wife, however, enjoyed the whole thing. Neither of us had finished the novel and knew about the Big Plot Twist.
And you can still find the best movie of the year so far – the character-driven crime drama Hell or High Water. It’s atmospheric, gripping, and packed with superb performances. Hell or High Water is a screenwriting masterpiece by Taylor Sheridan. It’s becoming hard to find, but it’s out there and it’s a Must See.
Other movie choices:
Girl Asleep, is an offbeat coming-of-age story with more than a splash of Australian magical realism. From a first-time woman director.
Another odd tale from Down Under is the uneven but entertaining period tale of revenge, The Dressmaker.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is Free State of Jones, the compelling story of resistance to the Confederacy and to white supremacy by Southerners during and after the Civil War, starring Matthew McConaughey. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix (and coming soon to Redbox) and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
This is a fine week for film noir on Turner Classic Movies. On October 16, TCM presents The Third Man (1949). Shot amid the ruins of post-war Vienna, this film noir classic sets an American pulp novelist (Joseph Cotten) to find out what happened to his pre-war buddy, who turns out to have become a notorious black marketeer (Orson Welles) with a set of associates each shadier than the last. This has it all, a fated relationship with a European beauty (Alida Valli), stunningly effective black-and-white photography, an enchanting musical theme and one of cinema’s most sharply surprising reveals of a new character. There are two unforgettable set pieces – a nervous interview in a Ferris Wheel and a climactic chase through the sewers.
Then on October 19, TCM screens three more noir classics:
Lady in the Lake (1947): Shot entirely from the point of view of the protagonist detective (Robert Montgomery), we never see him except when reflected in mirrors. Even without this interesting gadget, it’s a good movie. Audrey Totter plays one of her iconic noir Bad Girls.
Detour(1945) Ann Savage plays the nastiest, most predatory and savage female character in film noir history. One of the few Hollywood films where the leading lady was intentionally de-glamorized with oily, stringy hair.
Born to Kill (1947): Lawrence Tierney (no cupcake in real life, either), plays the nastiest, most predatory and savage male character in film noir history. Set in the world of Reno quickie divorces. Features Queen of Noir Claire Trevor, along with Walter Slezak and Elisha Cook, Jr.
Mahershala Ali and Matthew McConaughey in FREE STATE OF JONES
Free State of Jones is the compelling story of resistance to the Confederacy and to white supremacy by Southerners during and after the Civil War. Matthew McConaughey stars as Newton Knight, an overlooked but quite singular figure in American history. It is little-known, but the Confederacy actually lost control of some Mississippi counties to poor white farmers who tired of fighting a war to benefit the rich slave-holders.
I am a pretty serious Civil War history buff, and I was planning to skip Free State of Jones entirely until I found out about writer-director Gary Ross’ commitment to taking the history seriously. In fact, Ross has posted a very impressive website which outlines the historical events and figures depicted in the movie and even links the primary historical source material. I’ve never seen such a credible effort by a filmmaker to explain how he got the history right. Here’s a New York Tines article about the movie, Ross and his website.
In the second act of his career, McConaughey has delivered brilliant performances in excellent movies (Mud, Bernie, The Paperboy, Killer Joe, The Wolf of Wall Street, Dallas Buyers Club,True Detective). Here, he positively sizzles as the intensely principled and determined Newt Knight. The rest of the cast is excellent, too, especially Mahershala Ali (House of Cards) as an escaped slave turned Reconstruction political organizer.
Free State of Jones effectively combines the elements of political drama, romance and war movies into an absorbing drama, one which connects the dots between the 19th Century and the 20th and beyond. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix (and coming soon to Redbox) and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
One MUST SEE at the Mill Valley Film Festival is Toni Erdmann, from writer-director Maren Ade. You might not expect an almost three-hour German comedy to break through, but I’ve seen it, and I think that it’s a lock to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture. Ade gives us a woman’s perspective of a father-daughter relationship, creating a totally original and unforgettable father who takes prankstering into performance art. This is a movie with the funniest nude brunch you’ll ever witness that still will leave you choked up at the end.
Toni Erdmann opens January 20 in the Bay Area, but you can see it at the MVFF today, October 8, and on October 13; both screenings are at the Rafael in San Rafael.
This year’s MVFF runs from October 6-16, mostly at the Sequoia in Mill Valley and the Rafael in San Rafael, but also at three other Marin venues. Check out the program and tickets for the MVFF. I’ll be adding more festival coverage, including both features and movie recommendations. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest coverage.
TONI ERDMANN this week at the Mill Valley Film Festival
The Mill Valley Film Festivalis underway – don’t miss Oscar hopeful Toni Erdmann this week; after the MVFF, Toni Erdmann won’t be screened again in the Bay Area until it opens theatrically on January 20, 2017.
You might be able to find the best movie of the year so far – the character-driven crime drama Hell or High Water. It’s atmospheric, gripping, and packed with superb performances. Hell or High Water is a screenwriting masterpiece by Taylor Sheridan. Must See.
Here are other movie choices:
Opening today, Girl Asleep, is an offbeat coming-of-age story with more than a splash of Australian magical realism. From a first-time woman director.
Another odd tale from Down Under is the uneven but entertaining period tale of revenge, The Dressmaker.
My DVD Stream of the Week is based on the Jane Austen novel Lady Susan, the sharply witty Love & Friendshipwith Kate Beckinsale. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix (and coming soon to Redbox) and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and DirecTV.
On October 10, Turner Classic Movies has The Haunting, which show us what happens when a paranormal investigator invites you to join him at a haunted house. Julie Harris and Claire Bloom wish they hadn’t said “Yes”. It’s one of the very scariest black-and-white films.
On October 13, TCM plays one of my Overlooked Noir, Raw Deal with its ménage à noir, some of the best dialogue in all of film noir and the superb cinematography of John Alton.
I’ve seen plenty of teen coming of age movies, but none like Girl Asleepfrom Australia and first-time director Rosemary Myers. The arc of the story may be familiar – a new school, an excruciatingly awkward boy and an encounter with Mean Girls. The anxiety for our teen protagonist Greta (Bethany Whitmore) is crowned by her parents doing what must be the most embarrassing thing for a teenager – the parents putting on a party for her and inviting everyone at her new school. As the story is set up, we see some glimpses of magical realism. Then, when the party maximizes Greta’s stress, the story is immersed into a trippy Alice in Wonderland parallel universe. It’s all an allegory for the perils of the adolescent journey.
Greta’s batty parents are played with gleaming resolve by Amber McMahon and screenwriter Mathew Whittet. Harrison Feldmore’s total commitment to his role as Greta’s suitor is admirable; he’s not just geeky but enthusiastically so, plunging headlong into a profound geeky totality. Director Myers also has fun with the 1970s milieu, taking particular glee with the short shorts worn by the male characters.
The movie is pretty funny, and you won’t find a trippier coming of age flick. Girl Asleep opens tomorrow in the Bay Area at Camera 3 in San Jose and at the Roxie in San Francisco. Girl Asleep screens with the short film Pickle, a deadpan comedy.
