Welcome to The Penny-Pinching Cinephile, a weekly spotlight of the best free flicks on the web. ‘Cuz sometimes you gotta eat.
1) My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989)
This is the film turned Daniel Day-Lewis, great actor, into Academy Award-winner Daniel Day-Lewis, untouchable god of acting. Because it isn’t so much acting that Day-Lewis does here–it’s more like alchemy or sorcery. He inhabits the role of Christy Brown, a blue-collar Irishman with cerebral palsy who could only control his left foot, with an intensity and realism unparalleled in modern movies. It’s cliché for actors to play awards-baiting disabled people, but Day-Lewis and director Jim Sheridan actually pull it off without the schmaltz or self-importance of many other inflated biopics of handicapped people. Part of this is due to the character of Christy Brown himself, who became a painter and a writer despite his disabilities, but also became something of an alcoholic jerk. The film never sugar-coats the real human ugliness of Brown or his family life, which becomes, besides Day-Lewis’ performance, the major strength of the film.
2) Hoop Dreams (Steve James, 1994)
Roger Ebert has called Hoop Dreams “the great American documentary”–high praise, indeed. Documentary filmmaker Steve James originally just intended to produce a 30-minute short on young, inner city basketball players for PBS. He ended up creating a sprawling, 3 hour+ epic that followed the lives of two students for eight years. Arthur Agee and William Gates both dream of becoming professional basketball players. At the tender age of thirteen, the teens are saddled with the success and future of literally their entire families–everything hinges on getting into a good high school where they can become the star player, get scouted into a college program and then drafted into the NBA. Both Gates and Agee hail from South Side, Chicago, a place with very few opportunities or role models for success. During the course of filming, Agee’s father loses his job and abandons the family for drug addiction. Both Gates and Agee struggle to excel at school while balancing the mounting stresses of home life. Hoop Dreams becomes more than a sports movie: it’s a portrait of the triumphs and tragedies of American life, an ethnographic expose of urban decay and a moving, in-depth character study.
3) In the Relam of the Senses (Nagisa Oshima, 1976)
In memory of Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, who passed away earlier in January at the age of 80, The Criterion Collection is spotlighting his films on their Hulu page. You can check out a dozen of the master’s films for free from now until February 3rd. My recommendation is the controversial In the Realm of the Senses, a film whose unsimulated sex scenes got it banned from countries around the world and raised the ire of critics who dubbed it nothing more than arty pornography. Those critics are woefully mistaken as the film is a beautiful, sensual and darkly tragic masterpiece. The film tells the true story of Sada Abe, the Japanese women who caused headlines in 1936 for strangling her lover and then disposing of his–ahem–bits, Lorena Bobbit-style. The intensely sexual and obsessive nature of the lovers’ relationship, and the film itself, is bound to turn off more squeamish or prudish viewers; but if you can handle it, In the Realm of the Senses is a lush, beautifully photographed film and a deeply rich character study from one of the masters of cinema.
4) Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962)
Carnival of Souls is a film that’s been kicking around the public domain web-o-sphere for a while now. You could probably find it on any number of video outlets with a quick Google search. So why am I highlighting this black and white cult classic now? Friend of the site oldfilmsflicker just launched a Facebook app that allows you to stream movies on Facebook with color commentary and pop-up trivia from the movie maven herself. It’s like having a live tweet-a-thon with all your friends and one really knowledgeable film blogger. Carnival of Souls strikes the perfect mood of spooky-silly for this kind of viewing-on-demand experience. You can marvel at the striking cinematography while poking fun of the corny dialogue and unpolished acting. It’s a win-win!
Watch on Facebook via Old Films Flicker
5) Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson, 1996)
With all the awards buzz garnered by Moonrise Kingdom, it may be time to take a look back at Wes Anderson’s feature debut, Bottle Rocket. All the director’s trademarks are already present: overly elaborate heist/escape plans, good music, good-natured humor, slow-motion photography and Wilson brothers. Luke and Owen star as hapless criminals whose boredom compels them to concoct a ludicrous 75-year plan including a crime spree and getaway plan that is doomed to fail. Anderson’s characters are willfully ignorant, but also cheerfully innocent. This weird combination turned off viewers initially (Bottle Rocket supposedly earned the lowest audience preview score of any Columbia Pictures film till that time), but the film has since become something of a cult classic. Somewhat overshadowed by Anderson’s next picture, the breakout Rushmore, and subsequent mainstream successes, Bottle Rocket is still an interesting film to revisit in light of the director’s current popularity.
If you’d like to suggest a website or film that’s streaming for free, leave us a comment below.
2 thoughts on “The Penny-Pinching Cinephile (2/1/13—2/5/13)”
Yes, yes, yes to the last three selections. And the first one. And Hoop Dreams, too. (Note: three out of five of these picks are on Criterion!)
I really think My Left Foot deserves revisiting from the legions of newly-minted DDL fans Lincoln acquired him. You’re spot-on, it’s the film where it all began for Day-Lewis and he transformed into one of the planet’s most revered acting talents. I don’t know if I’d call it his best performance– that COULD be Lincoln— but it’s still amazing and it deserves to be seen if only because it’s that essential turning point in his career.
And singling out another film here, well, I’ll show some love to Carnival of Souls. It’s clunky and kind of awful in some respects, but it works really, really well regardless and makes for a solid blueprint for a lot of future DIY/indie horror filmmaking. And it’s also quite lovely.
Carnival of Souls is one of my all-time favorites. The Criterion Collection print is absolutely beautiful. The photography is just stunning–even if most of it may be accidental!