movie recommendations

Movies to See Right Now

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Incendies

The searing drama Incendies is 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.

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.  In the fine French drama Queen to Play, a working class woman discovers a passion for chess  in midlife; she and her family, must adjust, along with a French-speaking Kevin Kline.

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. Meek’s Cutoff is a disappointing misfire.

Source Code is a gripping scifi thriller with intelligence and heart, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Vera Farmiga and Michelle Monaghan. Hanna is a rip roaring girl-power thriller starring Saiorse Ronan as a 16-year-old raised in the Arctic Circle to be a master assassin by her rogue secret agent father, and then released upon the CIA.

For trailers and other choices,see Movies to See Right Now.

You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is Diabolique.

Movies on TV this week include the underrated Sam Peckinpah classic Junior Bonner and the campy Giant Mutant Bunny horror film Night of the Lepus on TCM.

Incendies: best movie of the year so far

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This searing drama is 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.

Because the film is anything but stagey, you can’t tell that Canadian director Denis Villaneuve adapted the screenplay from a play.  Lubna Azabal, a Belgian actress of Moroccan and Spanish heritage, is brilliant as the mother.

It’s a tough film to watch, with graphic violence against women and  children.  But the violence is neither gratuitous nor exploitative – it is a civil war, after all, and the theme of the film is the cycle of retribution.

Incendies was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, but lost out to a much inferior film on the same subject of violence, In a Better Life.

 

Meek’s Cutoff: when men don’t ask for directions

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Meek’s Cutoff is an unfortunate misfire by the excellent director Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy).   The masterpiece Picnic at Hanging Rock has already been made.  We didn’t need an indifferent covered wagon version.

The route of the Oregon Trail was not yet well established in 1845, so a covered wagon train hires a mountain man who claims that he has found a shortcut through the Cascades.  However, it becomes clear that the mountain man (Bruce Greenwood) is unreliable, and there is a new option of following an Indian of unknown motives.  We can’t even tell if the Indian is sane.  The men (Will Patton, Paul Dano) must figure out what to do while their wives (Michelle Williams, Shirley Henderson) eavesdrop and guess their fate.

There are possibilities there, but Reichardt hasn’t made much of a point by the time the movie ends.  We know that human decision making cannot guarantee survival in a harsh and unfamiliar environment, but that’s not enough of a payoff after tromping around bleak Eastern Oregon for two hours.

Oddly, Reichardt shot the movie in a 1.37:1 Academy screen ratio.  This looks especially boxy in a Western set in a vast, horizonless wilderness.

DVD of the Week: Diabolique

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The headmaster of a provincial boarding school is so cruel, even sadistic, that everyone wants him dead, especially his wife and his mistress.  When he goes missing, the police drain the murky pool where the killers dumped the body, and the killers get a big surprise.  Now the suspense from director Henri-Georges Clouzot really starts.

A master of the thriller, Clouzot was nicknamed the French Hitchcock.  In an achingly scary scene from Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, two truck drivers try to get a long truck around a cliff side hairpin curve  – and the truck is filled with nitroglycerin.  If you like Diabolique, you’ll probably also like another domestic murder – this time set in Paris – Quai des Orfevres.  Criterion has released the Diabolique DVD.

Queen to Play: A passion discovered late

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In the fine French drama Queen to Play, a working class woman discovers a passion for chess in midlife. It’s a film about aspiration. First, she must muster the courage and resourcefulness to learn the game. When it becomes an obsession, she and her family must adjust.

The excellent actress Sandrine Bonnaire (Intimate Strangers) is the perfect choice to play this laconic and controlled character, who reveals her thoughts and emotions to the audience almost only through her eyes. A French-speaking Kevin Kline is also very good as the crusty American widower who teaches her chess..

Movies to See Right Now

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Cave of Forgotten Dreams

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.  In the fine French drama Queen to Play, a working class woman discovers a passion for chess  in midlife; she and her family, must adjust, along with a French-speaking Kevin Kline.

Source Code is a gripping scifi thriller with intelligence and heart, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Vera Farmiga and Michelle Monaghan. In a Better World is an ambitious contemplation on violence by Danish director Susanne Bier (Brothers, After the Wedding).  Potiche, a delightful French farce of feminist self-discovery is the funniest movie in over a year, and another showcase for Catherine Deneuve (as if she needs one).

