There are still two Must See movies this summer – the historical thriller Dunkirk and the delightful romantic comedy The Big Sick.
The best of the rest:
Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly time to the beat of music.
The Midwife, with Catherine Deneuve as a woman out of control and uncontrollable, indelibly disrupting another life.
The amusingly naughty but forgettable comedy The Little Hours is based on the dirty fun in your Western Civ class, Boccaccio’s The Decameron.
I enjoyed Charlize Theron’s rock ’em, sock ’em, espionage thriller Atomic Blonde, and I’ll be writing about it when I have time.
My Stream of the Week is the documentary Ella Brennan: Commanding the Table, which tells the story of the New Orleans powerhouse restaurateur who overcame sexism and family betrayal to launch iconic restaurants, invent Bananas Foster, the Jazz Brunch and a host of food trends and mentor the celebrity chefs Paul Prudhomme, Emeril Lagasse and Jamie Shannon. Ella Brennan: Commanding the Table can be streamed from Netflix Instant.
On August 6, Turner Classic Movies will feature His Kind of Woman, one of my Overlooked Noir. Robert Mitchum plays a down-and-out gambler who is offered a deal that MUST be too good to be true; he’s smart enough to be suspicious and knows that he must discover the real deal before it’s too late. He meets a on-the-top-of-the-world hottie (Jane Russell), who is about to become down on her luck, too. They may not be lucky, but they are determined to survive. The delicious cast includes Charles McGraw, Jim Backus, Vincent Price, Philip Van Zandt, Tim Holt and Raymond Burr at his most pitiless.
DUNKIRK
There are two Must See movies this summer – the historical thriller Dunkirk and the delightful romantic comedy The Big Sick.
The best of the rest:
Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly time to the beat of music.
The Journey is a fictional imagining of a real historical event with wonderful performances from Colm Meaney and Timothy Spall as the two longtime blood enemies who collaborated to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
The Midwife, with Catherine Deneuve as a woman out of control and uncontrollable, indelibly disrupting another life.
Okja, another wholly original creation from the imagination of master filmmaker Bong Joon Ho, is streaming on Netflix and also in theaters.
The amusingly naughty but forgettable comedy The Little Hours is based on the dirty fun in your Western Civ class, Boccaccio’s The Decameron.
The character-driven suspenser Moka is a showcase for French actresses Emmanuelle Devos and Nathalie Baye.
You just shouldn’t miss my DVD/Stream of the Week, The Imposter. Life is at times stranger than fiction, and The Imposter is one of the most jaw-dropping documentaries I have seen. A Texas boy vanishes and, three years later, is impersonated by someone who is seven years older than the boy, is not a native English speaker and looks nothing like him. Even the con man is surprised when the family is embracing him as the lost boy – and then he begins to suspect why…The Imposter is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix, Amazon, iTunes and many other VOD providers.
On August 1, Turner Classic Movies presents the classic film noir The Asphalt Jungle. The crooks assemble a team and pull off the big heist…and then things begin to go wrong. There aren’t many noirs with better casting – the crooks include Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Sam Jaffe and James Whitmore. The 23-year-old Marilyn Monroe plays Calhern’s companion in her first real speaking part. How noir is it? Even the cop who breaks the case goes to jail. Directed by the great John Huston.
Also on August 1, TCM airs Some Like It Hot, this Billy Wilder masterpiece that is my pick for the best comedy of all time. Seriously – the best comedy ever. And it still works today. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play most of the movie in drag (and Tony is kind of cute). Curtis must continue the ruse even when he’s next to Marilyn Monroe at her most delectable. Curtis then dons a yachting cap and does a dead-on Cary Grant impression as the heir to an industrial fortune. Joe E. Brown gets the last word with one of cinema’s best closing lines.
Manchester by the Sea: MUST SEE. Don’t miss Casey Affleck’s career-topping performance in the emotionally authentic drama .
Elle: MUST SEE (but increasingly hard to find in theaters). A perverse wowzer with the year’s top performance by Isabelle Huppert. Manchester by the Sea is #2 and Elle is #4 on my Best Movies of 2016.
Loving: The love story that spawned a historic Supreme Court decision.
Mascots: the latest mockumentary from Christopher Guest (Best in Show) and it’s very funny. Mascots is streaming on Netflix Instant.
The Eagle Huntress: This documentary is a Feel Good movie for the whole family, blending the genres of girl power, sports competition and cultural tourism.
Also in theaters or on video:
Despite a delicious performance by one of my faves, Michael Shannon, I’m not recommending Nocturnal Animals.
Arrival with Amy Adams, is real thinking person’s sci-fi. Every viewer will be transfixed by the first 80% of Arrival. How you feel about the finale depends on whether you buy into the disconnected-from-linear-time aspect or you just get confused, like I did.
The remarkably sensitive and realistic indie drama Moonlightis at once a coming of age tale, an exploration of addicted parenting and a story of gay awakening. It’s almost universally praised, but I thought that the last act petered out.
Skip the dreary and somnolent Jackie – Natalie Portman’s exceptional impersonation isn’t enough.
If you’re interested in the Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune or cinema in general (and can still find the movie in a theater), I recommend the documentary Mifune: The Last Samurai.
