THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO: you think you’ve seen a revenge movie?

by
Photo caption: Pierre Niney in THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO. Courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.

The French epic The Count of Monte Cristo is a relentlessly entertaining three hour plunge into betrayal, revenge and forgiveness – and some spectacular French real estate. Alexander Dumas published the original adventure novel 185 years ago, and it’s been made into over 100 movies and episodic series. This version, by writer-directors Alexandre de La Patelliere and Matthieu Delaporte, is pretty fun, and gorgeous to look at.

The sweeping story spans 24 years, beginning in 1815 when the protagonist, Edmond Dantes, (Pierre Niney) is nineteen years old and on the verge of a wonderful life. A seafaring prodigy, he has just earned the captaincy of his own ship, which will earn him affluence, and he’s about the marry the stunningly beautiful love of his life. But three other jealous and resentful men manufacture a false charge and railroad into a life sentence of solitary confinement in a remote island dungeon. Before he know what has hit him, Dantes has been suddenly and unjustly stripped of everything he had or could have had.

After languishing in hopeless squalor for six years, he makes contact with another prisoner who has a plan for an escape – but it will take them another eight years to implement. In The Count of Monte-Cristo‘s most thrilling scene, he manages a skin-of-the-teeth escape. He then tracks down an immense medieval fortune and returns to France with a new identity – the Count of Monte-Cristo – and the power and status of great wealth.

He can no take revenge on the three men who betrayed him, but killing them is not enough for Dantes – this is not the kind of revenge movie that we’re used to. Dantes needs to break them completely – he needs to deprive them of their wealth, their status, their families and their own sense of self-worth. To do that, he creates and manipulates an elaborate web of traps.

The base assumptions and societal mores of early 19th century France, of course, are utterly anachronistic to our modern sensibilities , but de La Patelliere and Delaporte make Dantes’ situation relatable. The first two hours of the story is remarkably adherent to the source material. De La Patelliere and Delaporte reworked the some of the revenge devices at the end, but they were true to Dumas’ overall story arc. And, who, these days, has actually read the original? (I’ll admit that I have only read the Classics Illustrated comic book as a boy.)

De La Patelliere and Delaporte, along with cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc make this a visually splendid film, aided by impressive chateaus, period costumes and the attractive cast.

Niney is an able enough actor to carry the film, appearing in 90 percent of the scenes and aging 24 years. The rest of the cast is fine, too, with Patrick Mille sparkling as the ever-grinning, vile speculator Danglers, one of Dantes’ three main targets.

The Count of Monte-Cristo is available to watch for free on kanopy and to rent from Amazon,AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango. There are many similar titles, including a 2025 mini-series,so be sure to get the 2024 French movie with the hyphen in the title.

SUDDEN FEAR: twelve minutes of movie perfection

by
Joan Crawford in SUDDEN FEAR.

The riveting final twelve minutes of the 1952 film noir Sudden Fear is movie perfection. Now, it’s a pretty good movie for the first hour and thirty-eight minutes, but its ending takes Sudden Fear up a couple of notches.

Here’s the set-up – a highly successful woman (Joan Crawford) marries a guy (Jack Palance) who really just wants her money; he plots with his longtime girlfriend (Gloria Grahame) to do in his wife for the inheritance. The wife discovers their scheme, and plans to get them before they can get her.

The wife has sneaked into an apartment when the husband unexpectedly returns, and she becomes trapped and defenseless in a closet, just hoping against hope that he won’t discover her. The tension mounts as he putters around the apartment, and there’s an ingenious use of a wind-up toy to build even more suspense. After several excruciating minutes, her cover is blown, and she manages to bolt. As she runs for her life through the hilly sidewalks and alleys of San Francisco, he careens after her in a large sedan.

Jack Palance in SUDDEN FEAR.

In this extended sequence, there’s almost no dialogue except for his yelling her name. The storytelling rises to the level of Hitchcock’s, and the storyboard could be taught in film school.

Director David Miller directed over forty features, many with big stars (Billy the Kid with Robert Taylor, Flying Tigers with John Wayne, Twist of Fate with Ginger Rogers, and The Story of Esther Costello with Crawford and Two decades later, he directed another thriller, the cheesy and tasteless conspiracy movie Executive Action with Burt Lancaster. But there’s nothing in his body of work that would indicate that Miller could create those twelve minutes of perfection in Sudden Fear.

