You Should Be Watching: August 16-22

Posted on by Jacob Neff.

Welcome to You Should Be Watching, my weekly opportunity to introduce you to a variety of great films, gems of the past and present, available for you to stream from Netflix, Amazon Prime, FilmStruck, and anywhere else streams are found.

STREAMING PICKS OF THE WEEK

The Aviator

Year: 2004

Director: Martin Scorsese

Genre: Biography, Drama, History

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda, Ian Holm, Jude Law, Kelli Garner, Danny Huston, Brent Spiner, Willem Dafoe, Gwen Stefani, Adam Scott, Matt Ross, Frances Conroy, Stanley DeSantis, Keith Campbell, Amy Sloan, Kevin O’Rourke, Nellie Sciutto, Edward Herrmann, Kenneth Welsh, J.C. MacKenzie, Jacob Davich, Sam Hennings, Vince Giordano, Jason Cavalier, Rufus Wainwright

Nominated for a whopping 11 Academy Awards and winner of 5, Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, headlined by the magnificent Leonardo DiCaprio is a star-studded, technically masterful, sprawling epic full of period music, design, and color about the larger than life Howard Hughes, an insanely wealthy and driven man who could do it all. He flew planes, made movies, and had an insatiable entrepreneurial spirit. His contributions to the disparate worlds of film and flight technology echo into today. He was also one of the most eccentric characters in American history, which was only worsened by hearing loss and other mounting injuries and an extreme case of OCD that eventually turned him into a complete recluse.

It’s difficult to believe Leonardo DiCaprio, who perfectly inhabits the brilliant, obsessive Hughes, did not win the Oscar he was nominated for, as it’s truly the work of a master actor, full of nuance, vulnerability, and energy. This is not to take away from the other deserving winners from this film, including Cate Blanchett, who presents a pitch-perfect Katharine Hepburn, Hughes’ long-term girlfriend and a spirited eccentric herself. The Aviator is an experience that is as joyful as it is tragic.

 

Pather Panchali

  

Year: 1955

Director: Satyajit Ray

Genre: Drama

Cast: Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Chunibala Devi, Uma Das Gupta, Subir Banerjee, Runki Banerjee, Reba Devi, Aparna Devi, Tulsi Chakraborty, Haren Banerjee, Rampada Das, Nibhanani Devi, Rama Gangopadhaya, Roma Ganguli, Binoy Mukherjee, Haridhan Nag, Harimohan Nag, Kshirod Roy, Suren Roy

With this stunning debut and the first film in what’s known as The Apu Trilogy, Satyajit Ray shows the touch of a master in handling the complex and contrasting emotional, familial, and economical dynamics at play in this story of a family living in the jungles of Bengal facing abject poverty. While each member of the central family contributes to the narrative, casting Chunibala Devi for the elderly cousin Indir was inspired. She’s like the fragile, upbeat, super old grandma who puts a smile on your face and whom you can’t help but love . Seeing the continued breakdown of her body and the harsh treatment she receives from her cousin (by marriage) Sarbojaya (Karuna Bannerjee) is painful.

The children, Durga (Uma Das Gupta) and Apu (Subir Banerjee) are relatively carefree, but Durga tends to make her mother’s challenging life even more so, though in contrast, she has a special relationship with Indir. Their father Harihar (Kanu Bannerjee) is optimistic about their future but largely absent as he’s gone months at a time trying to earn money as a writer, which leaves Sarbojaya trying to provide for her family with basically nothing. She’s often hard and bitter and even unnecessarily mean at times. She’s also a fiercely proud woman who refuses to ask for help.

She pays a stiff price for them, but her actions based on her extreme circumstances only seem outrageous at face value and when contrasted to those around her who are in happier spirits. It puts into perspective what our own attitudes would be like if faced with enduring her circumstances. Consider how we treat others when we’re having nothing more than a bad day. It’s a call for compassion and a reminder that we can always use more empathy for those around us.

The Second Mother

   

Year: 2015

Director: Anna Muylaert

Genre: Drama

Cast: Regina Casé, Michel Joelsas, Camila Márdila, Karine Teles, Lourenço Mutarelli, Helena Albergaria, Luis Miranda, Luci Pereira, Hugo Villavicenzio, Theo Werneck, Alex Rusjar, Thaissa Reis, Milcéia Vicente, Bete Dorgan, Andrey Lima Lopes

An engaging story about the complexities of inter-class and family relationships, especially when the status quo is shaken up. Val, played by Regina Casé, is a live-in maid for a wealthy family. She has a better relationship with their son Fabinho (Michel Joelsas) than his own mother does and no relationship with her estranged daughter Jessica (Camila Márdila), who resents her having moved away despite it being to provide her a better life. Suddenly, Jessica, needing a place to stay while she studies for her university entrance exam reaches out to Val, who receives permission to let her stay, hopefully not long. Her presence creates a complex new dynamic to the home and in her relationship with her mother.

