Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Monica Barbaro and Timothee Chalamet in A COMPLETE UNKNOWN. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

This Week on The Movie Gourmet – Noir City continues though tomorrow, but I’m back with a new review of the overlooked gem In the Summers, now available to stream. Here’s my Noir City coverage so far:

CURRENT MOVIES

  • Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • A Complete Unknown: a genius and his time. In theaters.
  • The Last Showgirl: desperation amid the rhinestones. In theaters.
  • The Room Next Door: Tilda and Julianne, life and death. In theaters.
  • All We Imagine as Light: three women and a society that’s not on their side In theaters.
  • Conclave: explosive secrets? in the Vatican?. In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • A Real Pain: whose pain is it? In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • The Return: an ancient tale told thru a 21st Century lens. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl: another smart and charming romp. Netflix.
  • Blitz: one brave, resourceful kid amid the horrors. AppleTV.
  • The Outrun: facing herself without the bottle. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • The Remarkable Life of Ibelin: totally unexpected. Netflix.
  • In the Summers: they mature, he evolves. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Queer: forty-five minutes of fine romantic drama, and then the bizarre. In theaters.
  • You Are Not Me: a nightmare at mom and dad’s. Amazon, Fandango.
  • The Settlers: reckoning with the ugly past. MUBI.
  • It’s Not Me: his life as an art film. Amazon, Fandango.
  • Lake George: when you know you’re not going to win. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Emilia Pérez: four women yearn amid Mexico’s drug violence. Netflix.
  • The Critic: who’s on top now? Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.

WATCH AT HOME

From my Best Movies of 2024:

  • Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • The Bikeriders: they ride, drink and fight, and yet we care. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Hit Man: who knew self-invention could be so fun? Netflix.
  • Challengers: three people and their desire. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • La Chimera: six genres for the price of one.  Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • In the Summers: they mature, he evolves. Amazon.
  • Ghostlight: a family saves itself, in iambic pentameter. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango (included).
  • The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed: is she going to be a loser? Amazon, AppleTV, Hulu.
  • Love Lies Bleeding: obsessions and impulses collide. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • I Saw the TV Glow: brimming with originality. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.

ON TV

Timothy Bottoms (standing) in THE PAPER CHASE

As we enter February, Turner Classic Movies launches its 31 Day of Oscars, showing only Oscar winners and nominees. That means lots of good movies, but it’s harder for me to recommend overlooked films to you, because fewer Oscar winners are overlooked, although some have been unjustly forgotten. For example tonight kicks off with 8 1/2, Wild Strawberries and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie back-to-back – a veritable survey course in European cinema. (I also DVR very few TCM movies this month, because I’ve already seen the ones I would want to watch.)

Nonetheless, I can recommend TCM’s February 3 broadcast of one of my personal favorite movies, The Paper Chase, which traces a young man’s (Timothy Bottoms) first year at Harvard Law School and is based on the memoir of a recent grad. Although IMDb labels The Paper Chase as 1973 movie, I saw it in the summer of 1975, just as I was about to enter law school myself.   It’s such a personal favorite because just about EVERYTHING in the movie is something that I experienced myself at in my first year at Georgetown Law – everything, that is, EXCEPT dating Lindsay Wagner.  It’s a compelling story and the great producer John Houseman won an acting Oscar for his performance as the mentor/nemesis law professor; Houseman immediately cashed in with his ”They make money the old fashioned way… they EARN it” commercials for Smith Barney.

The Paper Chase is also notable as the first feature film credit for actors Craig Richard Nelson, Graham Beckel (Brokeback Mountain, L.A. Confidential)  and Edward Herrmann (known for many portrayals of FDR).  All three are stellar as members of the law school study group, and these guys have now combined for over 300 screen acting credits.  John Jay Osborn Jr.,  who wrote the autobiographical novel which was the source material movie, died in 2022.

John Houseman in THE PAPER CHASE

IN THE SUMMERS: they mature, he evolves

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Photocaption: Rene Perez Joglar (center) in IN THE SUMMERS. Courtesy of NashFilm and Music Box Films.

