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In Milan, shady art critic James Figueras and Berenice, his mysterious American lover whom he just met yesterday, is invited to the lakeside villa of rich-as-Croesus art collector/gallerist Cassidy and roped into a scheme to steal a painting from reclusive artist Debney, who may have set his own work on fire many years ago. Giuseppe Capotondi’s film of The Burnt Orange Heresy, based on the novel by Charles Willeford (which I now want to read), is supposed to be a thriller, but it’s too languid and stately to raise your pulse.

The movie starts to fizzle out right when the crime is committed, but it raises fascinating questions about Art. Like, wtf is it? What do you really see when you look at art—the art itself, or the artist? How do we value a work when a critic can spin a tale turning paint splotches into a tragic masterpiece? Who really owns a work of art? What does the artist owe the world?

With the elegantly elongated Elizabeth Debicki (who will play Princess Diana in the next season of The Crown), Claes Bang (best name in showbiz, as a rancid version of his character in The Square), Donald Sutherland, and Mick Jagger as the devilish collector (He should always be cast as the devil). The cast is perfect, the Italian locations are gorgeous, the subject is intriguing, the movie is tepid but stress-free viewing. Debicki is always worth watching.

Nearly everything I know about Black American History, I learned from Spike Lee movies. They are compelling and vivid, funny and furious, and they are an education. He will interrupt the flow of his own movie to have a character address the audience directly and deliver a lecture about some point of African-American life that we need to know. Reality is more important to him than the movie. In the end the movies merge with the real world: the undercover cop in BlacKkKlansman steps into a present where a sitting president empowers racism and murder. Da 5 Bloods is even more emotionally charged than other Spike Lee movies because Chadwick Boseman is in it, and the moment he appears onscreen his character is already a myth.

Spike Lee is an angry man, but he is fair. We understand Danny Aiello’s pizzeria owner in Do The Right Thing, we understand Edward Norton’s drug dealer in The 25th Hour, and here we almost understand Delroy Lindo’s Trump-voting, MAGA cap-wearing, PTSD-suffering Vietnam veteran. In a towering performance, Lindo pulls us into the rage and resentment of a man who feels that he has been cheated by life and will lash out even if he hurts himself. (Fans of The Wire will enjoy the reunion of Clarke Peters and Isiah Whitlock, Jr, who got one of his trademark Sheee-its in there.)

Da 5 Bloods is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as a Vietnam war picture. Five men go into the jungle to retrieve the body of their fallen leader and a stash of gold bars they view as reparations—they were conscripted into someone else’s war to kill and die for rights they themselves did not have. I do not know if it was the filmmaker’s intention or budgetary constraints that led to the flashbacks in which Chadwick Boseman (the joy and pain of seeing him, especially now that we know what he was going through during filming) is young and heroic while his squad is old and grizzled (no digital de-aging), but it drives home the movie’s point: Wars never end. Those men are still fighting to this day.

Victor Erice, whose first feature was The Spirit of the Beehive, only made one more feature after that: El Sur, based on the novella by Adelaida Garcia Morales, to whom he was married at the time. The movie was planned as a complete adaptation of the novella, but Erice’s producer decided that the movie would stop two-thirds into the script, as the protagonist Estrella was packing for her trip to the south. As it stands, the “incomplete” film is beautiful, but what might the complete film have been like?

We are joined by film critic Richard Bolisay, and filmmakers Baby Ruth Villarama and Sally Gutierrez.

This weekend, Clasicos Contigo gives you La buena estrella starring Maribel Verdu. Directed by Ricardo Franco, it swept the Spanish film industry’s Goya Awards in 1997. To access the film, go to https://vimeo.com/437642948 and enter this password: clasicoscontigojulio24. The movie is available until Monday, July 27 at 2am.

Then join me and my guests, filmmakers Monster Jimenez and Annicka Dolonius, and Philippine Ambassador to Lisbon Celia Feria for the fourth episode of Cineclub Pelikula, live on Zoom.

The Holy Innocents is about a family of serfs living on a hacienda in Zafra, Extremadura in Spain (same region seen in Las Hurdes by Buñuel). The film is based on a novel by Miguel Delibes, and the setting is the 1960s but it could just as well be the 1860s.

Thanks to filmmakers Mike Alcazaren and Elvert Bañares, and scholar Marina Diaz for joining our discussion.

It’s been four months since the virus upended our lives. As apocalypses go, it’s been quiet. Sometimes I don’t speak to another person for days. I force myself to walk 4,000 steps a day indoors. Most days I don’t venture past the parking area of my building. I go downstairs to feed the three garage cats and collect packages from motorcycle delivery men (Shopee is my retail therapy: cat food, envelopes, broom, coffee filters, bond paper, etc). Twice I went to the supermarket, and once to the print shop (and then my friend lent me a laser printer so I don’t have to go back). I’ve walked to the drugstore and the convenience store down the street six or seven times.

I would not survive this quarantine without my friends who, knowing my total lack of cooking skills (I gave my stove to my cleaning lady since I never used it anyway), include my grocery list when they shop, send wine and pastry, and let me judge their cooking experiments. I had one fabulous al fresco lunch on a friend’s birthday. The next one will have to wait—covid numbers have risen since the city reopened (and some testing became available), and hospital ICUs are at full capacity.
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This is last Sunday’s Cinemaclub Pelikula discussion of The Spirit of the Beehive by Victor Erice.

To watch The Holy Innocents by Mario Camus today and tomorrow, go to the Instituto Cervantes Vimeo page.
Password: clasicoscontigojulio10

To join the Cineclub Pelikula discussion tomorrow at 5pm, go to
https://zoom.us/j/96949757066