The premise of the observant British comedy Days of the Bagnold Summer is simple enough. We follow two people, each stuck in a rut, as they muddle through a long summer of disconnection and, if fortune and providence prevail, self-actualization. One of them is Susan Bagnold, played by the extraordinary Monica Dolan. Susan is a librarian who satisfies everyone’s mental … [Read more...]
The View From Home: Pain and pleasure in two historic jazz documentaries
Two documentaries about the Golden Age of jazz, new on video from Kino Lorber and its affiliates, spotlight both the agonies and ecstasies of the lives of its performers. Both are essential, but if you’re going to make a double feature out of them, it’s best to get the tough one out of the way first. James Erskine’s arresting Billie ($13.99 DVD) charts the tragic life of … [Read more...]
The View From Home: Adventures on Kanopy
I have a new favorite streaming service, and it’s called Kanopy. Marrying the deep archive of Amazon Prime with the art-house sensibilities of the Criterion Channel, the streaming service offers an ever-growing trove of foreign, independent, classic and documentary titles, often fresh off the festival, theatrical and pay-per-view circuits. The best part? It’s free for … [Read more...]
‘Last Blockbuster’ recalls an era of cinephiles and serendipity
There’s a joke from the Craig Kilborn years of The Daily Show that has, in essence, stuck with me after some 23 years. Google doesn’t remember it — not everything was transcribed for posterity on the Web back then — but the premise was about Citizen Kane topping the AFI’s 1998 list of the Top 100 Movies of All Time. Then Kilborn dropped the punch line, and I’m paraphrasing from … [Read more...]
‘Wonder Woman’ has it all — if all you want is spectacle
As Tom Petty said it best, the waiting is the hardest part. Just ask fans of the D.C. Universe, who expected to see Wonder Woman 1984 in December 2019 and have endured a year’s worth of overoptimistic postponements. After watching their proposed dates of June 5, Aug. 14 and Oct. 2 devoured by the pandemic, Warner Brothers took the industry-upending move of dropping the film as … [Read more...]
In its Blu-ray debut, ‘Popeye’ continues to age artfully, if manically
It’s been 40 years since Popeye paddled its way onto cinemas, but instead of making a splash, it is generally believed to have sunk upon impact. Not every prominent critic ragged on Robert Altman’s adaptation of the iconic E.C. Segar comics character. Siskel and Ebert both pointed their thumbs skyward. But Los Angeles’ snarky Stinkers Bad Movie Awards channeled the critics’ … [Read more...]
The View From Home: Revelatory early works from an indie film artist
For casual indie film enthusiasts, writer-director Azazel Jacobs likely landed on their radars with his 2011 feature Terri, his first picture with a marquee actor (John C. Reilly) and a million-dollar budget. Many more viewers saw his 2017 comedy The Lovers, with Debra Winger and Tracy Letts, his most expensive and best-marketed picture to date. At first blush at his scant … [Read more...]
‘Freaky’: Been-there-slashed-that horror pic runs out of laughs, gas
In the increasingly popular subgenre of the meta-horror-comedy, irony is the soul of wit. How else to explain the moment in Freaky when two of its supporting characters — written and cast for their tokenism — run for their lives through the corridors of their school, a purported serial killer barreling down upon them, and the flamboyant Josh (Misha Osherovich) offers this … [Read more...]
‘Unfit’ unpacks psyche, not policies, of Trump
When Michael Moore released his anti-Trump screed Fahrenheit 11/9, in 2018, I was still in a mood of electoral shellshock. I was very much seeking an answer to the question the director posed in voice-over at the beginning of the film: “How the f--- did this happen?” It’s amazing how time has made armchair pundits out of all of us. Hindsight being what it is, Trump’s … [Read more...]
‘Burning Ghost’: Go toward the (Hollywood) light
Eschatology is at the heart of French director Stéphane Batut’s Burning Ghost, but to this viewer’s mind, so is capitalism, a concept as eternal as the soul. That’s because even his premature death can’t keep young Juste (Thimotée Robart) out of the labor force. Juste opens the movie in an earthbound purgatory. Newly freed from his dying body but not yet adjusted to the … [Read more...]