Movies

Hello, fellow film lovers!We’re bunkered down at home and missing the movies. We miss the dramas and comedies, and we miss sharing a theater, the love and the friendly debates. If you miss that too, Your Weekend Watch is here for you. The idea is that we pick a movie, we all watch it over the weekend, you weigh in on the film (like it, hate it) and then we do.The last time we got together (virtually), it was to watch the Tom Cruise vehicle “Top Gun.” For our next Weekend Watch, we have returned to the Hollywood vault and selected “His Girl Friday” (1940), about men and women, romance and work, and the glories and outrages of a subject that is especially dear to both of us: journalism. No hissing.[embedded content]You may have seen it already, but that’s OK. So have we, a lot (more than either of us remembers). There’s something comforting about watching an old Hollywood film. Part of this is just familiarity — nice to see you, Cary Grant — and part of it is, well, the genius of the system. But while many consider “His Girl Friday” a classic, it hasn’t always been loved. In his review for The New York Times, the critic Frank S. Nugent carped, “The lines are all cute if you can hear them, but you can’t hear many because every one is making too much noise — the audience or the players themselves.” Ouch.At once simple and twisty, “His Girl Friday” is essentially a romantic duel between a newspaper editor, Walter Burns (Grant) and his ex-wife, the ace reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell). Hildy’s about to get married, but a breaking story — and Walter — keep getting in her way. It’s based on “The Front Page,” a crackling play that the film puts into delirious overdrive. And now Hildy is a woman, a glorious change.Does it matter? That’s one of the things that we’ll be chewing over while we’re watching “His Girl Friday” again. Is Hildy a role model? Or is it Russell who makes the character feel liberated? Hildy isn’t just a great “newspaperman,” as she’s called. She and Walter are equals who can both dish it out and take it, no matter how stinging and funny the barb. Oh, and one more question: is Cary Grant the greatest film actor in history? We have thoughts.“His Girl Friday” is on several platforms (here’s a guide), but be warned that there are disgracefully battered copies out there. The best-looking ones we found are on the Criterion Channel and a free version on YouTube. So, take a look and, after you have watched, tell us what you think in the comments section below. Be sure to weigh in by 6 p.m. Eastern time on Monday. We’ll return with our reactions to your comments on Wednesday. Have fun, talk soon, be safe. More

Alfred Hitchcock may seem like an odd choice for this column, which purports to recommend entry points for movie genres you don’t get or directors who seem difficult. Hitchcock, by contrast, could easily be considered the most famous director who ever lived. His run from 1958 to 1963 alone — “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” “Psycho,” “The Birds” — consists exclusively of films that almost everyone knows.Yet Hitchcock made more than 50 features, and watching and returning to them is a lifelong pursuit. Most of his films are available to stream in some form or other.One of Hitchcock’s most daring experiments, “Rope” (1948), is a great gateway movie because, by breaking certain rules, it teaches you a lot about how films are made.“Rope”: Rent or buy it on Amazon, FandangoNow, iTunes and YouTube.Movies aren’t “supposed” to be shot on single sets (although Hitchcock made five that mostly were). Movies are supposed to have cuts, and this one — to a large extent — preserves the illusion of being shot in a single take (although the cuts that are visible are crucial to the film’s impact). And aside from the opening credits, “Rope” is set entirely within a New York apartment, which makes it, along with Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” (1954), a movie of the moment.