There are still two Must See movies this summer – the historical thriller Dunkirk and the delightful romantic comedy The Big Sick.
The best of the rest:
- Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly time to the beat of music.
- The Midwife, with Catherine Deneuve as a woman out of control and uncontrollable, indelibly disrupting another life.
- The amusingly naughty but forgettable comedy The Little Hours is based on the dirty fun in your Western Civ class, Boccaccio’s The Decameron.
- I enjoyed Charlize Theron’s rock ’em, sock ’em, espionage thriller Atomic Blonde, and I’ll be writing about it when I have time.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is the visually beautiful The Lost City of Z, which revives the adventure epic with cultural sensitivity. The Lost City of Z is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
It’s time for Screwball Comedy: On August 13, Turner Classic Movies presents two of the very best examples, The Lady Eve and Ball of Fire. Both star Barbara Stanwyck, matched with Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve and with Gary Cooper in Ball of Fire. Ball of Fire is directed by the acknowledged master of screwball comedy, Howard Hawks, with a screenplay touched up by Billy Wilder. The Lady Eve is written and directed by Preston Sturges at the top of his game. In The Lady Eve, Stanwyck regards Fonda with, “I need him like the ax needs the turkey”, and in Ball of Fire, she is described with “That is the kind of woman that makes whole civilizations topple!”
Henry Fonda is no match for Barbara Stanwyck in THE LADY EVE