Photo caption: Mike Veeck in THE SAINT OF SECOND CHANCES. Courtesy of Netflix.
The endearing documentary The Saint of Second Chances is about a guy who is both a character himself and the son of another character. Mike Veeck, the film’s subject, is the son of the legendary Bill Veeck, who was kind of the P.T. Barnum of baseball, known for the many gimmicks he used to draw paying fans into the ballpark. Unlike his father, Mike Veeck is not in the Hall of Fame, but he has earned his place in his self-described “family of baseball hustlers”.
This a movie about baseball people that really isn’t about baseball itself. It’s about Mike’s irrepressibility, ingenuity and audacity in conjuring up publicity stunt after publicity stunt. The story, cleverly divided into innings, traces Mike’s life through his very high highs and his very low lows. You may already know about his most famous low point – the Chicago White Sox’s “Disco Sucks Night” in 1979 that turned into a riot. That disaster drove Mike out of baseball, until, years later, he started promoting obscure minor league baseball teams with wacky novelties like the St. Paul Saints and their baseball-delivering pig, their nun masseuse and their blind radio broadcaster.
Like anyone’s life, Mike’s has had his share of heartaches, and The Saint of Second Chances‘ wistful moments are genuine and touching.
Photo caption: Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal in Raoul Peck’s FOE, screening at the Nashville Film Festival. Courtesy of Amazon Studios.
The Nashville Film Festival opens on Thursday, September 28 and runs through October 4 with a diverse menu of cinema. The Nashville Film Festival is the oldest running film festival in the South (this is the 54th!) and is an Academy Award qualifying festival. The program includes a mix of indies, docs and international cinema, including world and North American premieres.
The closing night feature is Foe, a drama from Oscar nominated director Raoul Peck (I Am Not a Negro) that stars fellow Oscar nominees Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal.
See it here first: several films in the program have already secured distribution and will be available to theater and/or watch-at-home audiences. Before just anybody can watch them, you can get your personal preview at the Nashville Film Festival: Foe, La Chimera, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Fingernails, Flora and Son, Eileen, The Taste of Things, Silver Dollar Road and The Disappearance of Shere Hite.
I love covering Nashfilm in person, but I’ll be covering remotely this year; that just leaves more pig-forward delicacies from Peg Leg Porker and Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint for you.
Check out the program and buy tickets at the festival’s Film Guide. Watch this space for Nashville Film Festival recommendations. I’ll be back in a couple days with my recommendations.
Photo caption: Florence Pugh in OPPENHEIMER. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – an all new most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE. Start of the football season with the Oscar-winning Undefeated.
As /i mentioned last week, we’re in that annual late- August/early September doldrums when we just don’t have good choices in brick-and-mortar cinemas. The one wonderful new film, Fremont, is still in a few arthouses and the masterpieces Oppenheimer and Barbie are still on theater screens. But Scrapper, Between Two Worlds, Afire and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny have all slipped from theaters, and Past Lives is barely lingering on a screen or two. However, note that Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Barbie and Fremont: are all on my Best Movies of 2023 – So Far; you might check out that list because several other of those films are already streaming.
And next week I’ll have a preview of this year’s Nashville Film Festival.
CURRENT MOVIES
Fremont: self-discovery and a fortune cookie. In theaters.
Oppenheimer: creator of a monster controlled by others. In theaters.
Barbie: a marriage of the intelligent and the silly. In theaters.
Our Kind of Traitor: Skarsgård steals this robust thriller. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
’71: keeping the thrill in thriller. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
ON TV
Jeanne Moreau in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS
On September 19, Turner Classic Movies will present one of my Overlooked Noir, Elevator to the Gallows– such a groundbreaking film that you can argue that it’s the first of the neo-noir. It’s the debut of director Louis Malle, shot when he was only 24 years old. It’s more difficult now to appreciate the originality of Elevator the Gallows; but in 1958, no one had seen a film with a Miles Davis soundtrack or one where the two romantic leads were never on-screen together.