“Rope” inevitably comes up whenever directors, like Sam Mendes in “1917,” shoot movies designed to look as if they were filmed in uninterrupted takes. That was part of Hitchcock’s experiment, but far from the whole of it. The plot of “Rope” has obvious similarities to the Leopold and Loeb case from 1924, when two Chicago graduate students kidnapped and killed a teenage boy.In the movie, two men, the domineering Brandon (John Dall) and the meek Phillip (Farley Granger), strangle an old school chum, David, simply for the sensation of getting away with murder. They then put the body in a book chest and cover the chest with a tablecloth, to use it as a serving table at a party. The dead man’s father (Cedric Hardwicke), aunt (Constance Collier) and girlfriend (Joan Chandler) attend, along with the three men’s former prep-school housemaster, Rupert (James Stewart).This was the third of five films that Hitchcock shot predominantly on a single set. His early talkie “Juno and the Paycock” (1930), derived from a stage play, adhered to the intuitive wisdom that it was necessary to “open up” a theater adaptation by occasionally, arbitrarily bringing characters outdoors. But Hitchcock told François Truffaut that he felt like he had stolen a success. “The film got very good notices,” he said, “but I was actually ashamed, because it had nothing to do with cinema.”Each of the other four films takes a different approach to the single-set problem, and none feels remotely theatrical. “Lifeboat” (1944) effectively treats one space as multiple spaces, allowing private conversations to occur despite the fact that the characters are in tight quarters on a vessel in the Atlantic. “Dial M for Murder” (1954) uses 3-D to play tricks with perspective. “Rear Window” (1954), despite being set in one stagelike apartment, directly addresses the act of looking through a camera. Stewart plays a housebound photographer who gazes through a lens at a set of still frames (the windows across the courtyard) and figuratively sets them into motion, seeing a murder story. The movie has long been recognized as a metaphor for filmmaking.“Rope,” Hitchcock’s first film with Stewart, is also about voyeurism. It is easy to get caught up in the suspense of the story, and to make the mistake of thinking you are watching filmed theater. But repeat viewings reveal that it is one of the best places to get a sense of Hitchcock as a master of film technique. Although Hitchcock told Truffaut he wanted to see whether it was possible to shoot a movie as continuous action, the way the play unfolded, he didn’t abandon the special shifts in emphasis that he could only make with a camera — or with cuts, which “Rope” assuredly includes.First, there are the famous cuts that came from technical limitations. Hitchcock couldn’t shoot an 80-minute movie in one take (cameras couldn’t hold that much film), so he occasionally had to dolly the camera into the backs of the men’s suit jackets, briefly obscuring the frame in darkness to hide a cut. But there are also plain-vanilla cuts in “Rope.” Hitchcock uses them to punctuate important moments in the dramatic action, giving a subliminal jolt to viewers, when, for instance, Rupert catches Phillip in a lie.Watch when the camera pushes in for close-ups or makes unexpected movements, as when the aunt arrives and momentarily mistakes another guest for the dead David, startling Phillip. At another point, while the guests, off camera, discuss where David could possibly be, Hitchcock’s gaze remains ruthlessly fixed on the housekeeper (Edith Evanson) removing the candles and tablecloth from the book chest in which David’s body is hidden.Students of film will be familiar with the 180-degree rule. Set a camera in one position relative to the actors; once you’ve picked a side, cutting to a shot from the opposite side will momentarily disorient viewers. There are only a few occasions when the camera skirts or crosses that line in “Rope,” and it does so subtly, always when Rupert is on the verge of a discovery. And because those are the angles from which a theater audience would be seen from a stage — the angles from which most of the film is shot — Hitchcock implicates viewers in Rupert’s j’accuse.“Rope” was Hitchcock’s first color film, but he approached the palette not for potential scenic beauty but as a tool. In 1948, Hitchcock crowed in the magazine Popular Photography about the panorama of the New York skyline that he had made for the “Rope” soundstage, with the setting sun conveying the passage of time. (The article, an excellent guide to the film’s making, can be found in the essential book “Hitchcock on Hitchcock.”) When Rupert confronts Brandon with the monstrosity of his crime, neon lights from outside flood the room — a device that Hitchcock would resurface in “Vertigo.”What initially looks like a filmed play turns out to be highly cinematic. And “Rope” is prime evidence that Hitchcock, as popular as he was, could execute a radical experiment within a mainstream art form without ever losing his accessibility. More

