Marriage Story

Movies to See Right Now

by
Brad Pitt in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD

It’s time for the Oscars, and The Movie Gourmet will be rooting for Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood and Parasite, which lead my Best Movies of 2019. I’ll be rooting for Adam Driver (actor), Brad Pitt (supporting actor), Laura Dern (supporting actress), Bong Joon Ho or Quentin Tarantino (director and original screenplay) and Taika Waititi (adapted screenplay for Jojo Rabbit).

Roger Deakins should win the cinematography Oscar for 1917; overall, I wasn’t impressed with 1917, except for the technical achievements, so I would be OK with 1917 winning some technical Oscars. I haven’t yet seen the favorite for best documentary, American Factory, which is streamable.

If Honeyland or The Joker win anything, I will become nauseous. If 1917 takes Best Picture, it will be projectile vomit.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is streaming on Netflix.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s streaming on Netflix.
  • Uncut Gems is a neo-noir in a pressure cooker. Adam Sandler channels a guy racing through a gambling addiction and the resultant financial desperation. It’s the most wire-to-wire movie tension in years.
  • Rian Johnson’s Knives Out turns a drawing room murder mystery into a wickedly funny send-up of totally unjustified entitlement.
  • Refusing to play it safe, director Francisco Meirelles elevates The Two Popes from would have been a satisfying acting showcase into a thought-provoker. It’s streaming on Netflix.
  • 1917 is technically groundbreaking, but the screenplay neither thrilled me nor moved me.
  • The earnest documentary Honeyland failed to keep me interested.

ON VIDEO

The character-driven suspenser The Gift is more than a satisfying thriller – it’s a well-made and surprisingly thoughtful film that I keep mulling over. The Gift is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon in ATLANTIC CITY

Turner Classic Movies continues its 31 Days of Oscar on February 8 with Atlantic City, one of only 43 movies that have been nominated for all of the Big Five Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay). Susan Sarandon plays Sally, a hard luck waitress in Atlantic City at its shabbiest. She’s never met anyone like her neighbor Lou (Burt Lancaster), an elderly small-time hood, who behaves as if he’s mob royalty, despite the fact that he lives across the alley from Sally. Despite his station, Lou has the confidence that comes from having seen every situation before. Sally’s nogoodnik ex entangles the two in a life or death drug buy. Top rate.

Susan Sarandon and Burt Lancaster in ATLANTIC CITY

REMEMBRANCE

Here’s my tribute to Kirk Douglas.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Tao Zhao in ASH IS PUREST WHITE – this week’s video pick

This weekend I’m back in San Francisco for the close of Noir City, Eddie Muller’s great film noir festival. Here are my recommendations and the eighteen films you can’t see anywhere else.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is streaming on Netflix.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s streaming on Netflix.
  • Uncut Gems is a neo-noir in a pressure cooker. Adam Sandler channels a guy racing through a gambling addiction and the resultant financial desperation. It’s the most wire-to-wire movie tension in years.
  • Rian Johnson’s Knives Out turns a drawing room murder mystery into a wickedly funny send-up of totally unjustified entitlement.
  • Refusing to play it safe, director Francisco Meirelles elevates The Two Popes from would have been a satisfying acting showcase into a thought-provoker. It’s streaming on Netflix.
  • 1917 is technically groundbreaking, but the screenplay neither thrilled me nor moved me.
  • The earnest documentary Honeyland failed to keep me interested.

ON VIDEO

My video pick, Ash Is Purest White, is writer-director Zhangke Jia’s portrait of an unforgettable woman surviving betrayal, the crime world and the tidal waves of change in modern China, all embedded in a gangster neo-noir. Tao Zhao, Jia’s wife and muse, gives a tour de force performance. Ash is Purest White is on my list of Best Movies of 2019, and it’s streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

On February 1, The Candidate reappears on Turner Classic Movies’ 31 Days of Oscar. The Candidate may still be the greatest political film of all-time, with a searing leading performance by Robert Redford. My day job is in politics, and so many moments in The Candidate are absolutely real. Excellent supporting performances by Peter Boyle, Don Porter and Melvyn Douglas. (Significant parts of The Candidate were shot in the Bay Area, including San Jose’s Eastridge mall and Oakland’s Paramount Theatre.)

