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. Stuck at home while the world shuts down cold to avoid a very tiny bully? Don’t binge on TV shows that are more product than provocative. It has never been easier for the public to access truly wonderful uncut, commercial-free cinema from the comfort of their own isolation wards. The explosion of digital platforms is creating a demand for “content”, and while much of it is clearly clickbait crap, it has also meant that many fine films long absent from the marketplace are reemerging, and it’s a great thing for people who love movies as much as I do!
Netflix-HBO-Amazon-Hulu-Hoopla-YouTube-TCM-Disney+!
. It’s what they call an embarrassment of riches. Lucky me, my life situation changed and I suddenly have access to most of these. I’ve barely begun to explore the possibilities. It will be much fun combing through my TO SEE list to discover what gems may suddenly be available to me. My old computer would not stream shit- but the new upgrade to MacBook Pro allows me to suddenly access an awesome free service called “Kanopy” that streams wonderful content free of charge to library patrons. I get credit for 8 films a month- and with all the other competing possibilities, I probably won’t even use them all. (Also just signed up for a free two week trial of The Criterion Channel. That looks promising!) In combing through the possibilities on Kanopy, I spontaneously began to take notes for my housemate who is every bit the cinepline I am. Apparently, he had seen very few of them. Thought I would do the charitable thing, and share this list with you- my socially stranded reader. So here it is, in no particular order:
WHAT PAUL SHOULD WATCH ON KANOPY AND WHY:
DENIAL (2016): Excellent true-life courtroom drama featuring a wonderful Timothy Spall as a loathsome Holocaust denier and a righteous Rachel Weisz as the woman who will bring him to justice.
5 BROKEN CAMERAS (2012): Searing portrait of Israeli brutality against peaceful, unarmed protesters
OMAR (2014): First class Romeo-and-Juliet story about a Palestinian man and his Israeli girlfriend attempting to have. a relationship with a giant wall between them- figuratively and literally.
THINGS TO COME (1936): Rather stunning early H.G. Wells sci-fi epic.
ARCTIC (2019): Tense, exciting one-man survival film featuring the great Mads Mikkelsen.
SEVEN CHANCES (1925): In this crazy-fun Buster Keaton romantic silent comedy, sad-sack Keaton suddenly becomes the most eligible bachelor in the world, when her discovers that to keep his riches, he must marry within 24 hours.
YOU, THE LIVING (2009): Absolutely one-of-a-kind Swedish surrealist Roy Andersson hysterical sketch film about the ironies and vicissitudes of everyday modern life
HARA-KIRI (1964): The single best Japanese film I have ever seen. Period. Better than anything from Kurosawa!
THE 10 COMMANDMENTS (1923): Cecil B. DeMille’s sprawling epic goes from Biblical spectacle to a “modern day” parable that features some really great storytelling.
SWEPT AWAY (1974): Lina Wertmüller’s incendiary look at the power dynamic between the classes and genders generated a shitstorm of controversy in its day.
SEVEN BEAUTIES (1976): Lina Wertmüller again, delivers one of THE TEN BEST FILMS I HAVE EVER SEEN, about Italian machismo in the face of WWII. Giancarlo Giannini gives one of the best performances ever committed to film. Those eyes!
I AM NOT A WITCH (2018): Fascinating African film (from a Scottish director) about an abandoned child who gets blamed for everything that goes amiss in a small village, and branded a witch as a result. So friggin’ good!
8½ (1963): Federico Fellini’s VERY BEST FILM is a crazy fantasia about a director struggling to overcome his creative block. Could not possibly be more fun.
ACE IN THE HOLE (1951): Burt Lancaster is terrific in this film that was a good 50 years ahead of its time! A miner is stuck in a cave-in, and Lancaster’s amoral reporter is ready to capitalize on the drama- even if it kills the miner! Billy Wilder directs a prescient drama that reads as a bitter indictment of commercial media.
THEEB (2015): This film about a Bedouin boy in 1916 Sub Saharan Africa is as good as any film about a child on a dangerous adventure.
