Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Bob Dylan in PAT GARRETT AND BILY THE KID, coming up twice this week on Turner Classic Movies.

This has been a remarkably busy week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of a Bronze Age saga, a Spanish psychological horror movie and a darkly funny crime thriller: The Return, You Are Not Me and Lake George. You can now stream Anora at home – the film currently number one on my Best Movies of 2024, The current number two film, A Complete Unknown, is in theaters.

REMEMBRANCE

You may have read of the recent death of Jeff Baena, who wrote David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees, and wrote and directed The Little Hours and Spin Me Round, all offbeat and subversive comedies.

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.
  • 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.
  • 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

Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan in PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID

The culture is pervaded with Bob Dylan right now, which is probably why Turner Classic Movies is airing a rare Bob Dylan acting performance, not once, but TWICE – on January 12 and 14.

One of my very favorite films is the Sam Peckinpah 1973 Western Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, featuring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson in the title roles. Dylan composed the music for the film, including Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, which perfectly underlines a heartbreaking scene with two greats of the Western genre, Slim Pickins and Katy Jurado. Dylan also holds his own in a small, mostly comedic, acting role.

Peckinpah takes us into a realistically dusty world of 1880s New Mexico and makes the story operatic in its sweep. Pat Garrett is a revisionist Western, with Billy representing the have-nots and his old pal Garrett hiring out to do the bidding of the capitalist one-percenters. It’s a near-great movie; if the unfortunate “Paco” story line were excised, it would rank among the greatest three or four Westerns of all time.

Pat Garrett also features the Peckinpah repertory company of Luke Askew, Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, Gene Evans, Dub Taylor, Emilio Fernandez and, in one his most memorable roles, R.G. Armstrong. The stellar cast also features Harry Dean Stanton, Jason Robards, Elisha Cook Jr., Chill Wills, Richard Jaeckel, Jack Elam, Barry Sullivan, Jack Dodson (Howard Sprague in The Andy Griffin Show), Richard Bright (Al Neri in The Godfather), and Charles Martin Smith (Terry the Toad in American Graffiti).

Dylan starred in his only other narrative feature film, Hearts of Fire, in 1987. He did appear, uncredited, in Dennis Hopper’s Catchfire (1990). Three decades after Pat Garrett, Dylan won an Oscar for composing the theme for Wonder Boys.

LAKE GEORGE: when you know you’re not going to win

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Photo caption: Carrie Coon and Shea Whigham in LAKE GEORGE. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures & Magnolia Releasing.

As the comic neo-noir Lake George opens, the hangdog Don (Shea Whigham) has just been released from a ten-year stint in prison. He has no prospects and is coerced by the fearsome crime lord Armen (Glenn Fleshler) into taking a job he doesn’t want. Having done his stretch for a white collar crime, Don is decidedly non-violent (and unlucky). He would be the first to agree that he is the worst possible choice to pull off a murder-for-hire, but Armen and his henchman Hanout (Max Casella) insists, on pain of Don’s own life, that Don whack the boss’ girlfriend and business associate, Phyllis (Carrie Coon).

Don tracks down Phyllis, and, of course, things do not go according to plan. She convinces him to join her in stealing stashes of loot from Armen, and the two are off on an odd couple road trip.

Phyllis is much, much smarter and quicker-thinking than any of the men in this story. And she’s just as ruthless, too. She has an impressive gift of persuasion and can apparently manipulate anyone into anything. Imagine if Brigid O’Shaughnessy were a lot smarter than Sam Spade. Femme fatale, sociopath – that’s Phyllis.

Don, on the other hand, kno ws that he has been a loser and that he ain’t gonna win this time either. Even if he is not quickest, Don is by no means stupid. Don is smart enough to know that doing Phyllis’ bidding is unlikely to work out and that Phyllis is only out for herself and has zero loyalty to Don. That’s the core of Lake George – Don trudging along at Phyllis’ side because he can’t figure out any alternative.

Lake George is a character study, and it’s an acting showcase for Shea Whigham. Ever dazed by the Phyllis’ increasingly outrageous acts, Whigham’s Don seems to be squinting into a bright light as he ponders how he can possibly escape each situation with his life.

Whigham is one of those character actors who works a lot and is always memorable (The Gray Man, A Country Called Home, Boardwalk Empire, True Detective, The Wolf of Wall Street, American Hustle, Take Shelter). It’s great to see him get a lead role.

