Movies to See Right Now

David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. (center back) in SELMA
David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. (center back) in SELMA

The best films in theaters right now are no secret – most are Oscar-nominated:

  • Clint Eastwood’s thoughtful and compelling American Sniper, with harrowing action and a career-best performance from Bradley Cooper.
  • The inspiring Selma, well-crafted and gripping throughout (but with an unfortunate historical depiction of LBJ).
  • The Belgian drama Two Days, One Night with Marion Cotillard, which explores the limits of emotional endurance.
  • The cinematically important and very funny Birdman. You can still find Birdman, but you may have to look around a bit. It has justifiably garnered several Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
  • Reese Witherspoon is superb in the Fight Your Demons drama Wild, and Laura Dern may be even better.
  • The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
  • The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.
  • I was underwhelmed by the brooding drama A Most Violent Year – well-acted and a superb sense of time and place (NYC in 1981) but not gripping enough to thrill.

My DVD/Stream of the week is last year’s best Hollywood movie, the psychological thriller Gone Girl, with a star-making performance by Rosamund Pike. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

It’s time for Turner Classic Movies’ annual 31 Days of Oscar – a glorious month of Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films on TCM. This week, I am highlighting:

  • The Great Dictator (February 7): Charlie Chaplin’s hilarious and devastating takedown of a thinly disguised Adolph Hitler – almost two years before the US entered WW II.
  • Laura (February 9): perhaps my favorite thriller from the noir era, with an unforgettable performance by Clifton Webb as a megalomaniac with one vulnerability – the dazzling beauty of Gene Tierney. The musical theme is unforgettable, too.
  • All the King’s Men (February 11): one of the best political movies of all time, from the novel based on the saga of Huey Long . Watch for the brilliant, Oscar-winning supporting performance by Mercedes McCambridge.
  • The Bad Seed (February 13): very bad things are happening – the chill comes from the revelation that the murderous fiend is a child with blonde pigtails.

CAGED: Eleanor Parker and Hope Emerson in the prototype for Orange is the New Black

31-days-2015-blogathonThis article is written for the annual blogathon in celebration of Turner Classic Movies’ 31 Days of Oscars.  The blogathon is hosted by classic movie bloggers Outspoken and Freckled, Paula’s Cinema Club and Once Upon a Screen.

Hope Emerson and Eleanor Parker in CAGED
Hope Emerson and Eleanor Parker in CAGED

Want to see the prototype for Orange Is the New Black?  In the 1950 Caged, Eleanor Parker (who died last year) played the naive young woman plunged into a harsh women’s prison filled with hard-bitten fellow prisoners and compassion-free guards. Parker was nominated for an acting Oscar, but her performance pales next to that of Hope Emerson, whose electric portrayal of a hulking guard also got an Oscar nod.

Caged is a Message Picture, editorializing that the prison experience unnecessarily molds inmates into criminals.  Although its trailer (available on IMDb), with its breathlessly sensationalistic narration, makes the film appear overwrought, Caged is edgy enough to have currency with modern sensibilities.  Parker’s newbie  is NOT innocent and wrongly convicted –  as the movie opens, she’s one of the crew in a bank heist.  She experiences hellish brutalization behind bars.  There’s also behind-the-bars pregnancy, inmate suicide and implied lesbianism.  The ending, when the protagonist is finally released and can choose between going straight or going bad, is filled with the cynicism and despair of film noir.

Eleanor Parker hit every note on her character’s slide from the Good Kid who made a dumb mistake all the way down to a Hard Case seasoned with hopelessness.  (In a stunningly competitive year, she lost the Oscar to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday, along with Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard, and both Bette Davis and Anne Baxter for All About Eve.)

But this is Hope Emerson’s movie.  Emerson draws the audience’s attention every moment that she’s on-screen.  Her prison matron is not just harsh but sadistic.  Emerson was able to radiate meanness with every glance, and took full advantage of her dominating physicality. It’s a performance that still works today.

This was the apex of Emerson’s career.  She stood a big-boned 6″2″, and then as now, Hollywood didn’t have many parts for an actress with her appearance.   She started on Broadway in her early 30s (as an Amazon in Lysistrata), was successful in radio voice-over work and managed 43 screen credits.  She was 53 years old when she made Caged.

Caged also features the fine character actresses Agnes Moorehead, Jane Darwell (Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath) and Ellen Corby (Grandma Walton here as a young woman).

Sixty-five years later, Caged might still be the best women’s prison movie ever.  TCM is featuring Caged on February 20 during its 31 Days of Oscar.  It’s also available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on  iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Xbox Video and Flixster.

