This week: four new 2020 films – The Traitor, Shooting the Mafia, Mae West: Dirty Blonde, The Ghost of Peter Sellers. Last week: five new 2020 films – Da 5 Bloods, Disclosure, Yourself and Yours, Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things and You Don’t Nomi. As a tribute to Carl Reiner, it’s time to revisit The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! Plus a great classic Western on TV.
ON VIDEO
The Traitor: A true life epic spanning four decades and three continents, The Traitor introduces us to the first and most important Sicilian Cosa Nostra informer. The Traitor can be rented from all the major streaming services.
Shooting the Mafia: Another movie about the Sicilian Mafia, this is the biodoc of Letizia Battaglia, whose photojournalistic specialty became photographing murder victims and also documented the grief, trauma and outrage of the Sicilian population. Shooting the Mafia can be streamed on iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.
Disclosure: This insightful (and even revelatory) documentary about the depiction of trans people on screen is moving and thought-provoking. Disclosure is streaming on Netflix.
Mae West: Dirty Blonde: I learned a lot from this excellent biopic: Mae West was more than a drop-in risque caricature – starting a movie career after age 40, she was an uncredited writer and producer of her films. And she did it in a prudish era when women’s aspirations were not encouraged (intentional understatement). Available on demand from PBS stations. Trailer.
The Ghost of Peter Sellers: This documentary tells the story of an uncompleted early 1970s pirate movie parody, Ghost in the Noonday Sun, sabotaged by its star, Peter Sellers. The doc is from the fraught perspective of the director, Peter Medak, whose career was harmed by the fiasco. The 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha (Amazon, iTunes) which chronicles Terry Gilliam’s disastrous attempt to film Don Quixote, is a much better and more entertaining movie than this one.
The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!: Appreciate Carl Reiner, the best Straight Man in American comedy, in this goodhearted and very, very funny Cold War parody.
The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:
- Driveways: I can’t think of a more authentic movie about intergenerational relationships than this charming, character-driven indie.
- The Lovebirds: A rom com with a playful plot and a truthful relationship.
- Da 5 Bloods: reflections on the Vietnam War and on the Black experience in America and a great Delroy Lindo (but it’s too long).
- Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things: A Must See for jazz fans.
- Yourself and Yours: The absurdism of Luis Buñuel meets the social awkwardness of Seinfeld.
- Electrick Children: magical Mormon runaways in Vegas.
- King in the Wilderness: an icon, floundering.
- The Bandit: A Hollywood buddy documentary that features some amazing movie stunts.
- Wind River: “This isn’t the land of backup, Jane. This is the land of you’re on your own.”
- Unfriended: Teenagers find horror on their own webcams.
- Touching the Void: the gripping true life story of a mountaineer who had to cut his climbing partner’s rope.
- Searching: A ticking clock thriller that captures the Silicon Valley vibe.
- The T.A.M.I. Show: The first concert film, featuring eight future Rock and Roll Hall of Famers.
- Cold Case Hammarskjöld: An investigatory documentary that sends-up the genre.
- Spaceship Earth: A visionary scientific experiment, unraveled from human foibles.
- Very Semi-Serious: glorious The New Yorker cartoons.
- The Whistlers: a shady cop and a mysterious woman walk a tightrope of treachery.
- The Wild Goose Lake: vivid nights in the Chinese underworld.
- Radio Dreams: stranger in a strange and funny land.
ON TV
On July 6, Turner Classic Movies presents what is perhaps the best of director Anthony Mann’s “psychological Westerns”, Winchester ’73 (1950) with James Stewart. Winchester ’73 taps the quest and revenge genres, and it has the Western’s requisite Indian battle and climactic shootout. Westerns were oft about Good versus Bad, but Mann makes Jimmy Stewart’s character in Winchester ’73 much more complex and morally ambiguous – and he has what we now call “unresolved issues”. The bad guys are Dan Duryea at his oiliest and Stephen McNally at his most brutish. The 29-year-old Shelly Winters finds herself as the object of several characters’ desires. Millard Mitchell is perfect as Jimmy’s sidekick. One of my favorite character actors, Jay C. Flippen, shows up as a cavalry sergeant.
REMEMBRANCES
Carl Reiner, from earlier this week.
Director Joel Schumacher had been a department store window dresser when he broke into movies as a set designer. Then he wrote the screenplay for the wonderful guilty pleasure Car Wash, which led to directing the similar DC Cab. His career took off when he launched the Brat Pack with St Elmo’s Fire, and followed that with Batman and Robin. My favorite Schumacher film is the 2002 thriller Phone Booth, in which an Everyman – or is he? – (Colin Farrell) is trapped in a phone booth by a sniper villain (Kiefer Sutherland); Phone Booth can be streamed from all the usual sources.