Oscars

Movies to See Right Now

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LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION at Cinequest

We’re now in the final two days of San Jose’s Cinequest Film Festival.  It’s been a good year for thrillers at Cinequest, and you can still see Lead Us Not Into Temptation, Dose of Reality and Chaos, as well as the German dark comedy gem Oh Boy.  Check out my CINEQUEST 2013 page for comments on these films, plus another 20 or so that I’ve seen.

In the theaters, I recommend The Gatekeepers, a documentary centered around interviews with all six surviving former chiefs of Shin Bet, Israel’s super-secret internal security force; these are hard ass guys who share a surprising perspective on the efficacy of Israel’s war on terror.  The Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) documentary
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God is now playing on HBO; it explores the Catholic Church’s decades-long cover-up of priest abuse from a Wisconsin parish to the top of the Vatican (and I mean the top).  I admire Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller Side Effects, starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Quartet is a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances. The charmingly funny Warm Bodies has made my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies. The drama Lore is about the innocent children of monstrous people, but its intensity is so unrelenting that it wearies the audience.

I haven’t yet seen the Chilean historical drama No (with Gael Garcia Bernal), which was nominated for the 2013 Foreign Language Oscar and opens widely today. Nor have I seen Emperor, with Tommy Lee Jones as Gen. Douglas MacArthur leading the American occupation of Japan. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

You can still catch the Academy Award winning Argo, as well as Zero Dark Thirty and Silver Linings Playbook. To ride the momentum of director Ang Lee’s surprise Oscar win, Life of Pi is now out again in 3D, which I recommend. The Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Picture, Amour, is brilliantly made and almost unbearable to watch.

My DVD of the week is still Undefeated, last year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary.

Movies to See Right Now

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THE GATEKEEPERS

Three documentaries are dominating this week’s cinematic landscape:

  • The Gatekeepers is a documentary centered around interviews with all six surviving former chiefs of Shin Bet, Israel’s super-secret internal security force.  These are hard ass guys who share a surprising perspective on the efficacy of Israel’s war on terror.
  • Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, now playing on HBO, explores the Catholic Church’s decades-long cover-up of priest abuse from a Wisconsin parish to the top of the Vatican (and I mean the top).
  • 56 Up is the surprisingly mellow next chapter in the greatest documentary series ever.  Starting with Seven Up! in 1964, director Michael Apted has followed the same fourteen British children, filming snapshots of their lives at ages 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 and 49 – and now at 56.

We’re now in the third day of San Jose’s Cinequest Film Festival.  I’ve updated my CINEQUEST 2013 page, which includes comments on The Sapphires, In the Shadows, Lead Us Not Into Temptation, The Almost Man, Panahida, Dose of Reality, White Lie, Aftermath and The Hunt.

Opening this week, the drama Lore is about the innocent children of monstrous people, but its intensity is so unrelenting that it wearies the audience. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

I admire Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller Side Effects, starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Quartet is a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances. The charmingly funny Warm Bodies has made my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.

You can still catch the Academy Award winning Argo, as well as Zero Dark Thirty and Silver Linings Playbook.  To ride the momentum of director Ang Lee’s surprise Oscar win, Life of Pi is now out again in 3D, which I recommend.  The Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Picture,  Amour, is brilliantly made and almost unbearable to watch.

My DVD of the week is another documentary, Undefeated, last year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary.

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the Oscars with its annual 31 Days of Oscars, filling its broadcast schedule with Academy Award-winning films. This week, the lineup includes Inherit the Wind and Elmer Gantry.

Movies to See Right Now

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56 UP

I haven’t yet seen 56 Up, the next chapter in the greatest documentary series ever. Starting with Seven Up! in 1964, director Michael Apted has followed the same fourteen British children, filming snapshots of their lives at ages 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 and 49. Choosing kids from different backgrounds, the series started as a critique of the British class system, but has since evolved into a broader exploration of what factors can lead to success and happiness at different stages of human life. The ultimate reality show. I’ve included the 7 Up series in my list of Greatest Movies of All Time. It opens today, as does The Gatekeepers, a documentary centered around interviews with all six surviving former chiefs of Shin Bet, Israel’s super-secret internal security force. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

It’s you last chance to catch the Oscar-nominated movies before the Academy Awards: Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Django Unchained and Life of Pi.  The French language drama Amour is a brilliantly made and almost unbearable to watch.  If you really like musicals, you will probably like the lavish but stupefying Les Miserables (I didn’t).