CONVICTS 4: Ben Gazzara in prison with his crazy friends

Ben Gazzara and Timothy Carey in CONVICTS 4
Ben Gazzara and Timothy Carey in CONVICTS 4

The title of Convicts 4 (1962) is odd because it’s really the true-life tail of one convict, played by Ben Gazzara, who develops into a fine artist while in prison.  It’s based on the autobiography of John Resko, who was sentenced to death for a killing during a robbery; his sentence was commuted, and he developed his skills as a painter in prison, contributing to his eventual release.

Now Convicts 4 is not a masterpiece:  some of the scenes are contrived, the dialogue is often stiff  and there are some overwrought moments, especially the pre-execution shower and the wintertime escape attempt. interesting story.  But it’s pretty entertaining because of the real-life story and the compelling performance by Ben Gazzara – at the height of his charisma.

Resko/Gazzara does have a set of cronies while in the Big House.  There’s a particularly unforgettable turn by one of my favorite movie psychos, Timothy Carey, here in one of his most eccentrically self-conscious performances.  Ray Walton (My Favorite Martian) plays another loony prisoner, crazier than Carey’s, but not a menacing.  The rich cast includes Stuart Whitman, Vincent Price, Rod Steiger, Jack Albertson, Brodrick Crawford and Sammy Davis Jr.

Turner Classic Movies will air Convicts 4 on October 25.

D.O.A.: racing the clock to solve his own murder

Edmond O'Brien in D.O.A.
Edmond O’Brien in D.O.A.

On August 27, Turner Classic Movies has the gripping film noir whodunit D.O.A., which opens with a man walking into a police station to report HIS OWN MURDER. The man (Edmond O’Brien) finds out that he has been dosed with a poison for which there is no antidote – and that he has only a few days to live. He desperately races the clock to find out who has murdered him and why – all in a taut 83 minutes. Much of D.O.A. was shot on location in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and one SF scene has one of the first cinematic glimpses into Beat culture. The little known director Rudolph Maté gave the film a great look, which shouldn’t be a surprise because Maté had been Oscar-nominated five times as a cinematographer. The next year, he followed D.O.A. with another solid noir, Union Station, with William Holden and Barry Fitzgerald.

(This 1950 version with Edmond O’Brien is the one you want to see; avoid the 1988 remake with Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan.)

Movies to See Right Now

FINDING VIVIAN MAIER
FINDING VIVIAN MAIER

In the engrossing documentary Finding Vivian Maier, we go on journey to discover why one of the great 20th Century photographers kept her own work a secret.

The Unknown Known, master documentarian Errol Morris’ exploration of Donald Rumsfeld’s self-certainty, is a Must See for those who follow current events.   Like all Wes Anderson movies, The Grand Budapest Hotel is wry and imaginative, but it’s not one of his most engaging. Dom Hemingway is a fun and profane romp. In the most bizarro movie of the year so far, Under the Skin, Scarlett Johansson plays an alien who lures men with her sensuality and then harvests their bodies; it’s trippy, but I found it ultimately unsatisfying.

I liked Run & Jump, now available streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube and Xbox Video. It’s successful as a romance, a family drama and a promising first feature.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the emotionally satisfying gem Philomena. Philomena is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Sam Fuller is one of my favorite directors, and Turner Classic Movies is offering a Fullerathon on April 29. Fuller started out as a tabloid reporter and never missed a chance to shamelessly sensationalize a subject (except for war, which he insisted on treating realistically).  Two of Fuller’s trashterpieces are Naked Kiss and Shock Corridor.  His masterpiece is probably the Korean War film I Shot Jesse James, The Baron of Arizona ; the WWII movie Merrill’s Marauders is more conventional, but a solid WWII movie.  TCM is also showing I Shot Jesse James, The Baron of Arizona and Verboten!.  The only stinker of the group is The Run of the Arrow, with a hopelessly miscast and scenery-chewing Rod Steiger in buckskins.

In The Naked Kiss, a prostitute opens the movie by beating her pimp to a pulp, and then moves to a new town, seeking a new beginning in the straight world. She gets a job as a nurse at the clinic for disabled children, and becomes engaged to the town’s leading philanthropist. She thinks that everything will be great unless someone reveals her tawdry past. But, instead, she discovers that her Mr. Perfect is molesting the crippled kids! (Only Sam Fuller could pull this off!) Here’s the trailer.

The Outfit: Robert Duvall, Linda Black and Joe Don Baker on the loose in the 70s

Robert Duvall in THE OUTFIT
Robert Duvall in THE OUTFIT

The Outfit (1974) is a revenge/crime story starring Robert Duvall as a bank robber released from prison who starts a campaign of terror against the crime syndicate that killed his brother.  It turns out that Duvall’s gang robbed a bank that, unbeknownst to them, was mob-owned.