It may sound counterintuitive, but watching horror films isn’t just about feeling scared. It’s also about feeling safe. Scary movies assure our brains that the terror is happening there, not here. They’re chilling security blankets.A few weeks ago, the pandemic film “Contagion” was terrifying and cautionary but also a work of fiction. Now many of its fictions are facts, and the fear is real. (For some people, “Contagion” is still entertaining; streams of the film and other virus-themed disaster movies have surged.)Besides pandemics, horror movies about isolation (“It Comes at Night”), home invasions (“Hush”) and the apocalypse (“The Road”) also come too close for comfort these days.But what if I told you I had a motley list of films that are so far-fetched and improbable that there’s no way they could come true? That you can safely and sanely enjoy dread, mayhem and fear of the unknown? That each one carries a promise that this will never happen?Please, please, please let me be right.‘Them!’ (1954)Like That Would Happen: Giant killer antsAtomic Age creature features — about mutant people, animals and insects gone wild — are escapist nostalgia trips that make up in fun what they lack in quality. With run times around 90 minutes or less, they’re perfect for double or triple features. You can choose from a universe of attackers, including crabs, scorpions, she-creatures and The Manster. (CreatureFeatures.tv is a terrific resource.) One of the best is “Them!,” directed by Gordon Douglas, about massive man-crushing ants. The movie is more goofy than scary; one critic said the ants “look ridiculous and as threatening as … well, the Care Bears.” This one’s especially good for restless kids who might enjoy a retro scare.Available on Amazon, YouTube, Google Play, iTunes‘Alphaville’ (1965)Like That Would Happen: Mind controlFor something more highbrow, try Jean-Luc Godard’s sci-fi/film noir mash-up set in the dismal world of Alphaville, where emotions are outlawed. The film follows the intergalactic detective Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) on his mission to hunt down the evil scientist behind a mind-control supercomputer that rules the citizenry. Lemmy gets help from the scientist’s daughter Natacha (Anna Karina), who ultimately discovers love herself. Godard’s pulpy homage to American B-movies and hard-boiled gumshoe dramas exists in a world where technology and totalitarianism partner for evil. (We’re not there — yet.) But Godard also stylishly delivers a dystopian love story with a poetic, utopian heart.Available on Google Play, iTunes, YouTube, Kanopy‘Eraserhead’ (1977)Like That Would Happen: EverythingPerfect for adventurous film freaks, David Lynch’s first feature is a wacko, surreal, black-and-white nightmare-scape about — how do I put this? — an unnerved man with frightful hair (Jack Nance) and a monstrous infant. Writing in The New York Times, Manohla Dargis said the film “disturbs, seduces and even shocks,” but it “also amuses, in its own weird way, with scenes of preposterous, macabre comedy.” I vote this the Film Least Likely to Become a Documentary.Available on Amazon, YouTube, Google Play, iTunes, Criterion Channel‘Killer Klowns From Outer Space’ (1988)Like That Would Happen: Killer clowns from outer spaceIn this outlandish comedy-horror hybrid, clownlike aliens infiltrate a small town with plans to terrorize humanity. To the rescue come the teenagers Mike (Grant Cramer) and Debbie (Suzanne Snyder), who try to convince disbelieving authorities that the murderous bozos aren’t joking. Directed by Stephen Chiodo, the film is a fun-house nod to B-movie fare like “The Blob,” and now has a cult following. This one is great for families with children who can handle creepy clowns harvesting people in cotton-candy cocoons, or death by pie in the face.Available on Roku, Tubi, Pluto TV‘Willow Creek’ (2013)Like That Would Happen: BigfootUntil Bigfoot is captured, Bobcat Goldthwait’s unsettling found-footage horror movie remains a frightening work of pure imagination. It’s about a couple (Bryce Johnson and Alexie Gilmore) who travel deep into the woods to document where Sasquatch was said to have been seen in 1967. An almost 20-minute scene shot entirely inside a tent is one of the most nail-biting moments I’ve ever watched through my fingers. Because it feels like a documentary, this one is best for folks with a strong constitution for realistic horror.Available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, iTunes, Kanopy‘One Cut of the Dead’ (2019)Like That Would Happen: ZombiesThe most memorable zombie films upend the genre with surprises like musical-comedy zombies (“Anna and the Apocalypse”) and Nazi zombies (“Dead Snow”). This Japanese comedy, directed by Shinichiro Ueda, adds a delightful twist: meta zombies. In the zombie film within the film, a director keeps rolling as his cast and crew are attacked by actual zombies. But about a third of the way in, we suddenly switch gears and “One Cut of the Dead” delightfully transforms into a slapstick backstage farce — think “Noises Off” with blood. I’m cheating a little by including this film, since it could actually happen. (The reason it could is a spoiler.) But if it did, that would be splendid.Available on Shudder, Amazon, Google Play, iTunes More

