MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL #44 (October 7-17, 2021)

[Chris Knipp]

More Mill Valley. . .


JULIA (Julie Cohen, Betsy West 2021)
All about Julia Child, author of the seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking and an icon who taught generations of Americans how to take the kitchen and food seriously. Full of bubbly joie de vivre, just like Julia, this film does her justice.
This documentary comes out Nov. 5, 2021 in US theaters. I don't know if I will review it, but if you like Julia Child or cooking programs, you will want to see it. It made me smile a lot.

BECOMING COUSTEAU (Liz Garbus 2021)

A conventional and somewhat offical portrait but a richly illustrated one of the immensely famous Frenchman whose "Undersea World" TV series eventually led to his early, intense petitioning of the world to stop polluting the sea, his early alarms of global warming that made him important at Rio 1992. My elderly French neighbor thinks that Cousteau was a very bad boy in his later days, and you might look at it that way. He messed around.

This documentary comes to US heaters Oct. 22 and my full review will appear at that time.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (Todd Haynes 2021)

The most beautiful music documentary I've ever seen, a pure work of art. Use of split- and multiple-screen is a delight to the eye, elegant, and packs in a lot of visual information. But still leaves room for future docs about this seminal but under-documented sixties band with more detail about the music and the emotional clashes and the later accomplishments of the band members.

VELVET UNDERGROUND opens in selected US theaters on Friday (Oct. 15, 2021), and my full-length review of it will appear on Thursday. This is a superb documentary about the seminal late 1960's rock band with lead singer Lou Reed and lead composer John Cale, which was under the wing of Andy Warhol and his Factory.