Eight of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far are already available to stream. Here they are, and this week I’m featuring: Beast: finally unleashed … and untethered.Beast is a romance, a psychological thriller and a serial killer procedural. But it’s Jessie Buckley’s performance and Michael Pearce’s story that should bring you to see Beast. It’s a heckuva ride. You can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Also available to stream:
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 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.
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.
Eight of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far are already available to stream. Here they are, and this week I’m featuring The Death of Stalin: gallows humor from the highest of scaffolds. The Death of Stalin is a savagely funny movie from writer-director Armando Ianucci (Veep,In the Loop), a master of mocking the ambition, venality and flattery of those reaching for power. In The Death of Stalin, he adds terror to his quiver of motivations, and the result is darkly hilarious. You can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Also available to stream:
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.
Beast: finally unleashed … and untethered. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Custody: the searing essence of domestic violence. 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.
Eight of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far are already available to stream. Here they are, and this week I’m featuring The Rider: a life’s passion is threatened. A young man’s rodeo injury threatens to keep him from his passions. Filmed in South Dakota with non-professional actors, The Rider is emotionally powerful and genuine – and not a bit corny. It’s also visually beautiful. You can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Also available to stream:
Leave No Trace: his demons, not hers. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The Death of Stalin: gallows humor from the highest of scaffolds. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Beast: finally unleashed … and untethered. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Custody: the searing essence of domestic violence. 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.
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE
Eight of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far are already available to stream. Here they are, and this week I’m featuring Leave No Trace: his demons, not hers. Leave No Trace is Debra Granik’s first narrative feature since her 2010 Winter’s Bone (which I had rated as the best film of that year). Leave No Trace is a brilliant coming of age film that stars Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie as a dad-daughter team who challenge conventional thinking about homelessness and healthy parenting. Winter’s Bone launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence, and Leave No Trace might do the same for newcomer McKenzie. Leave No Trace may be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Also available to stream:
The Rider: a life’s passion is threatened. n Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The Death of Stalin: gallows humor from the highest of scaffolds. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Beast: finally unleashed … and untethered. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Custody: the searing essence of domestic violence. 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.
Crazy Rich Asians is wildly popular for a reason – it’s damn entertaining and probably the year’s most appealing date movie. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll wait for the chance to see Awkwafina in her next movie. Other choices in theaters:
OUT NOW
Spike Lee’s true story BlacKkKlansmanis very funny and, finally, emotionally powerful.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exuberance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
The hyper-violent and stylized Belgian thriller Let the Corpses Tan is a contemporary thriller that pays loving homage to the Sergio Leone canon. Essentially a soulless exercise in style, more interesting than gripping. It’s a visual stunner, though, and the Leone references are fun.
The coming-of-age drama We the Animals is imaginative, but a grind.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the cheeky and original sex comedy Threesomething, which I saw at its world premiere at this year’s Cinequest. Comedy is hard to write, especially comedy as smart and original as this. Threesomething is now available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
On September 1, Turner Classic Movies presents the iconic 1946 film noirThe Postman Always Rings Twice. An essential element in film noir is a guy’s lust for a Bad Girl driving him to a Bad Decision, and when John Garfield first sees Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice, you can tell that he’s hooked. She’s a Bad Girl, and a Bad Decision is on its way.
John Garfield’s first look at Lana Turner in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
John David Washington and Laura Harrier in BlacKkKlansman, a Focus Features release.Credit: David Lee / Focus Features
OUT NOW
Spike Lee’s true story BlacKkKlansmanis very funny and, finally, emotionally powerful.
You can still see the best movie of the year: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone). Superbly well-crafted, impeccably acted, thoughtful and emotionally powerful, it’s a Must See. Still at one theater in Silicon Valley and one in San Francisco.
The savagely funny social satireSorry to Bother You carries the message that humans are more than just their commercial value as consumers and labor to be exploited.
The political documentary Dark Money exposes the growing threat of unlimited secret money in political campaigns.
Puzzle intelligently and authentically traces one woman’s journey of self discovery.
The surprisingly emotional biodoc Won’t You Be My Neighbor?is about Fred Rogers’ fierce devotion to the principle that every child is deserving of love and our protection.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exuberance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
ON VIDEO
My DVD/Stream of the week is the period thriller The Two Faces of January, a Patricia Highsmith tale of dark hearts in sunny Greece. The Two Faces of January is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
Turner Classic Movies is airingRequiem for a Heavyweight(1962). Anthony Quinn is Mountain Rivera, a fighter whose career is ended by a ring injury by Cassius Clay (played by the real Muhammed Ali). His manager, Jackie Gleason, continues to exploit him in this heartbreaking drama. There’s no boxing in this clip, but it illustrates the quality of the writing and the acting.
