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

Movies to See Right Now – the really good movies are here

Patricia Arquette and Eller Coltrane in BOYHOOD
Patricia Arquette and Eller Coltrane in BOYHOOD

Our patience has been rewarded – an onslaught of really good movies is finally out now. I haven’t yet seen two of the highly anticipated movies that are out today:

    • Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood – potentially the best movie of the year.
    • Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final performance in the John LeCarre espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.

I HAVE seen and recommend:

  • The smart and entertaining I Origins , which works both as a scientific detective story and as a meditation on romance.
  • 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.

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 MexicoA 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.

I recommend setting your DVR to record Wild Strawberries on July 28. If you have found the work of Ingmar Bergman just too dreary, this is a great choice. There’s no denying that Bergman is a film genius, and he’s influenced the likes of Woody Allen, Scorsese, Coppola, Altman, Kieślowski and basically much of the last two generations of filmmakers. But I don’t recommend that casual movie fans watch gloomy movies that “are good for you” – I want you to have a good time at the movies. Wild Strawberries is the story of an accomplished but cranky geezer.  His indifferent daughter-in-law is taking him to be honored at his college. On their road trip, they pick up some young hitch-hikers and then a stranded couple. Each encounter reminds the old doctor of an episode in his youth. As he reminisces, he can finally emotionally process the experiences that had troubled him, helping him finally achieve an inner peace. It’s a wonderful film.

WILD STRAWBERRIES
WILD STRAWBERRIES

A Brony Tale: odd and odder

I’m not sure I was comfortable learning about the “Bronies”, subjects of the documentary A Brony TaleMy Little Pony is an animated television series that is made for an audience of little girls and which features flying pastel cartoon ponies. Bronies are fans of My Little Pony who are predominantly male and between the ages of 14 and 30. As one of the My Little Pony voice actresses notes, “my pervert alarm went off”.

I was settled in for a cringefest of a freak show, but surprised to met a biker Brony, an Iraq combat vet Brony, married Bronies and just a lot of seemingly manly and normal-looking Bronies. A Brony Tale raised some serious questions of gender expectations – why can we be so repelled by someone’s surprising taste in a harmless TV show? But then we visit BronyCon – the convention for Bronies – and see a lot of them expressing themselves with very strange costuming (and FanimeCon is held close to my house, so I have a high bar for strange costuming).

A Brony Tale is only 79 minutes long – and could have shaved 4-5 minutes off the voice actress’ journey to the BronyCon.  A Brony Tale is available streaming on iTunes.  Still mulling this over. Hmmmm…