Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Movies to See Right Now

by
Fred Rogers in WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?

Here’s a new set of shelter-in-place recommendations to stream or watch on TV.

ON VIDEO

The surprising fierceness underlying Mr. Rogers’ gentle affect is the subject of the emotionally satisfying fictional narrative A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and the even better biodoc Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Streaming Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is included with subscriptions to HBO and DirecTV, and the stream can be purchased for $14.99 from all major streaming platforms. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is available to stream from all the usual outlets; I paid Amazon $2.99. Have a box of Kleenex handy.

Rosamund Pike in GONE GIRL

2014’s best Hollywood movie was the marvelously entertaining Gone Girl, Rosamund Pike shines in David Fincher’s gripping study of psychopathy. It’s now available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Redbox.

ON TV

On April 1, Turner Classic Movies will present a host of films from the great Akira Kurosawa. Since we tend to think first of Kurusawa’s historic samurai classics, I am recommending his noir-stained contemporary crime films Drunken Angel, Stray Dog and High and Low. TCM is presenting them with seven other Kurosawa films. Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune team up in all three of these decidedly non-samurai stories.

  • Drunken Angel (1948) was Kurusawa’s first major film and his first with Mifune, two years before their first samurai masterpiece Rashomon. Mifune plays a young Yazuka hood, who works with some very bad people, so there are some double crosses and a suitable dark ending.
  • In the police procedural Stray Dog (1949), Mifune plays a detective tracking down a gun that was used in a crime. The trail leads through Tokyo’s gritty underworld during a heat wave and even into a sold-out pro baseball game.
  • My favorite of these three is the 1963 neo-noir pressure cooker High and Low, with Mifune as the CEO of a major shoe manufacturer. In an attempt to kidnap his son, the crooks accidentally grab his chauffeur’s son. The CEO still wants to ransom the kid, but the price is ruinous, and all of this is happening as the CEO is being targeted himself for corporate backstabbing.
Toshiro Mifune (center) in HIGH AND LOW

REMEMBRANCE

The prolific actor Stuart Whitman has died. Strikingly manly and relatable, Whitman also had the gift of imbuing strong-and-silent characters with emotional texture. Indeed, he was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for a 1961 film that I haven’t seen – The Mark, in which he played a guy seeking a normal life after being imprisoned for attempted child molestation. I remember Whitman for his performances in The Longest Day and the offbeat Convicts 4. He would not wish to be remembered for the giant carnivorous rabbit chiller Night of the Lepus.

Stuart Whitman

coming up on TV – WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?: gentleness from ferocity

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Fred Rogers with his Daniel Tiger in WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?

On Saturday night, PBS will broadcast Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, the surprisingly moving biodoc of Fred Rogers, the originator and host of the PBS children’s program Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. In theaters, this movie submerged audiences in their hankies.

Of course, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? tells the story of the show. But, more than that, it relates Rogers’ fierce passion for the plight of small children, and his need to protect them and help their emotional development.

What is so surprising is that Rogers’ sometimes laughably gentle affect sprang from such internal ferocity. It turns that Rogers was a man who hated, hated, hated the moral emptiness and materialism of commercial children’s television.

His need to help children through difficult times drove him to explain the word “assassination” the day after RFK was killed. And to demystify, clarify and normalize divorce and a host of other potentially child-traumatizing topics. Utterly unafraid of (most) controversy in a timid medium, he was first and foremost the champion for small children, a cardigan-clad champion.

I am immune to Mr. Rogers nostalgia because I am too old to have watched the show as a kid, and it was no longer a first-run show when my own kid came of age. So I was surprised to find myself choked with emotion when Fred Rogers explained to a very skeptical Senator John Pastore the need to “make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable”. As Rogers recited the lyrics of his song about having feelings and staying in control, Pastore visibly melted (and so did I).

In Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Rogers’ family and his TV crew reveal their insider views of Rogers and his show. The origins of the characters, the puppets, the songs and themes are explained. But the core of Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is that Fred Rogers resolutely believed that every small child is deserving of love and has value, a view which has sadly become controversial among some.

Movies to See Right Now

by

Awkwafina in CRAZY RICH ASIANS

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 BlacKkKlansman is 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 noir The 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 Garfield’s first look at Lana Turner in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE

Movies to See Right Now

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John David Washington and Laura Harrier in BlacKkKlansman, a Focus Features release.Credit: David Lee / Focus Features

OUT NOW

  • Spike Lee’s true story BlacKkKlansman is 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 satire Sorry 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 airing Requiem 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.

Movies to See Right Now

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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 satire Sorry 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 INCIDENT
Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan in THE OX-BOW INCIDENT

THE OX-BOW INCIDENT
THE OX-BOW INCIDENT

Movies to See Right Now

by

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 satire Sorry 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.

WHAT’S UP, DOC?

Movies to See Right Now

by

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 satire Sorry 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 noir Tension, 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.

Audrey Totter and Richard Basehart in TENSION

WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?: gentleness from ferocity

by

Fred Rogers with his Daniel Tiger in WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is the surprisingly moving biodoc of Fred Rogers, the originator and host of the PBS children’s program The Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.  I had missed this movie at the San Francisco International Film Festival where it submerged audiences in their hankies.

Of course, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? tells the story of the show.  But, more than that, it relates Rogers’ fierce passion for the plight of small children, and his need to protect them and help their emotional development.

What is so surprising is that Rogers’ sometimes laughably gentle affect sprang from such internal ferocity.  It turns that Rogers was a man who hated, hated, hated the moral emptiness and materialism of commercial children’s television.

His need to help children through difficult times drove him to explain the word “assassination” the day after RFK was killed.  And to demystify, clarify and normalize divorce and a host of other potentially child-traumatizing topics.  Utterly unafraid of (most) controversy in a timid medium, he was first and foremost the champion for small children, a cardigan-clad champion.

I am immune to Mr. Rogers nostalgia because I am too old to have watched the show as a kid, and it was no longer a first-run show when my own kid came of age.  So I was surprised to find myself choked with emotion when Fred Rogers explained to a very skeptical Senator John Pastore the need to “make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable”.  As Rogers recited the lyrics of his song about having feelings and staying in control, Pastore visibly melted (and so did I).

In Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Rogers’ family and his TV crew reveal their insider views of Rogers and his show.  The origins of the characters, the puppets, the songs and themes are explained.  But the core of Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is that Fred Rogers resolutely believed that every small child is deserving of love and has value, a view which has sadly become controversial among some.