Truman Capote (left) and Tennessee Williams in TRUMAN AND TENNESSEE: AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION. Photo courtesy of Frameline.
Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation brings us a double-barrelled biodoc of two literary giants, one who remade American theater and the American novel in the 1950s and 1960s. Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams were both gay men from the Deep South, who attained fame and descended into addiction. They also knew each other.
Truman and Tennessee tells their stories from their own letters and from being interviewed on TV by the likes of David Frost and Dick Cavett.
The words of Capote are voiced by Jim Parsons, and those of Williams by Zachary Quinto. There is no third-party “narration”. It’s an effective and increasingly popular documentary technique, used in, for example, I Am Not Your Negro.
The film’s structure allows us to harvest insights about each writer’s artistic process. There are plenty of nuggets like Tennessee Williams’ frustrations with the cinematic versions of his plays, all dumbed down to comply with the movie censorship of the day.
Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation can be streamed from Frameline through Thursday night, June 24, and opens in theaters on June 25.
Photo caption: Daphne Ruben-Vega, Stephanie Beatriz, Melissa Barrera, Olga Merediz, Gregory Diaz IV, Dascha Polanco and Jimmy Smits in IN THE HEIGHTS. Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures.
This week, five movies in theaters – yes, in theaters. Plus a new documentary to stream.
In the Heights: This exuberant musical celebrates immigrant aspirations and Latino subcultures, and it touches on the raw issues of racism and economic displacement. Vibrant, spirited and earnest, it’s perfect for this moment – when we’re emerging from our COVID cocoons. Also streaming on HBO Max.
Summer of 85: Director Francois Ozon reflects on how we remember our youth in this romantic teen coming of age story.
Censor: The premise is interesting – a buttoned-up woman’s day job is watching slasher films to determine how much gore is permissible; one film triggers her investigation of a past crime. Unfortunately, it is less scary and suspenseful than it is unpleasant.
Also in theaters:
The Dry: a mystery as psychological as it is procedural. In theaters and also streaming on AppleTV, YouTube and Google Play
My Name Is Bulger: While incorruptible State Senate President Bill Bulger was dominating Massachusetts politics, his brother James “Whitey” Bulger was the state’s most fearsome crime lord. Yikes. Streaming on discovery+.
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
ABOUT ENDLESSNESS
About Endlessness: Damned if I know. Streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Augustine: obsession, passion and the birth of a science. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The Brainwashing of My Dad: some insight into our national madness. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
This Saturday and Sunday, on Turner Classic Movies: The Blue Gardeniapresents a 1953 view of date rape, with lecherous Raymond Burr getting Anne Baxter likkered up into a blackout drunk with Polynesian Pearl Divers. There’s a very nice twist on the whodunit: when she wakes up, she doesn’t remember killing him, but he sure is dead. There’s even a cameo performance by Nat King Cole.
The June 19/20 broadcasts are on TCM’s Noir Alley, with intro and outro by the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller.
Photo caption: Félix Lefebvre and Benjamin Voisin in SUMMER OF 85
In Summer of 85, writer-director François Ozon pours on the romance and nostalgia. This is a dreamy tale of first love leading to obsession and, finally, a tragedy. Ozon tricks us into thinking that this story is much, much darker than it turns out to be.
In a Northern French beach town. two teen boys meet cute via a capsized watercraft. Alexis (Félix Lefebvre) doesn’t know his way around the locale (or a lot of things), and is fascinated by David (Benjamin Voisin). whose mom (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) runs the local fishing supply store. Alexis is utterly captivated, and the two become inseparable…until one of them is distracted by a bright shiny thing.
Ozon (Swimming Pool, Potiche) adapted the screenplay from an Aidan Chambers novel. Summer of 85 is a teen coming of age story embedded in Ozon’s reflection on how we remember our youth. Remember that teenagers tend to look at everything on their lives as momentous, and they magnify the drama.
Summer of 85 has garnered an astonishing 12 César nominations (the French Oscar equivalent). Some viewers will not be satisfied by the ending of this well-crafted film.
Summer of 85 opens tomorrow, June 18, in Bay Area theaters, including the Landmark chain.
William Bulger in MY NAME IS BULGER. Photo courtesy of discovery+.
The documentary My Name Is Bulger traces the life of one fascinating man – made even more compelling by the life of a second man. Bill Bulger, one of nine kids raised in the projects, was a political wunderkind. First elected at age 26, his 35-year career in the Massachusetts State Legislature was topped by 18 years as President of the State Senate. No less than the squeaky clean former Governor Michael Dukakis credits Bill Bulger for cleaning up the previously corrupt institution.
