The Bridge on the River Kwai

Movies to See Right Now (at home)

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Dev Patel in THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD

New this week – a dazzling literary adaptation, a profound social satire and a dreary slog. And check out my Best Movies of 2020.

I’ve also recently remembered 32 filmmakers that we lost in 2020:

  • 2020 Farewells: On the Screen (Part 1): Kirk Douglas, Sean Connery, Max von Sydow, Carl Reiner, Olivia de Havilland, Rhonda Fleming. Brian Dennehy, Fred Willard and Chadwick Boseman.
  • 2020 Farewells: On the Screen (Part 2): John Saxon, Ian Holm, Jerry Stiller, Allan Garfield, Michael Lonsdale, Ann Reinking, Stuart Whitman, Wilford Brimley, Sue Lyon, Jo Shishido, Little Richard, Linda Manz and John Benfield.
  • 2020 Farewells: Behind the Camera: Ennio Morricone, Buck Henry, Terry Jones, John le Carré, Lynne Shelton, Ivan Passer, Michael Chapman, Alan Parker, Joel Schumacher and Mike Cobb.

ON VIDEO

The Personal History of David Copperfield: That master of social satire, Amando Ianucci, brings Charles Dickins’ masterpiece to life in this vivid and brilliantly constructed film. Streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Another Round: Writer-director Thomas Vinterberg once again explores human foibles with humor and cold-eyed insight – and profoundly to boot. Mads Mikkelsen is stellar. I watched Another Round on Virtual Cinema at Laemmle.

Ammonite: The fine acting of Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan can’t save Ammonite, a slog of a period romance. Streaming on Amazon.

And some more current films:

ON TV

Alec Guinness in THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI

On January 5, Turner Classic Movies presents David Lean’s WWII epic The Bridge on the River Kwai.  It’s the stirring story of British troops forced into slave labor at a cruel Japanese POW camp.  The British commander (Alec Guinness, in perhaps his most acclaimed performance) must walk the tightrope between giving his men enough morale to survive and helping the enemy’s war effort.  He has his match in the prison camp commander (Sessue Hayakawa), and these two men from conflicting values systems engage in a duel of wits – for life and death stakes.  William Holden plays an American soldier/scoundrel forced into an assignment that he really, really doesn’t want.  There’s also the stirringly unforgettable whistling version of the Colonel Bogey March. The climax remains one of the greatest hold-your-breath action sequences in cinema, even compared to all the CGI-aided ones in the  62 years since it was filmed.

Sessue Hayakawa in THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI

Movies to See Right Now

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THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO

Frameline, the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, is underway; scroll down to see what I’ve written about several Frameline films.

OUT NOW

  • The Last Black Man in San Francisco is an absorbing exploration of inner lives reacting to a changing city – and it’s one of the best films of the year. The link will go live this weekend after I finish my review.
  • The wildly successful comedy Booksmart is an entirely fresh take on the coming of age film, and a high school graduation party romp like you’ve never seen. Directed and written by women, BTW.
  • The Fall of the American Empire is a pointed satire cleverly embedded in the form of a heist film.
  • Rocketman is more of a jukebox musical than a film biography, but it’s wonderfully entertaining.
  • So you think you know what you’re going to get from a movie titled Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese. It is indeed a documentary of a concert tour, but Scorsese adds some fictional flourish, as befits Dylan’s longtime trickster persona.
  • Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen are pleasantly entertaining in the improbable Beauty-and-the-Beast romantic comedy Long Shot.
  • The documentary Framing John DeLorean is an incomplete retelling of this modern Icarus fable. If you already know the basics of the DeLorean story, I’d recommend this Car and Driver article instead. Framing John DeLorean is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON VIDEO

I have the perfect film to kick off the summer – the marvelously entertaining dark comic thriller Headhunters. You can stream Headhunters on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube or Google Play It’s such a great choice, I’ll reprise it next week, too.

ON TV

Wow, on June 24, Turner Classic Movies will present two classics from the 1970s.  The first is one of the all-time greats of cinema – Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver.  It’s a masterpiece exploration of alienation through its searing portrait of loner Travis Bickle, played by an explosive Robert De Niro.  Also the first glimpse of Jodi Foster’s genius.

Then there’s the original Shaft – a low-budget and simplistic film not anywhere in the class of Taxi Driver.  But it is the icon of the Blaxploitation genre and a snapshot of an important moment in our culture.  And – it has one of the best movie theme songs EVER.  I can’t hear it without thinking of songwriter Isaac Hayes accepting his Best Song Oscar in his shirt-of-chains.

Isaac Hayes at the Oscars

Movies to See Right Now

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Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever in BOOKSMART. Credit: Francois Duhamel / Annapurna Pictures

I can recommend Booksmart for fun and smarts and Rocketman for fun. This weekend, there is a wave of movies that I haven’t seen yet, both critically praised (The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Late Night) and popcorn movies (Men In Black: International, Shaft).

