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Electra Glide in Blue (1973)

James William Guercio, the record producer who discovered and nurtured such acts as Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago directed exactly one film, Electra Glide in Blue.

Best known as a pop music producer and owner of Caribou Ranch recording studios outside of Nederland, Colorado, Guercio produced and directed this western on motorcycles as a sort of great American novel on film. Personally, I'm a sucker for these films from the American New Wave. But this isn't Easy Rider, where the younger generation condemns and threatens societal institutions. Electra Glide in Blue is a far more nuanced examination of the definition of success and the American Dream.

Robert Blake is brilliantly cast as a short-statured motorcycle cop in rural Arizona with ambitions of making detective. And Jeannine Riley (of Petticoat Junction fame) gives a moving performance as an aging starlet. 

Conrad Hall's cinematography captures the desolate beauty of Monument Valley. Most of the band Chicago play smaller roles as hippies, and an eagle-eyed observer can even catch a young Nick Nolte in the background of some scenes.

My Favorite Shapes by Julio Torres (US)

Saturday Night Live writer and co-creator of Los Espookys, Julio Torres, has an HBO special where bric-a-brac is delivered to him via a conveyor belt that he controls with a foot pedal. Torres then gives you the back story, the hidden secrets, and the drama behind each object. Sometimes these objects have interior monologues which are voiced by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Also, Torres is dressed as some sort of gay alien, and apparently he has the ability to teleport around the stage.

There are exactly two kinds of responses to this comedy special. There are those who will enjoy it precisely because they are unable to fully understand it. And then there are those who will hate it precisely because they are unable to fully understand it. Which are you?

Los Espookys (US)

I don't remember who recommended Los Espookys to me. But if you're reading this, Thank You! This new HBO comedy series is delightfully off kilter in a relaxed kind of way. It's mostly in Spanish with English subtitles, except for the English parts, which have Spanish subtitles.

Los Espookys is, I don't know, Latin American millennial Scooby-Doo? Except the kids in the Mystery Machine are now the ones creating the deception rather than solving it, because millennials. Los Espookys works on its own logic. And to attempt to describe it further would just be excruciatingly boring -- like that office coworker who insists on telling you all about their dreams. The bottom-line is that Los Espookys is refreshing and different and fun. And highly recommended.

A Face in the Crowd (1957)

I thought Paddy Chayefsky's 1976 film, Network, was the first and last word on the power and corrupting influence of mass media. But I've just seen Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd from 1957, and I'm awestruck. This film is 62 years old, and it remains an incredibly relevant criticism of mass media.

The film feels so modern, in fact, that I can't imagine what a 1957 audience would have made of it. Andy Griffith's performance is enormous, powerful, and frightening. I can't believe that he didn't receive an Academy Award nomination. The Eisenhower-era audiences seemed genuinely confused by this movie. And the critics were either nonplussed or panned it altogether. One notable exception being François Truffaut, who said the film is "a great and beautiful work whose importance transcends the dimensions of a cinema review."

My take is, yeah, what Truffaut said. This film is important.

In the second half of the film, Patricia Neal grows darker with every scene. Kazan lights her like a skeleton towards the end, her angular face often turns into the shadows or is half eclipsed by shadow. And Walter Matthau takes a turn as the educated cynic who knows exactly how this all ends.

This film is very much worth your time. The observations contained here continue to resonate over 60 years after its creation.

I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson (US)

This is a Netflix sketch comedy show with recurring situations, much like That Mitchell and Webb Look. The brilliance of this show is that just when you think you understand the premise of a sketch, they amp it up and change direction. Honestly, I think they missed the boat by not calling this show "Well That Escalated Quickly."

Still, this is genuinely funny stuff. And I can think of no higher praise than to say, "This is the stuff that memes are made of."