The Princess of Montpensier is an exquisitely beautiful romance about a 16th century French noblewoman who is forced by her father to marry – but not the man she loves; her new husband is unhealthily jealous and for good reason – various members of the Court fall in love with her and she is too immature to handle it well. Hanna is a rip roaring girl-power thriller starring Saiorse Ronan as a 16-year-old raised in the Arctic Circle to be a master assassin by her rogue secret agent father, and then released upon the CIA. The Robber is about an emotionless, compulsive bank robber who doesn’t care about the money, and you won’t care about him, either.

For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.

I haven’t yet seen Incendies or Meek’s Cutoff, two promising films opening this weekend. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is Hail! The Conquering Hero.

Movies on TV this week include the classic French heist film Rififi and one of my favorite Sam Peckinpah Westerns, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, both on TCM.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams: 3D for grownups

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Come along with Werner Herzog as he explores the 33,000-year-old Chauvet cave paintings in southern France. It’s a great topic for a film – a specially authorized descent into the claustrophobic confines of a prehistoric cave, littered with human footprints and the skulls of extinct cave bears.  Surprisingly, some of the paintings look like they were painted in the Renaissance or later.

And, of course, Herzog (Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Grizzly Man) is a great story teller.  Here, he made the wise choice to film in 3D.  The paintings are not on flat canvasses, but on uneven rock faces.  The 3D allows the audience to appreciate how the artists used the curves in the rock to give the illusion of motion in their subjects.

Don’t miss Cave of Forgotten Dreams while it can be seen in 3D.

DVD of the Week: Hail! The Conquering Hero

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Eddie Bracken and his new Marine comrades

This brilliantly funny movie is one of Preston Sturges’ less well known great comedies.  Eddie Bracken plays a would-be soldier discharged for hay fever – but his hometown mistakenly think that he is sent home a war hero.  Hilarity ensues.  All the funnier when you realize that this film was made in 1944 amid our nation’s most culturally patriotic period.

Turner Classic Movies broadcasts Hail! The Conquering Hero several times a year, and a new DVD has been released today.

Coming up on TV: Lawrence of Arabia

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Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia

It’s time to revisit a spectacle.  On May 9, Turner Classic movies is broadcasting Lawrence of Arabia.  For decades, many of us watched this epic squeezed into tinny-sounding TVs.   In 1989, I was fortunate enough to see the director’s cut in an old movie palace.   Now technology has caught up, and modern large screen HD televisions  can do this wide screen classic justice.  Similarly, modern home sound systems can work with the great Maurice Jarre soundtrack.

Nobody has ever created better epics than director David Lean (Bridge Over the River Kwai, Dr. Zhivago).  Peter O’Toole stars at the moment of his greatest physical beauty.  The rest of the cast is unsurpassed: Omar Sharif, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, thousands of extras and entire herds of camels.  The vast and severe Arabian desert is a character unto itself.

Settle in and watch the whole thing – and remember what “epic” really means.

Movies to See Right Now

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The Princess of Montpensier

Don’t miss Source Code, a gripping scifi thriller with intelligence and heart, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Vera Farmiga and Michelle Monaghan.  Poetry is a troubling, uncomfortable and profound film with a great performance by Koran actress Jeong-hie Yun.  In a Better World is an ambitious contemplation on violence by Danish director Susanne Bier (Brothers, After the Wedding).  Potiche, a delightful French farce of feminist self-discovery is the funniest movie in over a year, and another showcase for Catherine Deneuve (as if she needs one).

The Princess of Montpensier is an exquisitely beautiful romance about a 16th century French noblewoman who is forced by her father to marry – but not the man she loves; her new husband is unhealthily jealous and for good reason – various members of the Court fall in love with her and she is too immature to handle it well.  Hanna is a rip roaring girl-power thriller starring Saiorse Ronan as a 16-year-old raised in the Arctic Circle to be a master assassin by her rogue secret agent father, and then released upon the CIA.  The Robber is about an emotionless, compulsive bank robber who doesn’t care about the money, and you won’t care about him, either.

For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.

I haven’t yet seen Cave of Forgotten Dreams,  Incendies or Queen to Play, which open this weekend.  You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is Somewhere.

Movies on TV this week include the epic Lawrence of Arabia on TCM, which will look great on your wide screen HDTV – more on that tomorrow.