Now, here’s the kicker – while Bill Bulger was dominating Massachusetts politics, his brother James “Whitey” Bulger was the state’s most fearsome crime lord.
Politics is public, and crime is private. Politics requires self-promotion, and crime requires secrecy. The brothers Bulger are parallel studies in power.
For decades, my day job has been in politics. It’s not unusual for politicians to deal with embarrassing, and even unsavory, relatives, but what do you do if your vocation is politics and your older sibling is a notorious criminal?
Very bright and armed with wit and charm, Bill Bulger was able to artfully, even miraculously, keep his career separate from Whitey’s. As Whitey became more infamous, Bill was able to delay being hurt by the association. It was widely known that Whitey had been in Alcatraz as early as 1959.
We meet Bill Bulger himself, now 85, and several of his adult children (who also remember their “Uncle Jim”). Dukakis appears, along with another former governor, William Weld. There’s also a former crime partner of Whitey’s. And we hear from the recently released Catherine Greig, Whitey’s longtime girlfriend and fellow fugitive, captured with Whitey in Santa Monica.
As sympathetic to Bill Bulger as is My Name Is Bulger, it doesn’t hide his opposition to busing in the 1970s, a political necessity that put him on the same side as South Boston’s ugliest racists. Nor does it shy away from the moment Whitey became a high-profile fugitive and Bill was cornered into taking the Fifth.
William Bulger in MY NAME IS BULGER. Photo courtesy of discovery+.
My Name Is Bulger is told from the point of view of Bill Bulger’s family. The Bulgers are understandably resentful of Bill’s political enemies in the press (and former Governor Mitt Romney). It’s more difficult to appreciate the family grudge against the government for harshness to Whitey, who, after all, was convicted of 19 murders.
For the story of how Whitey was able to use the FBI to eliminate his competition in the local Italian Mafia and the Irish mob, I also recommend another recent doc, Whitey: The United States vs. James J. Bulger.
My Name Is Bulger will stream on discovery+ beginning June 17.
Actor Ned Beatty, Oscar-nominated for Network, amassed 165 screen credits, and Beatty was impeccable in every one that I’ve seen. Pudgy people (including The Movie Gourmet) are often underestimated; character actor Ned Beatty was certainly one of his generation’s greatest screen actors.
Beatty has been so prolific and so consistently excellent, that it’s now hard to grok that his most unforgettable performance, in Deliverance, was also his first movie. The rape scene in Deliverance was so shocking and so sensational that many overlook how perfectly Beatty played each of his scenes, including the one with the Banjo Boy and the one where his assailant has been dispatched by Burt Reynold’s arrow.
Norman Lloyd in ST ELSEWHERE
Actor, director and producer Norman Lloyd has died at age 106. Lloyd was the villain in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1942 nailbiter Saboteur, and his career stretched through 2015 (when he was a centenarian). His most remembered role was as Dr. Daniel Auschlander on television’s St Elsewhere. Among his achievements – a 75 year marriage.
As an actor on stage, radio, television and the Big Screen, Lloyd worked with Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Jean Renoir, Anthony Mann, Elia Kazan and Martin Scorsese. He acted with stars from Dana Andrews and Burt Lancaster to Denzel Washington. Fortunately for film fans, Lloyd was a delightful, anecdote-rich raconteur.
My own favorite Norman Lloyd performance was as the highly idiosyncratic stoolie Sleeper in Scene of the Crime.
Photo caption: Anthony Ramos and Melissa Barrera in IN THE HEIGHTS. Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
The exuberant musical In the Heights is based on the Tony-winning Broadway show created by Lin-Manuel Miranda. In the Heights celebrates immigrant aspirations and Latino subcultures, and it touches on the raw issues of racism and economic displacement. Vibrant, spirited and earnest, it’s perfect for this moment – when we’re emerging from our COVID cocoons.
The titular Heights is Washington Heights, the primarily Dominican neighborhood at the northern tip of Manhattan. Miranda’s Washington Heights is a boisterous and colorful place, filled by hard-working , marginalized people, each with his or her own dream. Life goes on with a salsa beat, and you can practically smell the carne ripiada. (Miranda himself appears in a small role as a piragua vendor.)
29-ear-old Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) runs a bodega, and employs his younger, precocious cousin Sonny (Gregory Diaz IV). Usnavi is so infatuated with Vanessa (Melissa Barrera)that he is paralyzed from asking her out. Vanessa, a nail tech and wannabe designer, has big dreams and confidence to match. The neighborhood’s version of a magnate is Kevin (Jimmy Smits), who runs a car service, with his dispatcher Benny (Corey Hawkins). The neighborhood’s soul and anchor is everyone’s surrogate grandma, Abuela Claudia (Olga Merediz).
