Movies to See Right Now

GLORIA
GLORIA

The Chilean drama Gloria is about an especially resilient 58-year-old woman.  The Palestinian Omar is a heartbreaking romance inside a tense thriller; Omar is nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the flawless true story thriller Captain Phillips, my choice as the best Hollywood movie of the year. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

In theaters, you can still find Oscar nominees Nebraska, American Hustle and Her, which all made my Best Movies of 2013. I also strongly recommend Best Picture nominees The Wolf of Wall Street and PhilomenaDallas Buyers Club, with its splendid performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, is formulaic but still a pretty good watch.

I saw this year’s Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts and was disappointed.  There was nothing to match recent gems like The God of Love or Curfew.  I liked the British short about a particularly bored and malevolent God masquerading as a convict, but that 13 minutes didn’t justify the two hours that I had invested.  A 30-minute Spanish film about child soldiers in Africa was to excruciatingly brutal to justify the trite attempt at a redemptive payoff.  (I haven’t seen the Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts, but I have heard good things about that program.)

Check out my first post on Cinequest – and follow me on Twitter for my Cinequest coverage.

I love 31 Days of Oscar, Turner Classic Movies magical month of Oscar-nominated films. On March 1, TCM is showing all five Best Picture nominees from 1967: The winner was In the Heat of the Night, which I can’t imagine holds up as well today as The Graduate or the groundbreaking Bonnie and Clyde. The other nominees were Doctor Doolittle and the now embarrassingly dated Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

Movies to See Right Now

AMERICAN HUSTLE
AMERICAN HUSTLE

The Palestinian Omar is a heartbreaking romance inside a tense thriller; Omar is nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. The Chilean drama Gloria is about an especially resilient 58-year-old woman. Harder to find, Stranger by the Lake is an effective French thriller with LOTS of explicit gay sex.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the flawless true story thriller Captain Phillips, my choice as the best Hollywood movie of the year. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

In theaters, you can still find Oscar nominees Nebraska, American Hustle and Her, which all made my Best Movies of 2013. I also strongly recommend Best Picture nominees The Wolf of Wall Street and Philomena. Dallas Buyers Club, with its splendid performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, is formulaic but still a pretty good watch. The Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts is also a good bet.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is another fine thriller from that franchise, with another amazing performance by Jennifer Lawrence. I also like the Mumblecore romance Drinking Buddies, now available on VOD.

We’re still enjoying Turner Classic Movies magical month of Oscar-nominated films – 31 Days of Oscar. This week I recommend the brilliant 1971 drama The Last Picture Show and the classic Bogart/Bacall thriller Key Largo.

Omar: a heartbreaking love story inside a West Bank thriller

omarThe gripping and thought-provoking Palestinian drama Omar, which opens tomorrow, is a fundamentally a love story that drives an action thriller.  It seems to be about a college-age Palestinian guy named Omar and his two buddies.  They live in a West Bank Arab community that is repressed by apparently omniscient and omnipotent Israeli security forces.  It’s an environment where one bad choice can spiral one’s life completely out of control – and one that is toxic with betrayals.

There are thrills aplenty when the Israeli security teams are chasing our hero.  We’ve never seen more riveting chase scenes through the alleys and rooftops of West Bank cities.  Shot in Nazareth and Nablus, Omar gives us a novel look at these Arab communities and the Israeli security wall.

But it is basically a love story, albeit a heartbreaking one, because most of the plot is motivated by Omar’s love for his sweetheart Nadia.  The first action by the three young guys stems from politics, testosterone and the foolhardiness of youth.  But everything that happens after is because of Omar’s yearning for Nadia.  We also see the chaste Palestinian courtship rituals; the kids are burning with passion for each other as they exchange letters and discreet glances.

Omar is not for everyone.  For one thing, it doesn’t try to be even-handed about the Israeli Occupation – everything is seen through the Palestinian lens.  It’s realistic – one Israeli character in particular is humanized and it’s easy for the audience to disapprove of the boneheaded behavior by the young Palestinians.  But if you aren’t open to that Palestinian perspective, you’re not going to like this movie.  And the ending is unusually jarring – my fellow audience members sat in shocked silence for a few seconds.

Omar won a jury prize at Cannes and is nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Oscar.