Coon has fun with Phyllis’ ever-bubbling self-interest and almost manic charm. It’s an interesting take on the femme fatale because she doesn’t sexually seduce Don. Her smarts and gift of gab are so effective that she doesn’t need to use her gams.

There is a massive plot twist near the end. Lake George was written and directed by prolific TV director Jeffrey Reiner, his first theatrical feature in 29 years.

My personal preference would be to make Lake George more noir by cutting the last minute. But it’s a mildly entertaining lark, and the wonderful character study by Whigham is the most compelling reason to watch it.

Lake George is now streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

YOU ARE NOT ME: a nightmare at mom and dad’s

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Photo caption: Roser Tapias in YOU ARE NOT ME. Courtesy of Music Box Films.

In the Spanish psychological horror film You Are Not Me, Aitana (Roser Tapias) and her Brazilian partner Gabi (Yapoena Silva), with their adopted infant, show up early for Christmas at the Catalan home of Aitana’s affluent parents (Pilar Almeria and Alfred Pico). And Aitana seems to step into a nightmare. Or is it?

The first thing that rocks Aitana is her parents’ reaction. They don’t seem happy to see Aitana after many years, nor to meet her partner or their own first grandchild. They’re especially displeased that Aitana’s family has arrived on the eve of a dinner party they’ve planned, a special party that is not the usual family holiday get-together.

Why are the parents acting so inappropriately? Are they homophobic? Are they racist (the baby is black)? Are they still pissed off at Aitana? Aitana is headstrong and often tactless, and we learn that there’s some baggage; years before, the parents were hosting Aitana’s wedding to their ideal son-in-law, when Aitana, realizing she was a lesbian, suddenly ran away, leaving everyone in the lurch.

Aitana is also upset by the condition of her wheelchair-bound younger brother, Saul (Jorge Motos), whose degenerative disease is apparently getting worse.

But, what really sends Aitana over the edge is that her parents are fawning over a Romanian woman Aitana’s age, Nadia (Anna Kurikka). They have awarded Aitana’s room to Nadia, along with their affection and even Aitana’s wedding dress. When Aitana discovers evidence of Nadia’s dishonesty and even behavior that threatens Saul, the parents refuse to listen.

A scene from in YOU ARE NOT ME. Courtesy of Music Box Films.

Finally, there’s the parents’ formal dinner party, hosting several couples their age. The parents are meeting many of the guests, from several European countries, for the first time. The guests are unusually convivial (and horny). Although the guests are outwardly very traditional, they make what is a decidedly a creepy assemblage. Everything is conventional, but Aitana and the audience feel that something must be amiss.

You Are Not Me was co-written and co-directed by Marisa Crespo and Moisés Romera in their second feature film. It’s a well-directed film that benefits from a clever story that keeps the audience off-balance. Are these things really happening, or is Aitana imagining or dreaming them, or even hallucinating? Is Aitana just easily offended or is she paranoid or even schizophrenic? Her well-balanced partner Gabi is rolling with the punches and unintentionally gaslighting Aitana. By making Aitana so prickly, having her jet-lagged and then drunk, Crespo and Romera keep us wondering. And just when we think that the ending is outrageously cheesy, Crespo and Romera creep us out again.

You Are Not Me is streaming on Amazon and Fandango.

THE RETURN: an ancient tale told thru a 21st Century lens

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Photo caption: Ralph Fiennes in THE RETURN. Courtesy of Bleecker Street Media.

The Return brings 21st Century sensibilities to The Odyssey, a story that the ancient Homer told of an even more ancient time.

Odysseus is the king of of the island of Ithaca, and is known as the smartest of the great warrior kings who left their Greek homes for ten years to fight the Trojan War (Homer’s The Iliad). The Odyssey spans the ten years it takes Odysseus to return home, in which he pleases and displeases various Olympian gods, blinds and slaughters an assortment of monsters and shacks up with a witch-goddess and then a nymph. Most tellings of The Odyssey focus on those rip-roaring adventures. That’s the case with the delightful 1954 Kirk Douglas version, Ulysses, and the really bad 1997 miniseries with Armand Assante and Greta Scacchi. (Christopher Nolan, in his first film after Oppenheimer, will release his version of The Odyssey later this year.)

