During the years 1972-4, documentarian Les Blank hung out and filmed around Leon Russell’s Oklahoma recording studio, and A Poem Is a Naked Person is the result.
This was the period when Russell produced two of my very favorite albums, Leon Live and Hank Wilson’s Back, so I especially enjoyed the music. There’s also a nice snippet of Willie Nelson (pre-beard and pigtails) singing Good Hearted Woman.
In fact, all of the Leon Russell parts (both talking and performing) are great. The problem is that Blank filmed everybody and everything in the neighborhood, including a tractor pull, the demolition of a building and a seemingly deranged and snake-obsessed artist. There’s also a lot of conversation between people who are very stoned. Getting stoned is a lot more fun than listening to stoned people talk.
The documentary’s puzzling title originates from liner notes on a Bob Dylan album.
A Poem Is a Naked Person has been a bit of a Lost Film, until recently only shown at screening where Blank was present. Now you can stream it on Amazon Instant, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Here are my extensive recommendations, beginning with six on my list of Best Movies of 2015. This is the very best time to go to the movies. Scroll all the way down for six bonus picks on video.
Mustang, about exuberant Turkish teenage girls challenging traditional repression.
Creed, the newest and entirely fresh chapter in the Rocky franchise; it’s about the internal struggle of three people, not just The Big Fight.
The Irish romantic drama Brooklyn is an audience-pleaser with a superb performance by Saoirse Ronan.
Youth, a glorious cinematic meditation on life with Michael Caine.
Spotlight – a riveting, edge-of-your-seat drama with some especially compelling performances.
The Big Short – a supremely entertaining thriller – both funny and anger-provoking.
Here are ten more choices. There’s something for everyone.
Legend – a true-life story and the best crime drama of 2015. Tom Hardy plays both gangster twin brothers.
Very Semi-Serious – a Must See documentary if you love the cartoons in The New Yorker. It’s showing on HBO.
Macbeth– an excellent new version of Shakespeare’s exploration of ambition. Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard star.
Hitchcock/Truffaut – a Must See for serious movie fans, this insightful documentary probes documentary Alfred Hitchcock’s body of work.
Chi-Raq: Spike Lee’s plea for inner city peace with justice, AND it’s a sex comedy.
Bridge of Spies – Steven Spielberg’s Cold War espionage thriller with Tom Hanks, featuring a fantastic performance by Mark Rylance.
Trumbo – the historical drama that reflects on the personal cost of principles.
Don Verdean – a dark satire on the faux scientists embraced by the Christian Right.
Spectre – action and vengeance from a determined James Bond.
Today Turner Classic Movies is presenting an entire day of the irresistible William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora in The Thin Man, After the Thin Man, Another Thin Man, Shadow of the Thin Man, The Thin Man Goes Home and Song of the Thin Man. And on New Year’s Day, TCM is showing the superb proto-noirM (1931) – if you’re going to see one pre-war European film – see this one.
And to binge watch on this Holiday weekend, here are six more movies from my Best Movies of 2015 – So Far that are available to stream or to rent on DVD:
The smartest road trip movie ever, The End of the Tour. It’s available streaming from Amazon Instant, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The unforgettable coming of age dramedy Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. It’s available streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play and now available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox.
The extraordinary Russian drama Leviathan, a searing indictment of society in post-Soviet Russia. Leviathan is available streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.
The hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
The Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy, the story of an extraordinarily gifted person’s escape from torment. Love & Mercy is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes and Vudu.
The gentle, thoughtful and altogether fresh dramedy I’ll See You In My Dreams with Blythe Danner, available to stream from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The melodramatic docudrama The Danish Girl is based on the real life of Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe, one of the first people to receive sexual reassignment surgery. We begin with a devoted and playful young married couple of Danish painters in the 1920s (Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander). He is a moderately successful landscape painter, and she is a struggling portraitist. As they experiment with sexual role-playing, his self-identification as a woman named Lili is revealed, and their journey continues though his-to-her transgender metamorphosis through the groundbreaking surgery.
There’s a point when he starts acting out his gender identification in ways that are not okay with her, and this is the best part of the film. Vikander plays a woman who is sexually ahead of her time, but anyone would be knocked for a loop when their partner switches genders. It doesn’t help when Lili addresses her very real yearnings with a substantial degree of selfishness.
But then The Danish Girl starts dragging and then ultimately grinds into boredom and predictability. The movie keeps hammering us with the wife’s devoted support of her transforming spouse, the secret they strive to maintain, yada yada. Tom Hooper, the director of The King’s Speech and the literally miserable Les Miserables, is technically quite good; he also knows how to make a movie pretentious and ponderous. There’s probably a better 90-minute movie embedded in The Danish Girl’s 119 minutes.
