This week on The Movie Gourmet – Harry Dean Stanton’s masterpiece in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas has been restored and re-released in theaters. In Paris Texas, Harry Dean plays Travis, a man so traumatized that he has disappeared and is found wandering across the desert and mistaken for a mute. As he is cared for by his brother (Dean Stockwell), he evolves from feral to erratic to troubled, but with a sense of tenderness and a determination to put things right. We see Travis as a madman who gains extraordinary lucidity about what wrong in his life and his own responsibility for it.
At the film’s climax, Travis speaks to Jane (Natassja Kinski) through a one-way mirror (she can’t see him). Spinning what at first seems like parable, Travis explains what happened to him – and to her – and why it happened. It’s a 20-minute monologue so captivating and touching that it rises to be recognized as one of the very greatest screen performances.
Paris, Texas is on my list of the fifty or so Greatest Movies of All Time. It’s been playing the Laemmle theaters in LA this week, opens at San Francisco’s Roxie today and opens at the Palm in San Luis Obispo next week.
CURRENT MOVIES
- Thelma: too proud to be taken. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
- Perfect Days: intentional contentment. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango, Hulu (included).
- How to Come Alive: addicted to his own turmoil. In theaters.
- Didi: learning to get out of his own way. In theaters.
- Between the Temples: prodded out of his funk. In theaters.
- Hit Man: who knew self-invention could be so fun? Netflix.
- I Saw the TV Glow: brimming with originality. Back in some theaters and Amazon, AppleTV; Fandango.
- The Bikeriders: they ride, drink and fight, and yet we care. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango, Peacock (included).
- Ghostlight: a family saves itself, in iambic pentameter. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango (included).
- Challengers: three people and their desire. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
- La Chimera: six genres for the price of one. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
- Daddio: intimacy between strangers. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
- Sorry/Not Sorry: revelatory, and posing the smartest questions. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
- The Grab: important, engrossing and sobering. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
- Relative: a loving, but insistent investigation. Amazon (included with prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
- Wicked Little Letters: a sparkling Jessie Buckley and an interesting take on repression. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Netflix.
- How to Have Sex: searing and authentic. MUBI.
- Civil War: a most cautionary tale. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
ON TV
On September 10, Turner Classic Movies offers Born to Kill (1947). Lawrence Tierney (no cupcake in real life, either), plays the nastiest, most predatory and savage male character in film noir history. Set in the world of Reno quickie divorces, the characters seem to compete to demonstrate the most venal behavior; (spoiler: the psychopath played by Tierney wins.) Claire Trevor, the Queen of Noir, was often wore flamboyant hats, but she just keeps topping herself in this film. Walter Slezak and Elisha Cook, Jr., play dregs of the underworld.