The Return is based on the very end of The Odyssey, when a shipwrecked Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) is finally cast upon the beach at Ithaca, and doesn’t like what he finds. His kingdom is overrun with suitors for his wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche). The suitors are demanding that Penelope, with Odysseus presumed dead after twenty years, marry one of them (and make the guy king).. They are a scummy lot, and Penelope is resisting with delaying tactics, but the pressure is overwhelming. The suitors are enjoying one big frat party, whoring and stripping the island’s economy of food and wine. Her son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer) is now a callow twenty-year-old, old enough to hate the situation, but too young to do anything about it. Can Odysseus set things right? Will he be accepted by his people? By the wife he hasn’t seen him for twenty years? By the son who doesn’t know him?

There’s no Poseidon and Athena, cyclops or sea monster in The Return. Director and co-writer Uberto Pasolini has stripped the mythology and supernatural out of the story to focus on human reactions to the consequences of our choices, to war and to abandonment.

What was not well-understood in Homer’s time is that even the glory of victory does not wash away away the emotional impacts of having experienced war. The Return’s Odysseus suffers from PTSD, no longer reveling in winning a war that slaughtered the civilians of Troy. He is feeling guilt for the war, for leading his Ithacan comrades to their deaths, and for abandoning Penelope, Telemachus and Ithaca for so many years. Sure, Penelope’s suitors are the direct cause of the current chaos, but the root is in Odysseus’ original decision to leave.

Similarly, Penelope has feelings that are intense and ambivalent. She doesn’t know whether to grieve the loss of her husband. She’s been single parenting for twenty years, running both a household and a kingdom. She’s worried about her son’s survival, given that his existence is inconvenient for the suitors. She’s stressed and weary, and the pressure from the suitors is pushing her over the edge. On the one hand, she yearns for the man she loves and wants Odysseus to come back and fix this mess. On the other, she resents whatever he’s been doing these past ten years (and with whom), and she feels the hurt of his original decision to go off to war.

I appreciated seeing Odysseus and Penelope through a 21st Century lens. The first encounter between the two is electrifying and emotionally rich. I did find their dialogue in the final scene to be stilted.

The Return is an acting showcase for Ralph Fiennes. This Odysseus, besides being emotionally tortured, must show the effects of two decades of suffering on a middle-aged man and also retain the combat skills of an ancient Special Ops warrior. In a remarkable performance, Fiennes pulls it off in spades.

I have to also mention that, at age 62, Fiennes is a remarkable physical specimen. He is so ripped that his extreme exploits at the film’s climax are entirely believable.

Juliette Binoche is similarly excellent as her Penelope feels determination, hopelessness, longing, resentment, anger and disgust, often at the same time.

Marwan Kenzari is really good as Antinous, by far the smartest and most manipulative of the suitors, the lone slick conniver amid a gang of thugs.

The Return is only the fourth film that Uberto Pasolini has directed in a quarter century. Hw was Oscar-nominated for the massive 1997 arthouse hit The Full Monty. He is not related to the groundbreaking filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, but he is the nephew of iconic director Luchino Visconti.

The Return is now streaming on Amazon, AppleTV and Fandango.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Elle Fanning and Timothée Chalamet in A COMPLETE UNKNOWN. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of A Complete Unknown, Queer and Jimmy Carter. Plus my year-end coverage:

  1. Best Movies of 2024
  2. Best (and worst) movie-going experiences of 2024
  3. 2024 Farewells: on the screen
  4. 2024 Farewells: behind the camera.

REMEMBRANCE

Olivia Hussey was only 15 when she began filming Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. Zeffirelli had decided to tell the story of impulsive, over-dramatic teenage love with actual teenage actors, and Hussey rewarded him with a rapturous and genuine performance. She worked with Zeffirelli again in the best-ever biblical epic, Jesus of Nazareth, as Mary, mother of Jesus.

CURRENT MOVIES

  • Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters.
  • A Complete Unknown: a genius and his time. In theaters.
  • Conclave: explosive secrets? in the Vatican?. In theaters.
  • Blitz: one brave, resourceful kid amid the horrors. AppleTV.
  • A Real Pain: whose pain is it? In theaters.
  • The Outrun: facing herself without the bottle. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandngo.
  • The Remarkable Life of Ibelin: totally unexpected. Netflix.
  • Queer: forty-five minutes of fine romantic drama, and then the bizarre. In theaters.
  • The Settlers: reckoning with the ugly past. MUBI.
  • Emilia Pérez: four women yearn amid Mexico’s drug violence. Netflix.
  • Chasing Chasing Amy: the origins of love, fictional and otherwise. In theaters.
  • Kneecap: sláinte! Amazon, AppleTV.
  • Will & Harper: old friends adjust. Netflix.