Photo caption: Orson Welles in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – don’t miss Turner Classic Movies’ presentation of Chimes at Midnighttonight, and I’m also recommending another TCM selection that airs later this week (see below).
We’re in that annual late- August/early September doldrums when we just don’t have good choices in brick-and-mortar cinemas. The one wonderful new film, Fremont, is still in a few arthouses and the masterpieces Oppenheimer and Barbie are still on theater screens. But Scrapper, Between Two Worlds, Afire and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny have all slipped from theaters, and Past Lives is barely lingering on a screen or two. However, note that Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Barbie and Fremont: are all on my Best Movies of 2023 – So Far; you might check out that list because several other of those films are already streaming.
CURRENT MOVIES
Fremont: self-discovery and a fortune cookie. In theaters.
Oppenheimer: creator of a monster controlled by others. In theaters.
Barbie: a marriage of the intelligent and the silly. In theaters.
NUTS!: the rise and fall of a testicular empire. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
ON TV
Lee Marvin in POINT BLANK
On September 12, Turner Classic Movies presents the seminal 1960s neo-noir Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin. Marvin stars as Walker, a heist man who is shot and left for dead by his partner Reese (John Vernon, Animal House’s Dean Wormer), who absconded with Walker’s share of the loot and Walker’s wife. When Walker recovers, he is hellbent on revenge, aided by his sister-in-law Chris (Angie Dickinson).
It turns out that Walker needs to trace the money through a cavalcade of Mr. Bigs (Lloyd Bochner, Keenan Wynn, Carroll O’Connor). There’s a great set piece where Walker invades a highrise penthouse, despite the heavily guarded elevator being the only entrance. Point Blank ends in a thrilling nighttime finale at Fort Point.
Walker is a very uncomplicated character, all he wants is to kill Reese and reclaim his $93,000. Anyone in Walker’s situation would be pissed off, but Lee Marvin plays Walker in a constant state of cold rage. Lee Marvin’s unique charisma animates this relentless killing machine.
Marvin, just coming off The Dirty Dozen and having won an Oscar for Cat Ballou, was at the peak of his stardom. Marvin’s other contribution to the film was handpicking the then unheralded John Boorman to direct; (this was five years before Boorman’s masterpiece Deliverance). Boorman intentionally delivered a morally bleak story in the most deserted of locations: empty parking lots, the Los Angeles River channel. and San Francisco’s two icons of abandonment – Alcatraz and Fort Point.
Lee Marvin in POINT BLANK
If you’re wondering why Angie Dickinson was a movie star, Point Blank is for you. Angie was ballsy, sexy and always unashamedly very direct, and she rocked midcentury fashion. (She plays one unforgettable scene in a dress with bold horizontal stripes in the colors of Denny’s restaurants.)
Watch for James B. Sikking as the professional sniper; Sikking became well-known as the supercilious SWAT team commander Lt. Howard Hunter in Hill Street Blues. Future horror icon Sid Haig pops up as the security guard in the penthouse lobby.
Orson Welles and Keith Baxter in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
The great auteur Orson Welles loved Shakespeare and made three Shakespearean movies, of which Chimes at Midnight is the masterpiece. Welles’ genius was in braiding together parts of Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, some Richard III, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor into a cohesive story of what he called “betrayal of friendship”. You can watch Chimes at Midnight tomorrow, September 8 on Turner Classic Movies.
Welles himself vividly plays the recurring Shakespearean character of Sir John Falstaff. Falstaff is a rogue knight, a shameless braggart and robustly debauched.
The young Prince Hal (Keith Baxter), the future King Henry V, is sowing his wild oats, and he is in the market for a dissolute companion. To the disgust of Hal’s severe father, King Henry IV (John Gielgud), Hal and Falstaff are carousing buddies, their fast friendship forged in taverns with plentiful spirits and women of easy virtue. (Falstaff’s wench is played by Jeanne Moreau.)
