This Week on the Movie Gourmet – new reviews of Kneecap, Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid! and The True Story of Tamara De Lempicka & the Art of Survival.
Note: this summer’s fine coming of age film Didi and the unabashedly surreal Mother Couch are now on VOD.
CURRENT MOVIES
- Kneecap: sláinte! Amazon, AppleTV.
- Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid!: rascal truth-teller. In theaters.
- The True Story of Tamara De Lempicka & the Art of Survival: an icon revealed. Mill Valley Film Festival.
- In the Summers: they mature, he evolves. In arthouse theaters.
- Will & Harper: old friends adjust. Netflix.
- Made in England: The films of Powell and Pressberger: Scorsese’s film class. In theaters, but increasingly hard to find.
- Wolfs: two charming stars and a chase. AppleTV.
- Megalopolis: pretentious, cartoonish, incoherent. In theaters.
- Tokyo Cowboy: he came, he saw, he changed. In arthouse theaters, but hard to find.
- Didi: learning to get out of his own way. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
- Mother Couch: obstreperous mom, surreal situation. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
ON TV
On October 17, Turner Classic Movies presents the seminal 1960s neo-noir Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin. Marvin stars as Walker, a heist man who is shot and left for dead by his partner Reese (John Vernon, Animal House’s Dean Wormer), who absconded with Walker’s share of the loot and Walker’s wife. When Walker recovers, he is hellbent on revenge, aided by his sister-in-law Chris (Angie Dickinson).
It turns out that Walker needs to trace the money through a cavalcade of Mr. Bigs (Lloyd Bochner, Keenan Wynn, Carroll O’Connor). There’s a great set piece where Walker invades a highrise penthouse, despite the heavily guarded elevator being the only entrance. Point Blank ends in a thrilling nighttime finale at Fort Point.
Walker is a very uncomplicated character, all he wants is to kill Reese and reclaim his $93,000. Anyone in Walker’s situation would be pissed off, but Lee Marvin plays Walker in a constant state of cold rage. Lee Marvin’s unique charisma animates this relentless killing machine.
Marvin, just coming off The Dirty Dozen and having won an Oscar for Cat Ballou, was at the peak of his stardom. Marvin’s other contribution to the film was handpicking the then unheralded John Boorman to direct; (this was five years before Boorman’s masterpiece Deliverance). Boorman intentionally delivered a morally bleak story in the most deserted of locations: empty parking lots, the Los Angeles River channel. and San Francisco’s two icons of abandonment – Alcatraz and Fort Point.
If you’re wondering why Angie Dickinson was a movie star, Point Blank is for you. Angie was ballsy, sexy and always unashamedly very direct, and she rocked midcentury fashion. (She plays one unforgettable scene in a dress with bold horizontal stripes in the colors of Denny’s restaurants.)
Watch for James B. Sikking as the professional sniper; Sikking became well-known as the supercilious SWAT team commander Lt. Howard Hunter in Hill Street Blues. Future horror icon Sid Haig pops up as the security guard in the penthouse lobby.
