OUT NOW
- The Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience.
- In The Chaperone, Downton Abbey’s writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern reunite for a pleasing character study of self-discovery in 1921 America – it’s deeper than it first appears to be.
- The Man Who Killed Don Quixote: after 25 years of misfortune and missteps, Terry Gilliam has succeeded in making a Don Quixote movie – and it’s good.
- In Teen Spirit, Elle Fanning plays an underdog teenager who has the chance to win a talent contest and become an instant pop star – yes, it’s a genre movie, but it’s a pretty fair one.
- The Brink is documentarian Alison Klayman’s up-close-and-personal portrait of Steve Bannon, the outsized personality who coached Donald Trump’s race-baiting right into the White House. As Bannon unintentionally reveals himself to be pathetically craving relevance, I found The Brink to be irresistible, and I watched with fascination.
- For the first hour-and-a-half of Sunset, I was convinced that I was watching the best movie of the year. Then the coherence unraveled, but I still recommend Sunset, even with its flaws, for its uncommon artistry.
- The puzzling thriller Transit, with all its originality, just isn’t director Christian Petzold’s best.
- Ramen Shop is a lightly-rooted dramedy about a Singaporean-Japanese family’s reconciliation. There’s also a metaphorical foodie angle.
- Skip The Hummingbird Project – two good scenes just isn’t enough.
ON VIDEO
My video choice, the psychological suspense movie Una, revolves around two twisted people who make for two unreliable narrators (Rooney Mara and Ben Mendelsohn). I originally saw Una at the 2017 Cinequest. You can stream it from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
On April 27, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1950 version of M, directed by Joseph Losey. This is a remake of Fritz Lang’s great 1931 M with Peter Lorre. The Losey version is not a masterpiece like the original, and I find it pretty odd. However, Los Angeles’ storied Bradbury Building, which has been in many a movie, was never been as gloriously revealed from basement to roof as in M. The Bradbury Building and the film as a whole benefit from the cinematography of Ernest Laszlo; Laszlo also shot D.O.A., The Well, The Steel Trap, Stalag 17, The Naked Jungle, Kiss Me Deadly and While the City Sleeps, before being Oscar-nominated eight times for more respectable, but lesser films. The cast is filled with film noir faves – Raymond Burr, Norman Lloyd, Howard Da Silva, Steve Brodie and Luther Adler. M is playing on TCM’s Noir Alley series, and I look forward to Eddie Muller’s intro and outro.
On May 1, TCM airs The Rack (1956): A returning US army captain (Paul Newman) is court-martialed for collaborating with the enemy while a POW. He was tortured, and The Rack explores what can be realistically expected of a prisoner under duress. It’s a pretty good movie, and Wendell Corey and Walter Pidgeon co-star.