Orson Welles and Jeanne Moreau in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
There’s plenty of palace intrigue interwoven with the comic pranks and partying by the rascal Hal and his favorite scoundrel Falstaff. Falstaff even does mocking impressions of Henry IV.
CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
Chimes at Midnight features an amazing 12-minute battle scene beginning at the 55 minute mark. Somehow Welles was able to afford 150 extras and was able to use them and his camera to create a battle scene as effective as the ones in Braveheart and Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. Welles doesn’t pull any punches in depicting the brutality of medieval warfare. The initial horse charge is followed by the chaos of hacking and clubbing. The combatants become a roiling cauldron of lethal mayhem. In all the fog of war, it’s still easy to follow Falstaff in his size XXXL armor. Welles’ Falstaff believes that honor is merely ornamental and not worth sacrificing one’s life for. No hero, Falstaff.
CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
Finally, Henry IV dies and Prince Hal will ascend the throne. Falstaff thinks he’s won the lottery, but a king can’t afford sloppy bad habits. Hal rejects vanity, of which Falstaff is the signal emblem. Hal rebuffs Falstaff with Presume not that I am the thing I was and banishes him. Falstaff is stunned – but then proud of his mentee. Defeated in the end, Welles’ eyes show us his pride and simultaneous disappointment. This high point of Chimes at Midnight is also probably Welles’ best moment as an actor.
The broad, raucous comedy in Chimes at Midnight shows us what it must have like to see Shakespeare’s words performed in the rowdy Globe Theater. Shot in Spain with authentic medieval settings, Chimes at Midnight looks very good for a low, low-budget film. It is narrated by Ralph Richardson.
Chimes at Midnight was extremely hard to find until very recently, except for a bootleg on YouTube and a 2015 DVD released in the UK. Fortunately, Chimes at Midnight has become available to stream on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube. And, of course, it plays occasionally on Turner Classic Movies.
The Stopover: PTSD takes more than an umbrella drink…Amazon, AppleTV.
ON TV
HARLAN COUNTY, USA
Monday evening, September 3, Turner Classic Movies honors labor on Labor Day with the 1979 Oscar-winner Harlan County U.S.A. Filmmaker Barbara Kopple embedded herself among the striking coal miners and got amazing footage – including of herself threatened and shot at.
Coal miner’s wife Florence Reece had written the song Which Side Are You On? in 1931 and, as an old woman with ma husband dyin’ of black lung, sings it at a rally in the film. Pete Seegar had popularized the tune by then, and you still don’t want to be a lousy scab. It’s still an apt anthem for the exploitation of Gig Economy workers today.
You can also stream Harlan County U.S.A. on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel. And it’s one of my 5 Great Hillbilly Movies.
Taylor Joree Scorse in UNDER THE INFLUENCER. Courtesy of Cinequest.
Cinequest winds up today. Here are the films in the program that I hadn’t posted about yet:
Daddy: This dark sci fi comedy is set in a future where only a limited number of men are approved by the government to father children. Four guys apply for the privilege and are isolated in a mountain lodge to wait for the expert evaluator, who doesn’t immediately show up. As they try to figure out what’s going on and what they should do, they succeed only in demonstrating how unfit they would be as parents – until things get all Lord of the Rings. It’s a very funny skewering of both male overconfidence and male angst. Second feature and first feature, respectively, for for co-directors/co-writers Neal Kelley and Jono Sherman, who play two of the guys. World premiere.
Everybody Wants to Be Loved: This German dramedy is a triumph of the harried mom genre. As a psychotherapist, Ina (Anne Ratte-Polle) spends her workdays listening to whining and naval-gazing. Then she goes home to her self-absorbed boyfriend and her teen daughter – and the job of teenagers is to be self-absorbed.-Nobody is most narcissistic and entitled than Ina’s mom. It’s the mom’s birthday, and she is rampaging with demands. The daughter is threatening to move in with Ina’s ex, and the boyfriend wants to move the family to Finland for his career. As Ina is swirling around this vortex of egotism, she gets some sobering news about her own health. As everyone converges on the birthday party, what could possibly go wrong? First feature for director and co-writer Katharina Woll. Second screening in the US.