“Slay the Dragon” begins with a subject that might seem counterintuitive for a documentary on gerrymandering: the Flint, Mich., water crisis. The movie lays out a timeline of state legislative actions that led to the decision that contaminated the city’s water supply. It persuasively argues that the crisis never would have happened without gerrymandering, which had allowed legislators to shield themselves from voters’ wrath.Connecting the dots between Flint and gerrymandering isn’t new; that case has been made elsewhere by the journalist David Daley, a consultant on the documentary and the author of “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count.” For anyone who has read a book on gerrymandering or followed the legal fights over the matter, “Slay the Dragon” won’t necessarily offer much that is new. (The Supreme Court ruled last June that federal courts had no power to rectify partisan gerrymanders, a process in which state legislative majorities redraw voting maps to help their political side ensure control.)But the film, directed by Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance, does a skillful job of distilling a complicated history. It recounts a Republican campaign to flip statehouses in the all-important election of 2010, a census year after which legislators could redraw boundaries. It tags along with Katie Fahey, a grass-roots activist, as she pushes for a ballot measure in Michigan that, in 2018, gave redistricting authority to an independent commission. And it dissects the extreme nature of partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin — graphics show how sophisticated, data-driven mapmaking guaranteed that, even in the event of a Democratic landslide, Republicans would maintain power in the State Assembly — and its policy consequences.[embedded content]One architect of the gerrymanders is quite forthright about his accomplishments. Chris Jankowski, a Republican strategist whose redistricting program was featured in Daley’s book, coolly discusses the cost-effectiveness of his plan to win statehouses in 2010, which had the potential to lock in Republican control in the House of Representatives for a decade. (It took the 2018 Democratic national landslide — unmentioned here — to counteract that.)Dale Schultz, a Republican and former state senator in Wisconsin, speaks out about the practice even though it benefited his party. He recalls his shock over the swiftness of Gov. Scott Walker’s push to weaken public-sector unions after winning office in 2010 (he remembers saying, “people kill each other’s dogs over this kind of stuff”) and, later, after seeing the 2012 election results, his surprise at how many assembly seats Republicans were able to retain.And then there is Robert LaBrant, a Republican redistricting strategist in Michigan who says he doesn’t think surplus votes for Democrats in urban districts are a direct result of Republican gerrymandering. “It’s just a fact of life,” he says. Then the movie shows a May 2011 email in which he wrote, “We needed for legal and PR purposes a good looking map that did not look like an obvious gerrymander.”The goals of “Slay the Dragon” are more activist than cinematic; the documentary ends with an exhortation for viewers to visit a website to learn how to take action. And there are only a few passages in which it has the sort of present-tense exhilaration that can come from watching events unfold, as when it embeds in 2018 with some of the plaintiff’s team in Gill v. Whitford, as they wait — and wait — for the Supreme Court’s ruling.But “Slay the Dragon” is not short on outrage, and just because some of this material is not new doesn’t mean it’s not worth repeating.Slay the DragonRated PG-13; tampering with democracy. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

