The best movie of the year so far is in at least one Bay Area theater: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone).
OUT NOW
First Reformed: Ethan Hawke stars in this bleak, bleak psychological thriller with an intense ending.
American Animals is funny documentary/reenactment of a preposterous heist.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
ON VIDEO
My DVD/Stream of the Week is the taut 76 minutes of Caesar Must Die, in which Italian maximum security prison convicts put on a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. It’s an excellent Shakespeare movie, and a fine prison movie, too. Caesar Must Die is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
The claustrophobic setting of a submarine movie can really propel a drama by magnifying the story’s conflict. Today, Turner Classic Movies plays Run Silent, Run Deep, in which the primary conflict is between two of the sub’s officers, played by the two charismatic stars Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster. Run Silent, Run Deep is not in the class of Das Boot or The Enemy Below, but it’s still one of the best of the genre.
Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster in RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP
In the taut 76 minutes of Caesar Must Die, convicts in an Italian maximum security prison put on a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Every year, there’s a drama laboratory at this prison. It turns out that Julius Caesar is a perfect choice.
Julius Caesar is, most of all, a play about high stakes. And high stakes, where a decision can result in life or death or power or failure or freedom or incarceration, is something these guys profoundly understand – and have had time to reflect upon. During rehearsal, one actor snaps at the director, “I’ve been in here for 20 tears, and you’re telling me not to waste time?”. When Cassius states that he has wagered his life on the outcome of one battle and lost, the line is more powerful because we know the actor playing Cassius is himself a lifer.
When the prisoners audition, we learn that their sentences range from 14 years to “life meaning life”. Most of them are naturalistic and very effective actors. The guy who plays Caesar is especially powerful in his acting and reacting.
The Julius Caesar story unfolds in black-and-white as the prisoners rehearse and then play the early scenes in the contemporary prison setting. Segments from the performance itself – about 15 minutes worth – are filmed in color.
It all works very well as a successful Shakespeare movie – and as a prison movie, too. Caesar Must Die is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.
This a GREAT WEEK for cinema. The wonderfully wry German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin opens today. In a brilliant debut feature, writer-director Jan Ole Gerster has created a warm-hearted but lost character who needs to connect with others – but sabotages his every opportunity. Besides laughing through A Coffee in Berlin, you’ll probably also notice the singularly complementary soundtrack and the vivid sense of time and place.
And don’t miss the 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. Ida may only be in theaters for another week or so.
The raucous comedy Neighbors is a pleasant enough diversion.
My DVD/Stream of the week is the Italian Caesar Must Die, with maximum security prisoners putting on a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Caesar Must Die is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Hulu.
Julie Delpy in WHITE
Okay, fire up the DVR for something special coming up on June 22 on Turner Classic Movies: the masterpiece Three Colors trilogy Blue, White and Red from the mid-1990s. The films are in French, and made by the director that I may admire more than any other, Krzysztof Kieslowski of Poland. The first film, Blue, stars Juliette Binoche and addresses grief; it is somber but its humanity is inspiring. Julie Delpy stars in White the second and much lighter film – a relationship dramedy. In Red, Irene Jacob stars in a story about how strangers treat each each other in modern society, with a redemptive conclusion to the trilogy. Together, the three movies profoundly explore aspects of the human condition, and the result is evocative, intelligent and emotionally satisfying. The stories of the three films intersect – and you can spot the characters from the first two movies in the third.
Kieslowski labored in obscurity in Communist Poland until he attained European recognition and US art house hits with The Decalogue (1988) and The Double Life of Véronique (1990). The Blue/White/Red trilogy came out in 1993 and 1994 to international acclaim, but Kieslowski, reportedly suffering from AIDS, had to retire and died two years later at age 54. I can’t imagine what cinematic masterpieces would have been produced in two more decades of Kieslowski.
Just so folks can calibrate my taste, I keep a list of the 50 Greatest Movies of All Time, and the Blue/White/Red trilogy is in the first ten films on that list. This trilogy is very special – and perfect for binge viewing.
In the taut 76 minutes of Caesar Must Die, convicts in an Italian maximum security prison put on a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Every year, there’s a drama laboratory at this prison. It turns out that Julius Caesar is a perfect choice.
Julius Caesar is, most of all, a play about high stakes. And high stakes, where a decision can result in life or death or power or failure or freedom or incarceration, is something these guys profoundly understand – and have time to reflect upon. During rehearsal, one actor snaps at the director, “I’ve been in here for 20 tears, and you’re telling me not to waste time?”. When Cassius states that he has wagered his life on the outcome of one battle and lost, the line is more powerful because we know the actor playing Cassius is himself a lifer.
When the prisoners audition, we learn that their sentences range from 14 years to “life meaning life”. Most of them are naturalistic and very effective actors. The guy who plays Caesar is especially powerful in his acting and reacting.
The Julius Caesar story unfolds in black-and-white as the prisoners rehearse and then play the early scenes in the contemporary prison setting. Segments from the performance itself – about 15 minutes – are filmed in color.
It all works very well as a very successful Shakespeare movie – and as a prison movie, too. Caesar Must Die is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Hulu.
