Grizzly Man

Movies to See Right Now

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OUT NOW

Peter Bogdanovich with Jesse Hawthorne Ficks at the Roxie

This Sunday, I was privileged to attend one of the year’s most stirring experiences of Bay Area cinema culture. The Roxie Theater screened two of director Peter Bogdanovich‘s films – the Oscar-winning The Last Picture Show (1971) and the hard-to-find Saint Jack (1979) – with the legendary Bogdanovich in attendance for two Q&A sessions. Speaking of The Last Picture Show, it’s a remarkable thing to watch a coming of age story about 18-year-olds when you are 18 and then again forty years later when you know stuff.

Check out the impressive program of the upcoming Mill Valley Film Festival: it’s an early look at the most prestigious movies of the year. If you miss the big movies at the MVFF, you can at least stream some of the Best Movies of 2019 – So Far – The Last Black Man in San Francisco, They Shall Not Grow Old, Amazing Grace and Booksmart are all available to be streamed.

OUT NOW

  • Downtown Abbey is a satisfying wrap-up for fans of the beloved PBS series.
  • Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is a Must See – one of Quentin Tarantino’s very, very best.
  • The family dramedy The Farewell is an audience-pleaser.
  • The Sound of Silence is an engrossing character study starring Peter Sarsgaard as a man confident in his obsession until… It’s had a limited run at the San Francisco’s Presidio and San Jose’s 3Below, and you can stream it on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

ON VIDEO

My Stream of the Week is Werner Herzog’s mesmerizing and darkly funny documentary Grizzly Man. Grizzly Man is a superb film, which made my own list of Best Movies of the 21st Century (and Sophia Coppola’s, too) and my Best Movies of 2005. It can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play, and it’s available on DVD from Netflix.

ON TV

On September 30, Turner Classic Movies brings us The Best Years of Our Lives. It’s an exceptionally well-crafted, contemporary snapshot of post WW II American society adapting to the challenges of peacetime. Justifiably won seven Oscars. Still a great and moving film.

Harold Russell, Dana Andrews and Frederic March in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

Stream of the Week: GRIZZLY MAN – a fool’s misadventure

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GRIZZLY MAN

Werner Herzog’s mesmerizing and darkly funny documentary Grizzly Man is about Timothy Treadwell, who had spent summers observing the brown bears (grizzlies) in Alaska’s Katmai National Park, and believed that he had “gained their trust”. Driven by his ill-advised dream to befriend the grizzlies, Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard essentially moved in with the grizzlies, camping by their fishing spot and personally interacting with them at close quarters. It did not end well.

Basically, grizzlies are hard-wired to hunt and eat humans. They are so fast that a human can’t escape one without a vehicle (or, possibly – but not for sure – tree climbing); They are so strong and fierce that a human can’t fend one off without a firearm (or, possibly, bear spray). This makes Treadwell’s’s quest remarkably foolhardy, This also makes Grizzly Man hilarious in a Darwin Awards way.

GRIZZLY MAN

As ridiculous as is Treadwell’s plan, this story had its life-and-death drama. Herzog’s presentation of a wristwatch and an audio recording is a moment that makes the hair on your neck stand up.

Werner Herzog, known for his German New Cinema art house hits of the 70s and 80s (Aguirre:The Wrath of God, Strozek Nosferatu the Vampyre, Fitzcarraldo), switched gears in 1997 with the underrated documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly and followed it with Grizzly Man. Since, Herzog has become a prolific and masterful documentarian.

In Grizzly Man, Herzog makes use of 100 hours of Treadwell’s own video footage of his misadventure. As we’ve come to expect, Herzog’s research is impressively resourceful, and he assembles his finds to construct a masterpiece of story-telling Most remarkably, Herzog has also become one of the greatest narrators of English language documentaries; somehow, his German-accented narrations are hypnotic.

Grizzly Man is a superb film, which made my own list of Best Movies of the 21st Century (and Sophia Coppola’s, too) and my Best Movies of 2005. It can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play, and it’s available on DVD from Netflix.