[Four sentences each. No spoilers. One entry that may not meet the definition of a movie.]
Little Sister (dir. Zach Clark, 2016). An ex-goth novice nun and her family: war-damaged brother, foundering father, druggie mom (Ally Sheedy). “Are you monsters?” “Yeah, we’re monsters.” The family that’s dysfunctional together, stays together.
*
The Gods of Times Square (dir. Richard Sandler, 1999). A documentary visit to Times Square before it became a theme park, focusing on the varieties of religious experience found there. You know how you see people on the street with posters and tracts and wonder what it would be like to talk to them? Richard Sandler found out. Dig the enigmas.
*
The Intern (dir. Nancy Meyers, 2015). Robert De Niro plays a widowed executive who joins Anne Hathaway’s company as a senior intern and changes lives. (Guys: carry a handkerchief, and tuck in your damn shirt.) With lesser talents this film would be unbearable. But I was happy to discover it to be sweet, gentle, Nora Ephron-like fun.
*
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City (dir. Matt Tyrnauer, 2016). A documentary about Jane Jacobs, the Greenwich Village activist who challenged New York City’s master destroyer Robert Moses — and won. It is astonishing to take in the heartlessness and stupidity with which “urban renewal” proceeded, as if people had no attachment to a neighborhood because they rented. Jacobs believed in neighborhoods and streets (not highways). My favorite line: “I have very little faith in even the kind of person who prefers to take a large overall view of things.”
*
I Am Not Your Negro (dir. Raoul Peck, 2017). The premise: an envisioning of James Baldwin’s Remember This House, a projected memoir of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. But the film is far more wideranging, or diffuse, a kaleidoscope of archival film clips and photographs, over which Samuel L. Jackson speaks passages from Baldwin’s prose. (The Ken Burns Effect.) The best moments are those when we see and hear Baldwin at the Cambridge Union Society and on The Dick Cavett Show: quick, cutting, and preternaturally eloquent.
*
Get Me Roger Stone (dir. Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro, Morgan Pehme, 2017). Yes, that Roger Stone. A friend of Roy Cohn and Donald Trump. A cartoon-villain and dandy, with hair plugs and a Richard Nixon tattoo. A major figure in the transformation of American democracy into professional wrestling.
*
The Keepers (dir. Ryan White, 2017). In 1969 Catherine Cesnik, Sister Cathy, a twenty-six-year-old Baltimore nun, was murdered. Decades later, two alumnae of the high school for girls where she taught try to solve the crime. What develops is a story of rampant abuses of power and the failure of religious and civil authorities to protect the vulnerable and pursue justice. Like The Jinx and Making a Murderer, this documentary series trusts that we will be patient enough to watch a narrative slowly take shape, even if its basic facts can be had online in just seconds.
*
The Dark Past (dir. Raoul Maté, 1948). Al Walker (William Holden), an escaped killer, his moll (Nina Foch), and his henchmen take shelter in the lakeside retreat of Andrew Collins (Lee J. Cobb), a psychiatrist and college professor weekending with family and friends. In the course of a long wait for a getaway car, Walker recounts a dream that‘s tormented him since childhood, and Collins decodes its symbols. Mystery solved, and Walker will never need to kill again — though he will be going back to prison. I took perverse glee in this film’s depiction of the professorly life: a shotgun in the office (to take to the lake), an Eames-like second house with two servants.
*
The Chase (dir. Arthur Ripley, 1946). A Horatio Alger story gone wrong: an unemployed veteran (Robert Cummings) returns a lost wallet, gets hired as a driver, and becomes involved with his employer’s wife (Michèle Morgan). The employer (Steve Cochran) is a smooth criminal, and Peter Lorre is his henchman. Genuine suspense, tricky dreams, and exoticism by way of Cuba. Another YouTube find.
*
Big Fish (dir. Tim Burton, 2003). A father and fabulist (younger, Ewan McGregor; older, Albert Finney), and a son (Ewan McGregor) who’s tired of hearing his father’s same old impossible tales. A lovely film about the power of one man’s imagination to create a life story. How wonderful when father and son are able to have meet on that ground, or in that water. Dad’s a big fish.
*
Dominguinhos+ (dir. Felipe Briso, 2014). Not a film, really, but an Internet supplement to a documentary film about the Brazilian accordionist, singer, and composer Dominguinhos (1941–2013). Maya Andrade, Yamanda Costa, Hamilton de Holanda, João Donato, Djavan, Gilberto Gil, Jazz Sinfônica, Elba Ramalho, and other musicians perform for and with Dominguihos. According to a Facebook page for the documentary, these performances are Dominguinhos’s last appearances in a recording studio. Available at YouTube.
*
Yamandu + Dominguinhos (dir. Maurício Valim, 2007). Yamandu Costa (seven-string guitar) and Dominguinhos (accordion), recorded in concert. I love hearing great players play in twos: I don’t think there’s a better way to see musical empathy in action. This performance offers one highlight after another, with endless virtuosity, wit, and joy. Out of print (I think) but available at YouTube.
Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)
Fourteen films : Thirteen more : Twelve more : Another thirteen more : Another dozen : Yet another dozen : Another twelve : And another twelve : Still another twelve : Oh wait, twelve more : Twelve or thirteen more : Nine, ten, eleven — and that makes twelve : Another twelve : And twelve more : Is there no end? No, there’s another twelve : Wait, there’s another twelve : And twelve more
