Do your self a favor and make sure that you see the best of this summer:
The contemporary Western thriller Wind River, which has mystery, explosive action, wild scenery and some great acting, especially by Jeremy Renner and Gil Birmingham.
Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly timed to the beat of music.
I enjoyed Charlize Theron’s rock ’em, sock ’em, espionage thriller Atomic Blonde.
The Trip to Spain, another gourmet romp from Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan is funny for the first 90 minutes or so – just leave when the characters part company in Malaga.
My Stream of the Week is the surprisingly engaging documentary about New York Times obituaries Obit, a superb study writing – we sit on the writers’ shoulders and observe their process in real-time. Obit is now available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
On September 9, Turner Classic Movies airs Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece of voyeurism, Rear Window. Here we have James Stewart playing a guy frustrated because he is trapped at home by a disability. When he observes some activity by neighbors that he interprets as a possible murder, he becomes more and more obsessed and voyeuristic. When it looks like he has been correct instead of paranoid, that business about being trapped by a disability takes on a whole new meaning. With the cool beauty Grace Kelly and the glowering and menacing Raymond Burr.
Coming up on Turner Classic Movies on September 8 is Night on Earth, with one of the very funniest scenes and one of the very saddest scenes in the same movie. Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, Night on Earth is comprised of five vignettes each in a taxi and each in a different city: Los Angeles, New York, Paris Rome and, of all places, Helsinki.
Moving west to east across the time zones, Night on Earth opens with the contrast between a working class driver (Wynona Ryder) and a striver executive (Gena Rowlands) and how they connect – or don’t.
Then we move to New York where a totally disoriented East German immigrant (Armin Mueller-Stahl) gets a job driving a hack (on his first or second day in the US) and picks up potty-mouthed passengers (Giancarlo Esposito and Rosie Perez).
The LA and NYC scenes are good, but Night on Earth really accelerates in Paris when an African immigrant driver (Isaach De Bankolé) picks up a blind woman (the gap-toothed beauty Béatrice Dall). They are both a bit touchy and immediately get underneath each others skins. The prickly conversation that follows teaches each a little about the other.
Now we get to perhaps the funniest episode in the movies (yes, I mean in the history of cinema). A manic, motormouth Roman cabbie (Roberto Benigni) picks up an ailing Catholic cleric and regales him with an unwanted stream of consciousness confession, highlighting his own ever more inappropriate sexual partners, including a pumpkin and a sheep. It’s a rapid fire comedic assault sure to convulse any audience.
Finally, in Helsinki, two guys toss their passed-out buddy into a cab, and explain that he’s had the worst day ever – he has lost his job just when he has a wife looking for a divorce and a pregnant daughter. But the driver (Matti Pellonpää) tells them a story that tops it. Profound sadness.
The cult director and indie favorite Jarmusch made Night on Earth in 1991 after he first made a splash with Mystery Train. He followed it with Dead Man, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Coffee and Cigarettes, Broken Flowers and last year’s Paterson. Night on Earth is one of the few movies that I own on DVD, and it’s now available from the Criterion Collection. But you can see it Friday on TCM. Go for it.
The one absolutely essential requisite for a fine documentary film is a fascinating subject, and Obit proves that an insightful filmmaker can find the fascination in the most unlikely place. It’s about the writing of New York Times obituaries. Director Vanessa Gould chose the subject when the NYT published the obit of an acquaintance whom she feared would become overlooked; the story in her own words is here (scroll down).
The writers in Obit explain something counter-intuitive – good obituaries are very little about a person’s death. Sure, they are published upon a death, but the key to an obit is to explain the person’s life. It helps that the NYT obits eschew the old-fashioned and hypocritical canonization of the dead, instead pseudo-resurrecting them by finding what was most interesting about their lives.
Obit is a superb study on writing. We sit on the writers’ shoulders and observe their process in real-time. Obit lives up to its tagline: Life on a Deadline.
Obit was released briefly earlier this year and is now available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
With the contemporary Western thriller Wind River, screenwriter Taylor Sheridan has delivered another masterpiece, this time in his first effort as director. It’s got mystery, explosive action, wild scenery and some great acting, especially by Jeremy Renner and Gil Birmingham.
Other movies that are among the best of the year are the historical thriller Dunkirk and the delightful romantic comedy The Big Sick.
The best of the rest:
Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly timed to the beat of music.
I enjoyed Charlize Theron’s rock ’em, sock ’em, espionage thriller Atomic Blonde.
