Movies to See Right Now

Chris Pine in HELL OR HIGH WATER
Chris Pine in HELL OR HIGH WATER

Topping my recommendations is the best movie of the year so far – the character-driven crime drama Hell or High Water. It’s atmospheric, gripping, and packed with superb performances. Hell or High Water is a screenwriting masterpiece by Taylor Sheridan. Must See.

Here are other attractive movie choices:

  • Really liked the New Zealand teen-geezer adventure dramedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
  • Florence Foster Jenkins is not just a one-joke movie about a bad singer – it’s a love story about trying to protect the one that you love.
  • Don’t Think Twice is a dramedy set in the world of comedy, another smart, insightful little film by Mike Birbiglia.
  • Woody Allen’s love triangle comedy Cafe Society is a well-made and entertaining diversion, but hardly a Must See.

Don’t have an unbridled recommendation for Mia Madre.

My Stream of the Week is the totally overlooked drama from earlier this year, A Country Called Home with Imogen Poots.   A Country Called Home can be streamed from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On September 20, Turner Classic Movies presents perhaps the most deeply funny movie of all time, Mon Oncle, Jacques Tati’s masterful fish-out-of-water satire of modern consumerism and modernist culture. If you have strong feelings (either way) for Mid-Century Modern style, be patient and settle in.  There’s very little dialogue and lots of sly observational physical humor. The use of ambient noise/sounds and the very spare soundtrack is pure genius.

Mon Oncle
Jacques Tati in MON ONCLE

Movies to See Right Now

Ben Foster and Chris Pine in HELL OR HIGH WATER
Ben Foster and Chris Pine in HELL OR HIGH WATER

Topping my recommendations is the best movie of the year so far – the character-driven crime drama Hell or High Water. It’s atmospheric, gripping, and packed with superb performances. Hell or High Water is a screenwriting masterpiece by Taylor Sheridan. Must See.

Here are other attractive movie choices:

  • Really liked the New Zealand teen-geezer adventure dramedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
  • Florence Foster Jenkins is not just a one-joke movie about a bad singer – it’s a love story about trying to protect the one that you love.
  • I found the documentary about Burt Reynolds and his stuntman/director Hal Needham, The Bandit, very enjoyable; it’s playing on CMT.
  • Don’t Think Twice is a dramedy set in the world of comedy, another smart, insightful little film by Mike Birbiglia.
  • Woody Allen’s love triangle comedy Cafe Society is a well-made and entertaining diversion, but hardly a Must See.

Don’t have an unbridled recommendation for Mia Madre.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the painfully timely Weiner, one of my Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. Weiner is available on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and DirecTV.

Today, Turner Classic Movies airs The Conversation.  And coming up on September 12, TCM delivers early Spielberg: The Sugarland Express (1974).  White trash anti-heroes (Goldie Hahn and William Atherton) pull off a jail break, but their harebrained scheme evolves into a man-hunt and then a hostage standoff.   The wonderfully underused Ben Johnson plays the lawman.

The young Steven Spielberg’s career trajectory as a director began with Duel and a couple of other TV movies, and then The Sugarland Express was his first feature.   Right after Sugarland came Jaws and Close Encounters and Raiders and ET and etc.   The Sugarland Express was made in that very brief period when big movie studios let auteur directors tell stories that today could only be made as “indies” (like The Conversation, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show, Taxi Driver, All That Jazz).

MIA MADRE: deeply personal and about loss

John Turturro in MY MOTHER
Margherita Buy and John Turturro in MIA MADRE

So let’s get one thing straight right up front – Mia Madre is NOT a dramedy. It’s an Italian drama that is leavened with bits of comedy. Writer-director Nanni Moretti has constructed a deeply personal portrait of a person in mid-career and mid-life who is losing her aged parent. There’s never a convenient moment to go through this experience, and Moretti’s protagonist, a movie director (Margherita Buy), is juggling her job and her relationships with her teen daughter, her ex-husband and her brother (played by Moretti). It’s all very complicated – just like it is in real life, and Moretti brings authenticity to the story.

All of this is pretty somber, but our heroine is making a movie, and she has cast an astonishingly pompous American star (John Turturro) who claims to speak more Italian that he really does and who can’t remember his lines. Every scene with Turturro is hilarious as he bumbles through the filmmaking with shameless bravado.

Nanni Moretti is a gifted filmmaker who has been successful in varied genres. I really enjoyed his comedy We Have a Pope, about a newly elected pope who suffers a panic attack and flees the Vatican. This is more serious stuff. The Wife, who liked it less than I did, refers to it as the “depressing Italian dying mother movie”. I found it very affecting, especially the emotionally satisfying ending.

