THE NEVERENDING
FILM FESTIVAL
#194 [archive]
10/17/2023
Jesus of Montreal (1989)In this truly moving motion picture, a parish priest has been staging the same ‘stations of the cross’ play for 35 years. Attendance is dwindling, though, so the priest hires a local struggling stage actor to re-write, re-cast, and generally liven up the proceedings. Which he sure as heck does.
Not being a Christian and never a Catholic, I needed Wikipedia to help understand the ‘stations of the cross‘. The concept is, a buncha devout people walk a path outside, that’s laid out with 14 religious knickknacks depicting the last pre-death day of the eternal life of the world’s whitest Middle Easterner, Jesus, on his way to being crucified.The walk and the knickknacks are supposed to make for a deeply religious experience, but the switch here is that each ‘station of the cross’ has actors reciting lines, instead of knickknacks being knickknacky. The movie’s story is about those actors, and the priest.“There’s got to be more to life than just waiting quietly for death.” I like to imagine I’m immune to Christianity’s pull, but I’m not, of course. You grow up wrapped in swaddling myth, you’re never fully free of it, and of course, that’s why the church wants kids to grow up with the myth.Jesus of Montreal has the pull of the better parts of Christianity — “be kind,” basically — but wisely avoids the savagery and cruelty that surrounds and usually drowns any religion’s kindness. So it’s set inside a religion, but without demanding, expecting, or even caring whether the audience is religious. That’s a nifty trick, really.This has been a favorite film of mine since it came out, mostly because of its brilliant writing, by Denys Arcand. With six marvelously-drawn intertwined characters, dialogue that seriously says a lot, and with laughs never far away, it’s slowly revealed as a very clever allegorical telling of the Christ — comical, serious, profound, and in French. Verdict: BIG YES.♦ ♦ ♦The Lady in the Van (2015)
There are several films about homelessness on my watchlist, which is how this one got there. Homelessness is one of America’s hugest and most ignored problems, but this film isn’t really about homelessness, at least not in the modern American sense.Maggie Smith plays the titular lady in a van, and she’s apparently the only person living in a van in all of England. Her van still runs, but she parks in the same neighborhood every night, where — get this — the neighbors are generally kind to her. One neighbor brings her fruit, another lets her use his loo “in emergencies,” at the holidays the locals bring her a Christmas present, and they all chat with her now and again. Everyone says she smells, but they don’t say it to her face. Nobody calls the cops. She seems to have no worries about money. Her social worker isn’t incompetent. So this movie is completely unAmerican.In addition to Ms Smith, there’s a splendid role for her “emergency loo” neighbor, a writer who wishes he was working on a spy novel, but instead finds himself drawn to write about this transient woman who lives on his street.In a grand twist that really makes the movie, he’s portrayed as twins who talk to each other, but they’re two halves of the same man and he’s actually talking to himself — an idea which could easily have ruined the movie but most assuredly does not.“I’m a sick woman — possibly dying.”
