Wild Tales – Page 2 – The Movie Gourmet

Movies to See Right Now

April 10, 2015 by movie gourmet

There’s a good movie choice for everyone:

If you haven’t seen it yet, run out and watch the hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales, a series of individual stories about revenge fantasies becoming actualized.
The harrowing thriller ’71 is exhilarating.
Going Clear: The Prison of Belief, documentarian Alex Gibney’s devastating expose of Scientology is playing on HBO;
I also really like the Belgian romance Three Hearts – the leading man has a weak heart in more ways than one.
If you’re looking for a scare, try the inventive and non-gory horror gem It Follows.
The music doc The Wrecking Crew is for those with an interest in music of the 1960s. It’s both in theaters and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Insurgent, from the Divergent franchise is what it is – young adult sci-fi with some cool f/x. The romance 5 to 7 did NOT work for me, but I know smart women who enjoyed it. I found Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter to be droll but tiresome. The biting Hollywood satire of Maps to the Stars wasn’t worth the disturbing story of a cursed family.

My Stream of the Week is Inherent Vice, a funny and confused amble through pot-besotted 1970 Los Angeles. It’s available on DirecTV PPV, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

On April 13, Turner Classic Movies has something for everyone:

The screwball comedy What’s Up Doc?, with my all-time favorite chase scene;
Hitchcock’s unsettling The Birds;
And if you like your film noir tawdry, then Gun Crazy (1950) is for you. Peggy Cummins plays a prototypical Bad Girl who takes her newlywed hubby on a crime spree.

On April 15, there is a real curiosity on TCM, the 1933 anti-war movie Men Must Fight, which predicts World War II with unsettling accuracy.

Movies to See Right Now

April 3, 2015 by movie gourmet

We’ve suddenly got some great movie choices again, and there’s something for everyone:

If you haven’t seen it yet, run out and watch the hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales, a series of individual stories about revenge fantasies becoming actualized.
The harrowing thriller ’71 is exhilarating.
Going Clear: The Prison of Belief, documentarian Alex Gibney’s devastating expose of Scientology is playing frequently on HBO;
I also really like the Belgian romance Three Hearts – the leading man has a weak heart in more ways than one.
If you’re looking for a scare, try the inventive and non-gory horror gem It Follows.
The music doc The Wrecking Crew is for those with an interest in music of the 1960s. It’s both in theaters and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Insurgent, from the Divergent franchise is what it is – young adult sci-fi with some cool f/x. The romance 5 to 7 did NOT work for me, but I know smart women who enjoyed it.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the story of Mr. and Mrs. Genius – The Theory of Everything, a compelling story with two fine performances. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

On April 4, Turner Classic Movies is presenting Laura, 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.

If you’re gonna watch a biblical epic for Easter, I say go for the most over-the-top paragon of the sword-and-sandal genre, Barabbas, showing April 5 on TCM. Legendary and flamboyant producer Dino De Laurentiis turned out all the stops, including a battle of gladiators in a movie studio re-creation of the arena. But that’s not all! Anthony Quinn becomes enslaved in a sulphur mine, survives an earthquake and battles as a gladiator. Along the way, he stops in at The Resurrection, the Burning of Rome and a mass crucifixion (filmed during a REAL ECLIPSE of the sun). Need I mention that there is a cast of thousands?

On April 6, TCM presents another overlooked film noir, His Kind of Woman with Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell. I’ll be writing about it tomorrow.

Movies to See Right Now

March 27, 2015 by movie gourmet

If you haven’t seen it yet, run out and watch the hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales, a series of individual stories about revenge fantasies becoming actualized. I also really like the Belgian romance Three Hearts – the leading man has a weak heart in more ways than one.

I did see Insurgent, from the Divergent franchise, and it is what it is – young adult sci-fi with some cool f/x. Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles is a satisfying bio-doc that features lots of clips of the great Orson himself.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the dark, feminist Western The Homesman. It is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

You can’t get any more surreal than the Luis Buñuel- directed and Salvador Dali co-written Un Chien Andalou from 1929. And you can’t film anything more cringe worthy than the slicing of a human eyeball. Un Chien Andalou is LITERALLY textbook surrealism and airs on Turner Classic Movies on March 29.