I saw Mia Madre at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October 2015, but its theatrical release in the bay Area was delayed until this weekend..

Movies to See Right Now

THE WAVE
THE WAVE

I really liked the gripping Norwegian disaster movie The Wave, with its ticking clock tension and cool disaster effects. I saw The Wave last week at Cinequest, and it opens in theaters this weekend.  I also liked Cinequest’s Eye in the Sky, with Helen Mirren, and I’ll be writing about that by next week before it opens widely in the Bay Area.

I remain completely absorbed with Silicon Valley’s own film festival, Cinequest. Check out my up-to-the-moment coverage both on my Cinequest page and follow me on Twitter for the latest.  I especially recommend the exquisite Chilean contemplation of grief The Memory of Water, which plays Cinequest tomorrow evening; I’ve seen 25 Cinequest movies so far, and this is the best one. Tomorrow night, I’ll be checking out two movies I haven’t seen yet:  The Adderall Diaries with James Franco, Ed Harris and Amber Heard, Christian Slater and Cynthia Nixon and February, a horror flick with Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka.

Then there are the Oscar winners and contenders, whose theatrical runs are winding down but still out in theaters:

  • Spotlight – a riveting, edge-of-your-seat drama with some especially compelling performances.
  • The Revenant, an awesome and authentic survival tale that must be seen on the BIG SCREEN. I predict that The Revenant will be the biggest winner at the Oscars.
  • The Irish romantic drama Brooklyn, an audience-pleaser with a superb performance by Saoirse Ronan.
  • The deserved Oscar winner for Screenplay, The Big Short – a supremely entertaining thriller – both funny and anger-provoking.

The Italian drama My Mother is a deeply personal film about loss with some comedic highlights from John Turturro. The Coen Brothers’ disappointingly empty comedy Hail, Caesar contains some cool Hollywood parodies.

In honor of Cinequest, my Stream of the Week is the delightful dark comedy Gemma Bovery from last year’s festival.  Gemma Bovery is available to stream from Amazon Video (free with Amazon Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

This week, watch for two wonderfully fun gender-crossing comedies on Turner Classic Movies on March 13: Victor/Victoria and Tootsie. TCM is playing Blow-up on March 17. Set in the Mod London of the mid-60s, a fashion photographer (David Hemmings) is living a fun but shallow life filled with sports cars, discos and and scoring with supermodels (think Jane Birkin, Sarah Miles and Verushka). Then he discovers that his random photograph of a landscape may contain a clue in a murder and meets a mystery woman (Vanessa Redgrave). After taking us into a vivid depiction of the Mod world, director Michelangelo Antonioni brilliantly turns the story into a suspenseful story of spiraling obsession. His L’Avventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse made Antonioni an icon of cinema, but Blow-up is his most accessible and enjoyable masterwork. There’s also a cameo performance by the Jeff Beck/Jimmy Page version of the Yardbirds and a quick sighting of Michael Palin in a nightclub.

BLOW-UP
BLOW-UP

MY MOTHER: deeply personal and about loss

John Turturro in MY MOTHER
Margherita Buy and John Turturro in MY MOTHER

So let’s get one thing straight right up front – My Mother is NOT a dramedy.  It’s an Italian drama that is leavened with bits of comedy.  Writer-director Nanni Moretti has constructed a deeply personal portrait of a person in mid-career and mid-life who is losing her aged parent.  There’s never a convenient moment to go through this experience, and Moretti’s protagonist, a movie director (Margherita Buy), is juggling her job and her relationships with her teen daughter, her ex-husband and her brother (played by Moretti).  It’s all very complicated – just like it is in real life, and Moretti brings authenticity to the story.

All of this is pretty somber, but our heroine is making a movie, and she has cast an astonishingly pompous American star (John Turturro) who claims to speak more Italian that he really does and who can’t remember his lines.  Every scene with Turturro is hilarious as he bumbles through the filmmaking with shameless bravado.

Nanni Moretti is a gifted filmmaker who has been successful in varied genres. I really enjoyed his comedy We Have a Pope, about a newly elected pope who suffers a panic attack and flees the Vatican. This is more serious stuff. The Wife, who liked it less than I did, refers to it as the “depressing Italian dying mother movie”. I found it very affecting, especially the emotionally satisfying ending.

I saw My Mother at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October 2015, but its theatrical release is now expected in March 2016.