WATCH AT HOME

From my Best Movies of 2024 – So Far:

ON TV

Ann-Margret and Elvis Presley in VIA LAS VEGAS

OK, I’m not saying that Viva Las Vegas (Turner Classic Movies on January 8) is neither a good movie nor an overlooked one, but it’s tough to beat for sheer vibrancy and sexual chemistry. Virtually all Elvis Presley, movies had silly, barely visible plots contrived as an excuse for Elvis to perform a few songs and to canoodle with a pretty female. What’s different about Viva Las Vegas is that his co-star Ann-Margret had the musical talent and charisma to match up with Elvis; her dancing here is captivating. Ann-Margret has confirmed that she and Elvis enjoyed a torrid fling during the shoot, and their lustful passion is evident (meaning that Elvis didn’t need to rely on his acting skills to appear smitten). (BTW the one good Elvis movie was Kid Creole – check it out.)

Director George Sidney (nearing the end of a career making light-hearted musicals) seems so obsessed with Ann-Margret’s derriere, that you can play a drinking game on the extended, lingering shots of her walking away from the camera; don’t blame Sidney – nobody in Kiss Me Kate or Annie, Get Your Gun! was as overtly sexual as Ann-Margret.

Ann-Margret and Elvis Presley in VIA LAS VEGAS

QUEER: forty-five minutes of fine romantic drama, and then the bizarre

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Photo caption: Daniel Craig in QUEER. Courtesy of A24.

The first thing I need to tell you about Luca Guadagnino’s Queer is something that I knew beforehand but failed to internalize – it is based on a William S. Burroughs story, an autobiographical one at that. Had I been thinking about that, I wouldn’t have been so jarred when the film veered into the super trippy.

Queer starts off coloring within the lines of a character study and romantic drama. William Lee (Daniel Craig) is an American expat in 1950s Mexico City; a man of independent means, he is continually drinking and prowling for sex with younger men. He glimpses Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a gorgeous American of ambiguous sexuality and is instantly infatuated; Lee begins a pursuit, and Eugene is hard to get, until he isn’t.

That’s the first act, which absorbed me. But it didn’t prepare me for the turgid second act, which is about opiate addiction nor the third act, which is about a search for psychedelics. That third act is bizarre, with some ripping moments.

Luca Guadagnino is known for visually striking, even delectable, movies; he and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (also Call Me By Your Name and Challengers) oblige with plenty of Mexico City and Ecuadorian jungle eye candy, mostly shot in an Italian studio. There’s an especially wonderful dream sequence after Lee’s most extreme drunk night. This is the first Guadagnino movie I’ve seen with special effects, which are necessary in the hallucinatory third act.

But Queer is too long overall, especially the hallucination scene. The entire second act drags.

Daniel Craig’s acting ability was justifiably admired before he became such an iconic James Bond. Here, his Lee is so fascinated and yet mystified by Eugene. Lee is always off-balance when he can win Eugene’s company, but he can’t control him. Lee has attained a relationship, but it’s an asymmetric one.

If there’s any doubt that he is very comfortable putting James Bond behind him, that doubt is erased when we see Daniel Craig playing a character with semen glistening on his lips.

Craig also plays drunk very well – which many actors fail to do convincingly. He nails the various degrees, starting at the point where Lee fails to read the room correctly and acts cutesy when it isn’t funny. As Lee becomes more tipsy, Craig perfectly adds a slight sway to his gait, then a bigger one.

We have known Craig can act since The Mother (2003) and Layer Cake (2004), so Drew Starkey, who hadn’t yet had a memorable performance, is the real discovery here. Eugene is anything but demonstrative, and Starkey communicates all of Eugene’s interest in Lee and resistance to Lee, with his eyes and body.

Lesley Manville jumps off the screen in what must be the most bizarre portrayal in her storied career; at some point, she must have played one of the witches from Macbeth, but she looks more the part here, with greasy hair, darkened teeth and unhinged eyes, than she could have in any other production. Her performance is very, very strong.

Jason Schwartzman, playing one of Lee’s Mexico City expat buddies, is very funny every time he’s on the screen.

So, what do I think about Queer? Luca Guadagnino and his team are interesting and accomplished artists, Daniel Craig is an actor worthy of his stardom and it’s great to have a non-heterosexual romantic drama – BUT, the choice to hew so closely to Burroughs’ source material, along with some self-indulgent editing, condemns the second half of Queer to lose the audience (me, at least).

Best Movies of 2024

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Photo caption: Mark Eydelshteyn and Mikey Madison in ANORA. Courtesy of NEON.

