Movies to See Right Now – the big Holiday movies

DJANGO UNCHAINED

It’s the Holidays and big Holiday movies are joining the great choices already in theaters.  I haven’t yet seen Tom Hooper’s all star epic Les Miserables, but the Quentin Tarantino blockbuster Django Unchained is gloriously pedal-to-the-metal exploitation.

In Lincoln, Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis push aside the marble statue and bring to life Abraham Lincoln the man.  Argo is Ben Affleck’s brilliant thriller based on a true story from the Iran Hostage Crisis. The rewarding dramedy Silver Linings Playbook has a strong story, topicality and humor, but it’s worth seeing just for Jennifer Lawrence’s performance. All three films are on my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

Don’t overlook The Matchmaker, a gem from Israel or the solid thriller Deadfall that is flying under the radar this holiday season.

Ang Lee’s visually stunning fable Life of Pi is an enthralling commentary on story-telling. The Sessions is an uncommonly evocative, funny and thoughtful film about sex leading to unexpected emotional intimacy. Denzel Washington stars in Flight, a thriller about the miraculous crash landing of an airliner and the even more dangerous battle against alcoholism.  Skyfall updates the James Bond franchise with thrilling action and a more shopworn 007 from Daniel Craig.

The FDR movie Hyde Park on Hudson is a bore.  The crime drama Killing Them Softly wastes an excellent cast on a run-of-the-mill gangster story. Skip the forgettable non-comedy Lay the Favorite. The disaster movie The Impossible is only for audiences that enjoy watching suffering adults and children in peril.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

Movies to See Right Now

Charlie Hunnam and Olivia Wilde in DEADFALL

It’s the Holidays and three major releases are joining the great choices already in theaters. In Lincoln, Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis push aside the marble statue and bring to life Abraham Lincoln the man. Argo is Ben Affleck’s brilliant thriller based on a true story from the Iran Hostage Crisis. The rewarding dramedy Silver Linings Playbook has a strong story, topicality and humor, but it’s worth seeing just for Jennifer Lawrence’s performance. All three films are on my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

Don’t overlook The Matchmaker, a gem from Israel or the solid thriller Deadfall that is flying under the radar this holiday season.

Ang Lee’s visually stunning fable Life of Pi is an enthralling commentary on story-telling. The Sessions is an uncommonly evocative, funny and thoughtful film about sex leading to unexpected emotional intimacy. Denzel Washington stars in Flight, a thriller about the miraculous crash landing of an airliner and the even more dangerous battle against alcoholism. A Late Quartet is a gripping drama with a superb cast led by Christopher Walken and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The wild and puzzling art film Holy Motors has its moments, too.

The engrossing but overlong drama In the Family is more than just another social issue picture because of Patrick Wang’s authenticity as a writer and brilliance as a director. The indie odd couple drama Starlet packs a surprising emotional punch. In the entertaining Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren star as Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock as they collaborate on making Psycho. Skyfall updates the James Bond franchise with thrilling action and a more shopworn 007 from Daniel Craig.

The crime drama Killing Them Softly wastes an excellent cast on a run-of-the-mill gangster story. Skip the forgettable non-comedy Lay the Favorite.  The disaster movie The Impossible is only for audiences that enjoy watching suffering adults and children in peril.

I haven’t yet seen the FDR movie Hyde Park on Hudson, the critically praised French drama Rust and Bone or the Judd Apatow comedy This Is 40, which open today, or Tom Hooper’s all star epic Les Miserables or the Quentin Tarantino blockbuster Django Unchained, which open on Christmas Day. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick this week is the singular comedy Sleepwalk with Me.

The Matchmaker: a character-driven gem from Israel

Fascinating characters make good stories and good movies, and the Israeli gem The Matchmaker has them aplenty.   A middle class teenager falls into a very unusual summer job – the “spy guy” for a matchmaker based in a Haifa neighborhood where prostitutes and smugglers ply their trades.  His job is to shadow prospective brides and grooms to verify their suitability for a match.  The kid is a pretty normal teen with an affection for detective fiction and an emerging talent for writing, and we see the other characters through his prism.

The Matchmaker is set in 1968, when many Israeli adults were Holocaust survivors who refused to talk about the Holocaust.  Ironically, the adult conspiracy of silence means that the teen characters know less about the Holocaust than do other kids around the world.  Almost all the adult characters are emotionally scarred in ways the kids really can’t understand.

The matchmaker himself is a shambling, secretive and somewhat shady guy, with unexplained facial scars.  He is an uncanny, but not always perfect, judge of human foibles.  He advises his clients, “I find you what you need, not what you want”.  It turns out that matchmaking is his passion, but he makes his living from another, less legal business.

The matchmaker himself pines for a charming but extremely emotionally fragile woman who works with him.  There’s also a kind, beautiful and lovelorn woman who owns a theater and is a dwarf.  We also have an obsessive librarian who is even more tightly wound than we see at first.  Oh, and the kid’s best friend’s American cousin comes for a visit, and she’s smokin’ hot.

So The Matchmaker is a coming of age movie, but one unlike any you have seen because of the singular characters.  Credit goes to Director Avi Lesher, who adapted the screenplay from a novel by Amir Gutfreund.