Catching the Pirate King: The enthralling Belgian documentary is two movies in one. The first is a play by play of the hijacking of a Belgian ship by Somali pirates and the negotiating of their ransom. The second is about the Belgian law enforcement’s dogged campaign to bring the pirates to justice – in Belgium. We meet the ship’s captain and crew, the shipping company’s negotiator, the cops and prosecutors and even some pirates. Absorbing, exceptionally well-sourced and very well-crafted. US premiere.
Under the Influencer: This the second film by Alex Haughey, whose debut Prodigy, a psychological thriller with paranormal elements, was one of the top films at the 2017 Cinequest. World premiere.
Brothers Broken: The documentary Brothers Broken contains a singularly refreshing aspect on a familiar phenomenon – the breakup of a 60s rock band. But here, the band breaks up, not because of drugs or ego, but because of a cult. And the estranged band members are brothers. The band doesn’t last long, but the brothers’ arc covers a 58-year arc. Fitting for Cinequest, the brothers and the band are from San Jose! First feature for co-directors Geoff Levin and Lily Richards. US premiere.
Under Water: This dark Dutch dramedy (or extremely dark Dutch comedy) starts out as the insistent effort of a pushy woman and her estranged husband to get her aged mother into residential care. The mother, a paranoid survivalist, resists every entreaty by the woman and her estranged husband to leave her isolated, condemned house – and even imprisons them in her basement. The husband’s role evolves, and we eventually see that this is a portrait of generational mental illness.
A Cautionary Tale: In this documentary, a Romanian man returns from 19 years in Turkey to find that he’s been officially declared dead; maddeningly, he needs a new ID to prove tht he’s alive, but the government won’t issue a new ID because he’s officially dead. The man is older and seems bewildered, and the movie seems like it’s going to be a real life The Trial by Kafka. But when the filmmaker tracks down his family, the story gets more complicated, finally even explosive. US premiere.
Sloane: A Jazz Singer: This is another laudatory doc on an overlooked musical artist. Now 82, she’s a lot of fun. I wasn’t wowed by an advance version that I screened, but I understand that revisions have since made this film very strong.
The Secret Song: This doc is an uncomplicated movie about a visionary and saintly public school music teacher. He has touched hundreds of lives; this movie won’t.
O Pioneer: This aspirational documentary samples the lives and work of three very nice Appalachian West Virginians – a creative, a traditional artisan and a spiritual leader, and tries to unify them as figurative pioneers. Grass grows and paint dries. World premiere.
This is the thirteenth year that I’ve covered Cinequest. My Cinequest coverage, including past festivals, is on my CINEQUEST 2023 page.
Photo caption: Anaita Wali Zada in FREMONT. Cortesy of Music Box Films.
Fremont is the absorbing and frequently droll portrait of a woman, having landed in a new place, who has paused her life and needs to find her path to self-discovery. Donya (Anaita Wali Zada), having worked as a translator for the US military in her native Afghanistan, has fled Kabul for her life. She is living in a stucco-box apartment in the Bay Area suburb of Fremont and is working for a San Francisco manufacturer of, absurdly, Chinese fortune cookies.
Her life is lonely and boring, and her social life is anything but what one would expect for an attractive Bay Area. single woman in her mid-20s. What’s holding her back? It’s not fear, shyness, the bounds of traditional Afghan culture or PTSD from the war. She could have landed an entry level job in Fremont and saved herself the 45-minute commute, but she has intentionally left the insular enclave of Afghan refugees for a job that exposes her to folks with other backgrounds. That clues us in to Donya’s curiosity and fearlessness.