Every year, I keep a running list of the best movies I’ve seen this year.  By the end of the year, I usually end up with a Top Ten and another 5-15 mentions. Here are my Best Movies of 2023 and  Best Movies of 2022 lists. To get on my year-end list, a movie has to be one that thrills me while I’m watching it and one that I’m still thinking about a couple of days later.

When I wrote my year’s end post last December 31, I had already seen the best two films, Oppenheimer and Anatomy of a Fall. Today, I still haven’t seen many of the films I expect to contend for this list, including The Room Next Door, The Brutalist, Hard Truths, All We Imagine as Light and Hard Truths. Pretty sure most of those will end up high on my list when I finalize it in a couple months. Sean Baker’s Anora is brilliant film, but I expect it to be surpassed on my list by one or some of the upcoming releases.

I HAVE seen 126 2024 films so far. BTW that 126 total for 2024 doesn’t include the 105 festival submissions that I’ve screened (those will be 2025 films) nor the 104 movies from earlier years that I watched this year.

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

Here’s the entire list of the best of 2024:

  • Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters.
  • A Complete Unknown: a genius and his time. In theaters.
  • 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.
  • The Substance: the thinking woman’s Faust, if you can take the body horror. MUBI (free), Amazon, AppleTV.
  • 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.
  • Sweetheart Deal: a triumph of cinéma vérité. In arthouse theaters.
  • Love Lies Bleeding: obsessions and impulses collide. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • I Saw the TV Glow: brimming with originality. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
Jodie Comer and Austin Butler in THE BIKERIDERS. Courtesy of Focus Features.
Bill Faist, Zendaya and Josh O’Connor in CHALLENGERS. Courtesy of MGM.

Happy Anniversary to The Wife!

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

Happy 24th Anniversary to The Wife, also known as Lisa, The Love of My Life!

We started out the year by binge-watching The Crown (season 6) and Shetland (season 6), and ended, as is our beloved Holiday tradition, watching It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen

I really enjoyed introducing her to Anatomy of a Fall in January. Together, we discovered Ghostlight and The Bikeriders in July and Conclave, A Real Pain, A Complete Unknown and Queer to close out the year.

After a year-long streak of stinkers, she revived her own movie-picking credibility with Wicked Little Letters and Kneecap.

Once again, she tolerated my spending huge chunks of time covering Noir City and the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival in person and Cinequest, Slamdance, Frameline, San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), Nashville Film Festival and San Francisco Jewish Film Festival virtually. She was also OK with my helping out Cinequest by screening over 100 film submissions. I’m getting ready now to cover Noir City in person and Slamdance virtually again in January.

She joined me on my bucket list pilgrimage to the 105-year-old Hollywood restaurant Musso & Frank Grill. We sat at the bar where William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dashiell Hammett imbibed (and where Hammett wrote). We dined at Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s regular booth and passed by Charlie Chaplin’s regular table by the front window. Unforgettable.

She’s the biggest fan and supporter of this blog DURING ALL OF ITS FOURTEEN YEARS, and I appreciate her and love her. Happy Anniversary, Honey!

JIMMY CARTER – “What people say they want”

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In PBS’ American Experience documentary Jimmy Carter, The New Yorker writer and former Carter speechwriter Henrik Hertzberg says:

Jimmy Carter was what the American people always SAY they want – above politics, determined to do the right thing regardless of political consequences, a simple person who doesn’t lie, a modest man, not someone with a lot of imperial pretenses.  That’s what people say they want.  And that’s what they got with Jimmy Carter.

And herein lies the rub. 

In 1976, Americans were reacting to Watergate and wanted a President the LEAST like Richard Nixon. We got him, in the form of Jimmy Carter; it turned out that Carter could deliver non-Nixonian decency, but not the leadership that the era required.

In Jimmy Carter, we hear from those who know Carter best – including his wife Rosalynn Carter, his vice-president Walter Mondale, and right-from-the-start Carter insiders Jody Powell, Pat Caddell and Bert Lance. How the times made this man, then propelled him to such improbable electoral success and then finally doomed his Administration, is a great and cautionary story.

Jimmy Carter is in two parts, which combine for two hours and 39 minutes. It’s available to stream from Amazon and AppleTV (I can find it on my app, but not on the website).

Best (and Worst) Movie-going Experiences of 2024

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Photo caption: Craig Wasson and Jodi Thelen in FOUR FRIENDS

I see over 300 movies each year, and every time, I am hoping for an especially rewarding experience. Here are my favorite movie-going experiences of 2024.