OLDBOY (2005): Intense Korean drama about a man who is mysteriously locked into an apartment against his will for 15 years, with only a TV for company. What happens when one day, he finds the locked door open and he is free to leave, and hunt down his captor. This film contains the single best fight sequence I have ever seen in a movie. Explosive conclusion makes this the best Korean film I have ever seen.
VICTORIA (2015): This unpredictable German thriller has the same gimmick as 1917 or Hitchcock’s ROPE: The difference? Those films only presented the illusion of being shot in one take. This film WAS shot in one take, and the result is one of the most delirious films I’ve ever seen!
AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (1972): Werner Herzog at his very best. Klaus Kinski at his very best. Amazing doomed adventure in the heart of the Amazon. Brilliant!
EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT (2015): A memorable ethnographic Amazon adventure from Columbia, featuring a shaman in search of a hare medicinal herb.
MEET JOHN DOE (1941): This corny Frank Capra social fantasy is THE FILM for 2020. Gary Cooper is a sweet, naive patsy, being played like a marionette by hardbitten cynical newswoman Barbara Stanwyck, who inadvertently becomes a genuine American hero despite her callous manipulations. Curiously, both a liberal’s and a conservative’s wet dream, MEET JOHN DOE is Pollyannaish bullshit of course- but what heartfelt BS it is! If you have not seen it yet and you have any interest in American politics whatsoever- PUT DOWN WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND WATCH THIS FILM NOW.
TIMBUKTU (2014): I don’t know about you, but one major thing I look for in films is to be wholly transported to a different time, place, and way of life. This film about what happens Islamic militants occupy Timbuktu, and attempt to impose their morality on the locals. They are being told to stop their singing, as it is an affront to Allah. But they are singing Allah’s praises! How could that be wrong? Fine film.
HUNGER (1973): One of the very first computer animated shorts, I studied it in art school, and it still fascinates today.
LOVING VINCENT (2017): Willem Dafoe could not possibly be better as tormented Vincent Van Gogh, in this visually spectacular animated feature that uses the great artist’s paintings to tell a story about his life. If you dig Van Gogh you gotta see this!
CARTEL LAND (2015): This exceptional documentary shines a bright light into the dark corners of drug trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border and the gangs who terrorize everyone they come into contact with.
UNDER THE SKIN (2013): Uber-creepy indie sensation from Scotland. Watch as Scarlett Johansson chats up ordinary working class Joes on the streets of Glasgow (Some are not actors!) then brings them home for the most terrifying seduction imaginable. Also good for people who just want to ogle the luminous star naked.
MUSTANG (2015): This great portrait of girls coming of age in an Islamic society is the best Turkish film I have ever seen.
NOWHERE IN AFRICA (2001): Reading the writing on the wall of history, a Jewish lawyer relocates his family to Africa to wait out the coming war. He adjust to the new reality because he sees he has no choice, but his wife pines for the old life she left behind, and the daughter gradually becomes more African then European. Excellent!
EX MACHINA (2014): A.I. run amok is one of the best sci-fi meditations on the dangers of unchecked technology- and Alicia Vikander in a breakout performance as the sexy automaton is a bombshell!
OF FATHERS AND SONS (2017): This film about the casual child abuse of life under ISIS is among the VERY BEST documentaries I have ever seen- certainly in the top ten! YOU HAVE GOT TO SEE THIS OVERWHELMING FILM TO BELIEVE IT. A horrifying but absolutely vital wake-up call for complacent Westerners… like me. Critically important filmmaking!
ROOM (2015): If you have not seen this stark but thrilling human drama yet, it begs the question: What are you waiting for? It sure made a star of Brie Larson! Sheer Dynamite.
WAR WITCH (2013): A painful tale of child abuse in Africa with a twist. Rebel partisans violently conscript a village girl, but something happens that make them believe the tormented girl has supernatural powers.