No one likes when their parent begins dating someone new, and Kareem Manning (Terrence Little Gardenhigh), the pint-size pseudo-policeman in the agonizingly humorless Netflix cop comedy “Coffee & Kareem,” is no exception. But his reaction to learning that his mother, Vanessa (Taraji P. Henson), is dating a loser cop (Ed Helms, who is also credited as a producer) — requesting that local drug dealers put a hit on his mom’s new boyfriend — might be considered fairly extreme. Now, that bumbling police officer, James Coffee, recently demoted to handling traffic after allowing a Detroit drug dealer (Ronreaco Lee) to get away during a sting operation, has to prove to Vanessa his worth both as a romantic partner and a possible father figure for her son. Additionally, Coffee must show that he’s more than a weak, poor, uncool white guy to the 12-year-old Kareem, who aspires to become a rapper and wears an outsized form of young braggadocio.Kareem’s hit request goes off the rails when he and Coffee witness the dealers murder a corrupt officer, launching them into a rogue buddy cop plotline so padded with bad jokes (many of which are homophobic), aimlessly vulgar language and hackneyed plot points that it makes its 88 minutes congeal beyond a recognizable measure of time.Directed by Michael Dowse as something like the comedic demon seed of “Good Boys” and “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Coffee and Kareem” (get it?) sees itself as a provocation. Kareem calls cops “pigs” and makes cracks about the racial dynamics between both him and Coffee, and Coffee and his mother.The buddy cop movie genre is by all means worth interrogating as conversations around institutional racism and police brutality continue. But this film’s jabs are dull and sophomoric, as if they only began with the premise of “isn’t it wild to make a buddy cop movie in this cultural climate?” without considering the precision needed to allow the gags to be a politically challenging and thoughtful satirical tool. As it stands, this “Coffee” leaves a bitter taste.Coffee & KareemNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. More

Photographed like a dream and experienced like a nightmare, the religious cult at the center of “The Other Lamb” looks idyllic on the outside, but, like the bird’s carcass stumbled upon by the film’s heroine, is teeming with maggots inside.Most of this rot emanates from the leader, a Messiah-like figure known as the Shepherd and played by Michiel Huisman with arrogant stillness and burning glances. The recipient of these is usually Selah (Raffey Cassidy), an auburn-haired beauty and his favorite daughter. Over the years, the Shepherd, the lone male, has accumulated many wives and daughters — for all intents and purposes, seemingly one and the same — and Selah’s approaching puberty is about to catapult her from one nominal category to the other.[embedded content]Her coming-of-age, though, brings visitations beyond the blood that will banish her temporarily to a shed reserved for the impure. Disturbingly macabre visions — a mauled lamb, livid crimson stripes on a woman’s neck — appear at random. Dark hints dropped by Sarah (Denise Gough), a mysteriously cursed wife fed on scraps and exiled to the fringes of the cult’s remote forest home, warn Selah that the Shepherd may not be the answer to her prayers. For one thing, he enjoys ramming his fingers down women’s throats in foreplay, but that’s another story — one that, like all the cult’s legends, only he is permitted to tell.Existing outside of time and place, “The Other Lamb” is a gorgeous revenge fable with an excess of atmosphere and zero subtlety — a mallet wrapped in gauze and girlish laughter. As the women raise sheep and babble hysterically in prayer, the Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska uses her bucolic setting (the movie was filmed in Ireland) like a trap, a cage drenched in mist and primal ritual. The otherworldliness, as well as the potent blend of serenity and agitation in Michal Englert’s ecstatic cinematography, can be hyper-seductive; yet the lack of narrative or character depth in Catherine S. McMullen’s screenplay is frustrating. We learn what happens when a boy is born, or a wife gets too old to titillate; but the revelations — like the reasons for the cult’s endless trek to a new location — unfold with only the flimsiest of context and virtually no back story.In only one brief sequence does the movie seem to reach for something transcendent, as Selah sees herself, in modern dress, drive unheedingly past the sect as it trudges beside a road. A vision of a new life, or a memory of a previous one, it frees the movie from its otherwise slow, symbol-fixated cycle of baptisms and beatings, obedience and control. In the press notes, Szumowska describes her film as “a dark cry against the patriarchy.” That seems to me like a very fair assessment.The Other LambNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play, YouTube and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

