Weekly Movie Recommendations

Movies to See Right Now

by
John Cusack and Elizabeth Banks in LOVE & MERCY
John Cusack and Elizabeth Banks in LOVE & MERCY

If you haven’t seen it yet, you owe it to yourself to see the CAN’T MISS coming of age masterpiece Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.  Besides Me and Earl, two more of my Best Movies of 2015 – So Far are playing in theaters:

Don’t miss Fabrice Luchini in the delightfully dark comedy Gemma Bovery. The coming of age comedy Dope is a nice little movie that trashes stereotypes. Alicia Vikander’s strong performance carries the anti-war memoir Testament of Youth. This summer’s animated Pixar blockbuster Inside Out is very smart, but a little preachy, often very sad and underwhelming. The Melissa McCarthy spy spoof Spy is a very funny diversion. Mad Max: Fury Road is a rock ’em sock ’em action tour de force but ultimately empty-headed and empty-hearted.

My Stream of the Week is the thriller Nightcrawler, with Jake Gyllenhaal as a highly functioning psychotic. You can stream it from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes and Vudu and rent it on DirecTV PPV.

Don’t forget that Turner Classic Movies is filling each June and July Friday with film noir in its Summer of Darkness series, hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir. The series schedule includes several favorites of my Overlooked Noir. Tonight I recommend D.O.A. and Caged; next Friday, look out for 99 River Street.

On July 15, Turner Classic Movies features the 1948 film noir Pitfall. Dick Powell plays a bored middle class married guy who is aching for some excitement. In his humdrum job as an insurance investigator, he investigates an embezzlement and meets the captivating Lizabeth Scott, the girlfriend of the imprisoned embezzler. They fall into a torrid but short-lived affair. Just when Powell thinks that he’s back to his normal family life, both he and Scott are dragged into a thriller by two baddies – the sexually obsessed sickie of a private eye (Raymond Burr) and the nasty and very jealous embezzler (Byron Barr), just released from the hoosegow. Jane Wyatt plays Powell’s wife.

Pitfall is especially interesting because it deviates from two prototypical characterizations. Unlike the usual noir sap, Powell doesn’t fall for Scott “all in”; although he has a brief extramarital fling, he’s never going to leave his family for her. And Scott, although she allures Powell, is not femme fatale. She’s not a Bad Girl, just an unlucky one. She has horrible taste in a boyfriend and the bad luck to attract a menacing stalker (Burr), but she’s fundamentally decent. Will her sexual promiscuity be punished at the end of this 1948 movie?

I feature Pitfall in my list of Overlooked Noir.

Lizabeth Scott, Dick Powell and Raymond Burr in PITFALL
Lizabeth Scott, Dick Powell and the looming Raymond Burr in PITFALL

Movies to See Right Now

by
ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL

This is as good as it gets until December – FOUR of my Best Movies of 2015 – So Far are playing in theaters:

Don’t miss Fabrice Luchini in the delightfully dark comedy Gemma Bovery. The coming of age comedy Dope is a nice little movie that trashes stereotypes.  This summer’s animated Pixar blockbuster Inside Out is very smart, but a little preachy, often very sad and underwhelming.  The Melissa McCarthy spy spoof Spy is a very funny diversion.  Mad Max: Fury Road is a rock ’em sock ’em action tour de force but ultimately empty-headed and empty-hearted.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the period thriller The Two Faces of January – a tale of dark hearts in sunny Greece. The Two Faces of January is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Don’t forget that Turner Classic Movies is filling each June and July Friday with film noir in its Summer of Darkness series, hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir. The series schedule includes several favorites of my Overlooked Noir.

On July 8, Turner Classic Movies will present The Leopard (Il gattopardo), an Italian period epic starring Burt Lancaster as a 19th century Sicilian prince who is trying to remain master of his changing time. Director Luchino Visconti came from Italian nobility himself. As befits an epic of this scope, it’s a sweeping 187 minutes long. One highlight is stunning entrance by 24-year-old Claudia Cardinale as the local mayor’s daughter, suddenly all grown up.

On July 10, TCM is playing Caged, the 1950 prototype for Orange Is the New Black; (I wrote the linked article for for the annual blogathon in celebration of Turner Classic Movies’ 31 Days of Oscars). Sixty-five years later, Caged might still be the best women’s prison movie ever, and it features a rich female cast and two Oscar-nominated performances.

