This week on The Movie Gourmet – Three excellent international films are playing arthouse theaters: the gripping Holocaust thriller Persian Lessons, the Chilean suspenser Chile ’76, and the mesmerizing Italian exploration of of male friendship and self-discovery, The Eight Mountains. See as many of them as you can find.
Plus, I have new reviews of the corporate thriller Tetris, set amid the implosion of the USSR, and the insightful documentary Body Parts, about on-screen sex from a female perspective.
REMEMBRANCE
Glenda Jackson won Oscars for Women in Love and a A Touch of Class. I most admired her as the fierce Queen Bess in the 1971 miniseries Elizabeth R. Many actors have tried on politics in real life, but Jackson took off 23 years from her acting career to serve as a hard Left Labor Party MP, before returning to the stage as an acclaimed King Lear.
CURRENT MOVIES
- Chile ’76: simmering suspense. In theaters.
- The Eight Mountains: Two men, each finding himself. In theaters.
- BlackBerry: woulda, coulda, shoulda. In theaters.
- Persian Lessons: walking the tightrope. In select arthouse theaters.
- The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic: wow – laughs, thrills, love. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Sam Now: a mystery solved…and more questions. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Tetris: corporate thriller amid communist collapse. AppleTV.
- The Roundup: No Way Out: a loveable lug with a gift for the one-punch knockout. In theaters.
- Body Parts: on-screen sex from the female gaze. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Being Mary Tyler Moore: you might just make it after all. HBO.
- Turn Every Page: two masters, two obsessives. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
- Dealing with Dad: two serious topics in an ok comedy. In theaters.
- Rodeo: roller coaster on two wheel. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu.
- Little Richard: I Am Everything: never denying his identity, but renouncing it. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Fanny: The Right to Rock: triple threat trailblazers. PBS.
WATCH AT HOME
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- The Bra: Just your average silent Azerbaijani comedy. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Revenge: The web is spun. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Blue Ruin: fresh take on the revenge thriller. Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
- Listening to Kenny G.: derision, devotion and a hard-working guy. HBO.
- Piggy: surprising and darkly hilarious. Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
- Riders of Justice: thriller, comedy and much, much more.
- Drinking Buddies: an unusually genuine romantic comedy. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
ON TV
On June 28, Turner Classic Movies brings us one of my favorites – 83 minutes of noir hysteria titled D.O.A. This gripping whodunit opens with a man walking into a police station to report HIS OWN MURDER. The man (Edmond O’Brien) finds out that he has been dosed with a poison for which there is no antidote – and that he has only a few days to live. He desperately races the clock to find out who has murdered him and why. Much of D.O.A. was shot on location in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and one SF scene has one of the first cinematic glimpses into Beat culture. The little known director Rudolph Maté gave the film a great look, which shouldn’t be a surprise because Maté had been Oscar-nominated five times as a cinematographer. The next year, he followed D.O.A. with another solid noir, Union Station, with William Holden and Barry Fitzgerald.