The best new movie is Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller Side Effects with Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones. In Stand Up Guys, Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin play old mobsters gearing up for one last surge of adrenaline. Quartet is a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances. The charmingly funny Warm Bodies has made my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies. The pretty good horror movie Mama (with Jessica Chastain) can send chills down your spine without any slashing or splattering.

Skip the unoriginal mob movie Gangster Squad, which wastes its fine cast. The FDR movie Hyde Park on Hudson is a bore. The disaster movie The Impossible is only for audiences that enjoy watching suffering adults and children in peril. I have not seen Movie 43 – it is the most critically reviled movie in a looooong time.

My DVD/Stream of the week is the Oscar winning Gosford Park, a fitting companion to the just completed third season of Downton Abbey.

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the Oscars with its annual 31 Days of Oscars, filling its broadcast schedule with Academy Award-winning films. This week, the lineup includes one of the funniest movies ever, Mel Brook’s glorious The Producers.

Oscar Dinner 2013

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Every year, we watch the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees.  For example, we had sushi for Lost in Translation, cowboy campfire beans for Brokeback Mountain and Grandma Ethel’s Brisket for A Serious Man –  you get the idea.  You can see our past Oscar Dinners on this page (including our Severed Hands Ice Sculpture in 2011 for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone).

This year The Wife did the heavy lifting in organizing our feast.

 

STARTERS

Hummus for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty – as you will see, it’s a big year for Middle Eastern food at the Oscar Diner.

Philly Cream Cheese Cocktail Sauce Dip for Silver Linings Playbook – a perfect accompaniment to an Eagles game.

Crackers from Life of Pi (not many food choices on that lifeboat).

Baguette from Amour and Les Miserables (I did NOT steal the bread, Javert).

The Wife vetoed the peach yogurt from Amour.

 

DINNER

Kabob Koubideh for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty.

Roast Chicken from Beasts of the Southern Wild (we could have done crab, too, but Quvenzhané Wallis won’t be here to rip them up for us).

Khoresh Ghormeh (a Persian veggie stew) for Argo.

 

DESSERT

Mary Todd Lincoln’s Almond Cake for Lincoln.  Understanding the political junkie that I am, my daughter gave me the Capitol Hill Cookbook and this is an authentic recipe from the Lincoln family.

 

BEVERAGES

Whiskey from Django Unchained (from the bar scene with Jamie Foxx and Franco Nero).

Vodka (Jennifer Lawrence ordered it at the bar) from Silver Linings Playbook.

Water from Life of Pi (again – not many choices in that lifeboat).

Enjoy!

 

Amour: we face heartbreak

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If you’re lucky, you get old.  When you get old, you eventually get infirm and then you die.  I generally do not focus on this grim truth, but no one can argue it isn’t part of the human condition, and director Michael Haneke explores it with his film Amour.

We meet a delightful elderly couple played by French film icons Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva.  They live a comfortable and independent life, engaged in culture and current events, until she suffers a stroke.  He steps up to become her sensible and compassionate caregiver.  However, the decline of her health brings humiliating dependence is  for her and frustration and weariness for him.  It finally becomes unbearable for both of them (and for the audience).

Amour is heartbreaking, made so by its utter authenticity.  I have been plunged by circumstance into the caregiving role at times, and I recognized every moment of fear, frustration, resentment and exhaustion that the husband experiences.

I tend to despise Haneke because he is a sadistic filmmaker. I hated his critically praised The White Ribbon because the audience has to sit through 144 minutes of child abuse for the underwhelming payoff that parents of Germany’s Nazi generation were mean to them.  In Funny Games, where a gang of sadistic psychos invade a home, Haneke toys with the audience’s expectation that the victimized family will be rescued in a thriller or avenged – but they are simply slaughtered.  However, he doesn’t manufacture cruelty in Amour, the cruelty is in the truth of the subject.

Haneke’s brilliant skill in framing a scene, his patience in letting a scene develop in real-time and his severe, unsparing style are well-suited to Amour’s story.  He is able to explore his story of love, illness and death with complete authenticity.  That, and the amazing performances by Trintignant and Riva, make the film worthwhile.  That being said, it is a painful and not enjoyable viewing experience.

Amour is an undeniably excellent film.  Whether you want to watch it is a different story.

a word about the Oscar nominations

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Quvenzhane Wallis in BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

Mainly, I’m just so glad that Beasts of the Southern Wild was nominated for Best Picture and that its star Quvenzhane Wallis (now nine years old) was nominated for Best Actress.  Both are very deserving of nominations, and it would have been easy for the Academy to overlook such a small indie film and its first-time director and actress.

