Citizen Koch

Movies to See Right Now

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Matthew McConaughey in TRUE DETECTIVE
Matthew McConaughey in TRUE DETECTIVE

My top picks:

  • Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin hits every note perfectly. I love this little movie, and it may only be in theaters for another week, so see it while you can.
  • It’s not up to Clint Eastwood’s usual standard, but Jersey Boys, is mostly fun – and features another jaunty performance by Christopher Walken.
  • If you look for it in theaters, you can still find my top movie of the year so far, the transcendent Polish drama Ida.

Among other movies out now:

My DVD/Stream of the week – perfect for binge-viewing on the holiday weekend – is the eight one-hour episodes of HBO’s True Detective. It’s a dark tale of two mismatched detectives – each tormented by his own demons – obsessed by a whodunit in contemporary back bayou Lousiana. Wood Harrelson is very good, and Matthew McConaughey’s performance may have been the best on TV this year. True Detective is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from HBO GO.

Turner Classic Movies also offers a pretty appetizing movie smorgasbord this week, starting with The Big Steal (1949) on July 8  – Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer are chased all over Mexico by William Bendix.  Then on July 10, we have three great documentaries:

  • The 1968 Salesman – as good of a depiction of the sales life as Glengarry Glen Ross);
  • Harlan County, U.S.A, the 1979 Oscar-winner Filmmaker Barbara Kopple embedded herself among the striking coal miners and got amazing footage – including of herself threatened and shot at.  Also one of my 5 Great Hillbilly Movies.
  • The Times of Harvey Milk  – the Oscar winner from 1984.  The real story behind Milk with the original witnesses.  One of the best political movies ever.

Movies to See Right Now

by
A COFFEE IN BERLIN (OH BOY)
A COFFEE IN BERLIN (OH BOY)

Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin hits every note perfectly.  I love this little movie, and it may only be in theaters for another week, so see it while you can.

It’s not up to Clint Eastwood’s usual standard, but Jersey Boys, is mostly fun – and features another jaunty performance by Christopher Walken.

Among other movies in theaters now:

  • I found the political documentary Citizen Koch to be righteous but lame.
  • I wasn’t a big fan of the bleak and hyperviolent The Rover, either;watch writer-director David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom instead.

My DVD/Stream of the week is the Backwoods thriller Joe, starring an unusually retrained Nicholas Cage and featuring two other great performances from lesser knowns. Joe is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

This week Turner Classic Movies is airing a very fun heist movie – the original 1969 The Italian Job with Michael Caine.  Another good choice is the WW II spy thriller The Fallen Sparrow with John Garfield and a 22-year-old Maureen O’Hara.

Citizen Koch: righteous but lame

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xxx Koch (center) in CITIZEN KOCH
David Koch (center) in CITIZEN KOCH

The advocacy documentary Citizen Koch exposes the terrible effects of the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allows the right-wing billionaire Koch brothers to anonymously spend unlimited treasure to promote political candidates, measures and legislation that I (The Movie Gourmet) abhor.  Filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, who have worked with Michael Moore, share Moore’s use of documentary to persuade by observation: here are the facts that will lead you to agree with us.

The very best aspect of Citizen Koch is the core story of Governor Scott Walker’s assault on public employees and their unions in Wisconsin.   Citizen Koch meticulously connects the dots between the Koch Brothers’ strategy of degrading the Democratic Party’s strength by weakening public employee unions and Walker’s machinations.  It’s a conspiracy in plain sight.  Citizen Koch is at its best when this thread is told from the perspective of a few Wisconsin public employees – who are themselves Republicans.

Unfortunately, what could have been a superb film on the political conflict in Wisconsin gets flabby and diluted with threads about Citizens United and Charles and David Koch.  The worst part is a fourth thread about Buddy Roemer, a sleazy opportunist who has changed political parties three times but is held up as some sort of beacon of good government; it’s outrageously naive and potentially discredits the rest of the film.

And here’s a little controversy that is illustrative of the Koch Brothers political power.  PBS was going to air Citizen Koch on its documentary series POV, but chickened out because David Koch sits on the board of PBS’ NYC affiliate WNET and is a huge contributor to PBS products like Nova.