On March 30, TCM brings us an overlooked film noir, While the City Sleeps (1956). When a zillionaire dies and leaves his media empire to his feckless playboy son (Vincent Price), the scion cruelly dangles the CEO job in front of the company’s top talent, plunging them into a ruthless competition. Whoever solves the Lipstick Killer Murders will win the prize, and plenty of backstabbing in the board room ensues.

While the City Sleeps benefits from a killer cast. Star columnist Dana Andrews (and the audience) weighs in on the side of old school Thomas Mitchell – but it’s going to a tough fight against arrogant George Sanders and oleaginous James Craig (here even more slippery than Sanders). One of these guys is having an affair with their new boss’ trophy wife (Rhonda Fleming). Ida Lupino is a cynical free agent. And Andrews his using his own girlfriend (Sally Forrest) as bait for the serial killer! A tragic figure in real life, John Drew Barrymore, has a small but important role. The cast is so deep that noir leading man Howard Duff is stuck playing the cop.

While the City Sleeps is directed by one of the giants of cinema, Fritz Lang, the German auteur of Metropolis and M. After WWII, Lang had an productive noir period in Hollywood, churning out Moontide, Scarlet Street, House by the River, The Blue Dahlia, The Big Heat, Human Desire (my favorite Lang noir) and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.

Movies to See Right Now

March 20, 2015 by movie gourmet

There are two Must Sees in theaters now, and both were nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar:

The hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales, a series of individual stories about revenge fantasies becoming actualized.
The Job-like Russian drama Leviathan, a searing expose of post-Soviet Russian society.

Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles is a satisfying bio-doc that features lots of clips of the great Orson himself. Queen and Country is director John Boorman’s (Deliverance) well-crafted and moderately entertaining look back at his year as a British Army conscript in the 50s.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Whiplash, the drama about the line between motivation and abuse and the line between ambition and obsession. J.K. Simmons just won an acting Oscar for his dominating performance. Whiplash is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

If you haven’t seen the hilarious gender bender comedy Victor Victoria in a while, catch it again on March 20 on Turner Classic Movies. I think that’s it’s director Blake Edwards’ best comedy – and that’s saying something after all the Pink Panther movies. Along with the alcoholism drama Days of Wine and Roses, this is Edwards’ masterpiece. Julie Andrews (Mrs. Blake Edwards) and James Garner give perfect performances, and there’s a memorable supporting turn by Alex Karras. Victor Victoria is over thirty years old, but stands up just as well today as in 1981.

Movies to See Right Now

March 13, 2015 by movie gourmet

There are two Must Sees in theaters now, and both were nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar:

The hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales, a series of individual stories about revenge fantasies becoming actualized.
The Job-like Russian drama Leviathan, a searing expose of post-Soviet Russian society.

Queen and Country is director John Boorman’s (Deliverance) well-crafted and moderately entertaining look back at his year as a British Army conscript in the 50s.

We’ve just concluded the 2015 Cinequest film festival. Here’s all my Cinequest coverage – with several features and comments on over twenty five movies – conveniently linked on one page.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Dear White People, a brilliant comedy about identity that’s on my list of Best Movies of 2014. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

On March 16, Turner Classic Movies is playing the French thriller Wages of Fear. It’s directed by that master of suspense Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique), nicknamed the French Hitchcock. The Wages of Fear features one achingly scary scene where two truck drivers try to get a long truck around a cliff side hairpin curve – and the truck is filled with nitroglycerin.

Cinequest 2015: festival recap

March 31, 2015March 8, 2015 by movie gourmet

A pronounced overall success, Cinequest 2015 delivered hearty audience-pleasers from a varied and satisfying menu that featured some real gems from the indie, documentary and world cinema categories.

The fest kicked off with two huge popular successes: the feel-good BATKID BEGINS and the hilariously dark WILD TALES, and kept up the pace throughout the first weekend with an assortment of successful premieres.

Cinequest’s Director of Programming Mike Rabehl presented a fest especially rich in first features, including:

THE CENTER: An absorbing and topical American indie drama about the seductiveness of a cult; and especially promising debut from filmmaker Charlie Griak.
ANTOINE ET MARIE: A brilliantly constructed French-Canadian drama with two unforgettable characters (actually a second feature).
IN THE COMPANY OF WOMEN: Unexpectedly sweet, this starts out with a Boys Behaving Badly set-up and then morphs into a tribute to enduring love. A festival surprise hit.
FOR SOME INEXPLICABLE REASON: A good-natured Belgian comedy containing some very innovative nuggets.

