movie gourmet

Movies to See Right Now

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Woody Harrelson and Frances McDormand in THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

The Oscar nominations are out, and I recommend some (not all) of the nominated films. I’ve also written If I Picked the Oscars – before the nominations were announced. The best movies of the year are in theaters right now, and here are the very best:

  • 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.
  • The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s imaginative, operatic inter-species romance may become the most-remembered film of 2017.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • I, Tonya is a marvelously entertaining movie, filled with wicked wit and sympathetic social comment.
  • Phantom Thread, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, is Paul Thomas Anderson’s rapturously beautiful story of a strong-willed man and two equally strong-willed women; unexpectedly witty.
  • The Florida Project is Sean Baker’s remarkably authentic and evocative glimpse into the lives of children in poverty, full of the exuberance of childhood.
  • Darkest Hour, Gary Oldman brings alive Winston Churchill in an overlooked historical moment – when it looked like Hitler was going to win WW II.

Don’t forget what is sure to be one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences of 2018 – the Noir City festival of film noir in San Francisco.

Here’s the rest of my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far. Most of the ones from earlier this year are available on video.

Other current choices:

  • The Disaster Artist, James Franco’s hilarious docucomedy about the making of one of the most unintentionally funny movies of all time.
  • Diane Kruger’s award-wining performance in the German thriller In the Fade.
  • The Final Year, a wistful inside documentary about the Obama Admistration’s foreign policy during his last year.
  • The ambitious satire The Square.
  • 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.
  • Murder on the Orient Express is a moderately entertaining lark.
  • Novitiate, the tediously grim story of a seeker looking for spiritual love and sacrifice, with a sadistic abbess delivering too much of the latter.

My DVD/Stream of the Week are recent Oscar winners for Best Documentary: Amy, Searching for Sugar Man and Undefeated. Follow the link for their availability on DVD and streaming platforms.

On January 28, Turner Classic Movies presents All the King’s Men, one of the best political movies of all time, from the novel based on the saga of Huey Long. Broderick Crawford stars as Willie Stark, the fictionalized Kingfish. Watch for the brilliant, Oscar-winning supporting performance by Mercedes McCambridge. (Note: this is the 1949 version, NOT the lousy 2006 Sean Penn remake.)

Broderick Crawford, John Ireland and Mercedes McCambridge in ALL THE KING’S MEN
Broderick Crawford in ALL THE KING’S MEN

And on January 31, Turner Classic Movies plays Angel Face, the 1953 film noir from director Otto Preminger, This movie has it all, the droopy-eyed magnetism of Robert Mitchum, the fragile beauty of Jean Simmons, and (along with They Won’t Believe Me) the most shocking ending in film noir.

Jean Simmons and Robert Mitchum in ANGEL FACE

DVD/Stream of the Week: recent Oscar winners for Best Documentary

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AMY

This being the week that the Oscar nominations are released, here’s your chance to see three recent Oscar winning movies. Each was recognized as the year’s best documentary, and each is completely engrossing.

Amy is the heart-felt, engaging and innovative bio-pic of singer Amy Winehouse. DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play

Searching for Sugar Man is about a modest guy who didn’t know that he was a rock star. For real. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Undefeated is the story of a high school football coaching trying imbue some hope into kids living in crushing poverty. On DVD and streaming from Netflix; also streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN

If I picked the Oscars

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THE BIG SICK

The nominations for this year’s Academy Awards come out tomorrow – and Academy of Motion Picture  Arts and Sciences is not asking my opinion.  But if I picked the Oscars:

Best Picture:  My choice for the year’s best movie – Truman – is NOT going to be nominated because it is a little-seen Spanish movie. But there are several deserving choices, including The Big Sick, The Shape of Water and The Post. The Academy almost always chooses a drama for Best Picture, seemingly equating seriousness and gravitas for quality. That means that comedies – and despite the coma, The Big Sick is fundamentally a romantic comedy – get underrated. So I don’t think it will win, but I gauge The Big Sick, an almost perfect film, to be the best American flick of the year.

Best Director:  I’m rooting for Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water, a story that could not be told as well in a novel, on stage or in any other artistic medium. It has to be a movie and one which springs from del Toro’s imagination.