The Trip to Spain, another gourmet romp from Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan is funny for the first 90 minutes or so – just leave when the characters part company in Malaga.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is an Oscar-winner that you haven’t seen: the Feel Good documentary Undefeated. You can find it on DVD and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
On August 30, Turner Classic Movies presents the second and the funniest of Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther movies, 1964’s A Shot in the Dark, in which Peter Sellers really comes into his own as Inspector Clouseau. A Shot in the Dark also introduces Herbert Lom, the king ofte slow burn, as Clouseau’s perpetually infuriated boss.
On September 1, TCM airs the 1933 submarine movie Hell Below. It’s a pretty contrived Robert Montgomery vehicle, but there are some elements worth fast-forwarding to. The comic relief is provided by Jimmy Durante, who plays the cook Ptomaine; Baby Boomers tend to remember Durante for his shtick on variety shows of the 1950s and 1960s – here’s the unadulterated Durante. Durante even boxes with a kangeroo! Hell Below also features Walter Huston, who was a major star at the time and who I think would be very successful today.
Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in A SHOT IN THE DARKHerbert Lom in A SHOT IN THE DARK
With the contemporary Western thriller Wind River, screenwriter Taylor Sheridan has delivered another masterpiece, this time in his first effort as director. Wind River was probably my most anticipated film of the year because I pegged Sheridan’s previous movie Hell or High Water as the best movie of 2016. Wind River doesn’t disappoint.
The story is set in and around Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation. Cory (Jeremy Renner) is a professional hunter who finds the body of a native American teenage girl. To find out what happened to her and who is responsible, the tribal police chief Ben (Graham Greene) calls for help from the feds. That assistance arrives in the form of FBI agent Jane (Elizabeth Olsen), an inexperienced city slicker who has no clue how to survive in the lethal elements of the wild country. She is canny enough to understand that she needs the help of Cory, who knows every inch of the back country. He has his own reason – very important to the story – to solve the mystery, and the unlikely duo embark on a dangerous investigation, which they know will end in a man hunt.
The man hunt leads to a violent set piece that Sheridan directs masterfully. There’s a sudden escalation of tension, then apparent relief and then an explosion of action. Deadly chaos envelops several characters, but we’re able to follow it all clearly, while we’re on the edges of our seats.
Jeremy Renner’s performance as Cory is brilliant. Cory is a man whose life has been redirected by a family tragedy. He’s a Western stoic of few words, but – unusual for his type – an individual who deals with his grief in a very specific and self-aware way. Playing a character who reloads his own rounds, Renner is able to deliver hard-ass, determined efficiency along with some unexpected tenderness.
Olsen is also very good as Jane who understands that she may appear to be the bottom of the FBI’s barrel because she is a woman and very green and tiny. Resolute and spunky, she moves past what others might take as a slight because no unaided outsider is going to be able to navigate the harsh environment and the culture of the reservation. She isn’t trying to make a name for herself, but just to take responsibility in the old-fashioned way that we would expect from characters played by Glenn Ford, Gregory Peck, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. She’s got to do the right thing.
As Martin, the dead girl’s father, Gil Birmingham (Hell or High Water) has two unforgettable scenes. His first scene is phenomenal first scene, as he processes the worst possible news with an outside Jane, and then with his friend Cory. Graham Greene and Tantoo Cardinal are also excellent. Kelsey Asbille and Jon Bernthal are also stellar in a flashback of the crime.
Sheridan and cinematographer Ben Richardson (Beasts of the Southern Wild) make great use of the Big Sky country, with the jagged topography of its mountains and the feral frigidity of its forests. Wind River opens as Cory hunts in spectacular postcard scenery; when we first see the reservation, we are jarred – this is a very bad place.
Taylor Sheridan has a gift for writing great, great movie dialogue:
“Who’s the victim today? Looks like it’s gonna be me.”
and
“This isn’t the land of backup, Jane. This is the land of you’re on your own.”
When Cory says, “This isn’t about Emily”, we know that this is precisely about Emily. When Cory says, “I’m a hunter”, we know exactly what his intentions are – and so does Martin.
Sheridan hates that, in much of our society, people are disposable. He has explored that theme in Sicario, Hell or High Water and now Wind River. Wind River begins with a title explaining that the story is inspired by actual events, and ends with a particularly horrifying non-statistic.
Smart, layered and intelligent, Wind River is another success from one of America’s fastest-rising filmmakers.
With football season (finally) approaching, it’s time for a Feel Good, Oscar-winning story set on the gridiron. The extraordinary documentary Undefeated begins with a high school football coach addressing his team:
Let’s see now. Starting right guard shot and no longer in school. Starting middle linebacker shot and no longer in school. Two players fighting right in front of the coach. Starting center arrested. Most coaches – that would be pretty much a career’s worth of crap to deal with. Well, I think that sums up the last two weeks for me.
Undefeated is the story of this coach, Bill Courtney, leading his team through a season. The kids live in crushing poverty and attend a haplessly under-resourced high school in North Memphis.