Vikander is just outstanding as the wife. Redmayne also nails his role, a part every bit as showy as in The Theory of Everything. Matthias Schoenaerts, Amber Heard and Ben Whislaw are excellent in supporting roles. Sebastian Koch, who is always good, is also solid in a secondary role.
The costumes in The Danish Girl are exquisite. The early hints as to his gender identification come with his attraction to the fabric and design of fine clothes. Then Lili expresses her femininity through ever more ravishing and flamboyant fashion. All of the clothes are beautiful to look at, from Vikander’s new nightgown to the dapper suits and cravats on Matthias Schoennaerts. In the second half of the film, Vikander wears a turquoise dress with a vertical decorative panel that is a masterpiece of art deco design.
Excellent acting, phenomenal costumes and some riveting early scenes. Then meh.
I love original approaches to cinema, and here are some from 2015 that work especially well:
Tangerine: This raucous and raunchy high energy comedy was shot on an iPhone. This is not a gimmick. The intimacy and urgency of this character-driven movie is a good fit with the iPhone. There really isn’t any call for helicopter shots or the like. The richness of the colors has been enhanced in post-production, so the iPhone cinematography isn’t any distraction at all. (See the shot above.)
Unfriended: This low-budget, high quality horror flick is about teenagers convening over social media. The ENTIRE MOVIE is comprised of their web cam screen shots. It works.
The Tribe: Although the The Tribe comes from Ukraine, we’re not going to hear any Ukrainian. Nor will we see any English subtitles. It’s set in a residential high school for the deaf, and the entire movie is in sign language. It’s novel for the hearing to experience an entire movie in which we hear only the sound of ambient noises – footsteps, creaking doors and the like – and we know that these sounds are NOT heard by the movie characters.
Wild Tales: This Argentine dark, dark comedy is one of my favorite movies of 2015. One key to its success is that it is an anthology. In a very wise move, writer-director Damián Szifron resisted any impulse to stretch one of the stories into a feature-length movie. Each of the stories is just the right length to extract every laugh and pack a punch.
Creed: Director Ryan Coogler and cinematographer Maryse Alberti have combined for the most impressive boxing scene since Raging Bull. The three-minute rounds are photographed as uninterrupted action (no cuts are apparent) from WITHIN the ring. We feel like we’re in the ring with the fighters – right at shoulder-level.
Victoria: The German indie thriller is filmed in one shot. One 138 minute shot. And this is reputedly a barn-burner of a thriller, not My Dinner With Andre. Victoria was in theaters for about a minute this year, and I haven’t seen it yet, which really annoys me. It’s available to stream on Amazon and iTunes, so I’ve downloaded it and hope to catch up to it over the Holidays.
There’s been a glimmer of feminism in many of the year’s best films. The most overtly feminist is Mustang, a fierce assault on the patriarchy of a traditional culture. But Brooklyn and Carolshare a feminist point of view. It’s no coincidence that the character that revolts in Ex Machinahas a female form. Ex Machina, Mustang and Brooklyn are are on my Best Movies of 2015.
Mad Max: Fury Road, a movie loved by critics (especially the female ones), is a rock ’em, sock’em action movie where women characters flee for their safety from male atrocities and then exact their revenge.
Testament of Youth is a biopic of the pioneering woman who leads a social movement. And from the 19th Century, there was the proto-feminist bodice ripper Far from the Madding Crowd. Chi-raq, Spike Lee’s modern inner city version of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, also has women taking charge of their society.
All of these movies are primarily about women and have female leads.
Even the protagonist’s love interest (usually a thankless and peripheral role) in Creed is accomplished and only interested in embracing the title character on her own terms.
What does this mean? Not that Hollywood is now the paradigm of gender equity. Just that there were some high quality movies this year, some women-centered, with a welcome perspective.
Some viewers are going to hate, hate, hate the droll Swedish existentialist comedy A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Contemplating Existence, but it’s kind of a masterpiece. For most of its 101 minutes, dull Swedes sit and stand talking about dull things. It’s no secret that the Scandinavians (who The Wife refers to as “Your people”) are not the most lively bunch. Filmmaker Roy Andersson uses this trope to probe the meaning of life itself.
Salon.com critic Andrew O’Hehir has accurately described this film as “extreme-deadpan”. It is made up of vignettes filmed in static shots where people hardly move for 1-4 minutes – a looooong time. There is nothing on the walls of any of the bleak rooms. The characters converse in empty social conventions, talking about weather and such. Everyone says, “I’m happy to hear that you’re doing fine” because they can’t think of anything else to say. The highlight of their lives is when a comely young woman removes a stone from her shoe. In one bus stop discussion about what day of the week it is, we have the theme distilled: “it would be chaos” if we didn’t follow the routine. All of these people need more than a little chaos.
