This week, make sure you see the year’s best movie, Nomadland. Plus a highly original first feature for a female writer-director and two strong recommendations on TCM.
ON VIDEO
Nomadland: The fierce authenticity of Frances McDormand’s performance and Chloé Zhao’s genius with nonprofessional actors illuminates this extraordinary film with humanity. It’s the year’s best movie. Streaming on Hulu.
Jumbo: A painfully shy girl, who is embarrassed by every human interaction,falls in love with a not-really-inanimate object. Jumbo is the first feature for writer-director Zoé Wittock, and it’s a helluva super-imaginative calling card. Ever bouncing between the sweet and the outre, Jumbo worked for me. Available to stream at Laemmle.
Other current films:
- Minari: who gets to decide on a family’s dream? Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.
- Sound of Metal: Seeking anything but stillness. Amazon (included with Prime).
- Black Bear: Ever surprising. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play
- Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You: Wiser and still vital. AppleTV.
- Mayor: potholes and tear gas, all in a day’s work. Roxie.
- MLK/FBI: about America then and about America today. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
- Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer: a good man tracks down evil. Netflix.
- Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: searing, with an electric performance. Netflix.
- The Personal History of David Copperfield: Dickins alive, at last. Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
- Another Round: Humanity buzzed. Amazon.
- Mank: biting the hand. Netflix.
- One Night in Miami: four icons share one pivotal moment. Amazon.
- Martin Eden: Jack London in an art film (link goes live soon). Laemmle.
- Ammonite: When the slow burn is a dud. Amazon.
ON TV
On March 6 and 7, Turner Classic Movies will present one my Overlooked Noir, a young Stanley Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss; it will be on Noir Alley with an intro and outro by Eddie Muller. It doesn’t take long to realize that Killer’s Kiss is not a typical film noir – there’s Kubrick’s own bracing visual style, an interracial relationship and a comically absurd fight to the death. The cast matched a couple one-hit wonders with the pioneering African-American actor and civil rights activist Frank Silvera.
And on March 10, TCM will air Harry Dean Stanton’s masterpiece in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas. In Paris Texas, Harry Dean plays Travis, a man so traumatized that he has disappeared and is found wandering across the desert and mistaken for a mute. As he is cared for by his brother (Dean Stockwell), he evolves from feral to erratic to troubled, but with a sense of tenderness and a determination to put things right. We see Travis as a madman who gains extraordinary lucidity about what wrong in his life and his own responsibility for it.
At the film’s climax, Travis speaks to Jane (Natassja Kinski) through a one-way mirror (she can’t see him). Spinning what at first seems like parable, Travis explains what happened to him – and to her – and why it happened. It’s a 20-minute monologue so captivating and touching that it rises to be recognized as one of the very greatest screen performances.
Paris, Texas is on my list of the fifty or so Greatest Movies of All Time.
