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

IDA
IDA

Let me make another pitch for 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. I took The Wife last week, and she admired Ida, too.

Get ready for funniest film of the year – the Canadian knee-slapper The Grand Seduction opens next week, and it’s a guaranteed audience pleaser.

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 Weeks is the highly original teen misfit movie Terri.  Terri is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

Coming up on Turner Classic Movies on June 5 is one of the very best Westerns, Winchester ’73 (1950). This was the first pairing of James Stewart with director Anthony Mann; the duo went on to create several more edgy “psychological Westerns” with atypically ambiguous heroes. Stewart’s emotionally scarred character is driven to hunt down a bad, bad guy (film noir stalwart Dan Duryea); his motivation is later revealed to be deeper than it first appears. Millard Mitchell plays Stewart’s buddy, and the two have great chemistry. Sexy Shelly Winters and sleazy John Ireland also sparkle in supporting roles. A very young Rock Hudson plays an American Indian warrior (shirtless, of course).

James Stewart and Millard Mitchell in WINCHESTER '73
James Stewart and Millard Mitchell in WINCHESTER ’73

Movies to See Right Now

IDA
IDA

My pick for the best movie of the year so far is openly more widely this week – the Polish drama Ida, about a novice nun who is stunned to learn that her biological parents were Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Superbly photographed in black and white, each shot is exquisitely composed. Watching shot after shot in Ida is like walking through a museum gazing at masterpiece paintings one after the other.

IDA
IDA

Fading Gigolo, a wonderfully sweet romantic comedy written, directed and starring John Tuturro is a crowd-pleaser. The raucous comedy Neighbors is a pleasant enough diversion. 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. 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 highly original Her, one of my Best Movies of 2013.

It’s Memorial Day Weekend, which means it’s time for Turner Classic Movies to unleash a war movie marathon.  On May 24, you can see two classic Korean War films: The Steel Helmet (1951) and The Men of the Fighting Lady (1954).

Gene Evans in The Steel Helmet

Movies to See Right Now

FADING GIGOLO
FADING GIGOLO

We’re sliding into the blockbuster doldrums of summer, but the best movie of the year is opening more widely next week (teaser). Right now, I heartily recommend Fading Gigolo, a wonderfully sweet romantic comedy written, directed and starring John Tuturro. 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. 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 gripping thriller Source Code.  It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2011.  Source Code is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

Take a hard-bitten Raymond Chandler mystery novel, have William Faulkner touch up the screenplay, get Howard Hawks to direct, cast Bogie and Bacall and, well, you get a 1946 masterpiece of film noir: The Big Sleep, coming up May 20 on Turner Classic Movies. The deliciously convoluted plot is part of the fun. I love the scene where Bogart’s Philip Chandler chats up Dorothy Malone’s bookstore clerk – and she closes the shop early for an off-screen quickie.

If you’re in the mood for a guilty pleasure, on May 17 TCM is showing 4 for Texas, a Rat Pack Western (!) from 1963. It’s not good, but you can enjoy Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin along with some great character actors: Jack Elam, Mike Mazurki, Victor Buono, Charles Bronson and Richard Jaeckel. Plus a cameo by the Three Stooges!

Dorothy Malone and Humphrey Bogart in THE BIG SLEEP
Dorothy Malone and Humphrey Bogart in THE BIG SLEEP

Movies to See Right Now

Sofia Vergara and John Turturro in FADING GIGOLO
Sofia Vergara and John Turturro in FADING GIGOLO

Okay – I admit I’ve been Missing In Action lately. I have been too busy to write while engrossed in the San Francisco International Film Festival, the New Orleans Jazz Fest and then back for the closing of the SFIFF last night.

I heartily recommend Fading Gigolo, a wonderfully sweet romantic comedy written, directed and starring John Tuturro. If you can find it, I also liked Catherine Deneuve’s road trip to self discovery in On My Way.  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.   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 a good French movie with a GREAT ending and several tantalizing scenes for foodies – You Will Be My Son.  You Will Be My Son is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, Vudu, iTunes and Xbox Video.

On May 15, Turner Classic Movies is showing the 1986 Woody Allen near-masterpiece Hannah and Her Sisters. Biting and insightful, Hannah and Her Sisters won Best Supporting Oscars for Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest, along with a Best Screenplay Oscar for Woody. I particularly enjoy the performances of Barbara Hershey as the inappropriate object of Caine’s middle-aged infatuation and Max Von Sydow as her pretentious artist-boyfriend.

Mia Farrow, barbara hershey and Dianne Wiest in HANNAH AND HER SISTERS
Mia Farrow, barbara hershey and Dianne Wiest in HANNAH AND HER SISTERS

Finding Vivian Maier: hiding her own masterpieces

vivian maier1
The engrossing documentary Finding Vivian Maier begins with the death of a Chicago woman so obscure that none of her neighbors knew her name.  She was a standoffish hoarder, and when a box of her junk is acquired at an estate auction, the buyer, a picker named John Maloof, finds lots and lots of photographs.  He posts some of them on the Internet, and it turns out that the woman was, hitherto undiscovered, one of the great 20th Century photographers.  So Maloof acquires the other boxes from the auction and embarks on a quest to find out who she was, why she took over 100,000 images and why she never showed them. Fortunately, we get to come along.

We quickly learn that her name was Vivian Maier, and that she worked as a nanny.   As Maloof’s journey of discovery takes us to another city and then to another country, we begin to piece together her life.  Because Maier lived with families to raise their children, we meet some of her former charges. We are able to construct what she looked and sounded like, how she dressed and walked and about her array of eccentricities.  We learn about a very disturbing dark side.

But Maier remained secretive even inside the families’ homes, so some of the puzzle pieces remain undiscovered.  We can infer that a pivotal event happened during her childhood.  We conclusively find out that she was obsessively private, but we can only guess why.

Vivian Maier is no longer obscure.  Her work is now shown widely in museums and galleries.  As a photographer, she had an uncommon gift to connect personally with her subjects and to document the humor and tragedy of the most human moments.  In the guise of a detective story, Finding Vivian Maier does her justice.


vian maier2