Now entering the summer months. Maybe a little bit of the summer doldrums — I can’t say that July’s releases make up an exceptional lineup. It is a very comfortable one with a handful of gems buried way down in there.
So let’s do the hidden treasure first. We’ll get back to Harry Dean Stanton, I promise. Before that, though, I need to urge you to make time for Ninón Sevilla: Queen of the Mexican Cabaret. So I’ve only seen one of these, Victims of Sin, but it’s so good and I’ll take any excuse to recommend it. There’s a third act scene where Ninón Sevilla bursts into a room with iconic style and more people should see it, plus the musical numbers are stunning. So I’m gonna want to see the three of these I haven’t seen. Amazing introduction to cine de rumberas and to the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema in general; there are noir overtones and melodrama and they’re just so much fun.
OK. Now we can talk about Harry Dean Stanton. He is great, although I don’t think any of the movies in this collection are musicals. They are a lovely representation of his career; everything from his work with David Lynch to his phenomenal performance in Paris, Texas to the driven pulp of Escape from New York and Repo Man to… you know, Cool Hand Luke doesn’t really have a lot of Harry Dean Stanton in it. Great movie, though. This is the kind of collection where you could just dip in anywhere and be pretty happy.
Following that, we have the delightful premise of Murderous Melodramas. Little bit of Douglas Sirk, little bit of Marilyn Monroe, whole lot of overheated emotion. Check out Desert Fury, which has Wendell Corey in a great queer-coded supporting role. This all looks quite watchable and I’m tempted to try and see all the ones I haven’t seen while they’re on the Channel.
The BlackStar Film Festival is the kind of collection that plugs holes in my cinematic knowledge. Dipping in just a bit, The Passion of Remembrance looks immediately intriguing and I generally like movies about hustling musicians like Restless City. I will try and make time for sampling these.
There’s a two-fer of Daniel Clowes themed collections next; first, his Adventures in Moviegoing and second, his two movies with Terry Zwigoff. I haven’t even heard of the Peter Weir movie Clowes chose, The Plumber, so that goes on the list. As to the other two, I know I’ve seen Ghost World but I can’t recall it well and Art School Confidential has been on my “one of these days” list for a while. Also, Ghost World is one of the Criterion Collection editions for the month so it has all the cool commentaries and supplements.
Directed by Jonathan Demme! Look, it’s one of the most interesting Hollywood directors of the last chunk of the millennium and some of his best movies. You could wish for more than four of them, I suppose, or you could just take the chance to see Silence of the Lambs and Something Wild again.
In Criterion’s more recent trend as a television streamer, they’re giving us the entire run of The Prisoner. Watch the first one and you’ll know if you want to watch the whole run. Essential television in my book.
Skipping ahead to touch on the other director collections, as usual: Khyentse Norbu and Onyeka Igwe are another pair of directors I don’t know anything about but who both look intriguing. I have seen Joel Potrykus movies before, specifically the first of the two movies presented here (Buzzard). “Darkly comic” and “caustic” are understating how grim Buzzard was; if you know me, you probably know that means I’m on board for Vulcanizadora.
OK, we’re finally at the one-offs. As always there are some great ways to spend time among them. I talked about Harry Dean Stanton; I am completely up for a documentary about him (Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction). Both the music films this month are good and Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC is directly up my alley.
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure? Wonder if there’s a time travel collection coming up soon or something. Cool, though.
The Rediscoveries and Restorations section gives us two cool looking Hong Kong movies. Both of these are 80s movies which are a smidge early for the golden age of heroic bloodshed — I don’t expect a ton although come on, Tony Leung (both of them) and Ti Lung? That’s gonna be good. The Energy War also excites me as a contemporaneous look at politics in the late 1970s, with D. A. Pennebaker as one of the directors. That should be good.
And finally the usual run of great movies with supplements from the Criterion Collection itself. There are two Demme movies here, which explains why he’s getting a mini-spotlight. I’ve had Lisa Cholodenko’s High Art on my watchlist for a while and one of the supplements is a conversation between Cholodenko and Karyn Kusama. If you’ve never seen Kusama talking about cinema I recommend finding an opportunity — she’s awfully thoughtful. Then, last I’ll talk about here but not least, a Nicholas Ray movie I haven’t seen, Bigger Than Life. James Mason! Yeah, I’ll watch that.