Kansas City (Arrow Academy)
I wasn’t thrilled with director Robert Altman’s Kansas City when it was released (1996). Seeing it on Blu-ray reminds me why: Jennifer Jason Leigh’s cartoony ‘30s tough gal performance as Blondie, a woman driven to kidnapping to get her man out of a jam. Of course, maybe there was intentionality in her Joan Blondell act. Blondie is a product of Great Depression pop culture and perhaps she’s emulating her screen idols.
Altman’s story concerns a petty white crook whose robbery-in-blackface drew some hostility from ’s leading black mobster (Harry Belafonte giving the film’s standout performance). Miranda Richardson plays Blondie’s kidnapping KCvictim, the wife of a political powerbroker. The fatalistic plot explores race, class and politics in a place and time when corruption taken for granted. The music is what’s memorable, a recreation of KC’s swing-era scene featuring hot jams by such ‘90s jazzmen as Cyrus Chestnut, Don Byron and Joshua Redman.
Cunningham (Magnolia Home Entertainment)
Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) upended the conventions of dance with his focus on the “movement possibilities” of the human body as well as by composing his choreography through chance. Alla Kovgan’s documentary is beautifully knit-together through Cunningham’s voiceovers over archival footage of performances and interviews along with purpose-made reenactments in parks, lofts, subway tunnels and a dark studio. John Cage was Cunningham’s primary influence and he set many of his dances to Cage’s indeterminate music.
Shooting the Mafia (Cohen Media Group)
Letizia Battuglia was Italy’s pioneering female newspaper photographer. She made the Mafia her beat once she began stumbling across the corpses they left behind. The documentary Shooting the Mafia is as much about her as the Mob and uses snippets from period Italian films to illustrate her early life in a society where women were subject to men. Palermo was dangerous in the ‘70s; some of her most startling image are of kids brandishing big guns.
