This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of Hit the Road, 18 1/2 and Jane by Charlotte, plus a completely refreshed the most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE. The best new movie is still Montana Story.
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.
- Hit the Road: a funny family masks their tough choice. In theaters.
- 18 1/2: the paranoid thriller meets the darkly silly. In theaters, including Laemmle’s Monica Film Center and soon the Glendale and the NoHo 7.
- Jane by Charlotte: as mildly interesting as the subject. AppleTV.
- Mau: fact-based optimism and thinking big. In theaters.
ON VIDEO
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- Very Semi-Serious: glorious The New Yorker cartoons. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
- The Handmaiden: gorgeous, erotic and a helluva plot. Amazon (included with Prime), Vudu.
- Touching the Void: the gripping true life story of a mountaineer who had to cut his climbing partner’s rope. Amazon, AppleTV.
- Dick Johnson Is Dead: funny, heartfelt and frequently bizarre. Netflix.
- The Women’s Balcony: a righteous man must keep his woman happy. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Electrick Children: magical Mormon runaways in Vegas. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
- NUTS!: the rise and fall of a testicular empire. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- The Imposter: you gotta see this. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
ON TV
On June 1, Turner Classic Movies will air the sci-fi classic Solaris (1972), the masterpiece of Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky. A psychologist, with that common Russian name of Kris Kelvin, is sent to check out a space mission orbiting the oceanic planet Solaris. He finds things ominously awry, with a suicide and suspiciously furtive behavior by the surviving crew. Then he is face-to-face with his own dead wife from Earth; and after he dispatches her into space, she reappears on the spacecraft. Things are seriously messed up.
Much of Solaris’ two hours and 47 minutes – watching this movie is a commitment – consists of trippy shots of the ocean planet, with waves breaking across its colored surface. Solaris is not so much an enjoyable art movie as it is a fascinating one. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes and is firmly placed in the sci-fi canon. Solaris is a must see for sci-fi fans [Note: This is NOT the inferior 2002 Steven Soderbergh remake.]
