Deenis O’Keefe and Ann Sheridan in WOMAN ON THE RUN
My favorite movie-going experiences in 2015:
San Francisco’s Noir City film fest, with the double feature Woman on the Run and Born to Be Bad.
Cinequest, especially seeing the raucously funny Wild Tales with The Wife and friends at a packed California Theatre and seeing the exquisite and lyrical Georgian drama Corn Island on the recommendation of international film programmer Charlie Cockey.
Turner Classic Movies’ Summer of Darkness, program of film noir, which allowed me to discover two new noir favorites: 99 River Street and Witness to Murder.
The wonderful surprise of the very funny and family centric documentary Meet the Patels at a Camera Cinema Club, complete with a Skype interview with the Patel family itself.
A particularly strong program at the San Francisco International Film Festival, where I saw The End of the Tour, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, The Look of Silence, Listen to Me Marlon, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead and Very Semi-serious.
The Wife taking me to a luxurious screening of Spectre at the Los Gatos Theater with its black leather sofas and ottomans.
Happening to be in Spain during the first weekend of the Sevilla European Film Festival, and getting to catch Mustang with The Wife and my niece Maeve.
Far from the Madding Crowd, is a satisfying choice for those looking for a bodice ripper. If you’re looking for a scare, try the inventive and non-gory horror gem It Follows. Don’t bother with Slow West, a failed Western that never gets into rhythm.
I really enjoyed the Argentine comedy The Film Critic, which is now available for streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
I really enjoyed the dark comedy Gemma Bovery, in which Fabrice Luchini – a treasure of comic cinema – sees a famous novel being acted out in real lie and jumps right in himself.
My Stream of the Week is the So Bad It’s Funny An American Hippie in Israel, available streaming from Amazon and Xbox Video.
Don’t forget that Turner Classic Movies is filling each Friday in June and July with film noir in its Summer of Darkness series, hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir. The series schedule includes several favorites of my Overlooked Noir.
Turner Classic Movies is playing the unforgettable The Man Who Would Be King (1975) on June 6. Sean Connery and Michael Caine star as two vagabond British soldiers adventuring in colonial India when one of them is mistaken for a god by the indigenous people. They play the misunderstanding into a kingdom – until hubris, greed and lust causes them to reach a little too high. It’s a great story, well told by director John Huston. Connery and Caine are wonderful.
On June 9, TCM is playing some of the greats of early 1970s American cinema: Annie Hall, Shaft, Dog Day Afternoon and Mean Streets. Put on your flairs and tune in.
Michael Caine and Sean Connery in THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
Occasionally I see a movie SO BAD that it’s entertaining and I add it to my Bad Movie Festival. The latest is An American Hippie in Israel from 1972, which is jaw-droppingly bad and unintentionally hilarious. An American Hippie in Israel has it all – a dreadful screenplay, poor acting and shoddy production values. Fortunately, Grindhouse Releasing rescued An American Hippie in Israel in 2013 so we can add it to the canon of cult classics.
After “bumming around Europe” an American hippie named Mike (Asher Tzarfati) decides to visit Israel. He walks out of the airport and hitches a ride with a young Israeli woman Elizabeth (Lilli Avidan) who has a large convertible. She also has a pad with shag carpet, on which they have sex. The sex happens when he utters the diatribe, “You fools, stop pushing buttons! You fools…fools…fools..” and she jumps him mid-harangue. I predict that, as more people see An American Hippie in Israel, the “fools” monologue will become as popular as the “She’s tearing me apart!” from The Room and “O my God!” from Troll 2. (Part of the “fools speech” can be found at 2:47 of the trailer below.)
Mike and Elizabeth head out across Israel in the convertible and find local Israeli hippies with whom to smoke pot and dance awkwardly. Two more hippies join them on a road trip, the impressively homely Komo (Schmuel Wolf) and comely Françoise (Tsilla Karny). The last half of the movie is set on a rocky “island”, where the two couples, clad in swimsuits or less, camp out, have more sex and go survivalist. Alas, then they get all “Lord of Flies” and it doesn’t end well.
There’s a fair amount of nudity in An American Hippie in Israel, and its cast is noteworthy for the most severe tan lines in cinema history.
AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL
The oddities include:
an opening credits sequence with a road roller that is mashing down the soil, for some never explained reason;
two murderous guys in black suits and top hats who have been following Mike around the world and pop up randomly; and
some floating objects that are supposed to pass for giant sharks.
But the perhaps An American Hippie in Israel’s moviemaking low-light is a dream sequence that is ACTED (not FILMED) in slo mo. In the dream, Mike is wielding an over-sized hammer to smash two giant computers (the early kind of mainframes with reels of tape) worn by human figures; the audience can tell that Tzarfati is running and swinging the hammer VERY slowly to ape the effects of slow motion photography.
Unsurprisingly, it was the only film credit for director and co-writer Amos Sefer. I saw American Hippie in Israel on Turner Classic Movies, but it is also available streaming from Amazon and Xbox Video. You can purchase the DVD and Blu-ray from Grindhouse Releasing.