MELANCHOLIA (2011): Bad Boy Lars Von Trier’s very best film was among the most impactful and devastating of the 5000+ films I have ever seen. It goes from the sublime (a radiant Kirsten Dunst luxuriating nude in the moonlight a la Maxfield Parrish), to the apocalyptic (don’t ask!). Tragically unforgettable!
EIGHTH GRADE (2018): Absolutely perfect look at teenage sexuality. No Oscar nominations at all make this a BIG snub for one of the best films of 2018.
THE WITCH (2015): Robert Egger’s debut feature marks him as one of the most promising living directors. It’s 1630, and a stunningly beautiful young girl is suspected of being a witch… Not good in 1630!
HOLY MOTORS (2012): Wild, crazy, goofy, outrageous surrealist romp! Fun stuff!
THE ZERO THEOREM (2013): Terry Gilliam’s criminally under-appreciated fantasy just kicks ass. Absolutely loved it!
MARINA ABRAMOVIC: THE ARTIST IS PRESENT (2012): Fascinating portrait of a creative genius and her groundbreaking performance art.
THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES (2012): Guffaw-inducing story of unbridled excess in America, when a newly rich family falls lock, stock and barrel down the black hole of compulsive consumerism.
MOONLIGHT (2016): Barry Jenkins directed this highly deserving Best Picture winner of 2016. This is a truly great film. Nice to know truly great films are being made!
TANNA (2015): I was totally entranced by this true exotic South Seas romance about two lovers run afoul of local taboo. The first film shot entirely in Vanuatu, the island tribe are playing themselves completely unselfconsciously. A fascinating diversion from modern life.
ECHO IN THE CANYON (2018): Resonant nostalgia from Dylan’s son Jakob, who brings back the (still living!) musical icons who made Laurel canyon in the 1970’s such a mecca for talent, producing such a wealth of classic music. Great interviews/great performances, despite Jakob’s lack of charisma and oversized ego.
A MAN CALLED OVE (2015): Certainly the best Swedish film to hit the U.S. market in many years, this bittersweet story tells the tale of nasty old codger Ove, who never hesitates to make everybody’s life miserable. Widowed and utterly defeated, he really wants to kill himself- but the damn neighbors keep stopping by asking for help!
THIS IS NOT A FILM (2012): The great Persian director-in-exile Jafar Panahi ran afoul of the rigid Iranian mullahs, and was forbidden to make any more films for decades. Extending a firm middle finger to these cultural bullies, he keeps making… um… NON-films, and sneaking them out of the country in flash drives embedded in cakes. If you call yourself a true film lover, this is absolutely a NON-film you want to see. It’s not his best, but it is a painful clarion call to freedom of expression.
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961): Certainly not for everybody, (Perhaps 90% of modern filmgoers would likely hate this!) this groundbreaking film changed forever my perspective on what was possible in cinema. French director Alain Resnais takes linear time and reality and throws it in a blender.
+ Special mentions:
LABOR DAY (2014)
THE MACHINIST (2004)
SKIN (2008)
GALLIPOLI (1981)
TCHOUPITOULAS (2012)
I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO (2017)
TAKE THIS WALTZ (2012)
MEMENTO (2000)
PELLE THE CONQUEROR (1988)
THE INSULT (2017)
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1966)
DEAD MAN WALKING (1995)
LADY BIRD (2018)
CAPTAIN FANTASTIC (2016)
THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA (1994)
THE LOBSTER (2015)
LEAVE NO TRACE (2018)
MEEK’S CUTOFF (2010)
THE TURIN HORSE (2011)
FIRST REFORMED (2017)
– We can only hope and wish that this wave of viral terror will recede sooner rather than later. With any luck, you will not get around to many of these before it passes and our new way of life emerges. Impossible to say. Worst case scenario: you have to watch all these wonderful films before the “all clear” siren is sounded. Could be worse… For many, it is. Let’s keep them in our thoughts, and all the medical responders on the front lines- true, real life heroes, all.
– Hang tight, friends!
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© Kevin Paul and lastcre8iveiconoclast, 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kevin Paul Keelan and lastcre8iveiconoclast with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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