This week: The latest from Aaron Sorkin and Spike Lee. But, first, a remembrance.
REMEMBRANCE
Actress Rhonda Fleming has died at age 97. She was known as the “Queen of Technicolor” when movie studios exploited her blazing red hair, blue eyes, ivory complexion and uncommon beauty in a series of Western, sword-and-sandal and adventure films; in this period, she was a candidate for the world’s most beautiful woman, along with her age peers Gene Tierney, Lana Turner and Marilyn Monroe. But Fleming’s very best acting work was in black-and-white, in Spellbound, Out of the Past, Cry Danger and While the City Sleeps. My favorite Fleming performance is in Cry Danger, where she plays the girlfriend of the guy who had framed the hero (Dick Powell) – an irresistible woman of uncertain loyalty.
ON VIDEO
The Trial of the Chicago Seven (link to full review will go live this weekend) is Aaron Sorkin’s dramatization of the notorious 1969 political trial of Vietnam War protestors. Sasha Baron Cohen, Mark Rylance and Frank Langella are all really good. Streaming on Netflix.
David Byrne’s American Utopia, directed by Spike Lee, is the concert film for Byrne’s Broadway Show, with the Broadway glitz pared down to explore humanity itself. It’s playing on HBO.
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- The Artist’s Wife: she finds her gifts
- Dick Johnson Is Dead: funny, heartfelt and frequently bizarre
- Sibyl: trashy, but in that sly and expert French way.
- #Alive: A Korean Home Alone with zombies.
- Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story: badass female movie-making
- The August Virgin: searching for reinvention. Best Movies of 2020 – So Far.
- An Easy Girl: summer school in Cannes
- She Dies Tomorrow: you have not seen this before
- Prime Suspect: binging one of TV’s greatest episodic characters.
- The Speed Cubers: odd, and then profound
- Yes, God, Yes: learning that hypocrisy is a choice.
- Dateline-Saigon: the truth will out
- The 11th Green: a thinking person’s conspiracy
- Driveways: I can’t think of a more authentic movie about intergenerational relationships than this charming, character-driven indie. Best Movies of 2020 – So Far.
- The Lovebirds: A rom com with a playful plot and a truthful relationship.
ON TV
Turner Classic Movies plays a lot of horror in October. But the best is coming on October 25, Diabolique from director Henri-Georges Clouzot (often tagged as the French Hitchcock). The headmaster of a provincial boarding school is so cruel, even sadistic, that everyone wants him dead, especially his wife and his mistress. When he goes missing, the police drain the murky pool where the killers dumped the body…and the killers get a big surprise. Now the suspense really starts…
I recently saw director Rene Clement pegged as the French Hitchcock, although Claude Chabrol and Clouzot are the favorites for that title. It occurred to me that Jen-Pierre Melville loved American film noir and was such an Americanphile that he wore a Stetson and drove a Cadillac. Would he be the French Robert Siodmak, Frtiz Lang, Richard Fleischer, Jules Dassin or Jacques Toruneur? Wait a minute – isn’t Jacques Tourneur already French?
On October 27, TCM broadcasts a searing real life time capsule The Connection, a 1962 cinema vérité of NYC heroine addicts waiting for, and getting, their fixes. It’s haunting.
