THE NEVERENDING
FILM FESTIVAL
#182  [archive]
Delicatessen (1991)[DVD from the library]
Movies are more fun for me knowing as little as possible before pressing ‘play’ — expectations color the experience. It was surprising, then, that despite the title, Delicatessen is not about a lovable old couple who run a shop serving corned beef on rye and maybe a bowl of soup.

Soon as it started, with a messy-looking man in an apron sharpening his knives, I wondered if this was going to be a bloody gore movie, but — wrong again.
It’s a surreal black comedy or lighthearted horror show, where nearly every moment is visually, audially, cinematically inventive. Out of work as a circus performer, our hero takes a job as handyman/janitor in a creepy but gorgeous old apartment building. What he doesn’t know is that previous employees have ended up in the local butcher’s meat-slicing apparatus.
Prepare for gruesomeness with a sense of humor, odd couple romance with a fabulous fiddle-and-saw duet, and bizarre, grotesque virtuoso visuals with swooping camerawork. Also, occasional screaming.Delicatessen is never shy about abandoning the story for side stories, so long as the side stories are also odd. It feels a little like something from Terry Gilliam in French, and like Gilliam it can be a bit much, but that’s part of the fun.Verdict: YES.♦ ♦ ♦ My Life in Monsters (2015) [Streaming free]

This is a short documentary from Vice, about Hollywood stop-motion special effects guy Phil Tippett. He made my head hurt with Mad God, and before that made the cantina aliens and stop-motion chess set for Star Wars, and worked on flicks like Jurassic Park, RoboCop, Starship Troopers, etc.Where athletes give credit to God, Tippett gives credit to LSD, so I gotta love the guy.Citizen Kane is OK, sure, but there are times when you want a smidgen more razzle dazzle for the eye. All of his adult life, Tippett has brought impossible creatures to life and shown me things I’d only imagined. The film is 22 minutes long and he deserves more. Verdict: YES.♦ ♦ ♦ Sleepless in Seattle (1993)[Streaming everywhere,
or buy the DVD for 25¢ at a garage sale]

My family knows that movies are my thing, so there’s a once-monthly movie & lunch with my brother Clay, his wife Karen, and sometimes a few others.Clay and Karen like ordinary movies and Christian movies, but they’re kind enough to leave the Christian movies out of the mix (though they have shown previews, when we’re watching movies at their house).I love these people and enjoy spending a few hours with them, but the movies? Generally, not so much. We usually watch whatever’s rated G and inoffensive to everyone, which are rarely the kind of films I prefer.Last month, it was Sleepless in Seattle, an all-time champion of films inoffensive to everyone.It’s a romantic comedy with Tom Hanks as a grieving widower and perfect dad, raising the kind of perfect son only seen in movies. When the son notices his father’s sadness, he calls a radio talk show, the host puts Dad on the air, and all of America listens and falls in love with Sad Hanks. Meg Ryan, listening to the radio show, is so enchanted that she leaves her fiancé and comes across the country looking for Sad Hanks. Will she find him? Will there be a happy ending? Will anyone call Child Protective Services about the boy, who looks about 8, somehow flying from Seattle to New York City without an adult and without anyone’s permission?Everything glistens, everyone’s nice, the jokes are G-rated but sometimes funny, and it’s all painted in very broad strokes.
Hanks and Ryan play characters with no discernible traits beyond prettiness, and no opinions about anything except, of course, that they need to fall in love. “You don’t want to be in love,” says best buddy Rosie O’Donnell. “You want to be in love in a movie.”This is that movie.
Some of Sleepless was filmed here in Seattle, but it’s entirely the Seattle of post cards — Sad Hanks lives in a houseboat on Lake Union, shops and eats at Pike Place Market, plays catch with his impossible son at Alki, etc.It’s all as deep as a post card, but I’ve seen worse on movie days with Clay & Karen. If you’re itching for a highly-polished and inoffensive Hollywood mix of applesauce and vanilla, this is that movie.
Verdict: MAYBE.♦ ♦ ♦ • Coming attractions •
District 9 (2009)Toni Erdmann (2016)
White Lotus (second season, 2022)
Within Our Gates (1920)      … plus occasional schlock and surprises
    • And then •
Asteroid City (2023)Battleship Potemkin (1925)China 9, Liberty 37 (1978) The Cook (1918)The Dark Crystal (1982)Doctor Who (second season, 2006)Dr Cook’s Garden (1971) The Eiger Sanction (1975)
From Beyond (1986)Good Night, Nurse (1918)It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) 
Last Tango in Paris (1972) Manchester by the Sea (2018) 
Ménilmontant (1926)The Scarecrow (1920)The Six Million Dollar Man (1973)
Stalker (1979)  Street Trash (1987) Wisconsin Death Trip (1999) The YouTube Effect (2022)  9/18/2023   
There
are so many good movies out there — old movies, odd or artsy, foreign
or forgotten movies, or do-it-yourself movies made just for the joy of
making them — that if you only watch whatever’s on Netflix or playing at
the twenty-plex, you’re missing out.To get beyond the ordinary, I recommend:Alter • Cineverse • Criterion • CultCinema Classics • DocsVille • Dust • Fandor • Films for Action • Hoopla • IHaveNoTV • IndieFlix • Internet Archive • Kanopy • KinoCult • Kino Lorber • Korean Classic Film • Christopher R Mihm • Mosfilm • Mubi • National Film Board of Canada • New Yorker Screening Room • Damon Packard • Mark Pirro • PizzaFlix • PopcornFlix • Public Domain Movies • RareFilmm • Scarecrow Video • Shudder • ThoughtMaybe • Timeless Classic Movies • VoleFlix • WatchDocumentaries • or your local library. Some people even access films through shady methods, though of course, that would be wrong.