  • A special screening of Four Friends at the Cambria Film Festival with stars Craig Wasson, Reed Birney and Jim Metzler. Critics loved this 1981 Arthur Penn film, and I loved it, and almost nobody else saw it. A film about an aspirational blue-collar young man in the turbulent Vietnam Era (like me), this film deeply resonated with me in 1981 and continues to do so. Grievously underrated, Four Friends isn’t available to stream and is very hard to find. It was wonderful to see it agaon, this time with an audience and the filmmakers.
  • Noir City: In recent years, Eddie Muller and team have been introducing me to international film noir. This year, they came through with the French Symphony for a Massacre and the British Across the Bridge. I attended Noir City in-person in Oakland, and I’ll be returning in January 2025.
  • Slamdance: This blog loves directorial debuts and world premieres – and that’s what Slamdance is all about. This year, the best two films were Italian: The Complex Forms and The Accident.
  • Cinequest: The film festival that launched this blog was once again rich with world premieres. The best were The Invisibles, Pain and Peace, and The Island Between the Tides, and the North American premiere of Human Resources. presented the remarkable In the Summers.
  • Nashville Film Festival: NashFilm has become one of my favorite film fests, and this year introduced me to In the Summers, which made my year-end top ten.
  • SFFILM: This time, SFFILM delivered two surprises of surrealism and absurdism: Mother Couch and The Practice.
  • San Luis Obispo International Film Festival: This year, the SLO Film Fest soared with its unique and very deep surf/skate program, and two indie charmers, Tokyo Cowboy and Chasing, Chasing Amy.
  • Frameline: San Francisco’s major LGBTQ fest brought us Gondola, another charming, dialogue-free comedy from German writer-director Veit Helmer, this one set in Georgia.
  • San Francisco Jewish Film Festival: The SFJFF is a major Jewish cultural event held against the backdrop of current events in Israel and Gaza, and the SFJFF leaned right into what would otherwise be the elephant in the room. I’ve been covering the SFJFF since 2016, I’m not Jewish and I can attest that this attitude is nothing new. I’ve seen SFJFF films with Palestinian voices, by Palestinian and Israeli Arab filmmakers, and about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
  • Not for the first time: I re-experienced Man on a Train, The Day of the Jackal, The Valley of Elah and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.
  • Palm Theater: My hometown arthouse delivered The Taste of Things, La Chimera, Wicked Little Letters, Ghostlight, How to Come Alive, Didi, The Outrun, Anora, A Real Pain, Queer and A Complete Unknown.
  • Sweetheart Deal: I’ve reviewed fifteen documentaries this year and screened another 80 while helping to program a film festival. Sweetheart Deal is the best documentary I’ve seen this year.
  • The Bikeriders: Jeff Nichols has written and directed six films, and I have loved all five that I have seen, including this latest one with Jodie Comer’s fine performance.
  • Netflix: I expected Richard Linklater’s Hit Man to be good (and it was), but I was totally surprised by The Remarkable Life of Ibelin.

TO TOP EVERYTHING ELSE

This is not technically movie-GOING, but it topped my movie-RELATED experiences of 2024. The Wife and I were joined by our friends Keith, Cynthia and Nisan on a bucket list pilgrimage to the 105-year-old Hollywood restaurant Musso & Frank Grill. The Wife and I sat at the bar where William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dashiell Hammett imbibed (and where Hammett wrote). We dined at Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s regular booth and passed by Charlie Chaplin’s regular table by the front window. (The old-school martini and the sweetbreads were the best I’ve had.)

THE WORST

I usually don’t have a “ten worst movie” list because I only choose to watch movies that I hope will be exceptionally good. After all, I don’t have an editor assigning me to review soulless franchise movies, predictable rom coms and cheesy horror flicks. And, I generally just choose NOT to write about a bad indie – indie filmmakers have invested years of their lives in their films, and they just don’t need snark from somebody like me. But EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, some film crosses the line.

This year, that film was a world premiere at Slamdance, the Japanese high school coming of age film House of Se, where one of the main characters is a menstruophile who swipes all the used sanitary napkins in the school. Anyone who makes a film this transgressive really must deliver a movie with some minimal production values and a coherent story, which House of Se fails to do. Of the 300+ movies that I watched in 2024, House of Se is unquestionably the very worst.

I did despise Kinds of Kindness and The Dead Don’t Hurt, but at least they were competently made.