Best Actor:  He’s probably not going to even get nominated, but I would go with Richard Gere in his best career performance in Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer. The huge favorite, of course, is Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour; it’s a fine performance, but I think the Oscars over-elevate portrayals of Great Men and Women.

Best Actress:  Can’t go wrong with Meryl Streep in The Post or Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water.   Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird was pretty special, too.

Best Supporting Actor:  Sam Rockwell is going to win this for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, but I prefer the performance of Woody Harrelson in the same movie. Harrelson doesn’t have as  showy a role, but this is one of Woody’s very best performances. Another brilliant performance that will NOT be nominated is Steve Coogan’s guy hanging on to sanity with his fingernails in The Dinner, but nobody saw it.  Among the guys who stand a chance of getting nominated, my preference is for Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project.

Best Supporting Actress:  Allison Janney will be nominated for I, Tonya, she will win and she will deserve it.

Best Animated:   Coco, of course.  Pixar is back.

Best Documentary:   The brilliant Ken Burns documentary The Vietnam War, which aired on PBS, isn’t eligible for an Oscar, but it was the year’s best doc.  Of the eligible documentaries, I really liked Abacus: Small Enough to Jail.

Best Foreign Language Picture.  I am all in for Truman from Spain, which will not be nominated.  Of those nominated, I most admired In the Fade from Germany.

Original Screenplay:  Martin McDonagh for Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri.

Adapted Screenplay:  Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber for I Tonya.

Cinematography:  I’m going to cop out on this category.  There just too many wonderfully visual movies this year tp pick just one as the best.  In any other year, the Academy could easily recognize the cinematography  in The Shape of Water, Dunkirk, Call Me by Your Name, Phantom Thread, Baby Driver and Okja – but only one can win the statuette.

Film Editing: Baby Driver or Dunkirk.

Long ago, the Oscars recognized a “Juvenile” acting category.  Brooklynn Prince of The Florida Project would be deserving for her exuberant performance.

Other groups give a “Promising Newcomer”award; mine would go to Greta Gerwig as writer.  Obviously, she’s not new to the movies, but her first screenplay makes me eager to see her next ones.

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

Dorothy Malone and her one indelible scene

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Dorothy Malone and Humphrey Bogart in THE BIG SLEEP

Actress Dorothy Malone has died at age 103.  She began making films in 1943 with a series of small parts, of which the most indelible came in 1948’s The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart.  Malone plays a bookstore clerk who takes a liking to Bogie’s Sam Spade and initiates a quickie.  As has been noted by many, it’s one of the sexiest moments in cinema and all she takers off is her glasses.

After turning platinum blonde, she won an Oscar for her supporting performance in the 1956 Douglas Sirk melodrama Written on the Wind.   After lots of TV success (Peyton Place, et al), her final movie role was a fittingly juicy one, a pleasantly smiling murderer, in Basic Instinct (1992).

Michael Douglas, Dorothy Malone and Sharon Stone in BASIC INSTINCT

Movies to See Right Now

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Meryl Streep, Tracy Letts and Tom Hanks in THE POST

The best movies of the year are in theaters right now, and here are the very best:

  • 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.
  • The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s imaginative, operatic inter-species romance may become the most-remembered film of 2017.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • I, Tonya is a marvelously entertaining movie, filled with wicked wit and sympathetic social comment.
  • Phantom Thread, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, is Paul Thomas Anderson’s rapturously beautiful story of a strong-willed man and two equally strong-willed women; unexpectedly witty.
  • The Florida Project is Sean Baker’s remarkably authentic and evocative glimpse into the lives of children in poverty, full of the exuberance of childhood.
  • Darkest Hour, Gary Oldman brings alive Winston Churchill in an overlooked historical moment – when it looked like Hitler was going to win WW II.

Here’s the rest of my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far. Most of the ones from earlier this year are available on video.

Sally Hawkins in THE SHAPE OF WATER

Other current choices:

  • The Disaster Artist, James Franco’s hilarious docucomedy about the making of one of the most unintentionally funny movies of all time.
  • Diane Kruger’s award-wining performance in the German thriller In the Fade.
  • The Final Year, a wistful inside documentary about the Obama Admistration’s foreign policy during his last year.
  • The ambitious satire The Square.
  • 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.
  • Murder on the Orient Express is a moderately entertaining lark.
  • Novitiate, the tediously grim story of a seeker looking for spiritual love and sacrifice, with a sadistic abbess delivering too much of the latter.