In the remarkably authentic and evocative In the Summers, two sisters fly to Las Cruces, New Mexico, for annual summer visits with their divorced dad. The father, Vincente, played by Rene Perez Joglar (AKA the rapper Residente) is a spirited and talented underachiever who tries to show them a Disney Dad experience; the girls soak up the fun, but also absorb lessons about Vincente’s less reliable characteristics. Each summer, the girls return to Las Cruces with additional savvy and sponge up real world lessons from Vincente’s changing behavior.

The girls arrive expecting last year’s Vincente, but they get a new model, shaped by his changing circumstances and emotional needs, and reflecting how he sees himself. From year to year, Vincente bounces between unearned swagger to self-loathing distraction to an uneasy humility. It’s a compelling coming of age for the daughters.

Carmen (Emma Ramos), the bartender at the local pool hall, is the one consistent sounding board who can validate what the girls are experiencing with their dad.

Joglar’s performance, only his second acting role in a narrative feature and first lead, is remarkable. He is able to portray a character who is the same man at the core, but whose behavior each year is formed by the cumulative slings and arrows of his life.

The three sets of actors playing Violeta and Eva as they mature (Dreya Castillo and Luciana Eva Quinonez, Kimaya Thais and Allison Salinas, Sasha Calle and Lio Meliel) are excellent.  So is Emma Ramos (New Amsterdam) as Carmen.

Writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio is able to convey so much narrative without spoon-feeding the audience. She positions the audience in the point of view of the watchful daughters, as they they to assess what is going on with their own father. She also gets fine performances out of actors with little or no movie experience. In the Summers is a triumphant debut feature for Lacorazza and marks the emergence of very promising filmmaker,

In the Summers made my list of Best Movies of 2024 after being my favorite film at last month’s Nashville Film Festival, and it’s streaming now on Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Pamela Anderson in THE LAST SHOWGIRL. Courtesy of RoadsideFlix.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – I’m at the Noir City film festival in Oakland:

Nevertheless, The Movie Gourmet has new reviews of Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door and Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl. But, first, remembering a fine actress and a transformative filmmaker.

REMEMBRANCES

Dennis Hopper and Isabella Rossellini in David Lynch’s BLUE VEVET.

It’s hard to think of a filmmaker more influential than David Lynch. His Eraserhead became the firt arthouse cult film, and no one had ever seen anything on TV lik his Twin Peaks. He had a popular and critical success with Elephant Man, but remained defiantly artistic with his masterpieces, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. His last film work was a hoot – an acting cameo as John Ford in The Fabelmans.

Dean Stockwell in David Lynch’s BLUE VEVET.

Joan Plowright was primarily a star of the English stage, but she worked in movies, too, including Tea with Mussolini and earning an Oscar nod for Enchanted April. My favorite Plowright performance was in a gentle Irish comedy, Widows Peak.

CURRENT MOVIES

  • Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • A Complete Unknown: a genius and his time. In theaters.
  • The Last Showgirl: desperation amid the rhinestones. In theaters.
  • The Room Next Door: Tilda and Julianne, life and death. In theaters.
  • All We Imagine as Light: three women and a society that’s not on their side In theaters.
  • Conclave: explosive secrets? in the Vatican?. In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • A Real Pain: whose pain is it? In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • The Return: an ancient tale told thru a 21st Century lens. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl: another smart and charming romp. Netflix.
  • Blitz: one brave, resourceful kid amid the horrors. AppleTV.
  • The Outrun: facing herself without the bottle. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • The Remarkable Life of Ibelin: totally unexpected. Netflix.
  • Queer: forty-five minutes of fine romantic drama, and then the bizarre. In theaters.
  • You Are Not Me: a nightmare at mom and dad’s. Amazon, Fandango.
  • The Settlers: reckoning with the ugly past. MUBI.
  • It’s Not Me: his life as an art film. Amazon, Fandango.
  • Lake George: when you know you’re not going to win. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Emilia Pérez: four women yearn amid Mexico’s drug violence. Netflix.
  • The Critic: who’s on top now? Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.

