This week (Halloween week), the movies get more unsettling and scary.
IN THEATERS
Lamb: This dark, cautionary fable of karma is a brilliant and unsettling debut by writer-director Valdimar Jóhannsson.
Also in theaters:
- No Time to Die: I went to a James Bond movie, and a romance broke out.
- The Many Saints of Newark: Tony Soprano’s origin story. Also streaming on HBO Max.
- The Eyes of Tammy Faye: some dignity for the clown.
- The Card Counter: a loner, his code and his past.
- Titane: Demented, icky and excessive
ON VIDEO
Sibyl: The filmmaking is so exquisite that it masks the delicious trashiness of the story. This sex-filled melodrama is now widely available to stream (Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube).
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- Wildland: giving family ties a bad name. Laemmle.
- The Unknown Saint: a shrine to really bad luck. Netflix.
- CODA: a thought-provoking audience-pleaser. AppleTV.
- Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed: Improbability squared. Netflix.
- Searching for Mr. Rugoff: the best movie taste of any barbarian. Laemmle.
- Curiosa: erotic, but do we care? Laemmle.
- The Green Knight: More of a test than a quest. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, Redbox.
- 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
- Dirt Music: a gorgeous bodice-ripper with a WTF ending. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
- Kansas City Bomber: self-discovery at the roller derby track. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.
- 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.
- The Neutral Ground: the supremacist legacy of old statues. PBS.
- Mama Weed: it’s always fun when Huppert gets outrageous. Laemmle.
ON TV
This being Halloween Week, Turner Classic Movies starts out with some of the more outlandish movie monsters on October 26, First. we have carnivorous rabbits the size of horses in Night of the Lepus. Then we have a classic from my list of Least Convincing Movie Monsters, – it’s The Killer Shrews, where the filmmakers have put fright masks on dogs, and then applied shaggy patches to the sides of the dogs and ropy rat tails to their backs.
Then, on October 29, TCM brings us a REALLY scary movie, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams must figure out that humans are being replicated by floating pods from outer space. Leonard Nimoy plays the chillingly confident and authoritative Dr. David Kibner – not everybody can be menacing in a turtleneck. The final shot is spine tingling.