Miller had a lot of help from cinematographer Charles Lang, who makes the best of the shadows and the natural Dutch angles of San Francisco’s sloped streets. Lang went on to shoot two of the most iconic film noirs, Ace in the Hole and The Big Heat. Lang had lots of ucess outside the noir genre, too: The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Some Like It Hot, The Magnificent Seven, One-Eyed Jacks, The Flim-Flam Man, Wait Until Dark. Lang was nominated for an Oscar for his work in Sudden Fear, as were Crawford, Palance and costume designer Sheila O’Brien.

Jack Palance in SUDDEN FEAR.

I’m not a big Joan Crawford fan, but even I recognize the power of her best two scenes here. In the first, she silently listens to a conversation between the two plotters, and her face registers the changing emotions as she connects the dots. In he climactic scene, she recognizes what she can and cannot do, and changes her course of of action, but then, initially frozen with terror, must rally herself to escape from her husband. The sequence concludes with a final close-up that is vintage Joan Crawford.

Gloria Grahame in SUDDEN FEAR.

Palance, oozing physicality and intensity, is perfectly cast. Grahame, whose performance is very understated next to Crawford’s and Palance’s, is excellent.

Sudden Fear can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango and is free on kanopy; it also occasionally plays on Turner Classic Movies.

Jack Palance and Joan Crawford in SUDDEN FEAR.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Asahi Hirano and Sabrina Jie-A-Fa in EGGHEAD & TWINKIE. Credit: Olivia Wilson, Courtesy of CanBeDone Films and Orange Cat Films.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – I’m trying to get you thru the movie doldrums with the delightful coming of age story Egghead & Twinkie and the genre-busting reenactment doc Starring Jerry as Himself. May is Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and both movies feature Asian American filmmakers and lead characters.

I am looking forward to Matt Wolf’s HBO biodoc Pee Wee Herman as Himself, which begins airing on the weekend after next. The week after, theaters will offer the buzzed-about The Life of Chuck and Caught by the Tides, from the Chinese master filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke and his muse Tao Zhao.

Note: I recommended the highly innovative The Accident after screening it for the 2024 Slamdance, and it’s now streaming on Fandor.  The Accident went on to win the Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance.

REMEMBRANCES

Mariko Kaga and Ryô Ikebe in PALE FLOWER

Director Masahiro Shinoda was a groundbreaking auteur, best known for his bracing neo-noir Pale Flower.

Character actor Craig Richard Nelson’s first film role was as a snobby, fastidious preppy in The Paper Chase (1973), and he nailed a similar character in Robert Altman’s A Wedding (1978). In this period, he had small roles in Altman’s 3 Women (1977) and Tony Bill’s My Bodyguard (1980). Even though he worked in TV and film through 1998, his performances were increasingly less memorable.

CURRENT MOVIES

ON TV

Gene Hackman in the 1975 NIGHT MOVES

On May 13, Turner Classic Movies is honoring Gene Hackman by airing Night Moves, along with his better known movies, The French Connection, Hoosiers and Mississippi Burning. In the1975 character-driven neo-noir Night Moves, Hackman plays an LA private eye who follows a trail of evidence to steamy Florida. Hackman shines in the role – the detective is deeply in love with his estranged wife (Susan Clark), but unsuited for marriage. Night Moves also features Melanie Griffith’s breakthrough role as the highly sexualized teen daughter in the Florida family; Griffith was right around eighteen-years-old when this was filmed, and had already been living with Don Johnson for three years. Night Moves features an impressive ensemble of supporting actors: Harris Yulin, James Woods, Edward Binns, Max Gail (Wojo on Barney Miller) and the sui generis Kenneth Mars.

STARRING JERRY AS HIMSELF: more than an exposé

by

In the documentary Starring Jerry as Himself, a Florida senior sees himself recruited as an operative by Chinese police. The story is told in a re-enactment with the subject playing himself. We later learn why the filmmakers chose re-enactment, and what could have been a conventional true crime exposé or a weeper, is illuminated by the subject family’s humanity.

Starring Jerry as Himself is the first feature for director Law Chen, who also edited, co-produced and shot some of the footage. Law Chen and his co-producer and subject Jonathan Hsu were responsible for the decision on how to structure the film. That decision turned what could have been a heartbreaking downer into an engaging and satisfying family story, albeit a cautionary one.

I highlighted Starring Jerry as Himself as a MUST SEE in my Slamdance: discovering new filmmakers, and it won Slamdance’s Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize. It’s now available to stream at home from Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube.