Adam Driver and John David Washington in BLACKKKLANSMAN
My top choice this weekend is Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, which I’ll be writing about this weekend.
OUT NOW
You can still see the best movie of the year: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone). Superbly well-crafted, impeccably acted, thoughtful and emotionally powerful, it’s a Must See. Still at one theater in Silicon Valley amd one in San Francisco.
The savagely funny social satireSorry to Bother You carries the message that humans are more than just their commercial value as consumers and labor to be exploited.
The political documentary Dark Money exposes the growing threat of unlimited secret money in political campaigns.
Puzzle intelligently and authentically traces one woman’s journey of self discovery.
The surprisingly emotional biodoc Won’t You Be My Neighbor?is about Fred Rogers’ fierce devotion to the principle that every child is deserving of love and our protection.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exhuverance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is a tale of magical Mormon runaways in Vegas. With Electrick Children, first-time feature filmmaker Rebecca Thomas has created an entirely unique teen coming of age story. Electrick Children employs an element of magical realism that requires the audience to accept a premise which cannot be real. The result is a highly original success. Electrick Children can be streamed from Amazon (included in Amazon Prime) and can be purchased from several other VOD platforms.
ON TV
On August 22, Turner Classic Movies presents the still-powerful 1943 The Ox-Bow Incident, a parable about mobs acting rashly on the basis of fear and prejudice (which certainly resonates in today’s political environment). Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan lead an excellent period cast with Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn and Jane Darwell, along with Frank Conroy and Harry Davenport, whose performances are perfect little gems. Which character most resembles Donald Trump?
Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan in THE OX-BOW INCIDENTTHE OX-BOW INCIDENT
Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson in SORRY TO BOTHER YOU
It’s getting harder to find the year’s best movie so far, so please track down Leave No Trace. I’ll be seeing the muc anticipated BlacKKKlansman by Spike Lee.
OUT NOW
Please make every attempt to see the best movie of the year, now in Bay Area theaters: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone). Superbly well-crafted, impeccably acted, thoughtful and emotionally powerful, it’s a Must See.
The savagely funny social satireSorry to Bother You carries the message that humans are more than just their commercial value as consumers and labor to be exploited.
The political documentary Dark Money exposes the growing threat of unlimited secret money in political campaigns.
Puzzle intelligently and authentically traces one woman’s journey of self discovery.
The Third Murder is a legal procedural that takes a philosophical turn.
The surprisingly emotional biodoc Won’t You Be My Neighbor?is about Fred Rogers’ fierce devotion to the principle that every child is deserving of love and our protection.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exhuverance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
ON VIDEO
I’m sure that you’ve never seen this week’s video pick because I don’t think it got a theatrical release. It’s the indie thriller Dose of Reality, which brings a jaw-dropper of a Big Surprise. Dose of Reality is available to stream on Amazon.
ON TV
On August 16, Turner Classic Movies will offer the delightful Peter Bogdanovich screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc? The nerdy academic Howard (Ryan O’Neal) and his continually aggrieved fiance Eunice (Madeline Kahn) travel to San Francisco to compete for a career-launching grant. The luggage with Howard’s great discovery (musical rocks) is mixed up with two identical suitcases, one containing valuable jewelry, the other with spy secrets, and soon we have juggling MacGuffins.
That’s all funny enough, but Howard bumps into Judy (Barbra Streisand), the kookiest serial college dropout in America, who determines that she must have him and utterly disrupts his life. Our hero’s ruthless rival for the grant is hilariously played by Kenneth Mars (the Nazi playwright in The Producers). Austin Pendleton is wonderful as the would-be benefactor.
The EXTENDED closing chase scene is among the very funniest in movie history – right up there with the best of Buster Keaton; Streisand and O’Neal lead an ever-growing cavalcade of pursuers through the hills of San Francisco, at one point crashing the Chinese New Year’s Day parade. I love What’s Up, Doc? and own the DVD, and I watch every time I stumble across it on TV. Bogdanovich’s hero Howard Hawks, the master of the screwball comedy, would have been proud.
Kôji Yakusho in Hirokazu Koreeda’s THE THIRD MURDER. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society (SFFILM).
