All right, so here we go again.If you missed the previous post, the theme here is films that have small casts and relatively few locations so as to be able to get lost in a whole ton of stories and situations that have at least some bearing on our own current ridiculous global situation. So I give you 10 more films to watch and maybe feel a little bit better about our own quarantined situation. Note that listings about “free to watch” usually involves already having a subscription to netflix or hulu or whatever service is mentioned below.
Reservoir Dogs/ The H8teful Eight (1992/2015) - When Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs came out it was a revelation in American Indie cinema - at the time there were few to no hard boiled crime films with tight yet colorful dialogue that fleshed out the criminals as multi dimensional people, avoided most of the action, chopped up the timeline the way it did and still was fraught with tension and blood. Over 20 years later The Hateful Eight takes many of those same themes - double crossing, funny & creative dialogue featuring much foul language, the pressure cooker situation that just keeps getting more and more and more intense and transfers it to the snowy old west. Personally I prefer the Hateful Eight to Django Unchained. Fun note here, the guitar Kurt Russell smashes was an old, vintage one of a kind acoustic loaned from Gibson that was definitely not supposed to be smashed up, so the surprise on the other cast members faces is genuine omg wtf surprise. (Dogs available on Hulu, $3.99 to rent on Youtube/Google/iTunes/Vudu, $7.99 on Amazon; 8 available on netflix, $3.99 to rent on Youtube/Google/iTunes/Vudu, $4.99 on amazon)
Interview (2007) - Not to be confused with the Seth Rogen comedy from a few years ago, 2007’s Interview is a chamber piece with essentially a two person cast, Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller. Buscemi (who also directed) plays a jaded journalist who is a assigned to interview a big soap star (Miller) who is, of course, beneath him to interview. Or so he thinks. While not an amazing movie, Buscemi and Miller pull us in with their empathetic performances that show us two characters who are a lot deeper than they may seem to us at first. Buscemi is of course one of our greatest character actors of the last 30 years who rarely gets the chance to step out as a leading man. Miller should have been as big in the 2000s as Margot Robbie became in 2010s - though Miller is British and not an Aussie, she combines Robbie’s striking dyed blonde bombshell looks with much more intelligence and skill than we might have expected and is every bit Buscemi’s equal in this movie that disappeared almost as soon as it came out. ($2.99 to rent on Amazon/Vudu/Youtube/iTunes/GooglePlay)
Misery (1990) - James Caan sure has had an interesting career, no? Often thought of for his tough guy roles in films such as Thief, The Killer Elite, Roller Ball and of course The Godfather, he’s always made interesting choices - comedies such as Mel Brooks’s Silent Movie from 1976 and Kiss Me Goodbye, where he plays the jealous ghost of Sally Field’s late husband trying to spoil her plans to marry Jeff Bridges. In light of that his choice to play an author held captive and powerless by a female superfan (Kathy Bates) who is upset that he killed off her favorite literary character (the Misery in the title of the film) is maybe not as surprising as it may have first seemed when Misery came out (one could see more a Dustin Hoffman or Richard Dreyfuss in this role when hearing the synopsis of the film). But certainly Caan’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s tough guys surely helped subvert the expectations in seeing this film play out. It didn’t hurt that both he and Kathy Bates play off one another extremely well in this Stephen King authored story. And after years of acclaimed broadway stage work where she would lose out to more attractive actresses when those plays went to films, Kathy Bates finally began to receive her due with her role in this film - she was in her early 40s at the time. A classic thriller that, though I’ve not seen it in years, still makes my ankles ache just thinking about it. (unfortunately not an easy one to find if you don’t own physical media: free on Vudu, but $14.99+ to rent on Amazon/Youtube/iTunes/Google)
Down By Law (1986) - Really you could practically put any of Jim Jarmusch’s films on this list, but Down By Law remains one of my favorite Jarmusch films. After a slow set up that lands our 3 main characters (musician, painter and early Jarmusch favorite John Lurie, italian comedic actor Robert Benigni, and famous gravel & blowtorched voice actor/musician Tom Waits) together in jail, this slow movie finally picks up to be the brilliant oddball character study comedy it is. From chants of ice cream somehow reminiscent of Pacini chanting “Attica!” in Dog Day Afternoon to their various encounters once they escape jail, if you can get in tune with its slow rhythms and slightly off charms, you are in for a treat. Unfortunately many Jarmusch films are hard to find to stream right now for some reason. (free on Kanopy, $3.99 on Amazon/iTunes)
Cube (1997) - This Canadian indie film from director Vincenzo Natali is a good indicator of what one can do with little budget, a no name cast, but a great concept and creative excution. 6 widely different people wake up in a very industrial looking cube room and they have to find their way out of a maze of identical rooms (with each cube having potential exits on all 6 sides). Of course, this being a horror movie, they will need to navigate through all sorts of deadly traps as well as their incompatible personalities - it’s almost as if these personalities were the prototypes for so many “reality shows” that followed in the next decade. While the acting varies wildly from decent to not very good, it’s the puzzles and unexpected twists that keep up interest and entertainment in this one. (free on youtube/tubi/vudu/IMDbTV, $3.99 on Amazon/Google)