My Stream of the Week is Wind River, smart, layered and intelligent, and another success from one of America’s fastest-rising filmmakers, Taylor Sheridan. It’s now available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Graham Greene and Elizabeth Olsen in WIND RIVER

THE FINAL YEAR: a most wistful documentary

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A scene from THE FINAL YEAR, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

In the documentary The Final Year, we get to peek inside the last year of the Obama foreign policy.  Director Greg Barker’s cameras go behind the scenes to follow Secretary of State John Kerry, UN Ambassador Samantha Power and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes as they travel the globe to keep the peace and mitigate conflict.

We see a lot of movies about the military and the intelligence services, so it’s a rare and welcome treat to watch diplomacy in action.

The Final Year primarily depicts and references the Obama Administration’s signature accomplishments – the Iran nuclear deal, avoiding catastrophe in North Korea, the Paris climate accords – along with the challenges of Syria.

We tend to see these folks as talking heads on television, so it’s humanizing to see them in candid moments.  However, this is hardly a warts-and-all expose, and sometimes the tone even reaches reverent or fawning.  Rhodes even gets the chance to evade responsibility for  a basic political mistake – letting a reporter exploit his words.

It’s impossible to watch The Final Year in early 2018 without comparing these folks with the current administration.  Whatever their imperfections, Kerry, Power and Rhodes are serious, competent people trying to implement a coherent foreign policy in our national interest and, in the process, earning the respect of other nations.  The juxtaposition with the clown show of the current Administration is alarming and profoundly sad.

[SPOILER: In the final shot before the closing credits, the very-soon-to-be-former President Obama  says, “Are we done here? Okay, see you later.” and turns down a White House corridor with his security detail for perhaps the last time.  It’s heartbreakingly wistful.]

The Final Year opens in the Bay Area on Friday.

Stream of the Week: WIND RIVER – another masterpiece from Taylor Sheridan

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Elizabeth Olsen and Jeremy Renner in WIND RIVER

With the contemporary Western thriller Wind River, screenwriter Taylor Sheridan has delivered another masterpiece, this time in his first effort as director. Wind River was probably my most anticipated film of the year because I pegged Sheridan’s previous movie Hell or High Water as the best movie of 2016. Wind River doesn’t disappoint and is one of the best movies of 2017.

The story is set in and around Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation. Cory (Jeremy Renner) is a professional hunter who finds the body of a native American teenage girl. To find out what happened to her and who is responsible, the tribal police chief Ben (Graham Greene) calls for help from the feds. That assistance arrives in the form of FBI agent Jane (Elizabeth Olsen), an inexperienced city slicker who has no clue how to survive in the lethal elements of the wild country. She is canny enough to understand that she needs the help of Cory, who knows every inch of the back country. He has his own reason – very important to the story – to solve the mystery, and the unlikely duo embark on a dangerous investigation, which they know will end in a man hunt.

The man hunt leads to a violent set piece that Sheridan directs masterfully. There’s a sudden escalation of tension, then apparent relief and then an explosion of action. Deadly chaos envelops several characters, but we’re able to follow it all clearly, while we’re on the edges of our seats.

Jeremy Renner’s performance as Cory is brilliant. Cory is a man whose life has been redirected by a family tragedy. He’s a Western stoic of few words, but – unusual for his type – an individual who deals with his grief in a very specific and self-aware way. Playing a character who reloads his own rounds, Renner is able to deliver hard-ass, determined efficiency along with some unexpected tenderness.

Olsen is also very good as Jane who understands that she may appear to be the bottom of the FBI’s barrel because she is a woman and very green and tiny. Resolute and spunky, she moves past what others might take as a slight because no unaided outsider is going to be able to navigate the harsh environment and the culture of the reservation. She isn’t trying to make a name for herself, but just to take responsibility in the old-fashioned way that we would expect from characters played by Glenn Ford, Gregory Peck, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. She’s got to do the right thing.

As Martin, the dead girl’s father, Gil Birmingham (Hell or High Water) has two unforgettable scenes. His first scene is phenomenal first scene, as he processes the worst possible news with an outside Jane, and then with his friend Cory. Graham Greene and Tantoo Cardinal are also excellent. Kelsey Asbille and Jon Bernthal are also stellar in a flashback of the crime.