Maggie Smith is always a joy, especially when she’s playing cranky, and here she’s nothing but. She’s terrific, and the “emergency loo” neighbor is terrific, and The Lady in the Van is damned near perfect.Verdict: BIG YES.♦ ♦ ♦ The Weavers: Wasn’t That a Time (1981)
Streaming free,
with German subtitles
The Weavers were very popular, very briefly, but their success was cut short by good old-fashioned American hatred and stupidity. Sometimes they sang about civil rights, unions, peace and justice and all that, so they were soon banned at the State Fair, disappeared from television, threatened by vigilantes, and blacklisted by McCarthyism.Their cover of “Wimoweh / The Lion Sleeps Tonight” was criticized as communism, I guess because the village is quiet and peaceful and we can’t have that? Right-wingers today claim Joe Biden is a socialist, so hatred and stupidity remain an American constant.In the movie, we check in on the Weavers long after they’d disbanded, when Lee Hays, the group’s bass singer, invited the other three — Ronnie Gilbert, Fred Hellerman, and Pete Seeger — to a picnic on his farm. He also invited a videographer, and to nobody’s possible surprise, the old friends broke into song.The idea had been planted, and it grew into a reunion concert, at New York’s Carnegie Hall. And also, into this almost magical documentary.The film is narrated by Hays, with wisecracks about every ninety seconds, most of them funny. Of the concert he says, “That day was so full of euphoria, that I had to take a laxative.” The friends’ spirit and camaraderie comes through so dang clearly that even if wasn’t already a fan — and I was — Wasn’t That a Time would’ve converted me.Seeger talks about the commercial and political blacklist of the ’50s, and of the movie’s time, 1980, reminding us that things have gotten better but a quieter blacklist still remains. Anyone with bright, fresh ideas is still unwelcome on TV, radio, or in the music business. Nobody gets a corporate contract unless they’re, well, corporate. “The Hammer Song” (If I had a hammer…) was written by Seeger and Hays, and became arguably the anthem of the 1960s, or at least co-anthem with Louise Shropshire’s “We Shall Overcome.” The Weavers’ recording of it, though, got no airplay and sold poorly.Maybe that was politics, or maybe lousy luck. It was covered, though, by everyone from Aretha Franklin to Peter Paul and Mary to Trini Lopez, and several of those versions are sewn together in an extraordinary montage here.Toward the end of the film comes the concert itself. We’re shown only a fraction of it, but when these four old timers, Hays in a wheelchair and only months from death, belt out “Wimoweh” it’s a wet moment in my recliner. They know it’s their last concert, so when it ends with the band’s very first hit, “Good Night Irene,” it’s a moment.Is the joy of their reunion perhaps lessened by 40 years’ passing, and one-by-one the deaths of each of them, or is it even more remarkable?Verdict: BIG YES.10/18/2023 • • • Coming attractions • • •
Fog Over Frisco (1934)
God Bless America (2011)
Hobo (1992)
Invader (1991) John Wick (2014)The Last Case of August T Harrison (2015) The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1941)
Man with a Movie Camera (1929) The Naked City (1948)The Night Strangler (1973)Nightmare Alley (1947)9 to 5 (1980)
Risky Business (1983)The Rockford Files (debut episode; 1974)Smothered (2002)Space Monster Wangmagwi (1967)
Special Bulletin (1983) Squirm (1976) Stephen Fry in America (2008)Tank Girl (1995)Taoism Drunkard (1981) The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009) You Can’t Take It With You (1938) … plus occasional schlock and surprises • • • And then • • •
A Better Tomorrow (1996)A Gnome Named Gnorm (1990)
A Night in Casablanca (1946) Alexander Nevsky (1938)
The Bat People (1974) The Beatles: Get Back (2021) Berkeley in the Sixties (1990)Brainwaves (1983) The Card Counter (2021) Cellular (2004) The Celluloid Closet (1996)The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1985)
Dark Star (1974)
The Day My Parents Became Cool (2009) The Decline of Western Civilization (1980) Downsizing (2017) Frankenhooker (1990) The General (1926) Get Shorty (1995)
The Gorilla (1939)
The Green Girl (2014) Hiroshima (1953)Hugo (2011) The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)The Internet’s Own Boy (2014)Kids in the Hall (debut episode; 1988) Kids in the Hall (reunion debut episode; 2022) The Killing of America (1981) The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) Line of Duty (debut episode; 2012)Love Happy (1950)The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)The Man Who Thought Life (1969)
The Man with Nine Lives (1940)The Manhattan Project (1996) Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966)Not Wanted (1949)Nothing But a Man (1964) Phone Booth (2002)PickAxe (1999)
Poison (1990)Popeye (1980)Reflections of Evil (2002)Revelations (1993)
Ride in the Whirlwind (1966) Romper Stomper (1992)Room Service (1938) Same Kind of Different as Me (2017) Saved! (2004) Scared to Death (1947) Secret Weapons (1985) The Shooting (1966)
The Soloist (2009) Sons of the Desert (1933)Street of Crocodiles (1986)
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)Taken for a Ride (1996)
The Train (1964)Truck Turner (1974)Welcome to New Orleans (2006)
Who Farted? (2019) Who’s That Girl? (1987) Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006) .jpg)
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.
Reviews are spoiler-free, or at least spoiler-warned. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.
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