Movies to See Right Now – more than one MUST SEE

Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD
Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD

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.  But two other movies that are ALSO on my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far open this weekend:

  • The emotionally gripping documentary Alive Inside, showing Alzheimer patients being pulled out of isolation by music.  This will be one of the two favorites for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
  • The mesmerizing drama Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson again teams with John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard.

Boyhood and Alive Inside, in particular, are MUST SEEs.  Don’t miss them.

Also in theaters:

  • Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.
  • The smart and entertaining I Origins, which works both as a scientific detective story and as a meditation on romance.
  • The quirky comedy Land Ho!, with an uproarious and yet genuine geezer road trip to Iceland.
  • The sci fi thriller Snowpiercer is both thoughtful and exciting, plus it features amazing production design. You can also stream Snowpiercer on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and DirecTV.
  • Lucy – a Scarlet Johansson action vehicle that rocks.
  • The credible and politically important HBO documentary The Newburgh Sting, which exposes the FBI’s manufacture of a fake terrorist attack to arrest some New York dumbasses. It’s playing on HBO.

I nodded off during Woody Allen’s disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight.

There’s also an assortment of recent releases to Video on Demand:

        • I loved the rockin’ Spanish Witching and Bitching – a witty comment on misogyny inside a madcap horror spoof, which you can stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.
        • Life Itself, the affectionate but not worshipful documentary on movie critic Ebert’s groundbreaking career, courageous battle against disease and uncommonly graceful death Life Itself is streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
        • The oddly undisturbing documentary A Brony Tale, about grown men with very unusual taste in television shows. Brony Tale is available streaming on iTunes.
        • The Congress: a thoughtful live action fable followed by a less compelling an animated sci fi story. The Congress is available streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
        • Robert Duvall’s geezer-gone-wild roadtrip in A Night in Old Mexico. A Night in Old Mexico is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
        • The art vs. technology documentary Tim’s Vermeer is a yawner.

One of my all-time favorite comedies, Twentieth Century, shows up on Turner Classic Movies on August 10. The next day, TCM will air The Wild One and The Gold Rush. The Wild One has the iconic 1953 Marlon Brando performance as the leader of bikers that terrorize a small town (based on a real incident in Hollister, California). Brando is asked “What are you rebelling against?” and replies “Whadda you got?”. Charlie Chaplin’s comic masterpiece The Gold Rush includes the wonderful scene where hulking Mack Swain, crazed by winter starvation, imagines Charlie to be a succulent chicken and chases him around their Alaskan cabin.

Charlie Chaplin and Mack Swain in THE GOLD RUSH
Charlie Chaplin and Mack Swain in THE GOLD RUSH

1 thought on “Movies to See Right Now – more than one MUST SEE”

  1. Scott, last night on The Daily Show the director of a documentary called Rich Hill was the guest. It sounds like a wonderful film. Apparently it just opened and I’m sure it will never get to the coast but I’ve put it on my Netflix list. Thought I’d give you a heads-up. P

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