OUT NOW

  • The wildly successful comedy Booksmart is an entirely fresh take on the coming of age film, and a high school graduation party romp like you’ve never seen. Directed and written by women, BTW.
  • The Fall of the American Empire is a pointed satire cleverly embedded in the form of a heist film.
  • Rocketman is more of a jukebox musical than a filmbiography, but it’s wonderfully entertaining.
  • So you think you know what you’re going to get from a movie titled Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese. It is indeed a documentary of a concert tour, but Scorsese adds some fictional flourish, as befits Dylan’s longtime trickster persona.
  • Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen are pleasantly entertaining in the improbable Beauty-and-the-Beast romantic comedy Long Shot.
  • The documentary Framing John DeLorean is an incomplete retelling of this modern Icarus fable. If you already know the basics of the DeLorean story, I’d recommend this Car and Driver article instead. Framing John DeLorean is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON VIDEO

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Bay Area writer-director Ryan Coogler’s emotionally powerful debut, Fruitvale Station. Coogler, of course, has become one of the top American filmmakers with Creed and Black Panther (both also with Michael B. Jordan). Fruitvale Station is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and YouTube.

ON TV

On June 20, Turner Classic Movies presents David Lean’s WWII epic The Bridge on the River Kwai.  It’s the stirring story of British troops forced into slave labor at a cruel Japanese POW camp.  The British commander (Alec Guinness, in perhaps his most acclaimed performance) must walk the tightrope between giving his men enough morale to survive and helping the enemy’s war effort.  He has his match in the prison camp commander (Sessue Hayakawa), and these two men from conflicting values systems engage in a duel of wits – for life and death stakes.  William Holden plays an American soldier/scoundrel forced into an assignment that he really, really doesn’t want.  There’s also the stirringly unforgettable whistling version of the Colonel Bogey March. The climax remains one of the greatest hold-your-breath action sequences in cinema, even compared to all the CGI-aided ones in the  62 years since it was filmed.

Sessue Hayakawa in THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI
Alec Guinness in THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI

12 movie classics coming up on TV

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SEVEN DAYS IN MAY

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the Oscars with its annual 31 Days of Oscars, filling its broadcast schedule with Academy Award-winning films.   On this Thursday through Sunday, the TCM lineup is especially rich, including these gems:

Seven Days in May:  “I’m suggesting Mr President, there’s a military plot to take over the Government of these United States, next Sunday…”   John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate) is a master of the thriller, and his 1964 Seven Days in May is a masterpiece of the paranoid political thriller subgenre.  Edmond O’Brien’s performance is best among outstanding turns by Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Frederic March and Whit Bissell.

A Place in the Sun: One of the great films of the 1950s.  Montgomery Clift is a poor kid who is satisfied to have a job and a trashy girlfriend (Shelly Winters in a brilliant portrayal).  Then, he learns that he could have it all – the CEO’s daughter Elizabeth Taylor, lifelong comfort, status and career.  Did I mention Elizabeth Taylor?  The now pregnant girlfriend is the only obstacle to more than he could have ever dreamed for – can he get rid of her without getting caught?

Anatomy of a Murder (1959): Otto Preminger delivers a classic courtroom drama that frankly addresses sexual mores.  James Stewart is a folksy but very canny lawyer defending a cynical soldier (Ben Gazzara) on a murder charge; did he discover his wife straying or is he avenging her rape?  Lee Remick portrays the wife with a penchant for partying and uncertain fidelity. The Duke Ellington score could be the very best jazz score in the movies. Joseph Welch, the real-life lawyer who stood up to Sen. Joe McCarthy in a televised red scare hearing, plays the judge.

All this and more!  There’s Double Indemnity one of the masterpieces of film noir, Marlon Brando’s tour de force in On the Waterfront, the great trial movie The Caine Mutiny, the historically important Easy Rider (and one of my Best Drug Movies) and the political classic All the King’s Men.  If you’re looking for an epic, you can try out The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia on your big screen TV.  For a comedy, there’s Tootsie.

And don’t miss an overlooked great Jack Nicholson performance in The Last Detail.

Tune up that TiVo!

Movies to See Right Now

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Jude Law in SIDE EFFECTS

The best new movie is Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller Side Effects with Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones.  In Stand Up Guys, Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin play old mobsters gearing up for one last surge of adrenaline. Quartet is a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances. The charmingly funny Warm Bodies has made my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies. The pretty good horror movie Mama (with Jessica Chastain) can send chills down your spine without any slashing or splattering.

Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook are on my list of Best Movies of 2012 and all are nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. The French language drama Amour, also nominated for Best Picture, is a brilliantly made film about the end of life – it’s also an almost unbearable viewing experience.

If, like me, you worship the spaghetti Western, the Quentin Tarantino blockbuster Django Unchained is gloriously pedal-to-the-metal, splattering exploitation. The intelligent drama Rust and Bone is the singular tale of a complicated woman and an uncomplicated man. Ang Lee’s visually stunning fable Life of Pi is an enthralling commentary on story-telling.

Skip the unoriginal mob movie Gangster Squad, which wastes its fine cast. Also pass on the lavish but stupefying all-star Les Miserables, with its multiple endings, each more miserable than the last. The FDR movie Hyde Park on Hudson is a bore. The disaster movie The Impossible is only for audiences that enjoy watching suffering adults and children in peril. I have not seen Movie 43 – it is the most critically reviled movie in a looooong time.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the week is the underrated 2012 thriller Deadfall.

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the Oscars with its annual 31 Days of Oscars, filling its broadcast schedule with Academy Award-winning films. In the next week, the especially rich lineup will include Double Indemnity, A Place in the Sun, Seven Days in May, All the King’s Men, Anatomy of a Murder with its great jazz score, On the Waterfront, The Caine Mutiny, Easy Rider, The Last Detail, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Tootsie.