Corey Hawkins and Leslie Grace in IN THE HEIGHTS. Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
The most interesting story thread is that of Kevin’s brilliant daughter Nina (Leslie Grace), who is just back from her first year at Stanford, which she did not find to be a welcoming place. Having suffered some unsettling indignities, he doesn’t want to return, but her dad won’t hear of it. Her old beau Benny is glad to have her back in the Heights, so…What’s best for Nina, and will everyone reach that conclusion?
The local Latino businesses are being priced out, and everyone is conscious of displacement as a real and present threat. To its credit, In the Heights doesn’t oversimplify the displacement issue with cartoonish corporate villains.
The cast is thoroughly excellent (although Jimmy Smits is the weak link on singing and dancing). Gregory Diaz IV and Corey Hawkins are the standouts.
The best acting performance is by – of all people – Marc Anthony – who perfectly captures the dead eyes of Sonny’s troubled, hope-exhausted father. I had forgotten that, 1990-2004, Anthony acted in some pretty good movies: Big Night, Bringing Out the Dead, Man on Fire.
Olga Merediz in IN THE HEIGHTS. Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures.
Director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) is a Silicon Valley native, son of the founder of Chef Chu’s, the beloved institution in Los Altos. Chu was a film school wunderkind and was signed to direct films right out of USC.
Chu is a master of filming dance. He has become one of the greatest directors of dance in cinema – and deserves to be ranked with the likes of Stanley Donen, Mark Sandrich, Busby Berkeley and Bob Fosse. I’m not gushing here – there;s no doubt that the guy has the chops.
The dancing in In the Heights is spectacular. The critic Jason Gorber tweeted that he was watching In the Heights a second time and focusing on the moves of the background dancers. If you do that, you will be able to confirm that the dancer to the right of Sonny in the swimming pool is indeed double-jointed.
Chu fills the frame with detailed content – and often with what seems like hundreds of dancers. See In the Heights on the biggest screen you can; The Wife and I watched it on a 65-inch television, which worked well, but a theater would have been even better.
In the Heights is in theaters and streaming on HBO Max through July 11.
This week, two new foreign films – one of them is brilliant. Plus an overlooked masterwork from 1964.
ON VIDEO
About Endlessness: The master of the droll, deadpan and absurd probes the meaning of life. One of the best movies of the year, but NOT FOR EVERYONE. Streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Bad Tales: Middle schoolers must navigate adolescence in this Italian coming of age film while their fathers radiate toxic masculinity. Droll and dark – perhaps too dark. Virtual Cinema, including Laemmle.
IN THEATERS
Eric Bana in Robert Connolly’s film THE DRY, which played at SFFILM. Photo courtesy of SFFILM.
The Dry: a mystery as psychological as it is procedural. In theaters and also streaming on AppleTV, YouTube and Google Play
Augustine: obsession, passion and the birth of a science. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The Brainwashing of My Dad: some insight into our national madness. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
On June 13, Turner Classic Movies will present an overlooked masterwork. Set in England just before the D-Day invasion, The Americanization of Emily (1964) is a biting satire and one of the great anti-war movies. James Garner plays an admiral’s staff officer charged with locating luxury goods and willing Englishwomen for the brass. Julie Andrews plays an English driver who has lost her husband and other male family members in the War. She resists emotional entanglements with other servicemen whose lives may be put at risk, but falls for Garner’s “practicing coward”, a man who is under no illusions about the glory of war and is determined to stay as far from combat as possible.
Unfortunately, Garner’s boss (Melvyn Douglas) has fits of derangement and becomes obsessed with the hope that the first American killed on the beach at D-Day be from the Navy. Accordingly, he orders Garner to lead a suicide mission to land ahead of the D-Day landing, ostensibly to film it. Fellow officer James Coburn must guarantee Garner’s martyrdom.
It’s a brilliant screenplay from Paddy Chayefsky, who won screenwriting Oscars for Marty, The Hospital and Network. Today, Americanization holds up as least as well as its contemporary Dr. Strangelove and much better than Failsafe. Reportedly, both Andrews and Garner have tagged this as their favorite film.
One of the “Three Nameless Broads” bedded by the Coburn character is played by Judy Carne, later of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.
Jule Andrews and James Garner in THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY
Photo caption: Elio Germano in BAD TALES. Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing.
In the Italian coming of age film Bad Tales, middle schoolers must navigate adolescence. It’s droll, dark and captivating – and, finally, perhaps too dark.
