My recommendations for film watching this week in L.A. 5/6-13/2016

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My recommendations for movie watching this week in L.A. 5/6-13/2016

ON NETFLIX:  I’m not saying that Robinson Crusoe on Mars, written by John C. Higgins and Ib Melchior and directed by Byron Haskin (loosely adapted from the novel by Daniel Defoe) is a good movie, but it’s a fun one, with all the cheesiness included.  Paul Mantee plays an astronaut stranded on Mars (long before Matt Damon) and Victor Lundin is a slave that escapes from a group of aliens who mine on Mars.  Adam (Batman) West is also around, at least for awhile.

ON HULU:  Stakeout, written by Shinobu Hashimoto (he worked on a number of Kurosawa films) and directed by Yoshitaro Nomura (Zero Focus, Castle of Sand), is a film noir as if Ozu had directed it.  Two police detectives go to a town in the South of Japan because they believe a man who killed a pawnbroker may visit his old girlfriend.  Methodical with its own pacing, it’s rich in character study with a story that slowly, but certainly, draws you in.  A Japanese filmmaker who isn’t as well known in the U.S. as he should be.

OF SPECIAL NOTE: Dragon Inn (1967) is playing at the Nuart

OF SPECIAL NOTE: Jean Luc Godard’s great film Band of Outsiders plays at Cinefamily at The Silent Movie Theater 5/6-8, 10-12 (It’s the one where our heroes run across the Louvre)

FIRST RUN and OPENING:  Captain America: Civil War, A Bigger Splash, The Family Fang, Dheepan, The Dark Horse, Being Charlie, Elstree 1976, The Invitation, Viva, Sing Street, The Meddler, Hockney, The Wait