The top picks this week are Incendies, Midnight in Paris and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I’m still urging people to see the searing drama Incendies, the year’s best film so far. Upon their mother’s death, a young man and woman learn for the first time of their father and their brother and journey from Quebec to the Middle East to uncover family secrets. As they bumble around Lebanon, we see the mother’s experience in flashbacks. We learn before they do that their lives were created – literally – by the violence of the Lebanese civil war.
Woody Allen’s sweet and smart Midnight in Paris is his best comedy in twenty-five years. Owen Wilson accompanies fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where she is intrigued by pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, leaving Wilson to explore midnight Paris and time travel back to the Paris of the Lost Generation.
Don’t miss Cave of Forgotten Dreams while it can be seen in 3D; Werner Herzog explores the amazing 30,000 year old Chauvet cave paintings.
13 Assassins is brilliantly staged and photographed, and is one of the best recent action films; an honorable samurai must assemble and lead a team of thirteen to hack their way through a psychotically sadistic noble’s 200 bodyguards.
In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best. The Hangover Part 2 is just not original enough, and, consequently, not funny enough.
For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.
I haven’t yet seen Beginners or The Trip, which open this weekend with very strong buzz. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD pick is one of the best movies from last year, True Grit.
Movies on TV this week include the brilliant Buster Keaton masterpiece The General on TCM.