THE CANDIDATE – Robert Redford learns that running for elected office has its disadvantages

Movies to See Right Now

by
Jean Gabin (wearung shades) and Alain Delon (with dice) in ANY NUMBER CAN WIN, playing Sunday at NOIR CITY

This weekend I’m in San Francisco at Noir City, Eddie Muller’s great film noir festival. Here are my recommendations and the eighteen films you can’t see anywhere else.

And ICYMI my first look at Cinequest 2020.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is streaming on Netflix.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s streaming on Netflix.
  • Uncut Gems is a neo-noir in a pressure cooker. Adam Sandler channels a guy racing through a gambling addiction and the resultant financial desperation. It’s the most wire-to-wire movie tension in years.
  • Rian Johnson’s Knives Out turns a drawing room murder mystery into a wickedly funny send-up of totally unjustified entitlement.
  • Refusing to play it safe, director Francisco Meirelles elevates The Two Popes from would have been a satisfying acting showcase into a thought-provoker. It’s streaming on Netflix.
  • 1917 is technically groundbreaking, but the screenplay neither thrilled me nor moved me.
  • The earnest documentary Honeyland failed to keep me interested.

ON VIDEO

My Stream of the Week is H.P. Mendoza’s refreshing hoot, Colma: The Musical. You can stream it from Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

REMEMBRANCES

Best known as member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Terry Jones was responsible for much of the troupe’s surreal and wicked humor; he embraced cross dressing as British matrons in Python skits. Jones thought up And Now for Something Completely Different, co-directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail and wrote the The Meaning of Life. Jones wrote and directed one of the wittiest films ever, The Life of Brian.

Jo Shishido in CRUEL GUN STORY

Actor Jo Shishido starred in a zillion Japanese crime action films, most notably Cruel Gun Story (1964). Oddly, his career as a leading man took off after his plastic surgery, intended to emphasize his cheekbones, left him with puffy cheeks.

ON TV

On January 25 and 26, Turner Classic Movies is presenting the 1950 noir thriller Try and Get Me! (also known as The Sound of Fury), It’s fitting that Eddie Muller will introduce this film on TCM’s Noir Alley because Muller’s Film Noir Foundation restored Try and Get Me! (and I first saw it at the FNF’s Noir City film fest).

Frank Lovejoy plays a hard luck guy who is talked into a crime by a sociopath (Lloyd Bridges), and the crime becomes worse than he ever imagined. The story basically mirrors that of the 1933 Brooke Hart kidnapping in San Jose, which resulted in the Bay Area’s last public lynching – in San Jose’s St. James Park.

Lloyd Bridges and Frank Lovejoy in TRY AND GET ME!

Movies to See Right Now

by
George MacKay in 1917

The best film still in theaters, Parasite, has garnered six Oscar nominations, and is certain to win the Best International Oscar. Marriage Story also has six Oscar nods. But I’m not a big fan of 1917.

Remembrance: Director Ivan Passer came out of the Czech New Wave (Intimate Lighting) to work in the US (fifteen features including award-winning Haunted Summer and Robert Duvall’s Stalin). My favorite Passer film is his 1981 Cutter’s Way, with its early Jeff Bridges and fine performances by John Heard and Lisa Eichhorn – and it’s still the best film set in Santa Barbara. I watched it again recently and it still holds up; you can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Jeff Bridges and John Heard in CUTTER’S WAY

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is playing in just a couple Bay Area theaters and is now streaming on Netflix.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s both in theaters and streaming on Netflix.
  • Uncut Gems is a neo-noir in a pressure cooker. Adam Sandler channels a guy racing through a gambling addiction and the resultant financial desperation. It’s the most wire-to-wire movie tension in years.
  • Rian Johnson’s Knives Out turns a drawing room murder mystery into a wickedly funny send-up of totally unjustified entitlement.
  • Refusing to play it safe, director Francisco Meirelles elevates The Two Popes from would have been a satisfying acting showcase into a thought-provoker. It’s streaming on Netflix.
  • 1917 is technically groundbreaking, but the screenplay neither thrilled me nor moved me.
  • The earnest documentary Honeyland failed to keep me interested.