The Outfit is well acted by Duvall (of course) and his fellow 70s stars Linda Black, Joe Don Baker and Bill McKinney (Deliverance and Worst Movie Teeth).  Black delivers one of her patented 70s lovable floozies, defined by a concoction of shopworn sexiness, bad luck and unreliability.  Baker is especially appealing as Duvall’s buddy.

The cast also stands out for its crew of 1950s film noir veterans:  Robert Ryan (mob kingpin), Timothy Carey (chief henchman), Jane Greer, Elisha Cook Jr and Marie Windsor.  Then there’s the dependable Richard Jaeckel, whose career bridged the decades. Joanna Cassidy plays Ryan’s bimbo du moment.

Duvall pisses off Timothy Carey in THE OUTFIT

I was most pleasantly surprised by the directing of John Flynn, who directed a handful of otherwise pedestrian crime films and action vehicles for Sly Stallone, Jan Michael Vincent and even Steven Seagal.  Flynn also did have a knack for working with good actors (James Woods, Tommy Lee Jones, Ned Beatty, Frank Langella, Danny Aiello, Brian Dennehy).

In The Outfit, Flynn shows himself to be a master of the stationary camera, the long shot and off-screen action.  The movie opens with a driver stopping at a remote gas station and getting out of the car to approach the attendant.  We see what happens in a single shot from roadside, outside the car, looking through the passenger side window and then again through the driver’s side window toward the gas station.  We see that there’s another man in the back seat, but we can’t identify him.  We only hear the ordinary music on the car radio. Still, we can tell that the driver is asking directions, and we sense that the two men in the car are up to no good.

The two men find their destination, and it turns out that they are hit men.  We see them sneaking into position around a home while the dog barks, and then we see them fire shots.  We don’t see the victim getting splattered.  We just see the dog barking his warning while we are hearing the shots.  Then the dog becomes agitated and whines.  Finally, in long shot, we see the victim prone.  It’s another very effective sequence.

Late in the story, we first sense that something has happened to Linda Black when we see the look in Joe Don Baker’s eyes in his rear view mirror.

The Outfit’s story is a little dated (not as violent as today’s crime films), but Duvall and Baker make for an appealing duo, and Flynn gives the film an interesting look. The Outfit plays this week on Turner Classic Movies and is available streaming from Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

The trailer slaps together every scene with a gun to make The Outfit look like too much like a shoot ’em up, but it does include a great line reading from Timothy Carey.

Movies to See Right Now

SHORT TERM 12
SHORT TERM 12

This week, I’m featuring three movies that are flying under the radar. The Chilean drama Gloria is about an especially resilient 58-year-old woman.  Harder to find, Stranger by the Lake is an effective French thriller with LOTS of explicit gay sex.

And my DVD/Stream of the Week is the compelling and affecting foster care drama Short Term 12. This movie made both my Best Movies of 2013 and my Most Overlooked Movies of 2013, with its star making performance by Brie Larson.   Short Term 12 is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, GooglePlay and Xbox Video.

In theaters, you can still find Oscar nominees Nebraska, American Hustle and Her, which all made my Best Movies of 2013.  I also strongly recommend Best Picture nominees The Wolf of Wall Street and PhilomenaDallas Buyers Club, with its splendid performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, is formulaic but still a pretty good watch.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is another fine thriller from that franchise, with another amazing performance by Jennifer Lawrence. I also like the Mumblecore romance Drinking Buddies, now available on VOD.

I saw this year’s Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts and was disappointed.  There was nothing to match recent gems like The God of Love or Curfew.  I liked the British short about a particularly bored and malevolent God masquerading as a convict, but that 13 minutes didn’t justify the two hours that I had invested.  A 30-minute Spanish film about child soldiers in Africa was to excruciatingly brutal to justify the trite attempt at a redemptive payoff.  (I haven’t seen the Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts, but I have heard good things about that program.)

Turner Classic Movies has launched its wonderful annual 31 Days of Oscar – filling the entire month with Oscar-nominated movies. This week I recommend the romantic French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) which is notable for three things: 1) the actors sing all of the dialogue; 2) the breakout performance by then 20-year-old Catherine Deneuve; and 3) an epilogue scene at a gas station – one of the great weepers in cinema history.  I also recommend two great performances by Peter O’Toole screening on February 20, as a lethally driven movie director in The Stunt Man (1980) and as a gloriously dipsomaniacal screen icon in the comedy My Favorite Year (1982).

