Weekly Film Recommendations №3–10/24/22

Welcome to another edition of weekly film recommendations, coming in a little late this time, just under the wire. We’re not taking aim at a specific theme this week, we’re just jumping right in!

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)

Impressed with Jonathan Majors from the likes of Loki and Lovecraft County? Or maybe you wanna pre-game his villainous term for the newest Ant Man feature? Watch this. It is utterly charming from beginning to end.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco is about two black men trying to reclaim a house owned by one of their grandfathers. It is also a total love-letter to San Francisco including this impeccable and almost indescribably beautiful photography of the city.

The movie stars the aforementioned Jonathan Majors and Jimmie Fails, who shares a writing credit & whom it is partly based on. This movie clearly comes from a passionate place of love for the city. There are movies that are reflective of a place, such as Woody Allen’s Manhattan for…well, Manhattan and Altman’s Nashville for…well, Nashville.

I’m not sure if I can call this under-appreciated as I recall it getting a good bit of buzz when it came out, but rarely do I see it mentioned anymore, and I think we need to bring it back into conversations.

It has been quite a bit since I watched this movie, but images for it are burned into my brain, and I think of them quite often due to their simplistic beauty.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco is currently streaming on Fubo, Showtime, Kanopy, and DirectTV.

Blue Collar (1978)

At the center of Paul Schrader’s satirical takedown of Corporate America is a fantastic trio — Richard Pryor, Yaphet Kotto, and Harvey Keitel. They plan three good Union boys, who after a few-too-many spats with their manager, “Dogshit” Miller, decide to rob the Union they work for.

No spoilers inbound, but it becomes quite a complex game after the heist. While you could label this a heist movie, the heist is a very small part of that. It ends up being more of a satirical thriller, while also having some very dark social commentary.

The three co-leads are fantastic separate and especially when they all get together. I’m a huge fan of Hollywood New Wave Cinema, and this captures the visceral angry tone of a lot of New Wave Directors. Lots of Schrader’s movies feel brimming with anger at their core, most notably Hardcore and First Reformed, but in my opinion this is his angriest movie. Even though this is his debut, it shows a bold and powerful voice as a filmmaker right from the getgo.

If you’re looking to get into Schrader’s filmography, I think this is clearly the best place to start. While not his strongest perhaps, it is one of his most accessible.

Blue Collar is currently streaming on Showtime and Fubo TV.

Fighting with My Family (2019)

I distinctly remember not really wanting to watch Fighting with My Family. I was participating in a Letterboxd Scavenger Hunt, and I hade to watch a film with a wrestler in an acting role, so I picked this.

Fighting with My Family is the true-story of real-life wrestler Paige, who gets the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to try out for WWE with her brother, Zak. It goes awry when only she earns a spot in the training program.

This is surprisingly good. It takes a subject I am really, completely uninterested in and makes me care about it.

Let’s get it out of the way, Florence Pugh is amazing in this. She had a knockout year in 2019 with this, Little Women, and Midsommar, but of those three, this is the one that goes mostly forgotten about.

Biopics can be a pretty forgettable genre, and I think it makes sense that this is forgotten about. There is nothing all that special about it, but I find it a terrific crowdpleaser. It is perfect for a Sunday night with your family (see what I did there) and friends. It also features Nick Frost in a great supporting roll, and it is always lovely to see him.

Fighting with My Family is available to rent on Apple TV, Amazon, YouTube, Vudu, and Google Play.

Dark City (1998)

This is perhaps a movie better watched blind, so I won’t give too much away about it.

The plot has been compared to the Matrix, which makes sense as some of the sets used in this were reused for that film a year later, which is pretty cool!

Dark City is a film about a world where it is always night, and our protagonist, John Murdoch finds himself awake in a hotel room with no memory of how he got there and on the run from the law.

That’s about all I want to give away.

This movie has the craziest set and production design I’ve ever seen. It is a thrill ride from start-to-finish. This is putting me in a difficult position because I want to promote this movie but I don’t want to give anything away. Just take my word on this one and watch it.

Dark City is currently streaming on Kanopy and available to rent on Apple TV, Amazon, YouTube, Vudu, and Google Play.

The Climb (2019)

I was so disheartened to see how under-the-radar this movie flew. That’s not its fault because it played the festival circuit right before the pandemic, and never really secured a popular streaming platform.

The Climb follows two super-close best friends until one of them sleeps with the others fiancee. It is crafted from an obvious place of love as it is written, produced, directed by, and starring Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin, playing fictionalized versions of themselves.

A lot of this movie is also about biking, as it is a mutual bond that ties the two together over many years that the film chronicles.

I quite like this movie, it has great character writing and some really wonderful tracking shots in the biking scenes. It’s also got a lot of heart, and you can really feel the chemistry and passion bleeding through the screen.

As I said before, I’d love for this to find its deserved audience, and maybe it finally will!

The Climb is currently streaming on Starz and available to rent on Topic.

That rounds out another week of recommendations, as I said before there’s no real thing uniting these together, I just believe these all deserve way more recognition than they’ve gotten.

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