WATCH AT HOME

From my Best Movies of 2024:

  • Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • The Bikeriders: they ride, drink and fight, and yet we care. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Hit Man: who knew self-invention could be so fun? Netflix.
  • Challengers: three people and their desire. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • La Chimera: six genres for the price of one.  Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • In the Summers: they mature, he evolves. Amazon.
  • Ghostlight: a family saves itself, in iambic pentameter. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango (included).
  • The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed: is she going to be a loser? Amazon, AppleTV, Hulu.
  • Love Lies Bleeding: obsessions and impulses collide. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • I Saw the TV Glow: brimming with originality. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.

ON TV

Dennis O’Keefe and Ann Sheridan in WOMAN ON THE RUN

On January 26, Turner Classic Movies airs the taut 77 minutes of Woman on the Run, one of my Overlooked Noir. When the police coming looking for a terrified murder witness, they are surprised to find his wife (Ann Sheridan) both ignorant of his whereabouts and unconcerned. And the wife has a Mouth On Her, much to the dismay of the detective (Robert Keith), who keeps walking into a torrent of sass. She starts hunting hubbie, along with the cops, a reporter (Dennis O’Keefe) and the killer, and they all careen through a life-or-death manhunt. Another star of Woman on the Run is San Francisco itself, from the hilly neighborhoods to the bustling streets to the dank and foreboding waterfront. Eddie Muller will present the intro and outro in TCM’s Noir Alley.

NOIR CITY is here – don’t miss these three femmes fatale

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Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN
Photo caption: Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN

Tomorrow, the Noir City film fest opens at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland and runs through February 2. This year’s program showcases the women of film noir – which femme is the most fatale?

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies. You know Eddie Muller from TCM’s Noir Alley, and he hosts Noir City in person, this year with his TCM colleague Alicia Malone.

Evelyn Keyes and John Payne in 99 RIVER STREET
Evelyn Keyes and John Payne in 99 RIVER STREET

It’s a great program of 24 movies over ten days, jam packed with unforgettable female performances that span from the iconic (Jane Greer in Out of the Past) to the seductive (Claire Trevor in Murder, My Sweet) to the, well, savage (Ann Savage in Detour). Here are three of my personal favorites that you should not miss:

  • The Narrow Margin, Noir City’s opening night film with Marie Windsor. In this taut 71 minutes of tension, growly cop Charles McGraw plays hide-and-seek with a team of hit men on a claustrophobic train. Windsor is unforgettable as the assassins’ target. McGraw might be film noir’s toughest Tough Guy, but Windsor gives him all the tough he can handle, and matches him snarl for snarl. “Relax, Percy, I wouldn’t want any of that nobility to rub off on me”.
  • 99 River Street with Evelyn Keyes and Peggy Castle. Film noir tends to be about guys with bad luck, but nobody would trade their luck with Ernie Driscoll (John Payne). Ernie has lost his boxing career to a fluke cut and his abusive and slutty wife (a suitably insufferable Castle) to a mobster, and, now, he’s been framed for a murder. His only hope is to track down the Real Killer while driving around with the murdered corpse in his cab. Evelyn Keyes plays a Good Girl would-be actress who goes along for the ride; problem is, Ernie can’t tell when she’s acting. Nobody can keep ’em guessing like Evelyn Keyes.
  • Cry Danger with Rhonda Fleming. Rocky (Dick Powell) has been released from prison; he knows he didn’t commit the crime, but he knows that his alibi is phony, too. Trying to figure out who framed and unframed him, he seeks out an old flame, his partner’s wife Nancy (Rhonda Fleming).  The exquisitely beautiful Nancy is as wholesome as anyone can be with a hubbie in the hoosegow.  We know that. if she turns out to be a femme fatale, it’s going to be a major punch in the gut for Rocky. Bonus: Rocky’s wing man is the perjuring alibi witness (an indelible Richard Erdman): “Occasionally I always drink too much.” It’s hard to top a frame, a drunk, a dame, hidden loot and an LA trailer park. This is not available to stream, so see it at Noir City.
Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming in CRY DANGER

Read my festival preview, NOIR CITY returns – with the spotlight on femmes fatale, which lists the twelve films from this year’s Noir City program that are NOT available to stream. Noir City is your best chance to see them.