Movies to See Right Now

Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey (both Oscar-nominated) in DALLAS BUYERS CLUB.
Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey (both Oscar-nominated) in DALLAS BUYERS CLUB.

Oscar nominees Nebraska, American Hustle and Her all made my Best Movies of 2013.  I also strongly recommend Best Picture nominees The Wolf of Wall Street and PhilomenaDallas Buyers Club, with its splendid performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, is formulaic but still a pretty good watch.

Not nominated, but pretty damn good, is The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, another fine thriller from that franchise, with another amazing performance by Jennifer Lawrence. I also admire the compelling French drama The Past. And I also like the Mumblecore romance Drinking Buddies, now available on VOD.

I haven’t yet seen the Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts, but I’m gonna because they’re always good.

I’m not a fan of Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks (sentimental and predictable) or the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (about an unlovable loser – and I didn’t love the movie, either).

My DVD/Stream of the Week features Philip Seymour Hoffman in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Hulu.

Turner Classic Movies has launched its wonderful annual 31 Days of Oscar – filling the entire month with Oscar-nominated movies. This week I recommend two wickedly funny Preston Sturges films – The Great McGinty (inside workings of a corrupt political machine) on February 10 and The Lady Eve (con artist Barbara Stanwyck tries to land the clueless but wealthy Henry Fonda) on February 11. TCM is also cablecasting the Howard Hawks screwball comedy Ball of Fire, with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, on February 11.

Coming up on TV – two JFK classics

Cliff Robertson in PT 109

So it’s almost the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, and we’re being bombarded by Kennedybilia.  But I recommend two JFK films on Turner Classic Movies – the documentary Primary and the biopic PT 109 .  [I’m also highly recommending the 2013 day-of-the-assassination movie Parkland, available now streaming on VOD]

Primary (November 21) documents the Wisconsin Democratic primary election campaign in 1960.  This was a key stepping stone in Kennedy’s road to the White House because it was a chance for him to demonstrate that he appealed to voters outside the Northeast.  Kennedy’s rival Hubert Humphrey was favored because Wisconsin neighbors Humphrey’s home state of Minnesota.  Primary is both a time capsule of 1960 politics and an inside look at the Kennedy family unleashed in a campaign.  There’s an amazing scene where Humphrey appeals to a handful of flinty farmers in a school gym – he’s giving his all and he ain’t getting much back.  Only 60 minutes long, Primary has been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.   The great documentarian D.A. Pennebaker, who went on to direct Monterey Pop and The War Room, shot, edited and recorded sound for Primary.

As 26-year-old PT boat commander in WWII, JFK was a real life war hero.  Some scolds deride PT 109 (November 21) as hagiography, but I don’t buy it – when things went bad, he acted heroically indeed and bore the health effects for the rest of life.  PT boats were essentially light wooden speed boats just big enough to hold some torpedoes and some depth charges on top of a tank of extremely combustible aviation fuel.  The commanders needed to maneuver the PT boat close enough to fire the torpedoes at a Japanese warship while avoiding return fire that would certainly be lethal .  No wonder the PT units were nicknamed  “They were expendable”.  It’s good history and an exciting true life action tale.  Cliff Robertson plays the young JFK.

 

Movies to See Right Now

Lake Bell in her IN A WORLD...

In A Word… is the year’s best comedy so far – it’s a Hollywood satire, an insider’s glimpse into the voice-over industry, a family dramedy and a romantic comedy all in one. 

The powerfully authentic coming of age film The Spectacular Now and the emotionally powerful Fruitvale Station are both on my list of Best Movies of 2013 – So Far.

My other top recommendations:

  • The jaw-dropping documentary The Act of Killing, an exploration of Indonesian genocide from the perpetrators’ point of view, is the most uniquely original film of the year.
  • Woody Allen’s very funny Blue Jasmine centers on an Oscar-worthy performance by Cate Blanchett.
  • The very well-acted civil rights epic Lee Daniels’ The Butler.

My other recommendations:

Also out right now:

You can read descriptions and view trailers of it and other upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

Check out my new feature VOD Roundup, where you can find my comments on over twenty current movies available on Video on Demand.  There are some good ones, some bad ones and some really, really good ones (including Letters from the Big Man).

My DVD of the Week is the riveting IRA thriller Shadow Dancer, with Clive Owen.  Shadow Dancer is available on DVD from Netflix.  Also check out my newest movie list: Best Movies About The Troubles (Northern Ireland).

On September 10, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting the great French heist movie Rififi. And on September 12, TCM will air one of the greatest examples of film noir, Out of the Past with Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas.

OUT OF THE PAST