ON VIDEO

My Stream/DVD of the Week is Brian De Palma’s gangster epic Carlito’s Way, starring a brilliant Al Pacino. Carlito’s Way plays frequently on premium television channels and is available on DVD and Blue-Ray from Netflix. Carlito’s Way can also be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

And where else can you find a guy who writes about Cutter’s Way and Carlito’s Way in the same blog post?

ON TV

On January 18, Turner Classic Movies airs The Man Who Cheated Himself, one of my Overlooked Noir. A cop falls for a dame who makes him go bad – but it’s not just any cop and not just any dame. Bonus: there are plenty of glorious mid-century San Francisco locations.

Jane Wyatt amd Lee J. Cobb in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF

Movies to See Right Now

by
Adam Sandler in UNCUT GEMS

Make plans now to attend Noir City, the great San Francisco festival of film noir.

And, ICYMI:

Remembrances

“I just want to say one word to you. Just one word…Plastics.” Screenwriter Buck Henry wrote some of the most iconic dialogue in the movies. “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me!” Henry was nominated for Oscars for adapting The Graduate screenplay and for directing Heaven Can Wait. Along with The Graduate, I also love his screenplay for What’s Up, Doc? He also played the hotel clerk in The Graduate and played himself in The Player, pitching The Graduate II. He appeared often on Saturday Night Live, once getting nipped by John Belushi’s samurai sword. His NYT obit includes his birth name and other tidbits.

Actress Sue Lyon died at the very end of last year and hadn’t made a movie in forty years. She is best remembered for her performance at age 16 as the titular character in Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 Lolita. She also appeared in The Night of the Iguana and in one of my guilty faves, The Flim Flam Man.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is playing in just a couple Bay Area theaters and is now streaming on Netflix.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s both in theaters and streaming on Netflix.
  • Uncut Gems is a neo-noir in a pressure cooker. Adam Sandler channels a guy racing through a gambling addiction and the resultant financial desperation. It’s the most wire-to-wire movie tension in years.
  • Rian Johnson’s Knives Out turns a drawing room murder mystery into a wickedly funny send-up of totally unjustified entitlement.
  • Refusing to play it safe, director Francisco Meirelles elevates The Two Popes from would have been a satisfying acting showcase into a thought-provoker. It’s streaming on Netflix.

ON VIDEO

My Streams of the Week are the six Best Movies of 2019 – So Far that are already available to stream. This week, I’m featuring They Shall Not Grow Old: a generation finally understood. Now you can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

On January 12, Turner Classic Movies will present the 1934 screwball comedy Twentieth Century, which holds up as well today as it did 85 years ago. A flamboyantly narcissistic Broadway producer (John Barrymore) has fallen on hard times and hops a transcontinental train to persuade his former star (Carole Lombard), now an A-list movie star, to headline his new venture. Barrymore’s shameless self-entitlement and hyper dramatic neediness makes for one of the funniest performances in the movies.

TWENTIETH CENTURY

Best Movies of 2019

by
Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD

It’s time for my Top Ten list.

To get on my year-end list, a movie has to be one that thrills me while I’m watching it and one that I’m still thinking about a couple of days later. I usually end up with a Top Ten and another 5-15 mentions. Here’s last year’s list. This year, I’m still waiting to see Uncut Gems and Little Women.

It was difficult for me to rank the top three films, very different from each other as they are. Here goes:

  1. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood: masterpiece.
  2. Parasite: social inequity – what’s really at stake.
  3. Marriage Story: the comedy helps us watch the tragedy.
  4. The Irishman: gangsters – an epic reflection.
  5. The Last Black Man in San Francisco:  the most stark reality, only dream-like. 
  6. Ash Is Purest White: a survivor’s journey.
  7. Jojo Rabbit: a joyous and hilarious movie about the inculcation of hatred.
  8. Long Day’s Journey into Night:  obsession and a vivid darkness.  
  9. They Shall Not Grow Old: a generation finally understood.
  10. 63 Up: a generation faces mortality.