My DVD/Stream of the Week picks are, for the rest of 2016, this year’s best films that are already available on video: Hell or High Water, Eye in the Sky, Chevalier, Weiner, Take Me to the River and Green Room.
For New Year’s Week, Turner Classic Movies is bringing us some great choices:
December 31st – Lawrence of Arabia: it’s time to revisit a spectacle. For decades, many of us watched this epic squeezed into tinny-sounding TVs. In 1989, I was fortunate enough to see the director’s cut in an old movie palace. Now technology has caught up, and modern large screen HD televisions can do justice to this wide screen classic. Similarly, modern home sound systems can work with the great Maurice Jarre soundtrack. Nobody has ever created better epics than director David Lean (Bridge Over the River Kwai, Dr. Zhivago). Peter O’Toole stars at the moment of his greatest physical beauty. The rest of the cast is unsurpassed: Omar Sharif, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, thousands of extras and entire herds of camels. The vast and severe Arabian desert is a character unto itself. Settle in and watch the whole thing – and remember what “epic” really means.
December 31st – Some Like It Hot: This Billy Wilder masterpiece is my pick for the best comedy of all time. Seriously – the best comedy ever. And it still works today. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play most of the movie in drag (and Tony is kind of cute). Curtis must continue the ruse although he’s next to Marilyn Monroe at her most delectable. Curtis then dons a yachting cap and does a dead-on Cary Grant impression as the heir to an industrial fortune. Joe E. Brown gets the last word with one of cinema’s best closing lines.
January 3rd – Cool Hand Luke, with Paul Newman as an iconic 1960s anti-hero, a charismatic supporting performance by George Kennedy, the unforgettable boiled egg-eating contest and the great movie line “What we have here is a failure to communicate”.
And on New Years Day, all you non-football fans can tune into TCM to binge-watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, Strangers on a Train, The Birds, Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, Shadow of a Doubt, Torn Curtain, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Family Plot, Marnie and The Trouble with Harry.
How to Run a Chain Gang and Influence People in COOL HAND LUKE
Something for everyone in theaters this week: Love & Friendship – a sharply witty adaptation of a Jane Austen story with an adept turn by Kate Beckinsale.
The Nice Guys – Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in a very funny mismatched buddy movie from the creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise.
A Bigger Splash – a sensual travelogue turned comedy turned thriller with a raucous and oft-naked performance by Ralph Fiennes.
You can find the best movie out right now on HBO. It’s All the Way, the story of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, warts and all, ending official racial segregation in America with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bryan Cranston brings LBJ alive as no actor has before.
Here’s what you want in a disaster movie: 1) a really impressive disaster and 2) lots of suspense about which of the main characters will survive. My Stream of the Week, the Norwegian The Wave, successfully delivers on both counts. It’s available to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and a variety of TV PPV outlets.
June 3 is Billy Wilder Day on Turner Classic Movies, which features some wonders from my favorite writer-director: Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, Days of Wine and Rosesand Five Graves to Cairo. Everyone recognizes Some Like It Hot and Double Indemnity as masterpieces, but I want to highlight Wilder’s very successful second film as a director – Five Graves to Cairo is a combo spy mystery and war film set in Nazi-overrun North Africa. Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter and Erich Von Stroheim star. The cast also includes two of my favorite character actors, Akim Tamiroff and Peter van Eyck.
Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter and Erich Von Stroheim in FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO
Tony Curtis has died. He was a very handsome and sexy guy, and the first half of his career was at the tail end of Hollywood’s Studio Era. As a result, he played the pretty boy leads in lots of mediocre action movies. He and first wife Janet Leigh (parents of Jamie Lee Curtis) made up one of Hollywood’s most glamorous couples ever.
But Tony Curtis could act if he got the right role, and he made at least three great movies. The fact that these movies come from three very different genres (screwball comedy, contemporary drama, sword-and-sandal epic) is a testament to his ability.
Some Like It Hot (1959): This Billy Wilder masterpiece is my pick for the best comedy of all time. Seriously – the best comedy ever. And it still works today. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play most of the movie in drag (and Tony is kind of cute). Curtis must continue the ruse although next to Marilyn Monroe is at her most delectable. Curtis then dons a yachting cap and does a dead-on Cary Grant impression as the heir to an industrial fortune.
Sweet Smell of Success (1957): This has Curtis’ most subtly acted role as a Broadway press agent who is completely at the mercy of Burt Lancaster’s sadistically nasty columnist. Many of us have experienced being vulnerable to the caprice of an extremely mean person – Curtis perfectly captures the dread and humiliation of being in that position.
Spartacus (1960): Once in a while, a grand epic is a really good movie , and Spartacus qualifies. Curtis plays a slave who is hit on by Laurence Olivier’s Roman patrician in a scene of BARELY implicit homosexuality. “Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?”, Olivier leers from the bath. It was a gutsy scene for a studio actor at the end of the 50s.
Click here for this week’s recommendations. Scroll down this blog to watch trailers. My top recommendations are The Secrets in their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos), Iron Man 2 and, of course, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
My top picks on DVD are still The Messenger, Crazy Heart and Broken Embraces (Abrazos Rotos).
Some Like It Hot,Diabolique and Monkey Business are all on TV.