Evil Dead/Evil Dead 2 (1981, 1986) - Sam Raimi’s epic series of films and TV show about Ash (Bruce Campbell) and the Deadites (a bunch of undead nasties) began with these two low budget horror films. Evil Dead II is mostly a redo of Evil Dead, which was made by Raimi and his buddies for no money at all. Played fairly straight, Evil Dead is a better than expected low budget early 80s horror movie about a group of 20 somethings who rent a cabin, sight unseen, in the middle of nowhere, in the woods, who are then plagued by an unknown evil unwittingly unleased by a previous occupant. Somewhat marred by a notorious scene in which one of the female victims is raped by a tree, the original Evil Dead brought so much creativity and innovation to horror films that today it seems obvious that eventually Raimi would be handed the keys to big money franchises like the original Spider Man series that stared Toby Maguire. Evil Dead II both trims the fat of the original (including excising that notorious scene) while turning up the dark humor component, and making Ash more of the overly confident, smug boob he became in Army Of Darkness and the Ash vs The Evil Dead series which originated on Starz. I’ve never seen the 2013 remake of Evil Dead, so I say nothing about it, except maybe “why?” ( Evil Dead is free on Netflix and Shudder, $3.99 on Amazon/iTunes/Vudu; Evil Dead II is free on Shudder, $3.99 on Amazon/Youtube/iTunes/Google/Vudu; Ash Vs Evil Dead the series is free on Netflix/Hulu/YoutubeTV/Starz and $1.99 per episode on Amazon)
Ex Machina (2014) - We keep coming back to sci fi and horror movies with these small cast, few locations films, and Alex Garland’s film fits into the former category. Domnhall Gleason plays the programmer employ of a google like company who wins an employee contest to go spend the weekend with the reclusive founder/owner of said company, played by Oscar Isaac. Taken by helicopter to Isaac’s remote compound, we soon find out that the tech mogul has ulterior motives for inviting his employee - it seems he’s been tinkering with giving human-like robots a realistic AI and personality and he wants Gleason to test it out. What follows is a cat and mouse game in which who is the cat and who is the mouse keeps changing. And of course the questions of “what is human? and “what does it mean to be alive?” and “what is love exactly?” are constantly in thought here. Alicia Vikander plays the artificial woman who may be in love with Gleason, or maybe she’s just using him. The production design is beautiful, and the compound in which Isaac lives is both luxurious and claustrophobic. This one is a sci fi gem. (free on netfllix, $2.99 on YouTube/Google/Vudu, $3.99 on Amazon, $4.99 on iTunes)
Persona (1966) - A famous actress suddenly and inexplicably goes mute in the middle of a performance. She is sent to a remote house to recover and has a young nurse accompany her to help in her recovery. That is basically the plot to Bergman’s film, which exploded on the international film scene with a bang when it hit. The Swedish Bergman was already a titan in the international film scene at this point, having released both Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal in 1959 and already having 26 films and numerous TV & stage productions under his belt. But this surreal film played with images in ways narrative film largely had not outside of purely experimental circles. At one point we even see the film stock break and burn on the “projector.” The two woman, Liv Ulmann (the actress) and Bib Andersson (the nurse) interact, at first with only the nurse speaking, and eventually begin to take on each other’s, well, Persona’s. An interesting and, yes, artsy film (and one with subtitles as, like almost all Bergman films it’s in his native Swedish) the movie is not inpenetrable. If you are able to open yourself up to its charms, it is worth it, even if you never really quite understand all that is going on. ($3.99 on Amazon/iTunes)
Solaris (1972) - The late Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky made slow films. I’ve even seen film critics describe viewing Tarkovsky’s work as “eating your vegetables.” While I understand what they mean by this, I would disagree simply because I enjoy viewing Tarkovsky’s work. That said it’s not for everyone, and even for those it is for, one has to be in the mood. Sometimes described as the Russian answer to 2001: A Space Odyessy, Solaris is the story of a scientist asked to go to a space station where the mission has fallen apart because the crew have mentally fallen apart. The Space Station is orbiting a mysterious planet that seems to have some sort of consciousness. This consciousness involves getting into the psyche of the astronauts and making real some form of their past that they have been grappling with. Solaris is long on existential philosophies about the nature of existence of long beautiful shots and short on special effects and action. There is even a long shot of simply the lights of traffic on a highway (we spend a lot of time on earth before heading out into the cosmos) that, if I remember correctly, is about 4 minutes long. Of just the glare of lights of automobile traffic around the magic hour. It truly is a beautiful film, if you can be patient. Beautiful both in the questions it asks but also it just looks very beautiful. Don't let the lack of special effects make you think this movie doesn't have great design or spectacular cinematography, because it does. Why else would you leave 4 minutes of evening traffic flow in your film if it wasn't beautiful? Tarkovsky called filmmaking “sculpting in time" and you can see what he means in this film. I’ve yet to see the Steven Soderbergh remake with George Clooney from 1999, but from what I understand it is a very different film, but one that’s worthwhile watching as well. ($2.99 on YouTube/Google/Vudu, $3.99 on iTunes, $12.99 on Amazon)
Other movies with small casts/few locations (including duplicates from post #1): A Field In England, Free-Fire, Tape, Death & the Maiden, Woman In The Dunes, Hour Of The Wolf, Secret Honor, Blue Lagoon, Sleuth, 127 Hours, Hard Candy, Cloverfield Lane, Robinson Crusoe On Mars, Enemy Mine, Hell In The Pacific, Antichrist, Gerry, Time Crimes, Buried, All Is Lost,, The Shining, Gravity, Castaway, Coffee & Cigarettes, Pi, Rear Window, Locke, Room, Green Room
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