Stalag 17

Movies to See Right Now

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Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.

This week I’m diving deep into the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). Here’s my festival preview.

OUT NOW

This week’s top picks:

  • The wonderfully dark, dark comedy The Death of Stalin.
  • Another dark comedy, this one about two teen girl sociopaths, Thoroughbreds.
  • Outside In: Now on Netflix, this fine Lynn Shelton drama about a man returning to his community after 20 years in prison is an acting showcase for Kaitlin Dever (Justified), Jay Duplass (Transparent) and, especially, Edie Falco. Falco’s performance is stunning.
  • The Last Movie Star: An aged action movies star (Burt Reynolds playing someone very similar to Burt Reynolds) examines his life choices. Funny and sentimental (in a good way).
  • Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story is the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch.
  • The Leisure Seeker is an Alzheimer’s road trip dramedy with Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. Mirren and Sutherland are excellent, possibly enough to see this in a theater.

VIDEO

In tribute to SFFILM, my Stream of the Week is from last year’s SFFILM Festival: NUTS! is the persistently hilarious (and finally poignant) documentary about the rise and fall of a medical and radio empire – all built on goat testicle “implantation” surgery in gullible humans. NUTS! is available to stream from Amazon (free with Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

TV

Tonight, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1964 serial killer movie The Strangler, with its brilliant and eccentric performance by Victor Buono.

And on April 8, TCM will air Stalag 17 (1960), adapted and directed by the great Billy Wilder. This is a taut WW II POW drama from a play written by two former POWs. If it’s not bad enough being held in a Nazi prison camp, there is a German mole informing on the prisoners. The POWs blame the wrong guy – the cynic played by William Holden – and he must uncover and expose the real traitor and help a POW in peril to escape.

This is a thriller, not a comedy, but you can’t tell from this trailer, which oversells the humor; it makes you expect Hogan’s Heroes.

10 Best Prison Movies

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So how does A Prophet stack up against other films in that time honored genre – the Prison Movie? Can a French film rank high among the Alcatraz, Sing Sing and Folsom fare?

My top ten includes familiar themes – the fact-based stories, the great escape attempts, the characters who resist the oppressive authority and those who work the system to become crime bosses.  Plus Death Row.  My list includes American penitentiaries, British, French and Turkish prisons, enemy POW camps and Southern chain gangs.  But some of the best known prison movies do NOT make the cut.

Edward James Olmos, Pepe Serna and William Forsythe in a very under rated prison movie

See my list of 10 Best Prison Movies.