I’ve written about The Narrow Margin, 99 River Street, Raw Deal, Caged, Cry Danger, The Prowler and Murder, My Sweet in my Overlooked Noir feature. Check them out, along with my Overlooked Neo-noir.

Don’t miss Noir City. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City. Of the nine film festivals that I cover each year, I always insist on attending Noir City in person. To steal from Eddie Muller, see you in the shadows.

THE ROOM NEXT DOOR: Tilda and Julianne, life and death

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Photo caption: Tilda Swinton and Juianne Moore in THE ROOM NEXT DOOR. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door is about the reconnection of two friends at a highly charged moment. Decades before, Martha (Tilda Swinton) and Ingrid (Julianne Moore) were running and gunning together in Manhattan, even dating the same guy (not at the same time). Each moved on to a successful career elsewhere – Ingrid as an author based in Europe and Martha as a war correspondent in the Balkans and Middle East. Ingrid returns to NYC on a book tour, and finds that Martha is hospitalized with stage 3 cervical cancer.

Martha undergoes an experimental treatment which seems to work, until it doesn’t. Martha has faced death many times in wars. She accepts her own mortality, but wants to avoid the indignity and suffering of her final weeks, and she wants to go out before experiencing happiness becomes impossible. But Martha doesn’t want to be alone, and her adult daughter is estranged.

Martha asks Ingrid to join her at a rented house in the woods, knowing that, on one night, Martha will end he own life. Not incidentally, Ingrid’s latest bestseller is about her own fear of death. Nevertheless, Ingrid agrees.

Remarkably, given the situation, The Room Next Door is not depressing. It’s absorbing, and even funny in places. The old boyfriend (a very funny John Tuturro), who both women remember as particularly zesty, is now a climate disaster Gloomy Gus, now essentially a public scold. Inrgid and Martha curl up on the couch to enjoy Buster Keaton’s hilarious Seven Chances.

We learn the back story about the father of Martha’s daughter, and more about Martha and Ingrid. Ingrid (and we the audience) wait on tenterhooks for Martha to implement her plan.

Of course, Moore and Swinton are two of cinema’s most talented actresses, and their performances are exquisite. Swinton even plays a second character.

We expect any Pedro Almodóvar film to be visually lush, with stellar performances from actresses, and The Room Next Door is certainly that. I never lost interest, but the work doesn’t rise to the level of Almodóvar’s masterpieces Talk to Her and Broken Embraces. .

This is Almodóvar’s first film in English, and he wrote the screenplay in English, evidently without enough collaboration. Hence, the dialogue is not as natural as if two native English speakers were conversing – sometimes a little stilted.

Although the core story about Martha and Ingrid is compelling, there are some extraneous distractions. I understood that a flashback from Martha’s wartime experiences is designed to tell us something about her, but it isn’t worth the time away from the main story. The same holds true when a cop tries to make some trouble for Ingrid; although very well acted by Allessandro Nivola, that thread doesn’t go anywhere (as it wouldn’t have in real life).

The Room Next Door is ever visually beautiful, with lots of Almodóvar’s favorite color of red. Almodovar takes full advantage of his leading ladies’ striking hair and graces them with vivid lipstick and fashion. He even gets to set ablaze a house on the prairie, just like the one in Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven

The Room Next Door, although not an essential film, still offers the mastery of Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, in a story of life and death.

THE LAST SHOWGIRL: desperation amid the rhinestones

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Photo caption: Pamela Anderson in THE LAST SHOWGIRL. Courtesy of RoadsideFlix.

Pam Anderson shines in The Last Showgirl, Gia Coppola’s singular study of personal identity. Anderson plays Shelly, who has spent the past thirty years onstage in an old fashioned, Las Vegas showgirl revue, showcasing rhinestones, plumage and bare breasts. The show has enjoyed a 38-year run and is the last one in town; as tastes have moved on, the audience has diminished. As The Last Showgirl begins, the owners have decided to permanently close the show.

All the dancers in the company are unsettled by the need to find new employment, but it’s clear that Shelley, no matter how well-preserved at age 57, is not going to be competitive in the Las Vegas female dancer job market. But Shelley is even more jarred by the end of her job than one might think. After all, she should be able to make the same money in another job; her income from the show wasn’t enough to care for her now college-age daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), who was fostered by family friends.