Opening this week: The Third Murder is the work of director Hirokazu Koreeda, who made the 1995 art house hit Maborosi and one of the best movies of 2008, Still Walking. Koreeda’s Shoplifters just won the Palm d’Or at Cannes, and will be released in the US by Magnolia Pictures on November 23. I saw The Third Murder at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). The Third Murder is a legal procedural that takes a philosophical turn.
OUT NOW
Please make every attempt to see the best movie of the year, now in Bay Area theaters: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone). Superbly well-crafted, impeccably acted, thoughtful and emotionally powerful, it’s a Must See.
The savagely funny social satireSorry to Bother You carries the message that humans are more than just their commercial value as consumers and labor to be exploited.
The political documentary Dark Money exposes the growing threat of unlimited secret money in political campaigns.
Puzzle intelligently and authentically traces one woman’s journey of self discovery.
The surprisingly emotional biodoc Won’t You Be My Neighbor?is about Fred Rogers’ fierce devotion to the principle that every child is deserving of love and our protection.
First Reformed: Ethan Hawke stars in this bleak, bleak psychological thriller with an intense ending.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exhuverance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
American Animals is funny documentary/reenactment of a preposterous heist.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
ON VIDEO
I’m sure that you’ve never seen this week’s video pick because I don’t think it got a theatrical release. It’s the indie thriller Dose of Reality, which brings a jaw-dropper of a Big Surprise. Dose of Reality is available to stream on Amazon.
ON TV
This is a great week for film noir and neo-noir on Turner Classic Movies. We begin on August 6 with The Set-Up (1949), one of the great film noirs and one of my 10 Best Boxing Movies. Robert Ryan plays a washed-up boxer that nobody believes can win again, not even his long-suffering wife (Audrey Totter). His manager doesn’t even bother to tell him that he is committed to taking a dive in his next fight. But what if he wins? Director Robert Wise makes use of real-time narrative, then highly innovative. Watch for the verisimilitude of the bar where the deal goes down.
Also on August 6, there’s the 1950 Perfect Murder noirTension, with Richard Basehart as the meek night manager of a pharmacy who is married to a slutty shrew (Audrey Totter – of course). She sneers, “”You were full of laughs then. Well, you’re all laughed out now”” When the wife humiliates him with her newest affair, he works a pair of the newly invented contact lenses and some flashy clothes into a new second identity. The wife’s boyfriend ends up fatally shot, and the cops start looking for the pharmacy manager. Will he take the fall? Barry Sullivan is the cop and Cyd Charisse is the good girl.
And on August 9, TCM plays one of my favorite neo-noirs, the Don Siegel thriller Charley Varrick. Walter Matthau stars as the title character, an expert heist man who sets up a “perfect crime” bank robbery which, of course, goes awry. Worst of all, it turns out that Varrick has stolen a secret Mob fortune being laundered by the bank, and now the underworld organization is after him. Only his wits can save him. I’ve rewatched Charley Varrick a couple of times recently, and it still holds up for me.
From L:R – Subjects Doug Rausch and Howard Burack in a still from THE TWINNING REACTION. Photo courtesy JFI.
The startling and moving documentary The Twinning Reaction tells the story of a Mad Men-era research project and its profound human impact. To perform a longitudinal study of nurture vs. nature, researchers INTENTIONALLY separated identical twins and placed them with families that the researchers kept in the dark. The placements occurred AFTER the twin babies had bonded together in the crib for many months. Legally and ethically sketchy at the time, this is monstrous by today’s standards, and, in fact, caused harm to the adoptees.
Somehow, some of these twins learned the truth as adults and located their birth siblings. In The Twinning Reaction, we meet three sets of separated identical siblings. Because we meet the subjects of the study, the effects of separation are clearly apparent and highly personalized.
Writer-director Lori Shinseki has found an amazing story and source material to match. In a gripping 52 minutes, she weaves it into a coherent and compelling story.
THE TWINNING REACTION
The most astonishing set of sibs are triplets which are the subject of a film in current theatrical release, Three Identical Strangers. The Twinning Reaction focuses on the study; we meet several sets of twins, and the triplets are the jaw-dropping final act. Three Identical Strangers focuses on the triplets and then takes a more current dive into the study.
The Twinning Reaction’s world premiere was at Cinequest two years ago. The Twinning Reaction is not yet available to stream, so your only chance to see it will be at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this July and August.