Sheridan and cinematographer Ben Richardson (Beasts of the Southern Wild) make great use of the Big Sky country, with the jagged topography of its mountains and the feral frigidity of its forests. Wind River opens as Cory hunts in spectacular postcard scenery; when we first see the reservation, we are jarred – this is a very bad place.

Taylor Sheridan has a gift for writing great, great movie dialogue:

      “Who’s the victim today? Looks like it’s gonna be me.”

and

     “This isn’t the land of backup, Jane. This is the land of you’re on your own.”

When Cory says, “This isn’t about Emily”, we know that this is precisely about Emily. When Cory says, “I’m a hunter”, we know exactly what his intentions are – and so does Martin.

Sheridan hates that, in much of our society, people are disposable. He has explored that theme in Sicario, Hell or High Water and now Wind River. Wind River begins with a title explaining that the story is inspired by actual events, and ends with a particularly horrifying non-statistic.  I’ve also written an essay on Sheridan’s filmmaking signatures, the films of Tayler Sheridan.

Smart, layered and intelligent, Wind River is another success from one of America’s fastest-rising filmmakers. It’s now available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT: Orson Welles’ Shakespearean masterpiece

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Orson Welles and Keith Baxter in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
Orson Welles and Keith Baxter in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

The great auteur Orson Welles loved Shakespeare and made three Shakespearean movies, of which Chimes at Midnight is the masterpiece.  Welles’ genius was in braiding together parts of Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, some Richard III, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor into a cohesive story of what he called “betrayal of friendship”.  You can watch Chimes at Midnight Wednesday on Turner Classic Movies.

Welles himself vividly plays the recurring Shakespearean character of Sir John Falstaff.
Falstaff is a rogue knight, a shameless braggart and robustly debauched.

The young Prince Hal (Keith Baxter), the future King Henry V, is sowing his wild oats, and he is in the market for a dissolute companion. To the disgust of Hal’s severe father, King Henry IV (John Gielgud), Hal and Falstaff are carousing buddies, their fast friendship forged in taverns with plentiful spirits and women of easy virtue. (Falstaff’s wench is played by Jeanne Moreau.)

Orson Welles and Jeanne Moreau in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
Orson Welles and Jeanne Moreau in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

There’s plenty of palace intrigue interwoven with the comic pranks and partying by the rascal Hal and his favorite scoundrel Falstaff. Falstaff even does mocking impressions of Henry IV.

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

Chimes at Midnight features an amazing 12-minute battle scene beginning at the 55 minute mark. Somehow Welles was able to afford 150 extras and was able to use them and his camera to create a battle scene as effective as the ones in Braveheart and Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. Welles doesn’t pull any punches in depicting the brutality of medieval warfare. The initial horse charge is followed by the chaos of hacking and clubbing. The combatants become a roiling cauldron of lethal mayhem. In all the fog of war, it’s still easy to follow Falstaff in his size XXXL armor. Welles’ Falstaff believes that honor is merely ornamental and not worth sacrificing one’s life for. No hero, Falstaff.

CHIMES
CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

Finally, Henry IV dies and Prince Hal will ascend the throne. Falstaff thinks he’s won the lottery, but a king can’t afford sloppy bad habits. Hal rejects vanity, of which Falstaff is the signal emblem. Hal rebuffs Falstaff with Presume not that I am the thing I was and banishes him. Falstaff is stunned – but then proud of his mentee. Defeated in the end, Welles’ eyes show us his pride and simultaneous disappointment. This high point of Chimes at Midnight is also probably Welles’ best moment as an actor.

The broad, raucous comedy in Chimes at Midnight shows us what it must have like to see Shakespeare’s words performed in the rowdy Globe Theater. Shot in Spain with authentic medieval settings, Chimes at Midnight looks very good for a low, low-budget film. It is narrated by Ralph Richardson.

CHIMES
CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

This is a brilliant film, and it’s high on my list of Best Shakespeare Movies.

Chimes at Midnight was extremely hard to find until very recently, except for a bootleg on YouTube and a 2015 DVD released in the UK.  It’s still not available to rent on DVD.  Fortunately, Chimes at Midnight has become available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and FilmStruck.  And, of course, it plays occasionally on Turner Classic Movies where it will be featured on January 17.