Cinequest’s international film scout Charlie Cockey came through once again with the fest’s best film, the transcendent Georgian drama CORN ISLAND, which won the Jury Award for Best Narrative Drama.

This 2015 fest was the strongest recent Cinequest for documentaries. The well-deserved Jury Award for best Documentary went to ASPIE SEEKS LOVE, the story of a surprisingly sympathetic subject. Other excellent docs included:

the sometimes jaw-dropping MEET THE HITLERS;
the pleasurable Nerd Olympics doc SWEDEN’S COOLEST NATIONAL TEAM; and
the powerful look at capital punishment, THERE WILL BE NO STAY.

Not every film was a home run. Director John Boorman’s personal appearance was a hit, but his QUEEN AND COUNTRY was only moderately entertaining. And the eagerly awaited CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (Cesar-winning Kristen Stewart) and the Sundance award-winning SLOW WEST were clunkers.

Richard von Busack, the highly respected local film critic, picked Tuesday night’s L’ATALANTE:, rarely seen on the big screen. It’s the 1934 masterpiece of French writer-director Jean Vigo, who died at age 29 soon after its completion. A packed house agreed that this was one of Cinequest 2015’s top experiences.

Other highlights included the Belgian romantic dramedy THREE HEARTS, the French comedy GEMMA BOVERY and the exceptionally well-directed Kosovan drama THREE WINDOWS AND A HANGING.

The most underrated movie at Cinequest? Somehow, the biting darkly hilarious Mexican social satire LOS HAMSTERS is flying under the radar. I think this tale of a dysfunctional family is both very smart and very funny.

BARCO Escape showcased developing three-screen technology to envelope the audience in the cinematic experience. I have reservations about the BARCO experience, but the short film WITHDRAWAL was a definite winner.

Here’s all my Cinequest coverage – with several features and comments on over twenty-five movies – conveniently linked on one page.

Movies to See Right Now

March 6, 2015 by movie gourmet

Okay, here’s the first Must See of 2015 – the hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales, a series of individual stories about revenge fantasies becoming actualized. The Russian Leviathan, which I’m gonna see tonight, has been universally praised. Both Wild Tales and Leviathan were nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar.

If you can make it to Cinequest, there are some great movie choices. Here is my extensive Cinequest coverage.

Other choices in theaters and elsewhere:

Clint Eastwood’s thoughtful and compelling American Sniper, with harrowing action and a career-best performance from Bradley Cooper.
The cinematically important and very funny (and, of course. Oscar-winning) Birdman.
And the movie that is better than all of these: Boyhood. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Here are some great choices for movies coming up on TV this week – all on Turner Classic Movies on March 8.

Billy Wilder’s 1957 Sweet Smell of Success contains Tony Curtis’ most subtly acted role. Curtis is a Broadway press agent who is completely at the mercy of Burt Lancaster’s sadistically nasty columnist. Many of us have experienced being vulnerable to the caprice of an extremely mean person – Curtis perfectly captures the dread and humiliation of being in that position.
To Kill a Mockingbird, with the iconic character of Atticus Finch and its great courtroom scene.
If you like your film noir tawdry, then Gun Crazy (1950) is for you. Peggy Cummins plays a prototypical Bad Girl who takes her newlywed hubby on a crime spree.

WILD TALES: the first Must See of 2015

March 6, 2015 by movie gourmet

Okay, here’s the first Must See of 2015 – the hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales. Writer-director Damián Szifron presents a series of individual stories about revenge.

We all feel aggrieved, and Wild Tales explores what happens when rage overcomes the restraints of social order. Think about how instantly angry you can become when some driver cuts you off on the highway – and then how you might fantasize avenging the slight. Indeed, there is story that has the most severe case road rage since Spielberg’s Duel in 1971. Now Wild Tales is dark, and you gotta go with it. The humor comes from the EXTREMES that someone’s resentment can lead to.

