OK – it’s the Labor Day weekend – we all have three days off and a need to seek an air-conditioned theater. So there’s just no excuse if you haven’t yet seen these movies on my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far:
- Alive Inside: The profoundly moving documentary showing Alzheimer patients being pulled out of isolation by music.
- Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.
- The mesmerizing drama Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson again teams with John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard.
I really liked The One I Love – a relationship romance, a dark comedy and a modern day episode of The Twilight Zone rolled into one successful movie. Don’t miss Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.
I was disappointed by the tiresome Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. I nodded off during Woody Allen’s disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is Go For Sisters , a border thriller with three more great movie characters from master indie writer-director John Sayles. Go for Sisters is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon and Vudu.
On September 1, TCM is airing The Crying Game – with one of the great movie plot twists of all time and one of my Best Films About the Troubles (Northern Ireland).