Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story
Although their names are little known outside the industry, Harold and Lillian Michelson were key contributors to hundreds of movies. A married couple, Harold drew storyboards in charcoal and ink, foreseeing what the camera would see, and Lillian was the research librarian for those visuals. This documentary interviews the couple behind everything from The Birds to Ben-Hur, with testimonials from Francis Ford Coppola, Danny DeVito and Mel Brooks (who credits them for the Space Balls’ costumes).
Avanti!
Well below the level of the previous collaborations between director Billy Wilder and actor Jack Lemmon (Some Like It Hot, The Apartment), the comedy of Avanti! (1972) hasn’t aged well. And yet it features a trademark Lemmon performance as a flustered, arrogant American businessman out of his element in the inefficient, freewheeling setting of Italy. The eccentric staff in the luxury resort may well have been an inspiration for Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel.
Moka
The voyeurism of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window begins in disinterested boredom and climaxes in terror. Not so this 2016 thriller by French director Frédéric Mermoud, where the voyeur, Diane (Emmanuelle Devos), has a mission from the start. She is stalking Marlene (Nathalie Baye) because she believes the woman killed her son in a traffic accident. Many scenes pass without a word spoken in this moody, visually well-composed film, based on Tatiana de Rosnay’s bestselling novel.
The Ambassador
In his later years, Robert Mitchum was often cast as forlorn-looking heroes. In this 1984 drama about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mitchum plays a U.S. ambassador on a peace mission, his wooden face barely registering surprise when bullets fly. He’s more expressive when he learns that his wife (Ellen Burstyn) is having an affair with an Arab shopkeeper. Rock Hudson is stodgy as his bodyguard; Donald Pleasence is good as the perpetually irritated Israeli defense minister.