CHIMES
Orson Welles in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

Movies to See Right Now

by
Meryl Street in THE POST

The best movies of the year are in theaters right now, and here are the very best:

  • 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.
  • The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s imaginative, operatic inter-species romance may become the most-remembered film of 2017.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • I, Tonya is a marvelously entertaining movie, filled with wicked wit and sympathetic social comment.
  • Phantom Thread, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, is Paul Thomas Anderson’s rapturously beautiful story of a strong-willed man and two equally strong-willed women; unexpectedly witty.
  • The Florida Project is Sean Baker’s remarkably authentic and evocative glimpse into the lives of children in poverty, full of the exuberance of childhood.
  • Darkest Hour, Gary Oldman brings alive Winston Churchill in an overlooked historical moment – when it looked like Hitler was going to win WW II.

Here’s the rest of my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far. Most of the ones from earlier this year are available on video.

Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf in LADY BIRD

Other current choices:

  • The Disaster Artist, James Franco’s hilarious docucomedy about the making of one of the most unintentionally funny movies of all time.
  • Diane Kruger’s award-wining performance in the German thriller In the Fade.
  • The ambitious satire The Square.
  • 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.
  • Murder on the Orient Express is a moderately entertaining lark.
  • Novitiate, the tediously grim story of a seeker looking for spiritual love and sacrifice, with a sadistic abbess delivering too much of the latter.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread is topping some critics’ top ten lists. So my Stream of the Week is Anderson’s first feature, Hard Eight, a neo-noir from 1996. Hard Eight is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On January 13, Turner Classic Movies airs director Richard Fleischer’s overlooked film noir masterpiece The Narrow Margin (1952), a taut 71 minutes of tension. Growly cop Charles McGraw plays hide-and-seek with a team of hit men on a claustrophobic train. Marie Windsor is unforgettable as the assassins’ target. It’s highly recommended on my list of Overlooked Noir.

Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN

IN THE FADE: a moral choice in a revenge thriller

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Diane Kruger in IN THE FADE, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Diane Kruger gives a brilliant performance in the searing and emotionally devastating German thriller In the Fade.  Kruger plays a German woman whose husband and child are murdered.  Her life essentially disintegrates, as a whodunit carries on mostly beyond her.  Katja is not exactly the German Betty Crocker.   She’s tatted up and has married a Turkish Kurdish man who is a reformed drug dealer.  But her grief is universal, and so is her impulse for revenge.  Her husband’s attorney Danilo (Denis Moschitto) leads her on a quest for justice.  But she must decide whether to take justice into her own hands.  And how. And at what cost.  The final scene in In the Fade is unforgettable.

German writer-director Fatih Akin, like Katja’s husband, is the son of Turkish immigrants.  In In the Fade’s taut one hour, 46 minutes, he has crafted a pulsating page-turner.  It can’t be easy to keep the pace of a movie from grinding down when the protagonist is plunging into a puddle of grief, but Akin pulls it off.  The horror of the murder is not shown on-screen, but Akin funds a way to make it even more horrible than if we had watched it happen.  Akin has made a successful thriller here, not a “message movie”, but he also effectively addresses the topical issues of immigration, racism and terrorism.

Diane Kruger in IN THE FADE, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Diane Kruger won Best Actress at last year’s Cannes film festival for this performance.  She creates a fundamentally vibrant Katja, who must react to a horrific loss, and then to a series of indignities capped by brutal gut-punch from her mother-in-law.  This is a profoundly authentic depiction of grief.  When any chance for resolution is jerked away from Katja by a shocking injustice, Kruger takes Katja into steely resolve.

Kruger is an impressively versatile actress.  She’s equally good as an American detective with Asberger’s in the absorbing American miniseries The Bridge and as a whim-driven queen in the French costume drama Farewell, My Queen.

Denis Moschitto and Diane Kruger in IN THE FADE, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

In the Fade is filled with excellent performances. Besides Moschitto, I’ll point out

  • Johannes Krisch as cinema’s most despicable defense attorney, loathsome down to the prefunctory danke with which he ends each argument.
  • Hening Peker as the earnest-to-a-fault police investigator, doing everything rationally and by the book, but not in a way comfortable for our sympathetic victim, Katja.
  • Ulrich Tukur as a character who has found serenity in doing the right thing, difficult as it may have been.

In the Fade won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign language Picture last Sunday and
opens this weekend in San Francisco.