Movies to See Right Now

THE GRAND SEDUCTION
THE GRAND SEDUCTION

There are two MUST SEE movies out now. The first is the Canadian knee-slapper The Grand Seduction – the funniest film of the year so far and a guaranteed audience pleaser. The second is my pick for the year’s best movie so far – the Polish drama Ida, about a novice nun who is stunned to learn that her biological parents were Jewish victims of the Holocaust – watching shot after shot in Ida is like walking through a museum gazing at masterpiece paintings one after the other.

Here are other good movie choices:

  • Words and Pictures is an unusually thoughtful romantic comedy.
  • Fading Gigolo, a wonderfully sweet romantic comedy written, directed and starring John Tuturro is a crowd-pleaser.
  • Locke is a drama with a gimmick that works.
  • In the 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 raucous comedy Neighbors is a pleasant enough diversion.
  • Like all Wes Anderson movies, The Grand Budapest Hotel is wry and imaginative, but it’s not one of his most engaging.
  • My DVD/Stream of the Week is the powerful drama Short Term 12, newly available on Netflix Instant. It’s ranked as number 7 on my Best Movies of 2013. Short Term 12 is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, GooglePlay and Xbox Video.

    This week Turner Classic Movies offers two fine revisionist Westerns from the 1970s.  A Man Called Horse (1970). In the early 19th century, Richard Harris is captured by American Indians and becomes assimilated into their culture.  Modern viewers will recognize most of the plot of Avatar herein.  Harris’ initiation into the tribe is one of cinema’s most cringe-worthy moments.  The film still stands up well  today.  Although why is it that when the white guy encounters a native girl, it’s always the chief’s beautiful, unattached, nubile daughter?

    In Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the title characters are played by James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson.  The great Katy Jurado and Chill Wills join Peckinpah company players, including Luke Askew, L.Q. Jones, Harry Dean Stanton, Slim Pickins, Jack Elam, R.G. Armstrong, Dub Taylor, Richard Bright (Al Neri in The Godfather) and Richard Jaeckel.  Bob Dylan also holds his own; Dylan wrote the score, including the iconic Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,   featured in a heartbreaking scene with Jurado and Wills.  I maintain that, if you delete the unfortunate scenes with Emilio Fernandez, you have a Western masterpiece.  Still, it’s one of my favorites.

    If you want some nasty film noir, there’s The Hitch-Hiker from 1953, directed by movie star Ida Lupino – one of the very few female directors of the 1950s. The bad guy is played by William Talman, who baby boomers will recognize as the never victorious DA Hamilton Burger in Perry Mason.

    Bob Dylan in PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID
    Bob Dylan in PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID

Movies to See Right Now

ZERO DARK THIRTY

The enthralling Zero Dark Thirty tells the story of the frustrating, wearying and dangerous ten-year man hunt for Bin Laden – it’s a Must See.  The intelligent drama Rust and Bone is the singular tale of a complicated woman and an uncomplicated man.  Matt Damon’s stellar performance leads a fine cast in Promised Land, an engaging (until the corny ending) drama about exploitation of natural gas in rural America.  Not Fade Away is a pleasant enough, but unremarkable 60s coming of age story by The Sopranos creator David Chase and rocker Steven Van Zandt.

Like Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook are on my list of Best Movies of 2012. In Lincoln, Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis push aside the marble statue and bring to life Abraham Lincoln the man. Argo is Ben Affleck’s brilliant thriller based on a true story from the Iran Hostage Crisis. The rewarding dramedy Silver Linings Playbook has a strong story, topicality and humor, but it’s worth seeing just for Jennifer Lawrence’s performance.

If, like me, you worship the spaghetti Western, the Quentin Tarantino blockbuster Django Unchained is gloriously pedal-to-the-metal, splattering exploitation. Also don’t overlook the solid thriller Deadfall that is flying under the radar this holiday season.

Ang Lee’s visually stunning fable Life of Pi is an enthralling commentary on story-telling. Denzel Washington stars in Flight, a thriller about the miraculous crash landing of an airliner and the even more dangerous battle against alcoholism. Skyfall updates the James Bond franchise with thrilling action and a more shopworn 007 from Daniel Craig.

Pass on the lavish but stupefying all star Les Miserables, with its multiple endings, each more miserable than the last. 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.

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

My pick for the best movie of 2012, The Kid with a Bike, is playing on the Sundance Channel three times on January 16-17. And next week Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the classic Western A Man Called Horse, Jack Nicholson’s most copmplex performance in Five Easy Pieces and a real curiosity, the 1933 anti-war movie Men Must Fight which predicts World War II with unsettling accuracy.