New in June: Go Big or Go Home (2014)

Netflix continues to bolster its back catalog of important directors. There are new additions this month from Woody Allen (Annie Hall), Jim Jarmusch (Coffee and Cigarettes), Howard Hawks (El Dorado), Steven Spielberg (1941), and three more from Robert Altman, not to mention the return of those itinerant Francis Ford Coppola films that never seem to stick around for more than a month or two. And in the No News Is Good News department, the handful of James Bond movies that showed up last month remain available—a first in the year-plus since this blog began. Bond titles, as many of you know, usually vanish after 30 days. But one of the bigger stories in June is the streaming debut of a movie as infamous as it was unavailable (at least in the U.S.), and as underrated as it was underseen—the one, the only:

Ishtar (1987)

"Honest and popular don't go hand in hand"

An early example of a movie reviewed for its budget rather than its quality, Ishtar sits only a notch below Heaven's Gate in terms of the critical scorn and audience indifference hurled its way. It may not have ruined a studio, but it certainly helped ruin the directorial career of Elaine May (who also wrote it), and long served as one of a handful of poster children symbolizing Hollywood excess prior to today's Tentpole Era. Me, I've always thought the movie got a bum rap. Having seen it during its initial—extremely brief—theatrical run, I remember being puzzled by the critical pummeling. Certainly it wasn't The Greatest Comedy Ever, but it was clever, entertaining, and silly in equal portions. Essentially a big-budget homage to the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby road pictures (anyone remember those?), it revels in the absurdity of Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, as two of the world's worst songwriters, getting dragged into an international crisis involving the CIA, gunrunners, and Middle Eastern revolutionaries. Hoffman and Beatty have a blast playing against type (Beatty is hopeless with the ladies), bringing real zest to their off-key interpretations of the deliberately awful Paul Williams songs they're meant to have written. Some of it may be dragged out and, at times (yes), excessive, but like the characters in a Will Ferrell or Farrelly Brothers movie, these are very smart people playing stupid, and most of the time they get it right—especially Charles Grodin, whose sly underplaying steals every scene he's in.

The Instant Classic: PAPER MOON

When Paper Moon was first released, in 1973, it was already a throwback. Compared with other great films of that amazing year—The Exorcist, Mean Streets, The Long Goodbye, Serpico, American Graffiti (among so many others)—it must have seemed downright archaic. Part buddy film, road movie, and picaresque, the film's contrasty black-and-white cinematography, long takes, and classical storytelling techniques ensured its status as an instant period piece. And yet this jaunty cross between The Sting (also 1973), The Grapes of Wrath, and The Little Rascals, with an unlikely love story at its center, became a sizable hit and remains one of the more purely enjoyable movie experiences.

As any student of film will tell you, for a few brief years in the early 1970s, Peter Bogdanovich was God. After cutting his teeth as an actor, Esquire film critic, and eager acolyte of low-budget king Roger Corman (for whom he directed 1967's Targets), Bogdanovich took the cinematic world by storm with his morose, artful adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel, The Last Picture Show (1971). Critical hosannas greeted the cocky wunderkind, whose devotion to his Old Hollywood idols—notably John Ford, Orson Welles, and Howard Hawks—was reflected in every carefully composed frame of his black-and-white potboiler.

Expiration Watch: What's New Is Old

Netflix giveth, and Netflix taketh away. Passing into Instant exile—if not downright oblivion—are a number of significant titles, including a couple of Oscar winners and a handful of movies previously spotlighted here. Taking the hit are such stalwart directors as Howard Hawks, John Carpenter, Barry Levinson and Mike Figgis, as well as stars Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell, Dustin Hoffman, Ashley Judd, Burt Reynolds and Nicolas Cage. Not to mention James Caan and those pesky Bond films...

Speaking of Caan, it seems the original Rollerball—reviewed here as a new title only last week—was simply on a one-month streaming loan. As of August 31 at midnight, it will once again be skating off into the distance. Thanks for the tease, Netflix.

Also on loan were those eternally recurring James Bond films, which arrived on 8/1 and will be departing on 9/2. At this rate I suppose we can hope for another return in the near future? I've only been tracking these titles since April, so I'm not sure how regularly such shenanigans occur.

Other titles previously recommended are the dark, fictionalized(?) biopic of game show producer/assassin Chuck Barris, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (review)—written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by George Clooney—and the wonderful coming-of-age comedy, Slums of Beverly Hills (review), with Natasha Lyonne as a brashly curious teen growing up with her nomadic family in 1970s Los Angeles. (10/1 Update: Confessions is now back!)

That brings us to this month's new expiring entries, starting with a couple of notable Oscar winners.

Like No Other: HIS GIRL FRIDAY

To kick off this blog, I thought I'd start with one of my all-time favorite classic comedies.

There have been many attempts to bring Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's 1928 Broadway play, The Front Page, to the big screen, but the only one anyone talks about is Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (1940). And for good reason: it's one of the fastest, funniest, most perfect comedies ever produced. And while it certainly doesn't qualify as "neglected" or "underrated," it's worth noting for anyone born after, say, 1970 who might otherwise overlook a black-and-white movie. If that's you--or if you've simply never gotten around to seeing this paradigm of comic timing--then put it near the top of your Netflix queue, posthaste.



No, it's not a gross-out comedy. There's no cartoon violence or computer-generated talking wombats. But it's got Cary Grant at his sneaky, conniving, rascally best, with Rosalind Russell, as career-gal (and ex-wife) Hildy Johnson, matching him line for line. There's also hapless Ralph Bellamy (one day to appear in Trading Places) in what became forever known as "the Ralph Bellamy role"--i.e., the poor third wheel found in pretty much every romantic comedy ever.