EGGHEAD & TWINKIE: funny, sweet and genuine

by
Photo caption: Sabrina Jie-A-Fa and Louis Tomeo in EGGHEAD & TWINKIE. Credit: Olivia Wilson, Courtesy of CanBeDone Films and Orange Cat Films.

In the funny, sweet and genuine coming of age film Egghead & Twinkie, Twinkie (Sabrina Jie-A-Fa) is finishing high school and trying to navigate her sexual awakening as aa lesbian – and it’s not easy. Her lifelong bestie is the neighbor boy Egghead (Louis Tomei), and he’s now sweet on her; (Egghead and Twinkie are their nicknames for each other), Twinkie impulsively commandeers her dad’s car and heads out on a cross country road trip to join her Internet object of desire (Tik Tok star Ayden Lee). Egghead is so loyal, smitten and cluelessly hopeful that he comes along.

Along the way, they have their share of zany road trip experiences. Twinkie meets the girl (Asahi Hirano) who REALLY is perfect for her, but Twinkie is first destined to learn a cruel lesson about being infatuated with a player. It’s a hoot, and there’s not one false note. For all their kooky antics, the kids’ feelings are remarkably authentic.

The entire cast is very good. Sabrina Jie-A-Fa is a charming force of nature as Twinkie. She’s in every scene, and she’s a real talent.

Asahi Hirano and Sabrina Jie-A-Fa in EGGHEAD & TWINKIE. Credit: Olivia Wilson, Courtesy of CanBeDone Films and Orange Cat Films.

Egghead & Twinkie is the first feature for writer-director Sarah Kambe Holland, and it’s an impressive calling card. Egghead & Twinkie is perfectly paced, and Kambe Holland sprinkles in just enough animation to help leaven the angst with the whimsical. Kambe Holland says,

“The kernel of an idea that turned into EGGHEAD & TWINKIE was
more of a question: Can I find humor in the coming out process? I
was nineteen years old at the time, and I had just come out to my
own parents a few months before. The stress of coming out was
fresh in my mind, but so was the hilarious awkwardness of it all. I
challenged myself to write a short film script about a teenage girl
who comes out to her parents, but I was adamant that it wouldn’t be
a drama. It would be a comedy, and the message would be one of
hope and friendship.“

Of course, given Kambe Holland’s inspiration for the story, Twinkie just doesn’t HAPPEN to be gay or HAPPEN to be Asian-American, but the themes are universal, and Egghead & Twinkie is one of the best coming-of-age films of the decade.

I screened Egghead & Twinkie for its premiere at Cinequest.. After  a strong festival run, Egghead & Twinkie is available on VOD, including Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube, beginning today.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Neil Young in COASTAL. Courtesy of SLO Film Fest.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of the British farce The Trouble with Jessica and extended coverage of the San Luis Obispo Film Festival – a film fest that punches above its weight:

Note that the delightful doc We Want the Funk is available for free on the PBS YouTube channel.

REMEMBRANCE

Val Kilmer in TOMBSTONE.

I’ve been on vacation, so this is my first chance to write about the late Val Kilmer. Kilmer applied his magnetism in unforgettable performances: Iceman in Top Gun, Jim Morrison in The Doors and Batman in Batman Forever. My favorite Val Kilmer turn was as an insouciant Doc Holliday in Tombstone.

CURRENT MOVIES

ON TV

Robert De Niro and Vincent Gardenia in BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY.

On April 29, Turner Classic Movies plays the Bang the Drum Slowly from 1973. A worldly MLB pitcher (Michael Moriarity) helps his slow-witted catcher (Robert De Niro), afflicted with aterminal illness, finish the season. It’s a weeper, but a very genuine one. This was the performance that got De Niro noticed. His next three movie roles were Johnny Boy in Mean Streets, Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II and Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.

THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA: a diverting farce

by
Photo caption: Shirley Henderson in THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA. Courtesy of Music Box Films.

In the dark British farce The Trouble with Jessica, the most despicable, unwelcome guest at a dinner party dies by suicide in the back yard, and the other four diners must dispose of the inconvenient corpse to prevent financial ruin of the hosts. As one might expect, the foursome must run a gauntlet of nosy neighbors, earnest police and horny drunks.

Five very able veteran actors (Shirley Henderson, Alan Tudyk, Olivia Williams, Rupert Sewell and Indira Varma) keep the laughs coming. Henderson, so good in Intermission and the Harry Potter franchise, brilliantly pivots her character from hand-wringing to ruthlessness. Varma does well with the most delicious role, an attractive, talented and successful person who is personally despicable in every way.

