This week – a contemporary Australian bodice-ripper on video and a whole mess of great television recommendations. The best two movies in theaters are still Summer of Soul and Roadrunner.
IN THEATERS
- Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain: Bad ass romantic. Best Movies of 2021 – So Far.
- Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised): concert with context. In theaters and streaming on Hulu. Best Movies of 2021 – So Far.
- Mama Weed: it’s always fun when Huppert gets outrageous.
- The Boys in Red Hats: Rorschach America.
- Zola: the road trip is not what it seems, (and neither is this movie).
- Summertime: no longer invisible and unheard, giving voice through verse.
- In the Heights: Vibrant, earnest and perfect for this moment. Also streaming on HBO Max.
- The Sparks Brothers: Must be seen to be believed.
ON VIDEO
Dirt Music: A sweeping romance amid Australian coastal vistas, but with an ending that wants to have it both ways. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- Riders of Justice: Thriller, comedy and much, much more. It’s the year’s best movie so far. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube. #1 on my Best Movies of 2021 – So Far.
- No Sudden Move: Steven Soderbergh’s neo-noir thriller has even more double-crosses than movie stars – and it has plenty of movie stars. HBO Max.
- Neutral Ground: the supremacist legacy of old statues. PBS.
- The Courier: amateur among spies. Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.
- Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation: Two gay Southern geniuses, revealing themselves. Laemmle.
- The Dry: a mystery as psychological as it is procedural. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- My Name Is Bulger: Two brothers, two paths to power. discovery+.
- About Endlessness: Damned if I know. Streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
- Brewmance: barley, hops, yeast and underdogs. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
- 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.
ON TV
Well, here we are in the August doldrums and Turner Classic Movies is turning up the heat with some great choices.
First, on August 1, there’s Secrets & Lies, which I considered the very best movie of 1996. Written and directed by Mike Leigh (Life Is Sweet, Naked, Topsy-Turvy, All or Nothing, Vera Drake, Another Year), this is Leigh’s masterpiece and his most acessible film.
Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is an accomplished young British woman who has been raised by middle-class adoptive parents. She decides to track down her birth mother, who turns out to be the working class hot mess Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn). This triggers Cynthia’s emotional damage from giving up baby Hortense, her panic at explaining this to her family – with the complicating factor that Hortense is Black. All kinds of family complications ensue. Cynthia’s underachieving daughter (Claire Rushbrook) is not at all comfortable with the emergence of an over-achieving sibling. Cynthia’s sister-in-law (Penelope Logan) faces this through her own child-related anguish. And Cynthia’s brother (Timothy Spall), who has clawed his way to respectability, has to juggle these developments.
There’s a searing emotional authenticity to Secrets & Lies, but there’s plenty of humor, too. (The montage of the brother’s portrait photography clients is hilarious.)
This is a career-topping performance by Brenda Blethens (TV’s Vera) and she was Oscar-nominated.
Blethyn’s fine performance is the showiest, but this is the movie where I recognized the greatness of Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner and Wormtail in the Harry Potter franchise),
The rest of the cast is brilliant, too, including Logan (Lovejoy and Mrs. Hughes in Downton Abbey) and Leslie Manville. Claire Rushbrook is especially good as the gobsmacked daughter.
Secrets & Lies, Leigh, Blethyn and Jean-Baptiste were all nominated for Academy Awards (and this was a little British indie back when they only nominated 5 movies for Best Picture). Secrets & Lies and Fargo lost the Best Picture Oscar to The English Patient (only because The English Patient was far, far more pretentious). This is a film of uncommon humanity and one of my Greatest Movies of All Time.
On August 2, TCM airs Satan Met a Lady, an earlier version of the 1941 The Maltese Falcon. I’ve written about all three versions in Three faces of the Maltese Falcon. This 1936 version is more of a screwball comedy than a whodunit, and the ensemble acting is magnificent..
Finally, on August 4 , TCM plays Pushover, one of my Overlooked Noir. Tracking a notorious criminal, the cop (Fred MacMurray) follows – and then dates – the gangster’s girlfriend (“Introducing Kim Novak”). It starts out as part of the job, but then he falls for her himself. He decides that, if he can double cross BOTH the cops and the criminal, he can wind up with the loot AND Kim Novak. (This is a film noir, so we know he’s not destined for a tropical beach with an umbrella drink.)