One key to the success of Wild Tales is that it is an anthology. In a very wise move, Szifron resisted any impulse to stretch one of the stories into a feature-length movie. Each of the stories is just the right length to extract every laugh and pack a punch. The funniest stories are the opening one set on an airplane and the final one about a wedding.

The acting is uniformly superb. In one story, Oscar Martínez plays a wealthy man in a desperate jam, who buys the help of his shady lawyer fixer (Osmar Núñez) and his longtime household retainer (Germán de Silva) – until their prices get just a little too high. The three actors take what looks like it’s going to a thriller and morph into a (very funny) psychological comedy with a very cynical view of human nature.

One of the middle episodes stars one of my favorite film actors, Ricardo Darín, who I see as the Argentine Joe Mantegna. I suggest that you watch Darín in the brilliant police procedural The Secrets in Their Eyes (on my top ten for 2010), the steamy and seamy Carancho and the wonderful con artist movie Nine Queens.

Wild Tales has been a festival hit (Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and Sundance) around the world and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar. I saw Wild Tales at Cinequest 2015.

Cinequest 2015 at mid-festival

March 2, 2015 by movie gourmet

We’re halfway through Cinequest 2015. What are the biggest hits and the most delightful surprises?

Cinequest’s Director of Programming/Associate Director Mike Rabehl was definitely right: he predicted BATKID BEGINS and WILD TALES to be among the biggest audience pleasers. The opening night audience reveled in BATKID BEGINS, and WILD TALES, the darkly comic Argentine collection of revenge stories, rocked the California Theatre.

And how about those surprise gems?

CORN ISLAND: This exquisite and lyrical Georgian drama is a Must See for Cinephiles. If it doesn’t turn out to be the best contemporary art movie at Cinequest 2015, I’ll be shocked.
ANTOINE ET MARIE: A brilliantly constructed French-Canadian drama with two unforgettable characters.
THE CENTER: An absorbing and topical American indie drama about the seductiveness of a cult.
IN THE COMPANY OF WOMEN: Unexpectedly sweet, this starts out with a Boys Behaving Badly set-up and then morphs into a tribute to enduring love.
FACTORY BOSS: I haven’t yet seen this narrative about the manager of a Chinese sweatshop factory getting squeezed, but I’ve hearing good things around the fest. One of my friends, who has been to factories in Shenzen, entered a screening a little late and initially mistook it for a documentary.

It’s also been a notably strong year for the documentaries at Cinequest:

ASPIE SEEKS LOVE: A surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a guy looking for love like anyone else, but whose social skills are handicapped by Asberger’s.
MEET THE HITLERS: Tracking down real people burdened with the Fuhrer’s name, this successful doc weaves together both light-hearted and very dark story threads.
SWEDEN’S COOLEST NATIONAL TEAM: A character-driven take on the sports movie takes us into a Nerd Olympics.
THERE WILL BE NO STAY: a powerful examination of American capital punishment from the perspective of the executioners.

Most promising film yet to come? I’d say Tuesday night’s L’ATALANTE:, rarely seen on the big screen. It’s the 1934 masterpiece of French writer-director Jean Vigo, who died at age 29 soon after its completion. Richard von Busack, the highly respected film critic for Metro, will receive a Media Legacy Award at the screening.

See you around the fest. You can find my festival coverage, including both features and movie recommendations, on my Cinequest page. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest.

Cinequest Picks for Wednesday, February 25

February 25, 2015 by movie gourmet

Four tips for Wednesday:

One Cinequest MUST SEE is WILD TALES, the darkly comic Argentine collection of revenge stories. Wild Tales has been a festival hit around the world and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. One of its vignettes features one of my favorite screen actors, Ricardo Darin (the Argentine Joe Mantegna). See it at Cinequest before it gets to Bay Area art houses in the next few weeks.
I liked the Nerd Olympics documentary SWEDEN’S COOLEST NATIONAL TEAM, which has its North American premiere tonight in Camera 12.
I’ll be watching the Norwegian comedy CHASING BERLUSCONI because I loved the filmmaker’s hilarious King Curling at the 2012 Cinequest.
I’ve also heard from some insiders that the Hungarian comedy FOR SOME INEXPLICABLE REASON is especially promising.

SWEDEN'S COOLEST NATIONAL TEAM — SWEDEN’S COOLEST NATIONAL TEAM