Donya is quiet without being shy, engaging in conversations with her benevolently goofy boss, her know-it-all co-worker and her oddball psychiatrist, and indulging their need to explain things to her. It’s clear to us that she knows more than all of them except for the old owner of an Afghan café, whose life experience tells him what she needs to do with her life.
Donya is the only member of her family in the US precisely because she is the only one whose life has been expressly threatened by the Taliban. That presents her with a form of survivor’s guilt that she needs to confront.
Donya needs to pivot, and the spark is a fortune in a fortune cookie – a fortune written by Donya herself.
Fremont and the character of Donya are the creations of Iranian-born and Belgium-based director and co-writer Babak Jalali, a master of deadpan, absurdist humor. (I love his even more droll Radio Dreams, also set in a Bay Area immigrant community.) After all, what is more disposable or trivial than the fortune in a fortune cookie? I especially enjoyed the scenes where Donya listens implacably as her shrink earnestly (and, he thinks, therapeutically) reads her passages from Jack London’s White Fang.
Donya borrows her friend’s beater of a car for a quest to, of all places, Bakersfield. At a remote gas station along the way, she meets Daniel (Jeremy Allen White of The Bear), a kind and lonely mechanic, and very, tentatively and more than a bit awkwardly, a connection forms.
Jalali captures and distills the profound attraction between mutual soul mates. Donya’s and Daniel’s encounters are so spare, you wonder how much of our courtship rituals are superfluous.
In her screen debut, Anaita Wali Zada effectively inhabits the fresh and original character of Donya, whose reserve masks her strong will. Essentially all of the cast (including his leading lady) are first-time actors, except for Jeremy Allen White and Gregg Turkington, who plays the shrink. You gotta wonder what Jalali could do with trained actors.
Fremont has opened in LA at the Laemmle Nuart, Town Center and Glendale, and in the Bay Area at the Roxie, the Rafael, and, happily, in the Cine Lounge in Fremont. The more I think about Fremont, the more I like it.
Photo caption: Cillian Murphy in OPPENHEIMER. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of the delightful Scrapper and Sam Pollard’s documentary on Negro League baseball, The League. As Cinequest moves across Silicon Valley from San Jose to Mountain View, here’s my Cinequest 2023 coverage, including my Best of Cinequest.
This week, I saw Oppenheimer for the second time with The Wife. If you haven’t yet seen it, I urge you to do it now while it’s still on the big screen.
CURRENT MOVIES
Scrapper: a funny film about connection and second chances. In theaters.
The Imposter: a jaw dropper. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
NUTS!: the rise and fall of a testicular empire. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
The Stopover: PTSD takes more than an umbrella drink…Amazon, AppleTV.
ON TV
Dennis O’Keefe and Ann Sheridan in WOMAN ON THE RUN
On August 29, Turner Classic Movies presents 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.
Photo caption: THE LEAGUE, courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
The League is a comprehensive documentary on the history of Negro League baseball. As one would expect from a Sam Pollard doc, it’s well-sourced and reveals some less well known history:
Rube Foster, remembered as a pitching great and inventor of the screwball, was the impresario and strategic mind behind the first Negro League.
Effa Manley, the canny co-owner of the Newark Eagles, was a pioneering female AND African-American businesswoman with the spunk, if not the resources, to stand up to MLB.
The Negro Leagues’ surprisingly brief lifespan and even briefer glory days.
Why the immensely talented, even Ruthian, Josh Gibson wasn’t put forward to integrate MLB (like Jackie Robinson was).
How MLB execs like Branch Rickey and Bill Veeck worked with the Negro Leagues (or not).
The painful trade-offs from the long-awaited integration of MLB.
The League is the work of filmmaker Sam Pollard, who directed the more compelling MLK/FBI. The League will appeal to those with interests in baseball and/or civil rights. The League is streaming on Amazon.
