MONTANA STORY. Courtesy of Bleecker Street.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of The Duke, a surefire crowdpleaser, and Montana Story, one of the best films of 2022 so far.
CURRENT FILMS
- Montana Story: a family secret simmers, then explodes. In theaters.
- The Duke: he finally gets his audience. In theaters.
- Everything Everywhere All at Once: often indecipherable and mostly dazzling. In theaters.
- Mau: fact-based optimism and thinking big. In theaters.
ON VIDEO
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- Strawberry Mansion very trippy and ultimately sweet fable. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Oscar Micheaux: Superhero of Black Filmmaking: a pioneer worth knowing about. HBO Max.
- Erotic Fire of the Unattainable: captivating docufiction. Amazon (included with Prime), YouTube.
- Buy Me a Gun: children in the narcolypse. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
ON TV
On May 25th, Turner Classic Movies airs In the Mood for Love, Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai’s steamy masterpiece. Tony Leong and Maggie Cheung play apartment neighbors in 1962 Hong Kong. They suspect, investigate and confirm that their respective spouses are having an affair -and become very personally close themselves during the process. They decide to keep the moral high ground and resist falling in bed with each other – and what’s sexier than NOT having sex? This becomes a haunting love story, complete with tantalizing near misses.
Wong Kar Wai’s regular cinematogapher Christopher Doyle combined with Mark Lee Ping-bing to shoot one of the most beautiful and atmospheric films you’ll ever see. You can feel the humidity as the men sweat in their Mad Men Era suits , and the rich color palette magnifies the passion.
Incidentally, the leading man is a different Tony Leong than the star of another art house hit, 1992’s The Lover.