Director Anna Muylaert has a careful eye for representing the separation between upper-class family represented in this film and the hired live-in help who serve them, namely Val. She also shows how important being present is as the son, Fabinho treats Val like a mother. Also, by Jessica refusing to recognize the class distinction and making herself at home, the distinctions themselves are brought into focus as well as inherent difficulties of the parent/child relationship across generational lines as well as differences in opinion of acceptable behavior. It’s a simple story but an affecting one.

COMING AND GOING

LAST CHANCE (last date to watch)

NETFLIX

August 24
The Road (2009)

August 26
White God (2014)

AMAZON PRIME

August 23
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

August 24
Captain Fantastic (2016)

August 29
Dirty Dancing (1987)

FILMSTRUCK

August 17
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989)
The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982)
Escape from New York (1981)
The Falls (1980)
Hairspray (1988)
A Zed & Two Noughts (1985)

August 20
Frances Ha (2012)

August 24
Act of Violence (1949)
Boy (2010)
Casablanca (1942)
The Freshman (1925)
From Here to Eternity (1953)
Get Carter (1971)
The Little Foxes (1941)
A Man for All Seasons (1966)
Mildred Pierce (1945)
Nine Queens (2000)
Now, Voyager (1942)
The Producers (1967)
Stella Dallas (1937)
Swing Time (1936)
Top Hat (1935)
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

August 31
Badlands (1973)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)
The Exorcist (1973)
Gun Crazy (1950)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Kameradschaft (1931)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
The Searchers (1956)
They Live by Night (1948)
Tootsie (1982)
Westfront 1918 (1930)
You Only Live Once (1937)

HULU

August 31
Across the Universe (2007)
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
The ’Burbs (1989)
Clue (1985)
Dead Man Walking (1995)
Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
Event Horizon (1997)
Hellboy (2004)
My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989)
Primal Fear (1996)
Rain Man (1988)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Trainspotting (1996)

JUST ARRIVED

NETFLIX

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)
Hostiles (2017)
No Country for Old Men (2007)

AMAZON PRIME

The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Carnage (2011)
The City of the Dead (1960)
The Damned United (2009)
The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
Every Little Step (2008)
A Field in England (2013)
General Della Rovere (1959)
Hope and Glory (1987)
The Hunt for Red October (1990)
In Syria (2017)
La Femme Nikita (1990)
Lean on Pete (2017)
Long Weekend (1978)
The Marquise of O (1976)
Mood Indigo (2013)
Ms .45 (1981)
Passport to Pimlico (1949)
The Second Mother (2015)
Tangerines (2013)
They Call Me Jeeg (2015)
Wake in Fright (1971)
Why We Fight (2005)
Zodiac (2007)

FILMSTRUCK

Heroes for Sale (1933)
Phoenix (2014)
A Star Is Born (1937)
Westward the Women (1951)
Wild Boys of the Road (1933)

HULU

Borg vs McEnroe (2017)
The Cage Fighter (2017)

COMING THIS WEEK

NETFLIX

August 17

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before – NETFLIX FILM
The Motive – NETFLIX FILM

HULU

August 17
Minding The Gap – HULU DOCUMENTARY (2018)

August 23
Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)

Jacob Neff is a film enthusiast living east of Sacramento. In addition to his contributions as an admin of the Feelin’ Film Facebook group and website, he is an active participant in the Letterboxd community, where his film reviews can be found. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with his latest thoughts and shared content.

Connecting With Classics 006: Bringing Up Baby

Posted on by Aaron White.

For this month’s pick, we took the opportunity to discuss a film about a paleontologist during the same week that another dinosaur-centric series is getting its newest entry and celebrating its original film’s 25th anniversary. We’re going back a little further and a little sillier than that series, though, with the loosest movie interpretation of a paleontologist possible. 1938’s Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks and starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, may not be scary but it is a classic screwball comedy with plenty to enjoy.

