Make plans to attend San Francisco’s great festival of film noir, Noir City, opening on January 25.
OUT NOW
Romais an exquisite portrait of two enduring women and the masterpiece of Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). Will win multiple Oscars. It is streaming now Netflix.
Green Book: Tony Lip is a marvelous character, and Viggo Mortensen’s performance is one of the great pleasures of this year in the movies.
Shoplifters won the Palm d’Or at Cannes. This is a witty, and finally heartbreaking, look at a family that lives on the margins – and then is revealed to be not what it seems.
Stan & Ollie: Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel and John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy deliver remarkable portraits of a partnership facing the inevitability of showbiz decline.
The masterful documentary Monrovia, Indiana is a fascinating movie about a boring subject.
Pawel Pawlikowski’s sweeping romantic tragedy Cold War is not as compelling as his masterpiece Ida.
The Favourite: Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue are not enough; this critically praised film didn’t work for me.
Skip First Man – a boring movie about a fascinating subject.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week, the Canadian psychological thriller Lost Solace, takes a highly original premise and turns it into a pedal-to-the-metal thriller. Lost Solace was my personal favorite at Cinequest 2016 and can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
You really haven’t sampled film noir if you haven’t seen Out of the Past (1947), and it’s coming up on Turner Classic Movies on January 14. Perhaps the model of a film noir hero, Robert Mitchum plays a guy who is cynical, strong, smart and resourceful – but still a sap for the femme fatale…played by the irresistible Jane Greer. Director Jacques Tourneur told Greer, ” First half of the movie – Good Girl; second half – Bad Girl.”
In case you’ve been absorbed in the Holidays, here is my annual Best Movies of 2019, farewells to filmmakers, both those behind the camera and those on screen. And my anniversary tribute to The Wife. And here’s my recent 42-minute podcast with Sara Vizcarrondo of Silicon Valley’s Cinema Club.
OUT NOW
Romais an exquisite portrait of two enduring women and the masterpiece of Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). Will win multiple Oscars. It is streaming now Netflix.
Green Book: Tony Lip is a marvelous character, and Viggo Mortensen’s performance is one of the great pleasures of this year in the movies.
Shoplifters won the Palm d’Or at Cannes. This is a witty, and finally heartbreaking, look at a family that lives on the margins – and then is revealed to be not what it seems.
The masterful documentary Monrovia, Indiana is a fascinating movie about a boring subject.
Pawel Pawlikowski’s sweeping romantic tragedy Cold War is not as compelling as his masterpiece Ida.
The Favourite: Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue are not enough; this critically praised film didn’t work for me.
Skip First Man – a boring movie about a fascinating subject.
Leave No Trace: his demons, not hers. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The Rider: a life’s passion is threatened. n Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The Other Side of the Wind: Welles’ brilliance from beyond the grave. Available to stream, along with its two companion documentaries, on Netflix.
The Death of Stalin: gallows humor from the highest of scaffolds. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Custody: the searing essence of domestic violence. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Beast: finally unleashed … and untethered. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Three Identical Strangers: a Feel Good until we peel back the onion. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Quality Problems: a screwball comedy for the sandwich generation. My favorite film from last year’s Cinequest has been released on video this year: Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Outside In: she finds herself finally ready. Streaming on Netflix.
ON TV
Tomorrow night and Sunday morning, Turner Classic Movies will air one of my Overlooked Noir, this time introduced by the Czar of Noir Eddie Muller. In His Kind of Woman. Robert Mitchum plays a down-and-out gambler who is offered a deal that MUST be too good to be true; he’s smart enough to be suspicious and knows that he must discover the real deal before it’s too late. He meets a on-the-top-of-the-world hottie (Jane Russell), who is about to become down on her luck, too. Top notch.
Romais an exquisite portrait of two enduring women and the masterpiece of Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). Will win multiple Oscars. It is streaming now Netflix.
Green Book: Tony Lip is a marvelous character, and Viggo Mortensen’s performance is one of the great pleasures of this year in the movies.