As Shelley flounders, we begin to understand that Shelley’s entire personal identity is invested in her stage persona. And we understand why she prioritized this job over even raising her own child. I feel so good about myself in the show…bathed in that light…I’M the one on the POSTER.

Shelley’s choice to get what she needs emotionally from the show, has left Hannah with a sense of emptiness, and Shelly now has that same emptiness about both her lost self-worth and the damage to the relationship with Hannah.

Pamela Anderson has not been known for her range as an actress, but she has enough to play Shelley with power and nuance. She is exceptional in this heartbreaking role. Anderson, whose body is still remarkable, has no vanity about the age on her face.

The rest of the cast is also outstanding. Kienran Shipka (Don Draper’s daughter in Mad Men) and Brenda Song play Shelley’s younger mentees in the troupe. Jamie Lee Curtis also eschews movie star glamor in playing Shelley’s former dance colleague, who has aged out of dancing and into cocktailing, and who suffers addictions to both alcohol and gambling; Curtis has one jaw dropping solo dance near the end of the film.

Jason Schwartzman is excellent as a guy casting live entertainment who resists being cruel, but finally must share the cruel truth with Shelley.

One of the best performances is that of Dave Bautista as the show’s stage manager. Bautista, the former pro wrestler who plays Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise and Beast in the Dune movies, is usually cast in action fare. Here, he proves that he can really act in a character-driven drama. His gentle, decent, socially awkward character is often the moral center of the story.

Coppola ends the film with a superb montage. The Last Showgirl is a searing portrait of a completely original character; it’s one of the Best Movies of 2024.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha in ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT. Courtesy of Janus Films.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – another busy week, with new reviews of a highly acclaimed art film from India and a Claymation romp: All We Imagine as Light and Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. Plus, my first coverage of next weekend’s Noir City film festival, which I’ll be covering in person: NOIR CITY returns – with the spotlight on femmes fatale.

Next week: Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl and Pedro Almodovar’s much-awaited The Room Next Door, with Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore.

CURRENT MOVIES

  • Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • A Complete Unknown: a genius and his time. In theaters.
  • All We Imagine as Light: three women and a society that’s not on their side. In theaters.
  • Conclave: explosive secrets? in the Vatican?. In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • A Real Pain: whose pain is it? In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • The Return: an ancient tale told thru a 21st Century lens. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl: another smart and charming romp. Netflix.
  • Blitz: one brave, resourceful kid amid the horrors. AppleTV.
  • The Outrun: facing herself without the bottle. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • The Remarkable Life of Ibelin: totally unexpected. Netflix.
  • Queer: forty-five minutes of fine romantic drama, and then the bizarre. In theaters.
  • You Are Not Me: a nightmare at mom and dad’s. Amazon, Fandango.
  • It’s Not Me: his life as an art film. Amazon, Fandango.
  • Lake George: when you know you’re not going to win. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Emilia Pérez: four women yearn amid Mexico’s drug violence. Netflix.
  • The Critic: who’s on top now? Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.

WATCH AT HOME

From my Best Movies of 2024:

  • Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • The Bikeriders: they ride, drink and fight, and yet we care. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Hit Man: who knew self-invention could be so fun? Netflix.
  • Challengers: three people and their desire. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • La Chimera: six genres for the price of one.  Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • In the Summers: they mature, he evolves. Amazon.
  • Ghostlight: a family saves itself, in iambic pentameter. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango (included).
  • The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed: is she going to be a loser? Amazon, AppleTV, Hulu.
  • Love Lies Bleeding: obsessions and impulses collide. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • I Saw the TV Glow: brimming with originality. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.

ON TV

Ed Norris, Jean Gillie and Herbert Rudley in DECOY.

On January 19, Turner Classic Movies presents the obscure, low-budget Decoy, which stands out out from the rest of film noir (and from much of cinema) for two elements. The first is the most hysterically evil femme fatale ever. The second is that the plot pivots on a preposterous premise – resurrecting an executed criminal to find out where he hid the loot.