The rest of the best are Amazing Grace, Knives Out, Booksmart and Midnight Family.

Three of my top eight are from Asia; two of my top four are from Netflix. You can read more about these films, including how to stream most of them at Best Movies of 2020.

Yeo-jeong Jo and Kang-ho Song in PARASITE

Movies to See Right Now

by
MARRIAGE STORY

It doesn’t get much better at the movies than Christmas week. There’s a great selection and you don’t even need to leave home to watch Marriage Story or The Irishman.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is playing in just a couple Bay Area theaters and is now streaming on Netflix.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s both in theaters and streaming on Netflix.
  • Rian Johnson’s Knives Out turns a drawing room murder mystery into awickedly funny send-up of totally unjustified entitlement.
  • Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter.
  • In his Pain and Glory, master filmmaker Pedro Almodovar invites us into the most personal aspects of his own life, illuminated by Antonio Banderas’ career-topping performance.

ON VIDEO

My Streams of the Week are the six Best Movies of 2019 – So Far that are already available to stream. This week, I’m featuring Long Day’s Journey into Night:  obsession and a vivid darkness. It can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

ON TV

On December 23, Turner Classic Movies is airing BOTH the 1940 and 1944 versions of Gaslight. My essay on both movies and gaslighting in domestic violence is here.

And on December 26, Turner Classic Movies presents Richard Attenborough’s Young Winston (1972), with Simon Ward as the young Winston Churchill. As a young man, Churchill was already risking life and limb to gain celebrity and build a public reputation. Young Churchill depicts his brief career in the military as an insubordinate daredevil in India, Sudan and the Boer War. It’s a good story, and, as a bonus, Simon Ward bears a remarkable physical resemblance to the young Churchill.

Simon Ward in YOUNG WINSTON

Movies to See Right Now

by
Scarlett Johannson and Adam Driver in MARRIAGE STORY

Of the four top movies of the year, you can still find Parasite in theaters and you can already stream Marriage Story, The Irishman and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.

Watch out for the very special opportunity to see a virtually lost film from 1976, Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein at the Roxie and BAMPFA.

If you enjoy Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, check out his equally inventive take on another genre, the neo-noir Brick.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is playing in just a couple Bay Area theaters and is now streaming on Netflix.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s both in theaters and streaming on Netflix.
  • Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter.
  • In his Pain and Glory, master filmmaker Pedro Almodovar invites us into the most personal aspects of his own life, illuminated by Antonio Banderas’ career-topping performance.
  • Harriet is excellent history (and Harriet Tubman belongs on the twenty dollar bill), but it’s not great cinema.
  • The atmospheric slow burn neo-noir Motherless Brooklyn gets postwar New York City right, but it’s too long.
  • Loro, Paolo Sorrentino’s send-up of Silvio Berlusconi is much more interesting visually than it is thematically.

ON VIDEO

My Streams of the Week are the six Best Movies of 2019 – So Far that are already available to stream. This week, I’m featuring Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood: masterpiece.

ON TV

I have NO TV recommendations this week – get out there and see the year’s best in theaters!

MARRIAGE STORY: the comedy helps us watch the tragedy

by
MARRIAGE STORY

Noah Baumbach’s family dramedy Marriage Story, one of the very best films of 2019, traces two good people who care for each other at the end of their marriage.  It’s a heartfelt film about a personal tragedy that has some of the funniest moments on screen this year.

Charlie (Adam Driver) is a theater director and Nicole (Scarlett Johannson) is an actress.   They are married with an eight-year-old son Henry.  Nicole’s career is taking her to California, while Charlie’s is anchored to his beloved New York.  Adults might be able to manage a bicoastal relationship, but the kid needs to have his school and his friends in one place or the other. 

The two try to complete an amicable divorce, but their disagreement over the kid’s primary home unintentionally plunges them into a litigation nightmare, with a cascade of stress added by the lawyers and the courts.  It’s been written elsewhere, but I need to add that Nicole and Charlie are horrified by a system that is working as designed.  There’s a wonderful shot of Charlie and Nicole sitting apart on an near-empty subway car, exhausted, bereft and unable to support each other.

