This week on The Movie Gourmet – I’m busy preparing for the San Francisco and San Luis Obispo film festivals that dominate my Aprils. Just like last week, the best six new movies are documentaries; five are about musical, performance and visual artists and the sixth is about a psycho killer. I’ve also highlighted The Whistlers, a neo-noir thriller currently free on Max. Here are my film festival previews:
Reminder: A Complete Unknown now rents for under $6 on Amazon and is free on Hulu. You can also pay more to watch it on AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.
CURRENT MOVIES
- We Want the Funk: Tear the Roof Off the Sucker. PBS.
- Thank You Very Much: provocateur explained. In theaters, Amazon, AppleTV.
- Art for Everybody: a contradiction revealed. Rolling out in theaters.
- Janis Ian: Breaking Silence: she stepped onto the roller coaster at 16. In arthouse theaters.
- Chaos: The Manson Murders: the facts still are incredible. Netflix.
- Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius): rise, fall and legacy of a groundbreaking prodigy. Hulu.
- Mickey 17: lovable loser in space. In theaters.
- Bob Trevino Likes It: without dad’s encouragement, she’s stuck. In theaters.
ON TV
Tomorrow, Turner Classic Movies presents The Getaway, a 1972 crime thriller starring the charismatic Steve McQueen and his real-life squeeze Ali MacGraw. McQueen and MacGraw are delightful to watch as they move between violent clashes and double- and triple-crosses. As befits a Sam Peckinpah film, there’s an intense shootout at the end. The grossly underrated character actor Al Lettieri (Sollozzo the Turk in The Godfather) gets to play perhaps his most delicious villain; when he comes across a oddly matched married couple – the nubile Sally Struthers and the nerdy Jack Dodson (county clerk Howard Sprague in The Andy Griffith Show). Lettieri layers on some glorious sexual perversity.
Speaking of character actors, we also get to enjoy the crew of Peckinpah favorites: Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Dub Taylor, Bo Hopkins and Richard Bright. My friend Sandy lets Ali McGraw’s lack of acting range get in the way of enjoying The Getaway, but IMO Al Lettieri more than makes up for it.