One of the goals for “Connecting With Classics” is listener participation. We will be hosting prize drawings for a poster of the Connecting With Classics movie of their choice plus podcast swag and more at the end of each calendar year. Entries into the drawing can be earned for every episode by watching the film and posting your own review or thoughts about the podcast episode in the comments section of the episode announcement post in our Feelin’ Film Facebook Discussion Group. For listeners who do not wish to be a part of the discussion group, emailing reviews to feelinfilm@gmail.com will also be accepted.

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You Should Be Watching: May 31 – June 6

Posted on by Jacob Neff.

Welcome to You Should Be Watching, my weekly opportunity to introduce you to a variety of great films, gems of the past and present, available for you to stream from Netflix, Amazon Prime, FilmStruck, and anywhere else streams are found.

This week, I’m recommending one of my all-time favorite crime thrillers that doubles as a piercing character study of the everyman. Next, I have a classic pairing of Bogart and Hepburn on an adventure on the rivers of Africa. And finally, I’m recommending an intense Israeli courtroom drama about one woman’s quest for a divorce from a loveless marriage. And in the coming and going section, there are a whole bucketload of worthwhile movies coming to streaming in the first week of June including the arrival of Thor: Ragnarok to Netflix, Lady Bird to Amazon Prime, and Blade Runner 2049 to Hulu.

 

 

STREAMING PICKS OF THE WEEK

A Simple Plan

    

Year: 1998

Director: Sam Raimi

Genre: Thriller, Crime, Drama

Cast: Bill Paxton, Bridget Fonda, Billy Bob Thornton, Brent Briscoe, Chelcie Ross, Gary Cole, Becky Ann Baker, Tom Carey, Jack Walsh

 

To start my recommendations, I’m headed back to 90s crime thriller territory to a can’t miss film about good people doing evil things. It’s easy to watch films like The Wolf of Wall Street and… well, Wall Street and self-righteously sit back and condemn the greed on display. We’re not heartless and self-absorbed like those jerks, we think. We wouldn’t put the pursuit of money above literally everything else. We’re not evil like that. But greed is not so easily dismissed. Greed does in fact lie in the heart of good people. And when that greed takes hold, well, as the Bible says, the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

The setup of A Simple Plan is just that, simple. Two kindly brothers, Hank and Jacob, and their good friend Lou (Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Brent Briscoe) discover a crashed plane in the woods near their home with nothing but a dead pilot and over four million dollars in cash. What Sam Raimi does with this setup is to masterfully challenge his audience through the consequences of one seemingly rational decision after another by each of these characters along with Hank’s wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda) to reveal the horrifying things human nature can convince us to do out of greed and fear of getting caught. It is a film rightfully at the top of Raimi’s filmography, one of the best studies of human nature on film, and among the best performed roles of each of its stars. I cannot recommend <i>A Simple Plan</i> highly enough.

 

The African Queen

Year: 1951

Director: John Huston

Genre: Adventure, Romance, War, Drama

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Morley, Peter Bull, Theodore Bikel, Walter Gotell, Peter Swanwick, Richard Marner

 

Sure, it’s directed by John Huston, the man who gave us such adventure classics as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Man Who Would Be King. Sure, it’s filmed on location in the jungles of Uganda and the Congo in lush technicolor. But what makes The African Queen really shine is the strength of its stars, that is Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. Even playing the disheveled, ill-mannered boat captain Charlie Allnut, Bogie can’t help but charm. And with Hepburn as his near polar opposite, the straight-laced missionary Rose Sayer who has just seen her mission destroyed and the villagers run off by the Germans of World War I, the stage is set for this unlikely pair to set off on an unlikely adventure.

Through the trials of a handful of thrilling set pieces and especially the sharp, snappy dialogue and wonderful chemistry between Charlie and Rose, a relationship slowly begins to take shape. While neither expects the other to become something they’re not, they find satisfaction in learning about each other and looking out for their well-being, whether it’s Charlie taking ill or Rose about to dive into alligator-filled waters to get away from a horde of files. The more dirty, weary, and bedraggled the pair become, the more joy they find in simply being together and facing their obstacles as one. All in all, it’s a charming film showcasing Africa’s beauty and its exotic rivers and an inspiring story of love strengthened through trials.