Claudia Cardinale and Burt Lancaster in THE LEOPARD
Claudia Cardinale and Burt Lancaster in THE LEOPARD

DVD/Stream of the Week: THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY – dark hearts in sunny Greece

by

two faces of january2
The successful period thriller The Two Faces of January, set in gloriously bright Greek tourist destinations, may not have the shadowy look of a traditional film noir, but its story is fundamentally noirish. Viggo Mortenson and Kirsten Dunst play an affluent couple vacationing in Athens in the early 1960s. They meet a handsome young American expat (Oscar Isaacs from Inside Llewyn Davis) knocking around Greece. The husband quickly and accurately sizes up the younger man as a con man – “I wouldn’t trust him to mow my lawn”. The central noir element is that NO ONE is as innocent as they seem, and the three become interlocked in a situation that becomes increasingly desperate for all three, culminating in a thrilling manhunt.

It’s the first feature directed by Hossein Amini, who adapted the screenplay for the markedly intense Drive, and he does a fine job here with a film that becomes more and more tense each time more information about the characters is revealed.

The Two Faces of January is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Movies to See Right Now

by
ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL

This is as good as it gets until December – FOUR of my Best Movies of 2015 – So Far are playing in theaters:

Don’t miss Fabrice Luchini in the delightfully dark comedy Gemma Bovery. The Melissa McCarthy spy spoof Spy is a very funny diversion. Far from the Madding Crowd is a satisfying choice for those looking for a period bodice ripper. I also liked the two-in-one Swedish comedy The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, a rich mixture of absurdity and broad physical humor.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the savagely funny Argentine comedy Wild Tales. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

Don’t forget that Turner Classic Movies is filling each June and July Friday with film noir in its Summer of Darkness series, hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir. The series schedule includes several favorites of my Overlooked Noir.

This week Turner Classic Movies is also bringing us some of the very best Westerns. On June 29, we can see the now-overlooked masterpiece The Emigrants (1971), depicting the journey of Swedish emigrants to frontier Minnesota. It is remarkably realistic and faithful to the historical period. The same cast (Max von Sydow, Liv Ullman) continued the story in the sister film The New Land (1972). Both films were directed by Jan Troell and both were nominated for Oscars. It’s a Must See for anyone whose heritage includes 19th century European immigration to the prairie states.

Then on July, TCM shows Sydney Pollack’s under recognized 1972 masterpiece Jeremiah Johnson, which features a brilliantly understated but compelling performance by Robert Redford. If you want to understand why Redford is a movie star, watch this movie. It’s only 108 minutes long, and today’s filmmakers would bloat this epic tale to 40 minutes longer. (The same night, TCM is accompanying Jeremiah Johnson with with two other great Westerns, Little Big Man and The Searchers.)

Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman in THE EMIGRANTS
Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman in THE EMIGRANTS

DVD/Stream of the Week: WILD TALES

by
WILD TALES
WILD TALES

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. It’s now topping my list of Best Movies of 2015 – So Far.

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. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Olivia Cooke and Thomas Mann in ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
Olivia Cooke and Thomas Mann in ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL

Right now, you can see four of my Best Movies of 2015 – So Far:

The Melissa McCarthy spy spoof Spy is a very funny diversion. Far from the Madding Crowd, is a satisfying choice for those looking for a costume bodice ripper.  I also liked the two-in-one Swedish comedy The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, a rich mixture of absurdity and broad physical humor.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is one of my Overlooked Noir, My Kind of Woman, where down-on-his-luck Robert Mitchum grabs a deal that he knows is just too good. His Kind of Woman is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.

Don’t forget that Turner Classic Movies is filling each June and July Friday with film noir in its Summer of Darkness series, hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir. The series schedule includes several favorites of my Overlooked Noir.

Last week, I told you that TONIGHT Turner Classic Movies brings us an unusually rich menu of classic film noir: Cornered, Crack-up, Gilda, The Big Sleep, The Killers, Nocturne and Crossfire.

Later this week on June 25, TCM brings us the 1973 cult sci-fi classic Soylent Green, which was utterly under appreciated until the past decade or so. Set in a dystopian future (like those so popular in today’s sci-fi), humans have pretty much destroyed the environment and most are impoverished, even homeless. The dietary staple is a green pellet provided by a mega-corporation. Charlton Heston is surprisingly effective as a jaded and solitary cop, whose investigation leads him to a horrifying discovery. The cast is very good, including Edward G. Robinson in his final performance. Soylent Green was directed by the versatile Richard Fleischer, 21 years after his noir masterpiece The Narrow Margin.

Charlton Heston in SOYLENT GREEN
Charlton Heston in SOYLENT GREEN

Movies to See Right Now

by
John Cusack and Elizabeth Banks in LOVE & MERCY
John Cusack and Elizabeth Banks in LOVE & MERCY

Right now, you can see three of my Best Movies of 2015 – So Far:

The Melissa McCarthy spy spoof Spy is a very funny diversion.  Far from the Madding Crowd, is a satisfying choice for those looking for a costume bodice ripper.