Shoplifters won the Palm d’Or at Cannes. This is a witty, and finally heartbreaking, look at a family that lives on the margins – and then is revealed to be not what it seems.
The masterful documentary Monrovia, Indiana is a fascinating movie about a boring subject.
Pawel Pawlikowski’s sweeping romantic tragedy Cold War is not as compelling as his masterpiece Ida.
The Favourite: Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue are not enough; this critically praised film didn’t work for me.
Skip First Man – a boring movie about a fascinating subject.
ON VIDEO
Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn in BEAST
My Streams of the Week are eight of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far that are already available to stream: Leave No Trace, The Rider, The Death of Stalin, Beast, Custody, Monrovia, Indiana, Three Identical Strangers, Quality Problems and Outside In.
ON TV
Once again, Turner Classic Movies is giving us a wonderful New Year’s Eve present – an all day Thin Man marathon. William Powell and Myrna Loy are cinema’s favorite movie couple for a reason – just settle in and watch Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man and its sequels do what they do best – banter, canoodle, solve crimes and, of course, tipple.
Myrna Loy and William Powell as Nora and Nick Charles during the Holidays
Tis’ the Season for Holiday movies and to listen to The Movie Gourmet’s appearance on the Silicon Valley’s Cinema Club podcast. Here’s our 42-minute podcast.
OUT NOW
Romais an exquisite portrait of two enduring women and the masterpiece of Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). Will win multiple Oscars. It is streaming now Netflix.
Green Book: Tony Lip is a marvelous character, and Viggo Mortensen’s performance is one of the great pleasures of this year in the movies.
Shoplifters won the Palm d’Or at Cannes. This is a witty, and finally heartbreaking, look at a family that lives on the margins – and then is revealed to be not what it seems.
The masterful documentary Monrovia, Indiana is a fascinating movie about a boring subject.
Pawel Pawlikowski’s sweeping romantic tragedy Cold War is not as compelling as his masterpiece Ida.
The Favourite: Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue are not enough; this critically praised film didn’t work for me.
Skip First Man – a boring movie about a fascinating subject.
ON VIDEO
Steve Buscemi and Jeffrey Tambor in THE DEATH OF STALIN
My Streams of the Week are eight of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far that are already available to stream: Leave No Trace, The Rider, The Death of Stalin, Beast, Custody, Monrovia, Indiana, Three Identical Strangers, Quality Problems and Outside In.
ON TV
On December 23, Turner Classic Movies brings us that Holiday classic, A Christmas Carol, and I’m talking about the 1951 version with Alastair Sim. Since the 1908 Tom Ricketts silent version, this Charles Dickens story has been made over 60 times for the screen. Scrooge has been played by George C Scott, Bill Murray, Rich Little, Cecily Tyson, Patrick Stewart, Jim Carrey and Kelsey Grammer. (But NOT, to my knowledge, by Nicolas Cage, Christopher Walken, Toshiro Mifune or Zac Efron.)
Alastair Sim’s performance as Scrooge elevates this 1951 version; Sim perfectly modulates Scrooge’s transformation from impervious meanness to vulnerability. A Christmas Carol was, by far, the highlight of Sim’s screen credits; he was primarily a stage actor, who appeared in 46 West End productions. It’s a simple but compelling story, and everyone can relate to the curmudgeon Ebenezer Scrooge, his touching backstory and his joyous redemption.
Romais an exquisite portrait of two enduring women and the masterpiece of Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). Will win multiple Oscars.
Green Book (link goes live this weekend): Tony Lip is a marvelous character, and Viggo Mortensen’s performance is one of the great pleasures of this year in the movies.
Shoplifters won the Palm d’Or at Cannes. This is a witty, and finally heartbreaking, look at a family that lives on the margins – and then is revealed to be not what it seems.
Bitter Melon, H.P. Mendoza’s dark indie comedy on an issue that a Bay Area family must finally face.
The masterful documentary Monrovia, Indiana is a fascinating movie about a boring subject.
Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes provides insight into of the man who founded Fox News and thus defiled the American body politic and made possible our venerable nation’s descent into Trump’s America.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen Brothers’ anthology of darkly funny Western vignettes, is recommended only for Westernphiles and Coen Brothers fans. It is streaming on Netflix.
The Favourite (link goes live this weekend): Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue are not enough; this critically praised film didn’t work for me.
The Outlaw King, with Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce, exists for those who need a dose of medieval slaughter and a spunky queen, but there’s not enough there for the rest of us.
Skip First Man – a boring movie about a fascinating subject.
ON VIDEO
THE RIDER
My Streams of the Week are the eight of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far that are already available to stream: Leave No Trace, The Rider, The Death of Stalin, Beast, Custody, Monrovia, Indiana, Three Identical Strangers, Quality Problems and Outside In.
ON TV
On December 17, Turner Classic Movies will broadcast the top heist film ever, the pioneering French classic Rififi: After the team is assembled and the job is plotted, the actual crime unfolds in real-time – over thirty minutes of nerve-wracking silence.
Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, finally completed and released thirty years after Welles’ death, centers on the fictional cinema auteur Jake Hannaford (John Huston). Not unlike Welles himself, Hannaford is widely recognized as brilliant and self-indulgent, as both a genius and impossible to work with, having a lifetime of relationship carnage strewn behind him. For the zillionth time, Hannaford is broke and needs to find money to finish his latest movie. He holds a screening party in hopes of snaring financial support from his now more successful protégé Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich).
The backdrop is the sort of 1970s Hollywood hedonism where the party includes naked models, midgets (“The midgets broke into the wine cellar and got their tiny hands on the fireworks”) and female manikins for target practice. And, oh, they invited the mid-70s version of Dennis Hopper.
Peter Bogdanovich and John Huston in Orson Wells’ THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND
Hannaford is surrounded by his own posse of collaborators and hangers-on, and a cynical bunch they are. That rampant and matter-of-fact cynicism is very witty, and things are funniest when things go badly – the money pitch is prematurely exposed and the screening of an art film has to be re-located to a drive-in!
John Huston’s performance is wonderful, especially when Hannaford is not suffering fools gladly. Hannaford’s team of scoundrels is played by Mercedes McCambridge, Tonio Selwirt as the Baron, Gregory Sierra, Paul Stewart and Edmond O’Brien, with Lili Palmer as an ex and Susan Strasberg as a provocateur of the press. In fact, virtually every actor delivers an excellent performance, except for Cameron Mitchell with his odd, apparently Southern, accent.
I was surprised by brilliance of Norman Foster’s performance as Hannaford’s gofer Billy, loyal, weary and crapped-upon; Foster is known for 57 screen credits as a director, but he also acted, supporting Walter Huston in one of the first talkies in 1929.
Norman Foster in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND
And then there’s the surreal film-within-the-film – the unfinished Hannaford movie that is being screened at the party. The star of that film is Welles’ real-life girlfriend, the Croatian actress Oja Kodar, who co-wrote The Other Side of the Wind. Kodar’s character strides around empty vistas naked and dominates the pretty boy leading man (Robert Random). This film is pure eye candy, with the most vivid colors and the most dramatic camera angles. Kodar’s almost silent performance is exceptional – she has the gaze of a predator, always direct and in command. She looks great naked, and her sex scene in a moving car is exceptionally erotic.
Some critical comment suggests that the film-within-the-film is Welles’ satire on European art films. But, to my eyes, it’s consistent with a good art film of the 1970s, too. Either way, you can’t stop watching it.
Oja Kodar in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND
The Other Side of the Wind has been famous for decades as a Lost Film (and now as a recovered film). But it’s best viewed without that baggage – by just absorbing what’s up on the screen.
Not everyone will like The Other Side of the Wind, especially those who like their movies to be linear. Is The Other Side of the Wind a mess, as some have described it? I don’t think so because the party scenes are SUPPOSED to be frenetic – Welles dips deeply into chaos and ambivalence and obscurity with intentionality.
