Hey. There’s something I need to tell you. It has been on my mind for a while, but I was afraid to bring it up. I didn’t want to scare you off. I didn’t want to come off needy. But the time has come, and I have to tell you.
I wrote a book.
It comes out on May 14, 2024, and it’s about baseball movies. It’s sort of the reason I created this Substack, but I really never wanted it to be just about the book. Over the next eight months, however, there is likely to be more baseball movie content here, and if that’s not your thing, I understand. As I do with my baseball essays, I’ll try to make it accessible to everyone, and I’ll continue to write about other subjects. But be forewarned: It’s about to get a little Crash Davis in here.
I’ll pass along more info about the book as I have it, but for now, I’m starting to put up baseball and movie content on TikTok and Instagram. Come follow me over there if you want to see my ugly mug.
For now, let’s get back to our routine. August is typically a slow month for my movie watching, as I try to soak up the last days of summer and often spend a lot of time watching the Mets. This year, that second thing isn’t happening—they’re terrible—but I have been enjoying nature a lot, and my film watching is a little down (you know, for a cinephile, it’s still a lot for a normal person). Anyway, here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of my August at the movies.
Best First-Views:
Cool Hand Luke (1967) - It was probably my biggest blind spot in American cinema. I’m not quite sure why I never saw it until now, except for the fact that I’d heard the “failure to communicate” speech about a thousand times in that Guns ‘n’ Roses song already, making me feel like I’d actually already seen the movie. And in another way, I had: Cool Hand Luke actually is the most influential portrait of coolness in history. The film clearly influenced every subsequent prison movie (Shawshank owes a lot to it), but it’s Newman’s effortless, casual defiance that made millions of young American men think they could pull off the same thing. I was one of them, even though I didn’t know it.
Anyway, the movie is great. It’s a crowd-pleaser at heart, with Newman’s incorrigible rebel pitched against an oppressive state guarded by men who get off on their cruelty. Throw in a crowd of fellow prisoners that Luke wins over through sheer charisma, and it’s easy to miss fascinating moral grayness lurking right under your nose.
The Misfits (1961) - One thing we don’t talk about much is how hard life is on beautiful people. Take the cast of The Misfits. Clark Gable died before the film was even released. Marilyn Monroe (whose husband Arthur Miller wrote the script) was dead a year or so later. Montgomery Clift died in 1966 at the age of 46. Meanwhile, Eli Wallach, a wonderful actor who was never mistaken for a hunk, lived to be 99. Go figure. Gable and Monroe went out on a doozy. The Misfits is a stunning western that uses cruelty to animals as a means of exploring the genre’s fundamental subject: the encroachment of civilization on man’s wild nature. Riveting and brutal, it’ll gnaw at you look after the dust settles.
Tokyo-Ga (1985) - We like to complain about the deleterious effect streaming has had on film culture, but without streamers, I never would have had the chance to see Tokyo-Ga, a documentary by Wim Wenders on his favorite filmmaker and mine, Yasujiro Ozu. The film played film festivals in 1985 and then was basically lost to history before Criterion found it, restored it, and put it on their streaming site. They did this for me and the 19 other weirdos who want to see a film about a German director who travels to Tokyo to see how much the city has changed in the 20 years since Ozu’s death. Wenders visits Ozu’s old haunts (including his grave), talks to his collaborators, and muses on the nature of time. For me, it’s thrilling, but if you’re not familiar with Ozu’s work….wait, you’re not? Stop reading, and go watch Late Spring.
Funny Girl (1968) - A star-making performance occurs when an actor finds the exact right role at the exact right time, and wow is Fanny Brice the right role for Barbra Streisand in 1968. The beautiful, intelligent, and unabashedly Jewish Streisand plays Brice, a beautiful, intelligent, and unabashedly Jewish showgirl who rose to the top of her profession before running into personal problems, i.e. marrying an inveterate loser. Given how rare it is that a Jewish actress gets to play a Jewish figure (listen to Sarah Silverman on this), it’s just wild to watch Streisand dance across the screen while singing in occasional Yiddish and playfully lamenting the size of her nose.
The Frisco Kid (1979) - Speaking of Jewish, I went into this movie, starring Gene Wilder as Rabbi Avram and the quarter-Jew Harrison Ford (not too shabby) as a bank robber in the Old West, expecting a Mel Brooks-esque farce. As such, it took me about an hour to realize The Frisco Kid is barely a comedy. Technically, it is, but it’s not overflowing with jokes, like a Brooks spoof. It’s more tender than that. As a rabbi from the Old Country trying to get to his new temple in San Francisco, Wilder encounters bandits, Indians, and every other challenge the Old West could throw at a person, and he meets them with wisdom and moral clarity. It’s an insightful and only occasionally hilarious portrayal of real courage in trying times.
Worst View: Ishtar (1987) - People keep trying to tell me Ishtar is good. They say it got a bad rap because the knives were out for director Elaine May. It was a bomb of colossal proportions upon its initial release, but recently it has been reclaimed as a lost classic. I looked at Letterboxd and found that all my mutuals on there gave it a positive review. So I watched it. Sorry, folks, but you’re all nuts. This is a disastrous movie that mostly earns its disastrous reputation. I’ll admit that the first 20 minutes, when the New York songwriters played by Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty meet, fall in love, and become creative partners has its moments, but once they get to the desert, the humor dries up, and the last act is borderline unwatchable. Even a blind camel that bumps into stuff can’t save this thing.
Best Rewatch: Lenny (1974) - Dustin Hoffman taketh away, and Dustin Hoffman giveth. Bob Fosse’s film about Lenny Bruce could be considered the first modern biopic for how it tries to link an artist’s creative output to his life behind the scenes. Fosse cuts between Bruce’s performances—faithfully recreated by Hoffman—and his tumultuous personal life with reckless abandon, and while the pieces don’t always fit together, the result is so kinetic that it hardly matters. The compositions, lighting, performances, camera work, and, most of all, the crackling editing comprise a film that captures the live-wire energy of life on the stage.
Oh, and I reviewed Citizen Kane.
Glad you finally outed yourself about the book. Please notify us when preordering becomes possible. And that is the oddest collection of August movies I've ever seen. Time to re-view Cool Hand Luke.
Also Collateral was better than Miami Vice.