Movie Chronicle

I get most of the movies I see from three sources:  Netflix, Turner Classic Movies, the Brooklyn Public Library.  If it's on DVD I get it from the latter two sources, while Turner shows many movies not available on tape.  Netflix is great because they have no late fees; I remember how I felt in the early days of video stores when I suddenly did not feel like watching a tape and had to pay a late fee or return it unwatched; with Netflix the incentive to return is that you pay a monthly fee for as many films as you can watch.  Turner Classic Movies is the only place that shows movies uncut, uninterrupted and in the proper aspect ratio (good-bye AMC, IFC, Sundance) and is the only reason I have cable TV.  I hope gone forever are the times I had to watch movies with a stopwatch to see if they were complete, constantly interrupted as they were by commercials (garish color commercials interrupting beautiful black-and-white are the worst). 

The two movies I have seen on Turner recently and the one each from Netflix and the library demonstrate that I am not inflexible when it comes to directors who are not my favorites.  From TCM Pennies from Heaven (1936) was directed by Norman Z. McLeod, whom Garry Giddins, in his biography of Bing Crosby, calls "an underrated comedy specialist" (I disagree), who keeps the movie moving along.  But the real value of the film is the low-key Bing Crosby, who brought in Louis Armstrong for one terrific number and does a wonderful job with a score by Arthur Johnston and Johnny Burke.  In the same way My Reputation (1946) is fairly routinely directed by Curtis Bernhardt but soars with its star Barbara Stanwyck and its cinematographer James Wong Howe, even if the later There's Always Tomorrow,(1956, directed by Douglas Sirk), is a better film.

From Netflix I watched Stephen Frears's Philomena, an intensely emotional film of genuine sentiment, with a star (Judi Dench) and a director (Stephen Frears) both in their 70's and a heart-breaking film for one with young children. From the library I watched Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale Station.  Both the Frears and the Coogler are based on real events and derive their power from the rather straightforward depiction of those events, without too much intervention from their directors, i.e., the events speak strongly for themselves.