The Other Side of the Wind is Welles’ unsparing glimpse into his own personality – a personality that self-sabotages his art and cruelly mistreats those closest and most necessary to him. The question he seems to ask himself is whether the self-created tumult is a REQUISITE for his art or an IMPEDIMENT?
In each of four decades Orson Welles produced unforgettable works of art. Citizen Kane is an undisputed masterpiece, and I consider A Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight to be great movies. The Other Side of the Wind is in that class. Thirty-three years after it’s creator’s death, it’s one of the best movies of 2018.
John Huston, Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich in THEY’LL LOVE ME WHEN I’M DEAD
The release of The Other Side of the Wind is accompanied by two documentaries on Orson Welles and his final movie: They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead and A Final Cut for Orson: Forty Years in the Making. And they’re both available to stream on Netflix.
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is a feature-length documentary. We hear from the two guys involved with The Other Side of the Wind during its forty-year journey. Producer Frank Marshall was one of the four-person crew during the four years of shooting, along with Orson Welles, co-writer and star Oja Kodar and cinematographer Gary Graver. Director Peter Bogdanovich began acting in one role and shifted to another during the shoot – and then played a pivotal off-camera role in the film’s completion.
Here’s what They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead helps you understand about The Other Side of the Wind:
How essential director of photography Gary Graver was to the project, one of the few non-porn flicks in his filmography.
Why impressionist Rich Little oddly shows up in the party in The Other Side of the Wind and what was his original role in the film;
How Welles treated his confidant Bogdanovich in real life, which gives a major insight into The Other Side of the Wind.
What The Other Side of the Wind insiders think is the intended meaning of the movie.
Just how charismatic and witty Welles was in real life – even more quick and refreshing than on his talk show appearances.
You can stream They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead on Netflix.
A Final Cut for Orson: Forty Years in the Making is a 38-minute “Making Of’ doc about the restoration and completion of The Other Side of the Wind. It’s a procedural that offers insight into all aspects of the final cut, including the editing and the music. A highlight is actor Danny Huston describing the looping of his father’s voice. The story of rescuing the actual cans of film is a helluva detective story in itself.
Netflix offers A Final Cut for Orson: Forty Years in the Making, but makes it unnecessarily tough to find. Instead of using the Netflix SEARCH feature, go right to The Other Side of the Wind and scroll down and click on MORE TRAILERS.
Frank Marshall, Oja Kodar and Orson Welles in A FINAL CUT FOR ORSON: FORTY YEARS IN THE MAKING
The film I’m most excited about is The Other Side of the Wind, a great Orson Welles film from the 1970s finally completed after his death. I’ll be writing about it and two companion documentaries soon.
OUT NOW
The masterful documentary Monrovia, Indiana is a fascinating movie about a boring subject.
Skip First Man – a boring movie about a fascinating subject.
The Great Buster: A Celebrationis Peter Bogdanovich’s biodoc of the comic genius Buster Keaton, filling in what we need to know of Keaton’s life and body of work.
Lady Gaga illuminates Bradley Cooper’s triumphant A Star Is Born. Don’t bring a hankie – bring a whole friggin’ box of Kleenex.
What They Had is an authentic and well-crafted dramatic four-hander with Hilary Swank, Michael Shannon, Blythe Danner and Robert Forster.
Quincyis Rashida Jones’ intimate biodoc of her father, that most important and prolific musical figure Quincy Jones.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the wonderfully dark comedy I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore. Melanie Lynskey plays a workaday schlub who suffers one indignity too many and goes postal. This movie is available to stream on Netflix Instant.
ON TV
On November 10, Turner Classic Movies presents Where Eagles Dare, a crackerjack thriller from the WWII commando subgenre (think The Guns of Navarone and The Dirty Dozen). The seemingly impossible target is a cliff-side Nazi stronghold only accessible via a funicular. And not all the commandos understand the true mission. The oddly matched stars are Richard Burton (nearing the end of his second marriage to Elizabeth Taylor) and Clint Eastwood (after the Leone spaghetti westerns but before his Dirty Harry franchise). It all works.
Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton in WHERE EAGLES DARE