Indira Varma in THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA. Courtesy of Music Box Films.

The story in The Trouble with Jessica follows a familiar premise, and the arc is predictable. But the acting is so vivid that it works as a light diversion.

The Trouble with Jessica was directed by Matt Winn, who co-wrote the screenplay with James Handel.

The Trouble with Jessica is opening this weekend, including at the Laemmle Royal in LA. I screened The Trouble With Jessica for the 2024 Cinequest.

Best of the SLO Film Fest

by
Photo caption: The Gaelic thriller AONTAS. Courtesy of SLO Film Fest.

The 2025 SLO Film Fest opens tomorrow. I’ve screened over a dozen of the features, and here are four that you shouldn’t miss:

  • Aontas: This clever Irish thriller opens with three women donning balaclavas, brandishing guns and bursting into a credit union, a heist going wrong. Who are they? Who are they to each other? What is their plan? This is not techie Dublin. They are in a Gaelic-speaking western village, already on hard times when a smug sociopath loots the town by closing its last economic engine. In his second narrative feature, director and co-writer Damian McCann brilliantly unspools the story in a reverse chronology. Carrie Crowley and Brid Brennan are excellent as two estranged sisters with a shared horror in their past.
  • Made in Ethiopia: Businesswoman Motto is the face of a huge, new Chinese industrial park in Ethiopia. How huge? A factory with 3,000 workers is just one of its 130 businesses – and Motto is working on an 18,000-acre expansion. Motto is smart, zealous, charismatic and utterly non-ironic. Along with the other Chinese, she has drunk the Koo-Aid and sees the park as entirely benevolent – bringing large scale employment and investment to a poor and neglected society. A visiting Chinese official exclaims, “it’s just like China used to be!“. All of the workers are Ethiopian, who earn $50 per month in what is essentially a clean and gleaming sweatshop. All of the supervisors are Chinese who have left their families behind in China. The local farmers feel ripped off by their government, and an armed rebellion may be brewing. Apart from a global pandemic, what could possibly go wrong? In their first feature, directors Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan have created a brilliant exploration of clashing cultures and economic imperialism.
  • The Cigarette Surfboard: To raise consciousness about the environmental impact of cigarette butts (which is really, really bad), an activist builds and displays a functioning surfboard made out of 10,000 discarded cigarette butts picked up on the beach.  Backed by a community of surfers, scientists and surfer-scientists, he tours the world, seeking a ban on cigarette filters. Impressively, the Ciggy Board even survives Mavericks. The butt-gathering, surfboard building and local politics happens in Santa Cruz. This doc has racked up awards at many film festivals (even at one in Bulgaria).
  • Coastal: This film documents Neil Young’s most recent tour, a bus trip down and up the California coast for outdoor concerts in LA, San Diego and Berkeley. Young performs almost all new material, alone onstage except for his guitars, harmonica and a series of ancient pianos and an organ, each with its own back story. But the time on the bus is the most fun, featuring the banter between a wry, comfortable Young (with none of his renowned prickliness) and bus driver/raconteur Jerry Don Borden. This is director Daryl Hannah’s third Neil Young doc, and it’s an unusually intimate and authentic film. Neil Young and Daryl Hannah are expected to appear at the fest’s closing night screening at the Fremont Theater.
Neil Young in COASTAL. Courtesy of SLO Film Fest.

And here are two that I haven’t yet seen yet, but I think they’re pretty good bets:

  • The Baltimorons: A cracked tooth sends a guy to an emergency dentist and launches a nighttime adventure through Baltimore that could result in romance. We’re expecting The Baltimorons to reflect the sharp comic sensibility of writer-director Jay Duplass, who will appear to receive an award and present this film at the Fremont Theater. With his brother Mark, Duplass wrote and directed Baghead, Cyrus and Jeff Who Lives at Home, and has been busy directing/producing in television and acting (Transparent, Lynn Shelton’s Outside In). This is the first feature he has directed since 2012. At its world premiere just weeks ago, The Baltimorons won the Best Narrative Feature award at SXSW.
  • Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion: If ever a fashion designer dominated the Hollywood red carpet, it is Bob Mackie. Cher, Carol Burnett, Bernadette Peters, RuPaul and Tom Ford are all featured in this biodoc. After Monday’s screening at the Palm, Bob Mackie will appear to receive the festival’s King Vidor Award at the Hotel San Luis Obispo.

