I love the wholly original German comedy Toni Erdmann, and today it opens widely throughout the Bay Area. It’s a Must See.
You’ll also enjoy these four movies:
- La La Land: the extraordinarily vivid romantic musical staring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
- Lion: an emotionally affecting family drama that makes the audience weep (in a good way).
- The Founder: the enjoyably addictive story of how a the money-grubbing visionary Ray Kroc built the McDonald’s food service empire.
- Hidden Figures: a true life story from the 1960s space program – a triumph of human spirit and brainpower over sexism and racism; the audience applauded.
I also recommend Noir City, the world’s best festival of film noir, running through Sunday in San Francisco. This year’s festival theme is the Heist Film, and they’ve got some bang up choices from classic film noir, international noir and neo-noir.
Other top recommendations:
- Manchester by the Sea: MUST SEE. Don’t miss Casey Affleck’s career-topping performance in the emotionally authentic drama .
- Elle: MUST SEE (but increasingly hard to find in theaters). A perverse wowzer with the year’s top performance by Isabelle Huppert. Manchester by the Sea is #2 and Elle is #4 on my Best Movies of 2016.
- Paterson, Jim Jarmusch’s gently funny portrait of a poet’s inner life. Starring Adam Driver.
- The Salesman is another searing and authentic psychological family thriller from Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation, The Past).
- The Eagle Huntress: This documentary is a Feel Good movie for the whole family, blending the genres of girl power, sports competition and cultural tourism.
Also in theaters:
- Arrival with Amy Adams, is real thinking person’s sci-fi. Every viewer will be transfixed by the first 80% of Arrival. How you feel about the finale depends on whether you buy into the disconnected-from-linear-time aspect or you just get confused, like I did.
- The remarkably sensitive and realistic indie drama Moonlight is at once a coming of age tale, an exploration of addicted parenting and a story of gay awakening. It’s almost universally praised, but I thought that the last act petered out.
- Skip the dreary and somnolent Jackie – Natalie Portman’s exceptional impersonation isn’t enough.
This is Imogen Poots Week at The Movie Gourmet, and my Stream of the Week is A Country Called Home. A Country Called Home can be streamed from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play. And last week’s pick was the TOTALLY OVERLOOKED neo-noir romance Frank & Lola, available to stream on the very same streaming services. After seeing it at the San Francisco International Film Festival, I put Frank & Lola on my Best Movies of 2016.
On January 28, Turner Classic Movies will play Robert Altman’s superb 1992 satire of Hollywood, The Player. Wickedly funny, it features a stellar cast: Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Lyle Lovett, Dean Stockwell, Whoopi Goldberg, Richard E. Grant, Vincent D’Onofrio, Peter Gallagher, Sydney Pollack and Dina Merrill.