Undefeated may be about a football team, but isn’t that much about football. Instead of the Xs and Os, it shows the emotional energy required of Courtney to keep each kid coming to school, coming to practice and on task. He gets many of the kids to think about goals for the first time in their lives. He is tireless, dogged and often frustrated and emotionally spent.
The film wisely focuses on three players, and we get to know them. Like the rest of the team, all three are from extremely disadvantaged homes. One is an overachiever both on the field and in the classroom, but surprisingly emotionally vulnerable. Another has college-level football talent but very little academic preparation. The third, recently back from youth prison, is impulsive, immature, selfish and extremely volatile.
Undefeated won the 2012 Oscar for Best Documentary for filmmakers Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin – but it didn’t get a wide theatrical release. It’s available now to stream from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.
Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan in THE TRIP TO SPAINIn The Trip to Spain, comics Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan play caricatures of themselves assigned to a gourmet road trip, just as in The Trip and The Trip to Italy. Both masters of impressions and improvisation, the amiable Brydon and the snootily competitive (but needy) Coogan banter their way through delectable Spanish cuisine. One of the franchise’s running gags is Coogan’s constant name-dropping and one-upmanship, which begs Brydon to deflate him.
Brydon’s wonderful impressions of Sean Connery and Michael Caine are legendary, and Coogan is no slouch. They do impressions of Marlon Brando and Robert Deniro, and mimic across the British acting greats John Hurt, Ian McKellen, Anthony Hopkins and Michael Holdern. Brydon even “does” Mick Jagger doing Michael Caine and Jagger playing Shakespeare’s Shylock.
In one of the funniest bits, a lunchtime reference to the “Moors in Spain” sparks a Rob Brydon marathon of ROGER Moore riffs; as Coogan and their companions try in vain to change the subject, Brydon is hilariously unstoppable.
There are plenty of other laughs, too, as Coogan tries to pronounces the French name “Aurore” and Brydon quips that the Spanish Inquisition was launched by a “Catalytic Converter”. They even refuse to pass up the obvious joke about Herb Alpert’s Spanish Flea.
As in the other Trip movies, the travel and food porn is exquisite. They cross Spain from the Basque country, through the dinosaur sites of Rioja, the Don Quixote heritage of La Mancha, the streets of Cuenca and the marvels of Granada, ending in Malaga. I didn’t notice any green vegetables until their fifth day of eating (always fine by me). (However, Spain’s ubiquitous jamón doesn’t show up until their final day.)
Frankly, Brydon’s and Coogan’s improvisations are reason enough to make (and see) one of these movies. Unfortunately, someone felt the need to focus the final 15 minutes of The Trip to Spain on the contrast between Brydon’s happly family life and Coogan’s disconnected loneliness and his career and personal insecurities. Blaaaaaaaaaah. Snooooooze.
So it’s simple: go see The Trip to Spain and, when the characters say goodbye to each other in Malaga – leave the theater.
This hasn’t been a first-rate summer for movies, but you MUST SEE the historical thriller Dunkirk and the delightful romantic comedy The Big Sick.
The best of the rest:
Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly timed to the beat of music.
The Midwife, with Catherine Deneuve as a woman out of control and uncontrollable, indelibly disrupting another life.
I enjoyed Charlize Theron’s rock ’em, sock ’em, espionage thriller Atomic Blonde.
The Trip to Spain, another gourmet romp from Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan is funny for the first 90 minutes or so – just leave when the characters part company in Malaga.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, perhaps Richard Gere’s best movie performance ever, and strongly recommended. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
For a ticking bomb thriller, you really can’t top John Frankenhimer’s The Manchurian Candidate, which Turner Classic Movies airs on August 19. Laurence Harvey plays a victim of Commie brainwashing who has become a robotic, remote-controlled assassin. Can he be stopped in time?
The Manchurian Candidate tops off a set of brilliant Frank Sinatra performances (before his directors couldn’t restrain him from mugging): From Here to Eternity, Suddenly!, The Man with a Golden Arm.
Harvey, Sinatra and Janet Leigh are all good, but this is really Angela Lansbury’s movie. Not only is her character promoting the political career of her bombastic Joe McCarthy-like husband, but she is a Communist agent intent on the Communist takeover of the US government. And she is pulling the strings to direct the assassin – her own son! Lansbury’s character makes my list of Worst Movie Mothers.
Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
Charlize Theron kicks ass and looks great doing it in the most entertaining espionage action thriller Atomic Blonde. Theron plays a British secret agent on a mission behind the Iron Curtain just before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The MacGuffins that she must recover are a list of clandestine operatives and the double agent who has memorized the list. She runs into more shady characters than in The Third Man’s Vienna, chief amongst them a debauched British agent gone rogue (James McAvoy).