In the comedy “Almost Love,” romance springs from a love of one’s class. The movie follows a group of 30-something New Yorkers who support one another through various stages of relationships. Ensconced in their close-knit circle, they chatter, deeming which partners are perfect and which ones deserve the boot. But the one subject these chatty characters never touch is class, despite their obvious obsession with it.Adam (Scott Evans) and Marklin (Augustus Prew) are at the center of this intertwined crew. They have been together for five years, but their sense of intimacy has started to deteriorate and their friends aren’t holding up any better. One, Elizabeth (Kate Walsh), seems to have the perfect relationship with her husband, until infidelity shakes its foundations. Another, Haley (Zoe Chao) is confused in her role as a college counselor when a particularly dependent student develops a crush on her.[embedded content]As these characters stumble and joke their way toward their inevitably happy endings, they flirt with shallowness. The film’s writer and director Mike Doyle does too. It’s particularly shown in the character of Cammy (Michelle Buteau), who has found a guy she likes enough to stay home with, despite her concerns he’s not totally Mr. Right. In short, her beau, Henry (Colin Donnell), is homeless. Cammy’s fears about how his housing reflects on her own stability are uncomfortably played for laughs, which only underscores the movie’s confused attitude toward social class.“Almost Love” teases you with glimpses into Manhattanite pocketbooks with references to exorbitant rents or entitled, wealthy clients. But each time money enters the story, the film dances around the issue, treating the characters’ investments in one another as solely emotional. When Elizabeth rejects a flirtation with a handsome ice cream man, she complains that he only wants to talk about his boring job. The movie never follows up and never leaves room to consider that these genial people with nice apartments and Ivy League diplomas might have an obnoxious sense of who is in their league.The aimless characters in “Almost Love” like to talk through their feelings, their aspirations, their disappointments, but there is little substance in their epiphanies, and the comedy is too low key to make up for its absence. In this comedy of romantic manners, class solidarity is the love that dares not speak its name.Almost LoveNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

Jon Abrahams’s comic thriller, “Clover,” strains for the mob intrigue of Martin Scorsese and the rapturous, bloody stylization of Quentin Tarantino. It’s chock-full of gore and expletive-laden banter, but lacks the key ingredients to make it worthy of its influences: original ideas and a strong script.Mickey (played by Abrahams) and Jackie Callaghan (Mark Webber) owe a local mobster, Tony (Chazz Palminteri, hamming it up), a debt that they cannot repay. So, Tony offers them a deal: They can work it off by helping his son, Joey, collect from another defaulting debtor. The situation goes (expectedly) south when Joey is shot dead by the debtor’s 13-year-old daughter, Clover (Nicole Elizabeth Berger), and the brothers flee with the girl, seeking refuge with a motley assortment of friends as they’re chased by Tony’s goons.Every beat in “Clover,” written by Michael Testone, is overly familiar and so is every character. The Callaghans are archetypal bumblers who squabble even when staring down the barrel of a gun. Tony is a cartoonish mob villain with a knack for gruesome murder. There’s also a coldhearted ex-girlfriend; a dirty back-stabbing cop; and a rival mob boss (Ron Perlman) who delivers a speech about the importance of the “pecking order” while a nearby TV plays images of wolves hunting deer. As more short-lived, thinly drawn characters accumulate, the movie contorts in unconvincing ways from one verbose, bullet-ridden set piece to the next.[embedded content]Why this film is named after Clover — or why the character even features in the story — is a mystery: She’s marginal to the plot and surfaces only occasionally to gratingly convey her precocious sass and savvy. A final twist involving a pair of female assassins and a tacked-on rape-revenge back story tries to add some context to Clover’s presence. But it’s a lazy grab at topical feminist cred and feels, as do many aspects of “Clover,“ like a half-realized imitation of better movies.CloverNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. Rent or buy on iTunes, Google Play, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More