This is the third movie in a trilogy by Andersson. (I’ve seen and relished one of the prior films, Songs from the Second Floor). Like Pigeon, Songs is very funny, but Pigeon is more ambitious and digs deeper.
In the primary recurring thread, we follow a pair of sad sack novelty salesmen, who see their hopeless mission as “to help people have fun”. The joke is there may not be any value/fun/point to life but ESPECIALLY if you are a brooding Swede.
During the end credits, there is a final contrast, juxtaposing the unrestrained American rockabilly music set against an image of mordant Swedes.
There are absurdist episodes where 18th Century King Carl XII rides his steed into a modern Swedish cafe. (It helps to know that Carl spurned the company of women and that his defeat in the Battle of Poltava signaled the end of Swedish empire.)
And then there is a horrifyingly surreal dream sequence that illustrates the horrors of European colonialism. It is about inhumane brutality that Andersson believes still haunts Europe until forgiveness is sought; there is a reference to Sweden’s brief colonial past. This segment is less evocative (and even unnecessary) for US viewers unless we relate it to our own legacy of slavery.
Is the movie pointless? Or is the point that life is pointless? We do see some brief tender moments of a couple at a window and another in a meadow. The foe, it seems, is loneliness. We have only each other.
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Contemplating Existence is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The Movie Gourmet doesn’t watch many horror movies, but 2015 featured some that were unusually inventive, scary and non-gory. It’s great to see young filmmakers bringing some intelligence and surprise (not just shockers) to this genre.
It Follows: Writer-director David Robert Mitchell has created a very scary horror film with an excellent soundtrack and a minimum of makeup, special effects and hardly any blood. 19-year-old Jay (Maika Monroe) has sex with a guy who then tells her that he has passed on to her a kind of supernatural infection – a monster will follow her and kill her if she doesn’t pass it on to someone else. The monster shambles along at zombie speed and takes the form of a different human being each time. It Follows is available on DVD from both Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
Unfriended: It’s the one-year anniversary of a teenage girl’s suicide, and her bullying peers convene via webcams on social media – but their computers are hijacked by an Unknown Force who starts wreaking revenge. Here’s a new one: the entire movie is compiled of the characters’ screenshots. Unfriended is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.
The House on Pine Street: So here’s the thing with every movie ghost story – either the ghost is real or the protagonist is crazy enough to hallucinate one. The beauty of The House on Pine Street is that the story is right down the middle – ya just don’t know until the end when the story takes us definitively in one direction – and then suddenly lurches right back to the other extreme. I saw The House on Pine Street at Cinequest, and it’s now available to stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
If you’ve been waiting all year for excellent cinema, you’re in luck. This week, I have SIXTEEN recommendations, with SIX of them on my list of Best Movies of 2015. Scroll all the way down for six bonus picks on video.
Mustang, about exuberant Turkish teenage girls challenging traditional repression. You can find Mustang in San Francisco and San Rafael, and it’s opening in San Jose on January 1.
Creed, the newest and entirely fresh chapter in the Rocky franchise; it’s about the internal struggle of three people, not just The Big Fight.
The Irish romantic drama Brooklyn is an audience-pleaser with a superb performance by Saoirse Ronan.
Youth, a glorious cinematic meditation on life with Michael Caine.
Spotlight – a riveting, edge-of-your-seat drama with some especially compelling performances.
The Big Short – a supremely entertaining thriller – both funny and anger-provoking.
Here are ten more choices. There’s something for everyone.
Legend – a true-life story and the best crime drama of 2015. Tom Hardy plays both gangster twin brothers.
Very Semi-Serious – a Must See documentary if you love the cartoons in The New Yorker. It’s showing on HBO.
Macbeth– an excellent new version of Shakespeare’s exploration of ambition. Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard star.
Hitchcock/Truffaut – a Must See for serious movie fans, this insightful documentary probes documentary Alfred Hitchcock’s body of work.
Chi-Raq: Spike Lee’s plea for inner city peace with justice, AND it’s a sex comedy.
Bridge of Spies – Steven Spielberg’s Cold War espionage thriller with Tom Hanks, featuring a fantastic performance by Mark Rylance.
Trumbo – the historical drama that reflects on the personal cost of principles.
Don Verdean – a dark satire on the faux scientists embraced by the Christian Right.