The kids head into summer vacation while their suburban families languish someplace between ennui and malaise. The fathers radiate toxic masculinity.
Co-directors and co-directors Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo won for best screenplay at the Berlinale; it’s just their second feature film.
The kids in Bad Tales are much more sympathetic than are real life middle schoolers in my experience. They’re at that awkward and confusing age where there’s nothing to be confident about. It’s the age where the boys call each other spazz and the last day of school transitions into summer vacation with a glorious water balloon fight.
The kid actors are exceptionally good. The D’Innocenzos must be both extremely adept at casting and lucky; the boys are all perfect for the ages of the characters – and just one unpredictable growth spurt or a voice-deepening from aging out of their parts.
As we observe human foibles, Bad Tales‘ overall tone is caustically amusing. But things get deeply tragic at the end, including the most cowardly behavior I’ve ever seen from a movie father – and then there’s the most insidious act by a movie teacher.
Bad Tales is streaming on on Virtual Cinema; I watched it at Laemmle.
In About Endlessness, Roy Andersson, that genius of deadpan existential cinema, probes the meaning of human life.
Andersson movies are a series of vignettes, with ponderous Scandinavians arranged or paraded in front of a stationary camera, in a way that critic Justin Change has likened to diorama. There is never a closeup. It is all superbly photographed by cinematographer Gergely Pálos.
Now, Andersson is not for everyone. This is what I wrote in 2014 about his most recent film:
Some viewers are going to hate, hate, hate the droll Swedish existentialist comedyA Pigeon Sat on a Branch Contemplating Existence, but it’s kind of a masterpiece. For most of its 101 minutes, dull Swedes sit and stand talking about dull things. It’s no secret that the Scandinavians (who The Wife refers to as “Your people”) are not the most lively bunch. Filmmaker Roy Andersson uses this trope to probe the meaning of life itself.
About Endlessness, with all its randomness, is more direct than A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Contemplating Existence. This time, in a psychiatry office and in a student’s bedroom, Andersson is explicit. When a doubting priest asks the point of life without religious belief, his shrink answers, “Damned if I know. Maybe being content with being alive.”
Most vignettes are absurdist and darkly funny, often about someone deeply engaged in something that Andersson sees as trivial. But, About Endlessness, contains some life and death moments, mixed among the clearly meaningless.
This time, some of Andersson’s vignettes are bracing. In one, a man has committed a horrific and irreversible act that he has come to realize, too late, was profoundly misguided.
Two other vignettes are among the sweetest you’ll see this year – one with young women bursting into into an impromptu dance, the other with a father tying his small daughter’s shoes.
About Endlessness is an art film in the best sense, an experience that demonstrates what what cinema can do in the hands of a talented artist with something to say. I recognize that it’s not for everyone – but it’s only 76 minutes, so give it a chance. I’m putting it on my list of Best Movies of 2021.
In just over a month, the 78-year-old Andersson will be out with another film, Being a Human Person.
About Endlessness is streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Photo caption: Paula Beer in UNDINE. Courtesy of MVFF.
This week, a mythical tragic romance, a preacher becomes an institution and the most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE.
IN THEATERS
Undine: Christian Petzold takes a mythical story and sets it in contemporary Germany. resulting in a romance that is operatic and supernatural and finally very tragic. But too slowly paced for me.
ON VIDEO
Billy Graham: This insightful biodoc explores how Billy Graham took evangelism out of backwoods revival tents and brought it to big city stadiums and television, becoming an institution in the process. And his fatal flaw – the need to pray with Presidents. Streaming at American Experience.
Drunk Bus: In this light and appealing coming of age comedy, a lovelorn slacker wallows in malaise until he meets a 300-pound Samoan security guy with facial tattoos. Laemmle.
My Memorial Day pick was We Stand Alone Together: The Men of Easy Company, the oral histories of regular men plunged into the most traumatic experiences of WW II and what they endured. Streaming on HBO Max.
Ed Harris and Annette Bening in THE FACE OF LOVE
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
The Dry: a mystery as psychological as it is procedural. In theaters and also streaming on AppleTV, YouTube and Google Play
Brewmance: barley, hops, yeast and underdogs. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play .
Hamlet/Horatio: More tragedy, less angst. Streaming widely.
Louder Than Bombs: An intricately constructed family drama. Amazon (included with Prime), Vudu and YouTube.
That Guy Dick Miller: Putting the “character” in “character actor:” Amazon (included with Prime).
Sword of Trust: comedy and so, so much more. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Run Lola Run: you’ll never see a more kinetic movie. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The Times of Harvey Milk: my favorite political documentary. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, HBO Max and Criterion Channel..