My DVD of the Week is Frederick Wiseman’s 2010 brilliant and mesmerizing 2010 documentary Boxing Gym.   One of the few boxing movies that will appeal to most women, Boxing Gym is available on DVD from Netflix.

Don’t forget that Turner Classic Movies is filling each June and July Friday with film noir in its Summer of Darkness series, hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir. The series schedule includes several favorites of my Overlooked Noir.

Speaking of which, I’m telling you NOW so you can set your DVRs. On June 19, TCM brings us an unusually rich menu of classic film noir: Cornered, Crack-up, Gilda, The Big Sleep, The Killers, Nocturne and Crossfire. The most famous – and my favorite – of these is The Big Sleep, with its iconic performance by Humphrey Bogart as the hard-boiled detective Philip Marlow and its impenetrably tangled plot. It’s also one of the most overtly sexual noirs, and Lauren Bacall at her sultriest is only the beginning. The achingly beautiful Martha Vickers plays a druggie who throws herself at anything in pants. And Dorothy Malone invites Bogie to share a back-of-the-bookstore quickie.

For something different, try out the early psychological thriller Crack-up, with Pat O-Brien as an art expert who is framed for a crime. As he tries to prove his own innocence, O’Brien is handicapped by a gap in his memory and repeated hallucinations of being in a head-on train collision.

Pat O'Brien in CRACK-UP
Pat O’Brien in CRACK-UP

Movies to See Right Now

by
Blythe Danner in I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS
Blythe Danner in I’LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS

The two exceptionally good films in theaters are:

Far from the Madding Crowd, is a satisfying choice for those looking for a bodice ripper. If you’re looking for a scare, try the inventive and non-gory horror gem It Follows. Don’t bother with Slow West, a failed Western that never gets into rhythm.

I really enjoyed the Argentine comedy The Film Critic, which is now available for streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

I really enjoyed the dark comedy Gemma Bovery, in which Fabrice Luchini – a treasure of comic cinema – sees a famous novel being acted out in real lie and jumps right in himself.

My Stream of the Week is the So Bad It’s Funny An American Hippie in Israel, available streaming from Amazon and Xbox Video.

Don’t forget that Turner Classic Movies is filling each Friday in June and July with film noir in its Summer of Darkness series, hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir. The series schedule includes several favorites of my Overlooked Noir.

Turner Classic Movies is playing the unforgettable The Man Who Would Be King (1975) on June 6. Sean Connery and Michael Caine star as two vagabond British soldiers adventuring in colonial India when one of them is mistaken for a god by the indigenous people. They play the misunderstanding into a kingdom – until hubris, greed and lust causes them to reach a little too high. It’s a great story, well told by director John Huston. Connery and Caine are wonderful.

On June 9, TCM is playing some of the greats of early 1970s American cinema: Annie Hall, Shaft, Dog Day Afternoon and Mean Streets. Put on your flairs and tune in.

Michael Caine and Sean Connery in THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
Michael Caine and Sean Connery in THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

Movies to See Right Now

by
Sam Elliiott and Blythe Danner in I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS
Sam Elliiott and Blythe Danner in I’LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS

The two exceptionally good films in theaters are:

Far from the Madding Crowd, is a satisfying choice for those looking for a bodice ripper. If you’re looking for a scare, try the inventive and non-gory horror gem It Follows. Don’t bother with Slow West, a failed Western that never gets into rhythm.

I really enjoyed the Argentine comedy The Film Critic, which is now available for streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the the Civil Rights docudrama Selma – an incredibly stirring movie with one significant historical flaw.  Selma is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox; you can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

On June 2, Turner Classic Movies airs Key Largo (1948), one of the classic film noirs and still satisfying to this day. Both trapped in a claustrophobic Florida island resort by a hurricane, Humphrey Bogart has to face down sadistic mobster Edward G. Robinson. 23-year-old Lauren Bacall was at her most appealing. Claire Trevor’s heartbreaking performance as a gangster’s moll aging out of her looks is one of her best.

TCM brings another noir on June 3 – The Killers (1946). Burt Lancaster stars in a story adapted (and greatly expanded) from the Hemingway short story. It’s only the only the third leading role for the 24-year-old Ava Gardner. Wonderfully deep noir cast: Edmond O’Brien, Charles McGraw, Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, Jeff Corey, William Conrad. Selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Finally, on June 5, TCM is showing the superb proto-noir M (1931), Peter Lorre stars as a serial killer who preys on children. It’s a masterpiece by master director Fritz Lang (Metropolis), who later fled the Nazis to Hollywood and made several fine film noirs in the 50s. Lorre is compelling as a man plagued with a twisted compulsion. There’s no explicit violence, but you’ve never seen a more chilling solitary balloon. The city’s criminal underclass races with the police to hunt down the monster. The climax is a most unusual courtroom scene. If you’re going to see one pre-war European film – see this one.

