Movies to See Right Now

Matt Damon in THE MARTIAN
Matt Damon in THE MARTIAN

Plenty of excellent movie choices in the theaters – and something for everyone:

  • The Martian – an entertaining Must See space adventure – even for folks who usually don’t enjoy science fiction;
  • Sicario – a dark and paranoid crime thriller about the drug wars.
  • Meet the Patels, a heartwarming crowd-pleaser – a documentary that’s funnier than most fictional comedies.  Now hard to find in theaters, it’s worth tracking down.
  • 99 Homes, a riveting psychological drama about the foreclosure crisis with searing performances by Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon.
  • Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine – Alex Gibney’s anything but reverential documentary on Steve Jobs.
  • The excellent true life crime drama Black Mass with Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton and a brilliant cast.
  • Going Clear: The Prison of Belief, documentarian Alex Gibney’s devastating expose of Scientology, originally shown on HBO and now in theaters.

My Stream of the Week is the unforgettable coming of age dramedy Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.  It’s available streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.  You will be able to rent it on DVD from Netflix and Redbox on November 3.

On October 12, Turner Classic Movies presents the groundbreaking French noir Elevator to the Gallows(1958). A thriller about the perfect crime that goes awry, it still stands up today, .It’s one of my Overlooked Noir. Elevator to the Gallows is such a groundbreaking film, you can argue that it’s the first of the neo-noir. It’s difficult now to appreciate the originality of Elevator the Gallows; but in 1958, no one had seen a film with a Miles Davis soundtrack or one where the two romantic leads were never on-screen together. Directed by Louis Malle when he was only 24 years old.

On October 15, TCM brings us the 1979 Oscar-winner Harlan County U.S.A. Filmmaker Barbara Kopple embedded herself among the striking coal miners and got amazing footage – including of herself threatened and shot at. Also one of my 5 Great Hillbilly Movies.

HARLAN COUNTY, USA
HARLAN COUNTY, USA

Movies to See Right Now

MEET THE PATELS
MEET THE PATELS

The Matt Damon space adventure The Martian is a crowd pleaser that I’ll be writing about soon. Here are this week’s other recommendations:

  • Meet the Patels, a heartwarming crowd-pleaser – a documentary that’s funnier than most fictional comedies.
  • 99 Homes, a riveting psychological drama about the foreclosure crisis with searing performances by Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon.
  • The excellent true life crime drama Black Mass with Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton and a brilliant cast.
  • Going Clear: The Prison of Belief, documentarian Alex Gibney’s devastating expose of Scientology, originally shown on HBO and now in theaters.

This week’s Stream of the Week comes from The Movie Gourmet’s list of Overlooked Noir. The Burglar (1957) is known primarily as the movie debut of Jayne Mansfield, but it’s a fine film noir. The Burglar plays from time to time on Turner Classic Movies and is available streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, Xbox Video and Flixster.

On October 4, Turner Classic Movies airs Key Largo (1948), one of the classic film noirs and still satisfying to this day. Trapped in a claustrophobic Florida island resort by a hurricane, Humphrey Bogart has to face down sadistic mobster Edward G. Robinson. 23-year-old Lauren Bacall was at her most appealing. Claire Trevor’s heartbreaking performance as a gangster’s moll aging out of her looks is one of her best.

Movies to See Right Now

99 HOMES
99 HOMES

Now we’re talkin’ – it’s late September and once again we have some fine movie choices in the theaters:

  • Meet the Patels, a heartwarming crowd-pleaser – a documentary that’s funnier than most fictional comedies.
  • 99 Homes, a riveting psychological drama about the foreclosure crisis with searing performances by Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon.
  • The excellent true life crime drama Black Mass with Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton and a brilliant cast.
  • Going Clear: The Prison of Belief, documentarian Alex Gibney’s devastating expose of Scientology, originally shown on HBO and now in theaters.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

On September 28, Turner Classic Movies brings us that paragon of madcap comedies, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944); Cary Grant leads a cast that is perfect, right down to Jack Carson as Officer O’Hara, the new cop on the beat.

BLACK MASS: psychopathy and ambition is a nasty combination

Joel Edgerton and Johnny Depp in BLACK MASS
Joel Edgerton and Johnny Depp in BLACK MASS

The excellent crime drama Black Mass tells the true life story of how gangster James “Whitey” Bulger built his Boston Irish gang into a major crime empire under the protection of the FBI.  As if we needed an illustrative example, Bulger is proof that psychopathy and ambition is a really nasty combination.  And, as Black Mass points out with the FBI characters, even ambition alone can prove to be a vulnerability.

Here’s what really happened:  Bulger (Johnny Depp), the ruthless leader of the Winter Hill Gang in South Boston was approached by FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) for help in eradicating Boston’s Italian Mafia.   Connolly was as ambitious as Bulger, and the two men shared Southie  roots.  It was in Bulger’s interest to rid himself of the competition, and he parlayed Connolly’s career-climbing grasping into a de facto amnesty that allowed Bulger to expand his murderous enterprises throughout Boston and beyond – even to Florida jai alai and gun running to Northern Ireland.

It’s an amazing tale, and director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) tells it very well, letting Depp and Edgerton drive the story by inhabiting a pair of characters that become a toxic mixture.  With an erect swagger and some of the coldest eyes in cinema history, Johnny Depp is superb as the feral Bulger.  The trailer below includes his life lesson to a small boy around the family breakfast table that shows his world view.  When the eyes go cold, Depp’s Bulger can terrorize with a touch, a word or even just a glance.

Joel Edgerton is equally effective as the corrupted FBI agent Connolly, who uses Southie bombast and bluster to escape the snares of office politics.  Alas,  it all finally catches up to him when a new prosecutor directs fresh eyes on Boston’s crime scene.  Until recently, I’ve known Edgerton as an Australian action star (he was the the Navy Seal team leader in Zero Dark Thirty and one of the thugs in Animal Kingdom). Edgerton recently wrote, directed and stared in the excellent psychological thriller The Gift, and his performance in Black mass reinforces that he’s a very talented and versatile filmmaker.

The cast is very deep and uniformly excellent, including Julianne Nicolson, Juno Temple, Kevin Bacon, Benedict Cumberbatch, Corey Stoll (Midnight in Paris and House of Cards) and Dakota Johnson.  Besides Depp and Edgerton, three other actors popped off the screen for me:

  • Rory Cochrane plays Bulger’s partner Steve Flemmi.  Cochrane is a veteran actor whose most memorable role is probably as the pothead Slater in Dazed and Confused.  Now filled out in middle age, he plays a guy who is about half of Depp’s scenes, but says very, very little.  As they say, the best acting is reacting, and Cochrane just chews gum and observes, letting his eyes tell us what he is thinking and feeling.
  • David Harbour plays Connolly’s FBI partner, a guy who becomes entangled in a web not of his own doing.  One of the most riveting scenes in Black Mass, he becomes terrorized about, of all things, a recipe for a steak marinade.  Harbour is a reliable veteran, but this is among his very best work.
  • Peter Sarsgaard is always brilliant, and here he gets to become a tweaked out lowlife who involuntarily giggles when he thinks that getting handed a valise full of cash is a good thing when it’s not.

Black Mass is a top rate crime story very well-told.  No more and no less.

One more thing:  there is a string of up-close-and-personal murders depicted here, including two by strangulation and a host of gunshot executions.  It’s not particularly gruesome by the standards of modern crime movies, but DON’T TAKE YOUR 4-YEAR-OLD.  A couple at my screening did just that.  What are people thinking?