There is intrigue and backstabbing, double-crossing and at least one major plot twist. The brutal action is exquisitely filmed and edited, and the Atomic Blonde qualifies as a full-fledged martial arts movie. Theron’s character is so Stoli-fuelled, that Stolichnaya Vodka must have paid a fortune for product placement.
Atomic Blonde makes excellent use of a more somber version of 99 luftballons (a 1983 hit by the German group Nena). There’s a Bond-like opening song, too.
Theron is a superb actress with wide-ranging skills (Monster, The Italian Job, In the Valley of Elah). And, as we saw in Mad Max: Fury Road, she can credibly carry an action movie. The rest of the cast is also very good: McAvoy, Toby Jones, John Goodman, Eddie Marsan and a bunch of scary-looking guys who play commie thugs.
Atomic Blonde is the first feature directing credit for David Leitch, a guy with a long resume as a stunt man as and a stunt coordinator Leitch sure knows how to film fights and chases, and Atomic Blonde is really a top-notch action film.
Lior Ashkenazi and Richard Gere in NORMAN: THE MODERATE RISE AND TRAGIC FALL OF A NEW YORK FIXER
In Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, writer-director Joseph Cedar and his star Richard Gere combine to create the unforgettable character of Norman Oppenheimer, a Jewish Willy Loman who finally gets his chance to sits with the Movers and Shakers. Norman’s gig is to find two real businessmen that he does not know, pretending to each to be the confidante of the other, and introduce them, hoping that they make a deal (a deal that he neither engineers or invests in), hoping that he can get a percentage as a finder’s fee.
Norman has not so much a ready smile as a compulsive one. Unencumbered by any sense of boundaries or propriety, he literally stalks the rich and influential like paparazzi stalk celebrities. He feigns familiarity and drops names (“a high official, I can’t say his name”). All he time, he tries, usually successfully, to stifle the odor of desperation.
I’ve spent over thirty years in politics, and in my business, it is said that there are Who Ya Know consultants and there are What Ya Know consultants. The most effective consultants combine both. If you’re only at the table to peddle the influence of Who Ya Know, you might be a little shady. That’s Norman.
I know the world of powerful and important people, a world that hustlers try to crash, and I’ve known people like Norman. And I know the Whack-A-Mole pressure of shepherding home a complex, multi-faceted deal. Norman’s character, while extreme, rings true.
Norman is everybody’s acquaintance but has no actual reputation of his own. No one knows where he lives or what deals he has structured before. He is so mysterious that we find ourselves even asking, is he homeless?
This may be Richard Gere’s best movie performance. Gere perfectly distills Norman’s obnoxious ambition to play with the high rollers and then his stress and bewilderment once he’s gotten to the high stakes table. The critic Christy Lemire writes, “You may not be able to root for him, but you can’t help but feel for him.”
Norman ingratiates himself to an Israeli politician (Lior Ashkenazi) and hits pay dirt when the politician unexpectedly becomes prime minister. Norman says, “for once, I have bet on the right horse”, and indeed Norman did spot a uniquely optimistic quality that other observers failed to recognize and appreciate. For the first time, Norman is relevant and at the exhilarating center of power.
Lior Ashkenazi is brilliant as the politician, a man who is able to recognize his own specific gifts. He is ebullient, and it’s easy to see how people can be attracted to his charisma and infectious confidence. His vulnerability is an appetite for fine things and a neediness for the flattery and attention that a poser like Norman can offer. Ashkenazi played a totally contrasting, much more nerdy, character in Cedar’s 2011 inventive and mostly successful character-driven dramedy Footnote.
Norman is juggling multiple balls in air, and he must make all of his deals pay off because they are all interlinked. It’s kind of like making an exotic bet at the racetrack like an exacta, a superfecta or a pick 6. If one part unravels, the whole thing will come crashing down. Norman has always been able to get by on bullshit, but now he’s has gotten his wish – to play at the highest level, where, at some point you’ve got to deliver. Here’s where “the tragic fall” comes in.
The stellar performances of Gere and Ashkenazi are but two highlights of Norman’s superb casting: Michael Sheen, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Harris Yulin, Steve Buscemi. Josh Charles plays a magnate who can sniff out a bullshit artist and can dismiss one with blistering efficiency. The always excellent Isaach De Bankolé (Night on Earth) is memorable in a tiny part. Hank Azaria sparkles as a character who confounds Norman with a taste of his own medicine. And we get to hear the glorious singing voice of Cantor Azi Schwartz.
As they say, if you can’t run with the big dogs, stay on the porch. Big deals are not for little men. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer is available on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Note: Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer weighs in at #16 on my list of Longest Movie Titles.