 

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

  

Year: 2014

Director: Ronit Elkabetz, Shlomi Elkabetz

Genre: Drama

Cast: Ronit Elkabetz, Simon Abkarian, Menashe Noy, Gabi Amrani, Dalia Beger

 

For my final recommendation, I head to the oft-neglected area of Israeli film for a searing single-room setting courtroom drama. Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem presents the unfolding of hearing after hearing as Viviane (Ronit Elkabetz) and her lawyer implore the Jewish religious courts to give her a divorce from her husband Elisha (Simon Abkarian) whom she can’t abide and no longer lives with. He is completely unwilling to grant her the divorce she seeks. While he claims to want her back, to love her, the bitterness is evident on both their faces. The acting in this film is stellar. It’s amazing to watch the change in Elkabetz throughout the extended trial, whether through her nonverbal reactions or her slow burning frustration that eventually bubbles over.

This is actually the third film in the Gett Trilogy. Weird recommendation, I know. However, I absolutely do recommend it even as a standalone film, even though Viviane’s stated goal is to obtain a divorce. Let me be clear. I hate divorce. It approves of selfishness, makes one’s happiness the ultimate priority, excuses a lack of sacrificial love, and tears apart families. I hate how prevalent divorce is, especially in western society, where people treat their vow to love and cherish the other for as long as they both shall live with utter disregard. So why the recommendation? It’s a brilliant study of Jewish culture and its court system and the bitter consequence of a lack of love lived out, a love in word not in deed until even the words are gone. While on one hand this film is a call to reform the Jewish court system, on the other, it’s a powerful revelation of how marriages die. It acts as a powerful warning to all husbands and wives to give themselves fully to their spouses, to love them deeply and unselfishly.

 

COMING AND GOING

LAST CHANCE (last date to watch)

NETFLIX

May 31
8 Mile (2002)
Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015)
Men In Black (1997)
My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989)
Neerja (2016)
Oldboy (2003)
Scarface (1983)
Super (2010)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The Resurrection of Jake the Snake (2015)
Training Day (2001)

June 24
Captain America: Civil War (2016)

June 29
On Golden Pond (1981)

 

AMAZON PRIME

May 31
From the Rocky Collection:

Rocky (1976)
Rocky II (1979)

From the James Bond Collection:

Dr. No (1962)
From Russia with Love (1963)
Goldfinger (1964)
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

June 7
Remember (2015)

June 9
Rosewater (2014)

 

FILMSTRUCK

May 31
High Noon (1952)

June 1
House of Flying Daggers (2004)
A Night At The Opera (1935)
Natural Born Killers (1994)

June 8
Christopher Guest:

Best in Show (2000)
Waiting for Guffman (1996)

Elia Kazan:

On the Waterfront (1954)
A Face in the Crowd (1957)

June 15
A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
Metropolis (1927)
Peeping Tom (1960)
Wag the Dog (1997)

June 22
An American in Paris (1951)
The Piano (1993)

 

HULU

May 31
1984 (1984)
Breakdown (1997)
Manhattan (1979)
The Secret of N.I.M.H. (1982)

 

JUST ARRIVED

NETFLIX

Coco (2017)
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017)

 

FILMSTRUCK

Seven Beauties (1975)
The Unknown (1927)
Wendy and Lucy (2008)
The Women (1939)
Lolita (1962)
Grand Hotel (1932)

 

HULU

I, Tonya (2017)
Rain Man (1988)

 

COMING THIS WEEK

NETFLIX

June 1
Blue Jasmine (2013)
The Departed (2006)
Miracle (2004)
National Treasure (2004)
Outside In (2017)

June 2
The King’s Speech (2010)

June 5
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

 

AMAZON PRIME

June 1
The Age of Innocence (1993)
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
Breakdown (1997)
The ’Burbs (1989)
Day of the Dead (1985)
The Disaster Artist (2017)
Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
Event Horizon (1997)
The Natural (1984)
The Running Man (1987)
Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Space Jam (1996)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Wonder Wheel — AMAZON ORIGINAL MOVIE (2017)

June 3
Lady Bird (2017)
Stargate (1994)

 

HULU

June 1
Apollo 13 (1995)
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Bull Durham (1988)
The ’Burbs (1989)
Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
Event Horizon (1997)
Hellboy (2004)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Margin Call (2011)
My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989)
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
The Running Man (1987)
Steel Magnolias (1989)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Trainspotting (1996)

June 2
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

June 3
Stargate (1994)

 

Jacob Neff is a film enthusiast living east of Sacramento. In addition to his contributions as an admin of the Feelin’ Film Facebook group and website, he is an active participant in the Letterboxd community, where his film reviews can be found. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with his latest thoughts and shared content.