Welcome to The Penny-Pinching Cinephile, a weekly spotlight of the best free flicks on the web. ‘Cuz sometimes you gotta eat.
1.) The Extraordinary Voyage
Released as an accompanying documentary on the 2012 Blu-Ray release of George Melies’ groundbreaking 1902 film A Trip to the Moon, The Extraordinary Voyage is a loving tribute to the history of the film from filmmakers/preservationists Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange. The hour-long documentary traces the beginnings of Melies’ career as a stage illusionist to pioneering filmmaker and the century-long influence his masterpiece has had on film and culture. Bromberg & Lange’s doc serves as an informative supplement to Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, a fanciful take on Melies’ life and decline. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of The Extraordinary Voyage is the excruciating preservation process–one that took fully ten years to complete–in order for us to enjoy A Trip to the Moon with in its original, hand-tinted color version. Unfortunately, the original negative of Melies’ film was far too damaged to be shown itself; it’s only because of preservationists’ quick thinking that digital scans of each and every frame were created, thus creating a file that could be used to create the DVD and Blu-Ray copies of the film. This documentary is worth seeking out, even if you’ve never seen A Trip to the Moon, for the light it sheds on the extraordinary measures filmmakers and film archivists go through to re-construct reels of our shared cultural heritage.
2.) Wendy and Lucy
If your childhood was anything like mine, you spent a large part of it crying over sad stories of a boy or girl and a dog (Where the Red Fern Grows, Shiloh). Kelly Reichardt’s 2008 film Wendy and Lucy gives even Old Yeller a run for its money in the “sad dog movies” department. Wendy (the stellar Michelle Williams) and her dog, a yellow lab named Lucy, are on a road trip up the Pacific coast en route to a potentially lucrative summer job in Alaska. We gradually learn that this is Wendy’s last hope: she has no one to help her financially and is down to her last $500 when her car breaks down, leaving her stranded. With no cell phone, no money and no food, things only get worse when Wendy is arrested for shoplifting and Lucy is taken away by the pound. Reichardt’s stalk realism and Williams’ unadorned, internalized anguish combine for a heart-wrenching story, one that’s contrasted sharply by the physical beauty of the Pacific Northwest woods and Lucy’s natural playfulness and buoyancy. Wendy and Lucy is never an easy film to watch, but it is an incredibly well-made and emotionally moving film about loss, perseverance and survival.
3) Yossi
Ten years after the events of 2002’s Yossi & Jagger, the groundbreaking gay-themed Israeli film about two soldiers who fall in love while patrolling the Israeli-Lebanon border, director Eytan Fox revisits Yossi (Ohad Knoller), who is still in mourning after the death of his partner in the previous film. Fortunately, Yossi works just as well as a stand-alone film. Having a gained some weight and lost his passion for life, Yossi is working as a closeted heart surgeon when he meets a group of young Israeli soldiers on leave. He decides to accompany the group on a short vacation to a resort hotel, and his lifestyle of denial and repression is challenged when he learns that one of the soldiers, Tom (Oz Zehavi), is openly gay. Fox’s film is an unabashed feel-good romance anchored by a very compelling performance by Knoller as the titular character. The happy ending may not be realistic, but it’s refreshing for a gay-themed romance to embrace optimistic fantasy instead of depressing loss (as in the previous Yossi & Jagger).
The art world seems to produce many documentaries about famous, artistic couples (see last year’s Cutie and the Boxer), but unlike the Shinoharas, the titular Vogels aren’t creators of masterpieces, but rather collectors. From the ’60s to the ’80s, Herb, a postal clerk, and Dorothy, a librarian, used their modest income for one purpose: to buy as many art pieces as they could fit in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. The voracious couple focused mainly on conceptual and minimal pieces from contemporary NY-based artists, many of whom would go on to great acclaim and renown in the art world. The unassuming Herb and Dorothy had pieces in their collection from Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, Christo, and even Andy Warhol; when the couple finally decided to donate their entire collection to the National Gallery, it was estimated to be worth millions of dollars. Megumi Sasaki’s extraordinary 2008 documentary profiles the Vogels’ latter years, living in the same absurdly cramped one-bedroom apartment, surrounded by newly acquired pieces of art–even after their extraordinary gift to the National Gallery of Art, the couple never stopped collecting. Herb & Dorothy is a fantastic testament to obsession and generosity.
The star-studded war epic The Guns of Navarone was one in a cycle of late-’50s/early ’60s epic war films that included The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Longest Day and Lawrence of Arabia. These lengthy, masculine movies featuring casts of international talent reflected the victories of the Allies’ recent past (mostly the Second World War) during the relative peace and prosperity of post-war America and England. Based on a book of the same name, The Guns of Navarone follows the Dodecanese Campaign, in which the Allies tried to capture Italian-held Greek islands and hold off the Germans from controlling them after the Italians surrendered in 1943. In the film, a group of British and Greek soldiers led by Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn and David Niven attempt to infiltrate the fictional island of Navarone and disable the fixed anti-aircraft guns that have been paralyzing the Allies’ attempts at attacking from the sea. The film is pure action-adventure, featuring shipwrecks, espionage, gun battles and enemy interrogations. Serving as one of the inspirations for Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, The Guns of Navarone is a classic worthy of re-discovery.
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