Spectre – action and vengeance from a determined James Bond.
Turner Classic Movies brings us the recently restored film noir Too Late for Tears on December 29. On New Year’s Eve, TCM is presenting an entire day of the irresistible William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora in The Thin Man, After the Thin Man, Another Thin Man, Shadow of the Thin Man, The Thin Man Goes Home and Song of the Thin Man.
And on New Year’s Day, TCM is showing the superb proto-noirM (1931), Peter Lorre stars as a serial killer who preys on children. It’s a masterpiece by master director Fritz Lang (Metropolis), who later fled the Nazis to Hollywood and made several fine film noirs in the 50s. Lorre is compelling as a man plagued with a twisted compulsion. There’s no explicit violence, but you’ve never seen a more chilling solitary balloon. The city’s criminal underclass races with the police to hunt down the monster. The climax is a most unusual courtroom scene. If you’re going to see one pre-war European film – see this one.
Peter Lorre in M
And for the Holidays, here are movies from my Best Movies of 2015 – So Far that are available to stream or to rent on DVD:
The smartest road trip movie ever, The End of the Tour. It’s available streaming from Amazon Instant, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The unforgettable coming of age dramedy Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. It’s available streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play and now available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox.
The extraordinary Russian drama Leviathan, a searing indictment of society in post-Soviet Russia. Leviathan is available streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.
The hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
The Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy, the story of an extraordinarily gifted person’s escape from torment. Love & Mercy is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes and Vudu.
The gentle, thoughtful and altogether fresh dramedy I’ll See You In My Dreams with Blythe Danner, available to stream from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Here’s an offbeat choice for a Christmas movie – the raucous and raunchy high energy comedy Tangerine is set on Christmas Eve. Of course, it’s not a family movie in that it’s appropriate for children, but it is about families by choice. Tangerine is available to stream from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
It’s history. Now we all know that the subprime mortgage scam blew up in 2007 and brought global banking to its knees by September 2008. The supremely entertaining The Big Short takes us back to before the financial collapse, when only a few quirky smarty pants saw it coming. Director Adam McKay personalizes the crisis into an irreverent character driven drama with both whodunit and ticking bomb elements. It all adds up to an exciting, funny and anger-provoking experience.
The Big Short follows the parallel stories of the not-so-merry few who discovered the worthlessness of securities comprised of bad subprime loans. There’s a San Jose doctor-turned-fund manager (Christian Bale), a renegade Wall Street hedge fund manager (Steve Carell) and a couple of boy wonder investors in Boulder, Colorado. It’s a very unlikely bunch of prospective heroes. Bale’s doctor is so socially impervious that he seems to belong somewhere on the autism spectrum. Carell’s trader attends anger management group therapy, which is not helping him a damn bit. And the Boulder kids – well this IS their first rodeo.
The real star here is Adam McKay, whose previous work has been in low-brow comedies, most notably the Ron Burgundy movies. Remember, this is the story of guys in front of their computers figuring out the current and future values of other people’s home mortgages. McKay has turned this into an edge-of-your-seat thriller. That is remarkable.
McKay’s first challenge is helping us understand all the financial gobbledygook. McKay immediately breaks the Fourth Wall, with an opportunistic Wall Street banker (Ryan Gosling) opening the movie by speaking directly to the camera and explaining how home mortgages are securitized – and it turns out that we can understand it, after all. Throughout the film, McKay keeps interrupting the action with very funny cameos, so unexpected personalities can explain various financial instruments. I’m not going to reveal them, because much of the fun is the delightful surprise. But I will say that no one has ever explained something complicated with more clarity than a pop star, an economist and a crowd in a casino when they combine to illuminate us about the “synthetic CDO”.
As cynical and iconoclastic as they are, none of our heroes can imagine the breadth of the corruption and the scale of the impending financial meltdown. As Carell’s character digs deeper, he unearths the incentives for the bankers, insurers, rating agencies and mortgage retailers to lie and cheat and defraud – all built into the system. Carell’s face is filled with a combination of disgust and terror as he connects the dots. The Big Short opens with the Mark Twain quote: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” No truer words…
Carell and Bale are brilliant in The Big Short; both performances are awards-worthy. Gosling, Brad Pitt and Melissa Leo are all also excellent, as is Adepero Oduye (12 Years a Slave). I especially loved Jeremy Strong’s performance as Carell’s hyper intense right hand man. Strong has a particular gift for being memorable in historical dramas: Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Selma and as Lee Harvey Oswald in the overlooked Parkland.
Now we know that these guys were right when everyone else – including ALL the figures of authority – were saying that they were wrong. It’s an amazing story to watch.