There are plenty more experiences at the fest, including features, workshops and six programs of shorts. Peruse the program and get your tickets at SLO Film Fest. Here are the trailers for Made in Ethiopia and The Cigarette Surfboard.

Surf and Skate at the 2025 SLO Film Fest

by
Photo caption: Surf Nite in SLO. Courtesy of the SLO Film Fest.

This year’s SLO Film Fest, opening April 24, once again presents the richest Surf/Skate program that I’ve ever seen at a mainstream film festival. In fact, the SLO Film Festival dedicates its Friday night and Saturday night showcase screenings at the Fremont Theater to Surf/Skate events – that’s respect. Here are the highlights.

The always popular Surf Nite in SLO features three surfing short films with gnarly waves. Expect the Fremont Theater to be packed again with surfers enjoying drinks in the lobby and the Riff Tide surf band before the screening. The films are:

  • Making Waves: The Lakey Peterson Story profiles 805-native Lakey Peterson and her experiences on the World Surf League Championship Tour.
  • Creatures of Habit explores extreme cold water surfing,
  • NØ WAY involves even colder water and is described as “an antithesis to The Endless Summer“. It follows a band of surfers in the Barents Sea, which is between the northernmost coasts of Norway, Finland and Russia and the Arctic Ocean
Leandre Sanders in SKATEGOAT. Courtesy of SLO Film Fest.

For the second year, SLO Film Fest celebrates the culture and cinema of skateboarding with its Community of Skate program:

  • The feature film Skategoat profiles Leandre Sanders, whose passion for skateboarding led him to escape a crime-ridden and impoverished environment to become an international skateboarding superstar. Sanders will appear personally, along with the director, Van Alpert.
  • The short film Against the Current airs the reflections of skate icon and filmmaker Stacy Peralta on his own artistic journey. A surfer and one of the pioneers of modern skateboarding, Peralta, directed Dogtown and Z-boys and Riding Giants, wrote Lords of Dogtown, and founded the Powell Peralta skateboard product company. 
  • A post-screening panel with pro skaters Leandre Sanders and Chico Brenes, skate film director Aaron Meza, and Skategoat director Van Alpert.
  • An exhibition of skateboard designs and live-screen printing by the San Luis Obispo High School Advanced Graphic Design class. 
Photo caption: Jack Johnson in THE CIGARETTE SURFBOARD. Courtesy of SLO Film Fest.

The fest’s program also includes the enviro documentary feature The Cigarette Surfboard. To raise consciousness about the environmental impact of cigarette butts (which is really, really bad), an activist builds and displays a functioning surfboard made out of 10,000 discarded cigarette butts picked up on the beach.  Backed by a community of surfers, scientists and surfer-scientists, he tours the world, seeking a ban on cigarette filters. Impressively, the Ciggy Board even survives Mavericks. The butt-gathering, surfboard building and local politics happens in Santa Cruz. This doc has racked up awards at many film festivals (even at one in Bulgaria).

Check out the program and get your tickets at SLO Film Fest. Here are the trailers for Skategoat and The Cigarette Surfboard.

Movies to See Right Now

by
CHEVALIER. Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing and SFFILM.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – The 2025 SFFILM is beginning, so here are my recommendations in Under the Radar at SFFILM. Plus, here are two great choices to watch at home: the engrossing 2002 French drama Man on the Train (Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango, YouTube) and Athina Rachel Tsangari’s sly and pointed exploration of male competitiveness, Chevalier (Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango, YouTube).

CURRENT MOVIES

ON TV

Anthony Quinn in BARABBAS

Easter always triggers television networks to pull out their Biblical epics. If you’re going to watch just one Sword-and-Sandal classic, I recommend going full tilt with Barrabas, broadcast by Turner Classic Movies on April 20. This 1961 cornball stars Anthony Quinn as the Zelig-like title character.

The story begins with the thief Barabbas avoiding crucifixion when Pontius Pilate swaps him out for Jesus (this part is actually in the Bible). Because the Crucifixion isn’t enough action for a two-hour 17-minute movie, Barabbas is soon sent off as a slave to the salt mines, where he is rescued by a miraculously timely earthquake. He then joins the Roman gladiators, complete with a javelin-firing squad, gets lost in the catacombs and emerges to the Burning of Rome. He has encounters with the Emperor Nero and the Apostle Peter before he converts to Christianity – just in time for the mass crucifixion. Watch for an uncredited Sharon Tate as a patrician in the arena.