Little known British actress Jean Gillie revels in her performance as the femme fatale, who is not only remorselessly murderous, but she’s sadistic as well. And she can even take pleasure in humiliating a man from her deathbed.

Decoy is not a very good film, but it moves so quickly, and its two major elements are so astoundingly outrageous, that it’s fun to watch. Decoy is not currently available to stream, so be sure to DVR it this week on TCM. It’s on my list of Overlooked Film Noir.

WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL: another smart and charming romp

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Photo caption: Wallace and Gromit in WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL. Courtesy of Netflix.

The Claymation romp Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is another smart and charming winner from Aardman Studio. If you haven’t met them yet, Wallace is a cheese-loving and socially clueless English inventor. Gromit is his longsuffering dog, who is the one with common sense. Their house is filled with Wallace’s Rube Goldbergesque contraptions.

Wallace often invents gadgets that are totally unnecessary. This time, Wallace, oblivious to how lovingly Gromit tends his English garden, invents a robotic gardening gnome. As they are coping with the inevitable resulting mayhem, they are targeted for revenge by an old nemesis, and things get really out of hand.

Years earlier, they had nabbed the chicken mastercriminal Feathers McGraw for a jewel heist. Now Feathers has escaped from prison and wants to get even. What happens in the fastmoving 82 minutes of Vengeance Most Fowl is very funny and very entertaining.

I’ve loved all the Aardman Studio films (except for Pirates! Band of Misfits, which was merely amusing). Vengeance Most Fowl is even funnier than the usual Aardman fare.

Netflix labels this as “for Kids”, and kids will enjoy it, but adults; will find it very funny, too; like any good children’s content, there are loads of references that will swoop over the heads of kids while the adults are cracking up.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is streaming on Netflix.

NOIR CITY returns – with the spotlight on femmes fatale

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Evelyn Keyes and John Payne in 99 RIVER STREET
Photo caption: Evelyn Keyes and John Payne in 99 RIVER STREET

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns January 24 and runs through February 2 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. This year’s program showcases the women of film noir – which femme is the most fatale?

Come to think about it, noir is the only movie genre that practically REQUIRES a pivotal female character. You can make a western, a comedy, a sci fi, a war movie or even, these days, a romance without any women on the screen. But not a noir.

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies. You know Eddie Muller from TCM’s Noir Alley, and he hosts Noir City in person, this year with his TCM colleague Alicia Malone.

Recent Noir City fests have introduced us to film noir from other countries and have sampled neo-noir. This year’s Noir City program goes back to the basics of American movies from the classic film noir period of the 1940s and 1950s. The program spans the genre, highlighting essential female performances, both famous and overlooked:

  • Out of the Past with Jane Greer manipulating Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in her most celebrated Good Girl/Bad Girl role.
  • The Narrow Margin: Charles McGraw might be film noir’s toughest Tough Guy, but Marie Windsor gives him all the tough he can handle, and matches him snarl for snarl.
  • Murder, My Sweet, featuring the Queen of Noir, Claire Trevor.
  • Raw Deal, where Trevor and the underused Marcia Hunt form a ménage a noir with poor Dennis O’Keefe. Two for the price of one.
  • 99 River Street: Nobody could keep the guys guessing more than the alluring Evelyn Keyes.
  • Tension with Audrey Totter as the most dismissive, humiliating, cuckolding wife in film noir.
  • Cry Danger and the ultra rare Inferno, with Rhonda Fleming, arguably the most beautiful American movie star of all time. When Rhonda goes bad, it’s a real gut punch for the sap.
  • Caged, the prototype for Orange Is the New Black. Eleanor Parker was the one nominated for an Oscar, but Hope Emerson, in an obviously LGBTQ role, steals the movie.
  • Detour: Ann Savage as perhaps the most rapaciously predatory and unhinged of femme fatales. One of the few Hollywood films where the leading lady was intentionally de-glamorized with oily, stringy hair.

Thirteen films on the program will be projected in 35mm.