For the most part, the Academy avoided leaving out the obviously deserving and rewarding the ridiculously underserving – very few big brainfarts this year.  I am completely baffled that Ben Affleck of Argo and Kathryn Bigelow of Zero Dark Thirty did not receive Best Director nods; (I would have passed over David O. Russell and Michael Haneke).  But that’s just about my only quibble.

Eight of the nine nominees for Best Picture are currently playing at your local theaters (although Amour is harder to find until next weekend).   Beasts of the Southern Wild is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streams from a host of VOD services.

You can also find Flight at the theaters and watch Oscar-nominated Denzel Washington.  The Sessions, with Oscar favorite Helen Hunt, is still lurking in some second run houses.  Among the nominated documentaries, Invisible War is available on Netflix Instant and some VOD services, while Searching for Sugar Man is available from several VOD services (although pricey).

A Royal Affair: Denmark sticks its toe into the Age of Enlightenment

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The historical costume drama A Royal Affair begins when a teenage noblewoman is married off to a mad king.  The king benefits from the companionship of a new doctor.  The doctor is a man of the Enlightenment, and finds a kindred spirit in the young queen, which leads to… Amazingly enough, all this actually happened in late 18th century Denmark.

It’s a romance and tragedy of operatic depth, and, unfortunately, operatic length.  It would make a gripping 90-minute film, but A Royal Affair slogs through 137 minutes.   As a result the sharpness of the tragedy becomes dulled into mere grimness.

A Royal Affair is a showcase for the charismatic Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen (After the Wedding), who plays the doctor.  Mikkelsen is probably best known as the James Bond villain with the tears of blood.  Newcomer Mikkel Boe Folsgaard cleverly plays the mad king by focusing on his lack of impulse control and his involuntary giggle and growls.

A Royal Affair won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and is considered a contender for the Foreign Language Oscar.

DVD of the Week: Monsieur Lazhar

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This week’s pick is on my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

A fifth grade class in Montreal loses its teacher in just about the worst possible way – she hangs herself in their classroom at recess.  Monsieur Lazhar is about how the kids face this trauma with their replacement teacher, an Algerian immigrant.  The school gets a psychologist to lecture to the kids, but bans them from otherwise mentioning the suicide in class – a rule designed to minimize the discomfort of the administrators and parents.  Meanwhile, the school’s zero tolerance rule against touching children means that the kids can’t get a reassuring hug.

The new teacher, Monsieur Lazhar (well-played by Mohammed Fellag), is a traditionalist who demands respect but with humor and compassion.  He also seems oddly ignorant of modern teaching methods.  Although mild-mannered, he is fiercely devoted to protecting the kids.  That devotion keeps him from sharing his own burden with the children, for we learn that he, too, has reason to grieve.

Monsieur Lazhar was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar and won Canada’s equivalent of the Best Picture Oscar.  The child actors are superb.  It’s an uncommonly sweet and powerful film.

Susan Tyrrell: celebrating the cheap and tawdry

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Susan Tyrrell in FAT CITY

Last week I recommended Turner Classic Movies’ broadcast of the under appreciated Fat City (1972) .  It’s the story of boxer on the slide who inspires a kid to become a boxer on the rise.  Stacy Keach and Susan Tyrrell give dead-on performances as pathetic sad sack barflies. Tyrrell was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.  Sadly, Susan Tyrell died on Saturday.

In this wonderful 2000 profile in LA Weekly, Tyrell said,  “The last thing my mother said to me was, ‘SuSu, your life is a celebration of everything that is cheap and tawdry.’ I’ve always liked that, and I’ve always tried to live up to it.”

Footnote: a comedy of awkwardness reveals two guys choosing misery

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A rising Talmudic scholar sees his career-topping prize accidentally awarded to his grumpy father.  This potentially comic situation reveals a character study of the two men.  At the beginning, we see the father as bitterly sullen.  As the story peels back the onion, we see the pomposity and narcissism in both men.

As you would think from watching the trailer, the first two-thirds of the film is very funny.  In fact, the scene of an academic meeting in a cramped office is one of the funniest moments you’ll see in any movie this year.  However, once the father makes a discovery, the movie darkens as the two men miss every chance to grasp selflessness.

As the end of the movie nears, the filmmakers create tension that makes the ending too abrupt for me, with too little payoff.  I think that the filmmakers of A Separation, by winding down the end of the movie, created a much successful ambiguous ending.

I admired Footnote more than I liked it, and, indeed, the critical consensus warmed to the film more than I.  Footnote won the screenplay award at Cannes and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Capturing the essence of the film perfectly, Roger Ebert wrote, “The Talmud provides guidance to Jews about how to lead their lives, but these two Jews have learned nothing that helps them when they find themselves in an impossible situation.”