This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new reviews of the important documentary The Grab, the family drama Ghostlight and the clichéd western The Dead Don’t Hurt, which is not always plausible or understandable. Ghostlight joins Hit Man and Thelma as the Must See movies.
CURRENT MOVIES
- Ghostlight: a family saves itself, in iambic pentameter. In theaters.
- Hit Man: who knew self-invention could be so fun? Netflix.
- Thelma: too proud to be taken. In theaters.
- Challengers: three people and their desire. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango, but still expensive.
- La Chimera: six genres for the price of one. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
- The Grab: important, engrossing and sobering. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
- Run Lola Run: still sprinting after 25 years. In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube.
- Banel and Adama: we want to be together and left alone. In arthouse theaters.
- Relative: a loving, but insistent investigation. Amazon (included with prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life: creativity with self-indulgence. In NYC and LA theaters now and digital on July 3.
- Waiting for Dali: here’s the cuisine; where’s the surrealist? AppleTV, YouTube.
- The Origin of Evil: the angry, the unhinged and the evil. Amazon, AppleTV.
- Wicked Little Letters: a sparkling Jessie Buckley and an interesting take on repression. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
- How to Have Sex: searing and authentic. MUBI.
- Wildcat: often admirable, rarely fun. In theaters.
- Civil War: a most cautionary tale. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango, but still expensive.
- Ennio: the good the bad and the transcendent. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
- Chasing Chasing Amy: origins of love, fictional and otherwise. Waiting for release.
- The Woman Who Ran: is the payoff worth the slow burn? AppleTV, YouTube.
- The Dead Don’t Hurt: such a bad movie. In theaters.
WATCH AT HOME
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- The Lost City of Z: the historical adventure revived. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Leave No Trace: his demons, not hers. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- The August Virgin: in search of reinvention. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Pale Flower: bracing neo-noir. Criterion.
- Eye in the Sky: thriller meets thinker. Max, Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Poser: personal plagiarism. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
- Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road: a genius opens up. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
- Witness to Murder: can she believe her own eyes? AppleTV.
- The Rider: a life’s passion is threatened. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
ON TV
Just for fun – on July 3, Turner Classic Movies will air A Bucket of Blood, a campy minor horror movie much more interesting as a window in beatnik culture. By 1959, beatnik consciousness was ripe for exploitation by low-budget movie wizard Roger Corman, who produced and directed A Bucket of Blood. The story is about a loser who covers a dead cat with plaster of Paris and is acclaimed as a talented sculptor. He embraces the hoax and starts hunting victims to cast into human “sculptures”; hence the horror and the bucket of blood.
“Beatnik” conjures up 20-somethings adorned in black turtleneck sweaters (and black leotards for women), berets, goatees and dark glasses; they’re in coffee houses snapping their fingers to applaud poetry and jazz. And they’re conversing in hip cat patter. Watch A Bucket of Blood and you’ll get a dose.
A Bucket of Blood stars Corman favorite Dick Miller, the subject of That Guy Dick Miller; ubiquitous game show host Burt Convy, as a young actor, played Lou. Can you dig it?