Marsha Hunt, Claire Trevor and Dennis O'Keefe in RAW DEAL
Marsha Hunt, Claire Trevor and Dennis O’Keefe in RAW DEAL

These titles from this year’s Noir City program are NOT available to stream, so Noir City is your best chance to see them: 

  • Hell’s Half Acre
  • The Sleeping City
  • Tension
  • Alias Nick Beale
  • The Long Wait
  • Raw Deal
  • Mary Ryan, Detective
  • My True Story
  • The Reckless Moment
  • Tomorrow Is Another Day
  • Cry Danger
  • Inferno

Next week, just as Noir City opens, I’ll be back to feature three Must See movies in the program. I’ve previously written about The Narrow Margin, 99 River Street, Raw Deal, Caged, Cry Danger, The Prowler and Murder, My Sweet in my Overlooked Noir feature. Check them out, along with my Overlooked Neo-noir.

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City. I’ll be there.

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT: three women and a society that’s not on their side

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Photo caption: Kani Kusruti in ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT. Courtesy of Janus Films.

All We Imagine as Light, writer-director Payal Kapadia’s highly-praised first narrative feature, is the story of three women and their need to find fulfillment by casting off societal expectations. Kapadia introduces us to that society by immersing us in a contemporary Mumbai that is teeming with people who don’t each other, who speak a variety of languages, and who have come from some home village elsewhere.

Prabha (Kani Kusruti) is the highly proficient and respected supervising nurse at a Mumbai hospital. Prabha has a husband from an arranged marriage, who moved to Germany for work shortly after their wedding. Prabha doesn’t really know him, and she’s more in love with the idea of having a soul mate and life partner than she could possibly be with the guy himself, who has become more of an abstraction. He hasn’t called her in more than a year.

Still, she considers herself a married woman, and she comports herself as though her hubbie were putting on his slippers back at her apartment. . A gentle doctor at the hospital is sweet on her, but she won’t entertain the opportunity for a love match. A Western movie audience is thinking, “Move on, girl!“.

Prabha has taken a roommate, Anu (Divya Prabha), a peppy but immature and irresponsible student nurse. Anu spends every free moment sneaking around with her sweet boyfriend, in the mistaken belief that she is successfully hiding the relationship. Hher parents are insisting on an arranged marriage, and she knows that they would never accept her Muslim beau.

Prabha is friends with the hospital’s cook, Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam). Parvaty is a middle-aged widow who is being forced out of her shanty by high-rise developers. The most fun character in All We Imagine as Light, Parvaty is full of piss and vinegar. Seeking to finally secure a life, however impecunious, that she is in control of, Parvaty decides to move back to her seaside home village.

Prabha and Anu help Parvaty move her stuff. At the village, Prabha helps with an emergency on the beach and has a revelatory hallucination. How deeply you accept Prabha’s catharsis depends on how easily you accept magical realism in a movie.

The core of All We Imagine as Light is Prabha’s profound loneliness, even as she is living amid 22 million other people. Kapadia is also spotlighting and criticizing both traditional Indian society, where women don’t even control who they are married to, and the inequities of untempered capitalism.

All We Imagine as Light won the second prize at Cannes and is universally acclaimed by critics. The Indian film authorities failed to submit All We Imagine as Light for the Best International Film Oscar – which, given the reaction of the American film community, was a huge misfire.

The NYT’s Manohla Dargis, who picked All We Imagine as Light as her number one movie of 2024, wrote, “It’s the kind of modestly scaled and lightly plotted international movie — with characters who look and sound like real people, and whose waking hours are set to the pulse of life — that can get lost amid the year-end glut of Oscar-grubbing titles. ” That is undeniably true, and, although it’s a fine film, All We Imagine as Light didn’t make my list of Best Movies of 2024 (although six indies by other emerging female directors did).

I think that there’s a lot to Howard Hawks’s definition of a great movie – three great scenes and no bad ones“. There’s one great scene here, where Prabha is alone with a rice cooker her husband has sent her as a gift (without a note). Most people would also count the scene where she imagines her husband is present as a great scene. But, that’s it for me, and I really didn’t embrace the magical realism or the Anu character. And, at times, my mind wandered.

As much as I was underwhelmed by All We Imagine as Light, it is a authentic exploration of women seeking dignity and love where society stacks the deck against them.