A Bigger Splash

Movies to See Right Now

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Bryan Cranston in ALL THE WAY
Bryan Cranston in ALL THE WAY

Another week with good choices – two outright comedies plus a comedy-within-a-thriller:

  • Love & Friendship – a sharply witty adaptation of a Jane Austen story with an adept turn by Kate Beckinsale.
  • The Nice Guys – Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in a very funny mismatched buddy movie from the creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise.
  • A Bigger Splash – a sensual travelogue turned comedy turned thriller with a raucous and oft-naked performance by Ralph Fiennes.

You can find the best movie out right now on HBO. It’s All the Way, the story of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, warts and all, ending official racial segregation in America with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bryan Cranston brings LBJ alive as no actor has before.

Stay away from the dark comedy The Lobster. A grim and tedious misfire, it’s the biggest movie disappointment of the year.

My Stream of the Week is the TOTALLY OVERLOOKED romantic comedy Man Up (and another good rom com written by a woman). Man Up is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.

On June 8, Turner Classic Movies presents Born to Be Bad. Joan Fontaine is a manipulative evildoer, who is trying to finagle the affections of Zachary Scott away from his goodhearted fiance, all while canoodling with Robert Ryan. Classic movie fans will enjoy the casting against type – Fontaine usually played goodie goodies and Scott was often a slimeball (which he’s not here).

Simon Pegg and Lake Bell in MAN UP
Simon Pegg and Lake Bell in MAN UP

Movies to See Right Now

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Ryan Gosling in THE NICE GUYS
Ryan Gosling in THE NICE GUYS
  • Something for everyone in theaters this week:
    Love & Friendship – a sharply witty adaptation of a Jane Austen story with an adept turn by Kate Beckinsale.
  • The Nice Guys – Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in a very funny mismatched buddy movie from the creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise.
  • A Bigger Splash – a sensual travelogue turned comedy turned thriller with a raucous and oft-naked performance by Ralph Fiennes.

You can find the best movie out right now on HBO.  It’s All the Way, the story of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, warts and all, ending official racial segregation in America with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Bryan Cranston brings LBJ alive as no actor has before.

Here’s what you want in a disaster movie: 1) a really impressive disaster and 2) lots of suspense about which of the main characters will survive. My Stream of the Week, the Norwegian The Wave, successfully delivers on both counts. It’s available to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and a variety of TV PPV outlets.

June 3 is Billy Wilder Day on Turner Classic Movies, which features some wonders from my favorite writer-director: Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, Days of Wine and Roses and Five Graves to Cairo. Everyone recognizes Some Like It Hot and Double Indemnity as masterpieces, but I want to highlight Wilder’s very successful second film as a director – Five Graves to Cairo is a combo spy mystery and war film set in Nazi-overrun North Africa. Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter and Erich Von Stroheim star. The cast also includes two of my favorite character actors, Akim Tamiroff and Peter van Eyck.

Franchot Tone, xxx and XXX in FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO
Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter and Erich Von Stroheim in FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO

A BIGGER SPLASH: another exercise in sensuality

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Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton in A BIGGER SPLASH
Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton in A BIGGER SPLASH

Harry Hawkes (Ralph Fiennes) is the kind of guy who gives a bad name to joie de vivre.  The ultimate disrupter, his gift is to seize all the attention, change any social situation into a party and take everyone else out of their comfort zones.  In A Bigger Splash, he inflicts himself on his former rock star lover Marianne (Tilda Swinton), who is trying to enjoy a quiet romantic respite with her current lover Paul (Matthias Shoenaerts) on the secluded Italian island of Pantelleria. Enter Harry, exit solitude.

With only five minutes notice, Harry shows up, expecting to become a houseguest in Marianne and Paul’s  borrowed villa.  To make matters worse, Harry brings along his newly discovered daughter (Dakota Johnson), a highly sexual nymphet with eyes for Paul.  And, and the first day, he invites two of his other friends to join them.  Harry repeatedly tears off his clothes, starts everyone dancing (one of his dances is right up there in cinema history with the one in Napoleon Dynamite) and even turns a village cafe into an overflowing karaoke after-party.  Because Marianne is recuperating from vocal cord surgery, she can’t talk, which makes Harry’s social intrusions even more unbearable.

Harry’s antics are very entertaining, and we watch with apprehension for the other shoe to drop – when are the others going to explode in reaction?   Harry is also trying to insinuate himself back into Marianne’s bed, an intention apparent to the hunky/dreamy Paul, for whom still waters run deep.

This is Guadagnino’s first English language movie.  He had a recent US art house hit with I Am Love, (also starring Swinton).  I Am Love was notorious for its food porn, and there are tantalizing scenes in A Bigger Splash, too, with homemade fresh ricotta and a spectacular outdoor restaurant set amid hillside ruins.

Guadagnino’s greatest gift may be the sensuality of his films.  Whether it’s food, a place or a social situation, he makes the audience feel like we’re experiencing it right along with the character.  In A Bigger Splash, we start out as tourists in a hideout for the super rich, and then Guadagnino takes to us through a raucous comedy of manners to, finally, a suspense thriller.