Peter Lorre in M
Peter Lorre in M

DVD/Stream of the Week: SELMA

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

It’s been a while since I’ve seen as stirring a movie as Selma, Director Ava DuVernay’s retelling of the Selma, Alabama, Civil Rights marches in 1965 – one of the most heroic episodes in a saga known for heroism.

It’s an important story. Although the marches came on the heels of a racist atrocity, instead of just vomiting rage, Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo) and his fellow civil rights leaders had a specific strategic goal in mind. Their planned civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery was designed to trigger the passage of yet-to-be-drafted legislation, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They knew that there would be risks to all and sacrifices by many – both martyrs to the cause and victims of terrorism. Those sacrifices were real and are depicted in the movie. As the civil rights leaders navigate the reefs of local Jim Crow rule and murderous racist terrorism, Selma’s story is compelling minute-to-minute.

King himself must bear the burden of responsibility of a leader sending his charges out to possibly sacrifice their lives. All the time, he is receiving threats to his safety and that of his family, dealing with blackmail and character assassination and going through a rough patch in his marriage to Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo).

But Selma, like history, is not a One Man Show. King doesn’t just dictate the path for his Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC). He has to work with his colleagues in the SCLC and reach out to build a coalition with the local African-American community and other national organizations, chiefly the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). King is not just another noble face. He’s got to show a canny craftiness as a study in negotiating, a guy who knows when to hold ’em and knows when to fold ’em.

Here’s something else that Selma does extraordinarily well. I’m a history buff who understands that – to relate a historical narrative in 90-120 minutes – filmmakers must compress historical events and compound characters. However, Selma allows us to glimpse the broad canvas by seeing other important figures of the Civil Rights movement – Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams, John Lewis, James Forman, Diane Nash, James Bevel, James Orange and even Malcom X and Bayard Rustin. There are also the white martyrs James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo. And New York Times reporter Roy Reed is there, representing the handful of national newsmen who brought the civil rights struggle into the homes of non-Southern America. As villains, we have not just George Wallace (Tim Roth) but Al Mingo and Sheriff Jim Clark.

And what about the controversial depiction of President Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson)? The short answer is that Selma’s treatment of LBJ is sometimes factually inaccurate and definitely wrong in tone. As much as Selma gets the Alabama scenes right, it gets all the Washington, DC, scenes wrong. When the movies opens, LBJ has just delivered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – the most important advancement in Civil Rights since the 13th and 14th amendments a century before; he thus ended legal segregation in America. Selma is about the effort to enact the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and LBJ and MLK were BOTH essential to achieving this milestone as well. Any reader of LBJ bios can tell you that the man had demonstrated his passion for Civil Rights since his year as a 20-year-old teacher of Mexican-Americans in Cotulla, Texas. When Selma depicts LBJ as having to be brow beaten by MLK to push the Voting Rights Act, it’s inaccurate and unnecessary; the effect is to create a serious flaw in the film.

But the bottom line is this – see the movie anyway. At its core, the movie is about what happened in Selma and within the leadership of the Civil Rights movement – it generally gets that right.

After seeing Selma, I reflected on the media landscape in 1965 – where every home in America watched the TV news from either CBS, NBC or ABC. The repugnant spectacle of the white mob beating the peaceful demonstrators came into every American living room, including mine. We Americans all saw the same thing. But in today’s media environment, a huge fraction of the country gets its news from Fox News, which would likely twist and minimize the very facts that mobilized a nation in 1965 – and another huge fraction would be watching non-news content and miss the controversy all together.

But my most sobering reflection upon leaving the theater was this – right now the Republican Congress and the majority of the US Supreme Court are trying their hardest to emasculate the very Voting Rights Act that was the culmination of the campaign in the movie Selma.

In a uniformly well-acted movie, David Oyelowo deserves special praise for his portrayal of MLK. Oprah Winfrey and veteran character actor Henry G. Sanders are the best of the rest. On a personal note, I relished seeing one of my faves Wendell Pierce (Treme and The Wire) and also up-and-comer Tessa Thompson of Dear White People.

Selma is inspirational, kids should see it and families should discuss it. It’s just outside the Top Ten of my Best Movies of 2014.  Selma is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox; you can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.