Shotgun Stories

Movies to See Right Now

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Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell in THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

Don’t forget to plan to attend Cinequest in San Jose and Redwood City from February 17 through March 11. My festival preview will be online this weekend.

I just watched the splendid Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri again, this time with The Wife.  Before the Oscars, you’re going to want to see Three Billboards and The Shape of Water.   (I’ve also written If I Picked the Oscars – before the nominations were announced.)  Here are the best movie choices in theaters this week:

  • The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s imaginative, operatic inter-species romance may become the most-remembered film of 2017.
  • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a powerful combination of raw emotion and dark hilarity with an acting tour de force from Frances McDormand and a slew of great actors.
  • Steven Spielberg’s docudrama on the Pentagon Papers, The Post, is both a riveting thriller and an astonishingly insightful portrait of Katharine Graham by Meryl Streep. It’s one of the best movies of the year – and one of the most important. Also see my notes on historical figures in The Post.
  • Pixar’s Coco is a moving and authentic dive into Mexican culture, and it’s visually spectacular.
  • Lady Bird , an entirely fresh coming of age comedy that explores the mother-daughter relationship – an impressive debut for Greta Gerwig as a writer and director.
  • I, Tonya is a marvelously entertaining movie, filled with wicked wit and sympathetic social comment.

Here’s the rest of my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far. Most of the ones from earlier this year are available on video. Here’s another current (and Oscar-nominated) choice:

  • Call Me By Your Name is an extraordinarily beautiful story of sexual awakening set in a luscious Italian summer, but I didn’t buy the impossibly cool parents or the two pop ballad musical interludes.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the actor Michael Shannon’s breakthrough film, Shotgun Stories. The first of director Jeff Nichols’ “Arkansas Trilogy”,  Shotgun Stories ranked #7 on my Best Movies of 2007.  Shotgun Stories is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix and iTunes.

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating 31 Days of Oscars, so we have many good choices of movies that often play on TCM. My choice this week is one of the great American political movies – Network playing on February 24. Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar winning original screenplay is both bitingly satirical and frighteningly prescient. Its leads, Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway both also won Oscars, as did Beatrice Straight for Supporting Actress. Director Sidney Lumet and five others from the cast and crew were nominated.

You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’

Peter Finch’s iconic monologue in NETWORK

DVD/Stream of the Week: SHOTGUN STORIES – Michael Shannon’s breakthrough movie

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SHOTGUN STORIES

I am celebrating the great Michael Shannon this week by recommending writer-director Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories. Nichols followed Shotgun Stories with Take Shelter and Mud, which together constitute his “Arkansas Trilogy”.  Shotgun Stories was also the breakout film for Nichols’ favorite leading man, Shannon, who has since gone on to Boardwalk Empire, The Ice Man, 99 Homes, Frank & Lola, Nocturnal Animals (Shannon is brilliant but the movie sucks) and, of course, the current Oscar favorite, The Shape of Water.

Shotgun Stories opens with three brothers learning about the death of their no good father. He had abandoned them and their mother in poverty – and was such an indifferent father that he named his children Son, Boy and Kid. After walking away from his family, he found religion and started another, more prosperous, family with another set of three sons. The three older sons crash the funeral to express their bitterness, and it becomes clear that the two sets of brothers are headed for a clash.

Shannon plays the oldest brother, who has been forged into stony strength and determination by deprivation and long-smoldering resentment. Nichols uses that resentment to light a fuse that burns fitfully but inexorably for most of Shotgun Stories’ 92 minutes.

Shotgun Stories ranked #7 on my Best Movies of 2007.  Shotgun Stories is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix and iTunes.

Movies to See Right Now

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Maika Monroe and Zac Efron in AT ANY PRICE

At Any Price is a thought-provoking psychological drama and a rare glimpse into modern corporate agriculture.   The Reluctant Fundamentalist offers a compelling performance by Riz Ahmed and a thriller ending, but holes in the story and the miscasting of Kate Hudson dim the effect.  Kon-Tiki is a faithful, but underwhelming account of a true life 5,000 mile raft trip across the Pacific.  The French In the House is clever, darkly funny and slightly creepy.

The best film in theaters now is the gripping and thoughtful Mud. Two Arkansas boys embark on a secret adventure with a man hiding from the authorities, and they learn more than they expected about love and loyalty. Mud is one of the best movies of 2013.

If you see the thought-provoking drama The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, you’ll still be mulling it over days later.  I guarantee that you will enjoy the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.  Don’t overlook the heartwarming British indie The Angel’s Share about a hard luck guy’s struggle to turn his life around with unexpected help from some ultra-rare Scotch whisky.

The compelling documentary The Central Park Five from Ken Burns, et al, is available streaming from Amazon Instant and other VOD providers. Football fans should tune into ESPN’s 30 for 30 for Elway to Marino, an inside look at several astonishing stories from the 1983 NFL draft.

The dreadful-looking The Great Gatsby is opening this weekend.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Shotgun Stories, the first triumph by Mud writer-director Jeff Nichols and the breakthrough film for actor Michael Shannon.  Shotgun Stories is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix and iTunes.

On May 14, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the 1947 film noir Kiss of Death, which introduced Richard Widmark as one of the most unforgettable screen villains – a nutty thug named Tommy Udo who chortles maniacally as he pushes an old lady in a wheelchair down the stairs to her demise.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?

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Michael Shannon in My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?

In My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, Werner Herzog explores why an actor would re-enact a theatrical scene for real and kill his mother with the sword that he had been using for a prop.  The short answer is because he was crazier than shit.  This is based on an actual event.  The generally intense and often creepy Michael Shannon plays the murderer, who has suffered a schizophrenic breakdown and is decompensating by the minute.  The audience wants to tell his fiance (Chloe Sevigny) to run, not walk, away from him.  His craziness is so immediately apparent, that there’s really no arc to the film, as we watch flashbacks from the prior year.

Shannon, who is now seen as the revenue agent in HBO’s fine Boardwalk Empire, is very scary.  Incidentally, the movie belongs to that very small subgenre of films where Williem Dafoe (here the cop) does not play the creepiest character.  Dafoe is also out-creeped by Brad Dourif, whose role apparently exists to show that entire family is crazy (like Arsenic and Old Lace).

I would rather recommend a great Michael Shannon performance in a much better film, Shotgun Stories.

The film had an extremely limited theatrical release early this year, but was not widely distributed.  Available now on DVD.