Dick Johnson Is Dead – The Movie Gourmet

This week: a doumentary, a Feel Good narrative and a docufantasy, all from a female point of view.

The Mill Valley Film Festival is still running, and you can still watch most of the films at home through this weekend. Here is my MVFF preview.

ON VIDEO

Today only – stream She Is the Ocean. In this visually stunning documentary, fearless and high-achieving women celebrate the oceans in science and sport.

The Artist’s Wife: Lena Olin’s performance as a woman facing the decline of her older husband with remarkable generosity. A Feel Good.

Dick Johnson Is Dead: A daughter and her dad face the end of his life in this funny, heartfelt and frequently bizarre docufantasy. One of a kind.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp: I wrote about 1943 Powell-Pressburger masterpiece last week. If you missed it last night on TCM, you can stream it from Amazon, AppleTV and the Criterion Channel.

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

Sibyl: trashy, but in that sly and expert French way.
#Alive: A Korean Home Alone with zombies.
Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story: badass female movie-making
The August Virgin: searching for reinvention. Best Movies of 2020 – So Far.
An Easy Girl: summer school in Cannes
She Dies Tomorrow: you have not seen this before
Prime Suspect: binging one of TV’s greatest episodic characters.
The Speed Cubers: odd, and then profound
Yes, God, Yes: learning that hypocrisy is a choice.
Dateline-Saigon: the truth will out
The 11th Green: a thinking person’s conspiracy
Driveways: I can’t think of a more authentic movie about intergenerational relationships than this charming, character-driven indie. Best Movies of 2020 – So Far.
The Lovebirds: A rom com with a playful plot and a truthful relationship.

ON TV

Tonight, Turner Classic Movies airs In a Lonely Place (1950). The most unsettlingly sexy film noiress Gloria Grahame falls for the troubled screenwriter Humphrey Bogart, a guy with a MAJOR anger management issue; once she’s hooked, she realizes that he might be a murderer after all…Nicholas Ray directs. In a Lonely Place justifiably made the BBC’s list of the 100 Greatest American Films. The Czar of Noir Eddie Muller has named it as his #1 film noir.

Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart in IN A LONELY PLACE

Documentarian Kirsten Johnson and her dad face the end of his life in this funny, heartfelt and frequently bizarre film. Dick Johnson Is Dead is so highly original that I would place it in its own genre – docufantasy.

Kirsten’s father Dick Johnson is an 85-year-old psychiatrist whose increasing forgetfulness and frailty is forcing hm to leave his Seattle house and move onto Kirsten’s NYC apartment. As generally sunny as he is, his loss of vigor and independence is hard on him. His impending loss of memory (and of life itself is hard on them both.

Kirsten chronicles the familiar – the doctor’s appointments, the closing of her dad’s practice, the selling of his car and the downsizing of his possessions. And then she grapples with his mortality by staging a series of fictional demises – as he “dies” in a series of quirky accidents, like getting a large appliance dropped on him from a highrise. Other scenes imagine Dick in heaven, dancing with her mom, and dining with Frederick Douglass and Buster Keaton.

Dick Johnson is indulgent with his daughter and one helluva good sport. There’s even a Seattle “funeral” while Dick is still alive and able to watch from the wings.

Offbeat as it is, the core of Dick Johnson Is Dead is wistful and deeply personal. Dick Johnson Is Dead is streaming on Netflix.

Movies to See Right Now (at home)

DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD: funny, heartfelt and frequently bizarre