In a masterstroke, Baumbach introduces his lead characters with each spouse’s assessment of what is so lovable about the other.  Then we sober up when we learn what prompted the essays.

We relate to both Charlie and Nicole, and Driver and Johansson perfectly inhabit these good folks, slipping into a deeper nightmare with each step in the process.  Near the end, the two have the raw argument that they had each been too nice to have before.

I think that the reason Marriage Story works is that Johansson and Driver can go through their characters’ pain with complete authenticity while amidst all the funny supporting characters.  

Laura Dern and Ray Liotta play top echelon Divorce Lawyers to the Stars. Alan Alda plays a sage older attorney who has lost something off his fastball.  Dern’s riotously funny performance is a lock for an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.  Dern, Liotta, Alda, Julie Haggerty, Merritt Wever and Wallace Shawn are each hilarious.  Azhy Robertson (Juliet, Naked) is very good as the kid.

At one point, the court appoints a child evaluator to visit Charlie and judge his relationship with his child.  Having any stranger parachute into your home, with your parenting rights at stake, would be stressful.   Martha Kelly is superb as an especially humorless evaluator, an oddball impervious to Charlie’s charms and oblivious to any of his positive attributes.  As things start going wrong, Charlie gets more and more desperate and the scene gets funnier.

Scarlett Johannson and Adam Driver in MARRIAGE STORY

Director Noah Baumbach’s screenplay is informed by the end of his own marriage to actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. He acknowledges “a connection to the material”, but that it’s not only about his divorce. He is generous enough to write the character of Charlie with self-absorbed cluelessness about his impact to Nicole’s career aspirations.

I liked Baumbach’s first movie The Squid and the Whale, about his own parents’ divorce. But my reaction to all his subsequent work until now has ranged from to indifference to antipathy; “detest” is the adjective that springs to mind. Despite my bias, I gotta admit that Marriage Story is so, so good that it solidifies Baumbach’s place as an American auteur. Baumbach should head into awards season as the favorite for the screenplay Oscar.

A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. It’s a masterpiece, and among the very best cinema of 2019. It’s a Must See. I saw Marriage Story in early October at the Mill Valley Film Festival.  You can find it theaters now, and it will stream on Netflix beginning on Friday, December 6.

Movies to See Right Now

by
PARASITE. Photo courtesy of Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) .

Three of the best four movies of the year so far are in theaters this weekend: Parasite, Marriage Story and The Irishman.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is playing in just a couple Bay Area theaters and will be streaming on Netflix on December 6. Complete review coming this weekend.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s in theaters now, and will stream on Netflix on November 27. Complete review coming this weekend.
  • Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter.
  • In his Pain and Glory, master filmmaker Pedro Almodovar invites us into the most personal aspects of his own life, illuminated by Antonio Banderas’ career-topping performance.
  • Harriet is excellent history (and Harriet Tubman belongs on the twenty dollar bill), but it’s not great cinema.
  • The atmospheric slow burn neo-noir Motherless Brooklyn gets postwar New York City right, but it’s too long.
  • The raucous romp Zombieland Double Tap is a fun change of pace to the serious fare in theaters.
  • I liked the Isabelle Huppert drama Frankie, but the Mill Valley Film Festival audience was very indifferent at the screening; I’m guessing that folks failed to warm to an ambiguous ending that leaves some plot threads unresolved.
  • Loro, Paolo Sorrentino’s send-up of Silvio Berlusconi is much more interesting visually than it is thematically.

ON VIDEO

My Stream of the Week is All the Way, with Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Trumbo) becoming the first actor to capture LBJ in all his facets – a man who was boring and square on television but frenetic, forceful and ever-dominating in person. LBJ’s 1964 makes for a stirring story, and All the Way is a compelling film. You can stream it from HBO GO, Amazon’s HBO Now,  iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

On November 27, Turner Classic Movies 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.

Harry Dean Stanton in PARIS, TEXAS
Natassja Kinski and Harry Dean Stanton in PARIS, TEXAS