movie gourmet

How to Train Your Dragon 2: action-packed and fun-filled for the young and young-at-heart

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How Train Dragon

By guest bloggers Sean Breen (Nephew 2) & Lisa Breen Strickland (The Wife)

The action-packed and fun-filled How to Train Your Dragon 2 picks up four years after the original movie’s story.  Hiccup, the hero, looks much older and has much more confidence.  As the movie begins his father Stoick offers Hiccup the opportunity to succeed him as the Chief of the Berk – their village and its merry band of Vikings and their dragons. Hiccup is not so sure about this plan.  But before he gets to decide Drago Bloodfist, an arch enemy of Stoick, comes back to the region to continue amassing his dragon army, with the intention of controlling Berk and the world.  Hiccup wants to use his persuasive powers to dissuade Drago from his evil plan.  Hiccup discovers more about himself – his past, present and future – as his plan unfolds.

We found this movie to be entertaining, engaging, and touching — and we liked it! We think that others like us – an 11 year old (or younger) and the young at heart – would enjoy the movie because it is even better than the book.  The way the animators portrayed the dragons was amazing – each so different, some scary, some cute – and some we would like to have as pets (especially Toothless).  It was impressive how they could animate the alpha dragons – with different and very useful skills that were used both for evil (when controlled by Drago) and good (when handled by Hiccup).

We say – grab your favorite nephew or aunt, get your popcorn, Slushee and Diet Coke and go see How to Train Your Dragon 2.

Movies to See Right Now

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WITCHING AND BITCHING
WITCHING AND BITCHING

I loved the rockin’ Spanish Witching and Bitching – a witty comment on misogyny inside a madcap horror spoof.  You can stream it on Amazon instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.

Roger Ebert fans will need to see Life Itself, the affectionate but not worshipful documentary on movie critic Ebert’s groundbreaking career, courageous battle against disease and uncommonly graceful death. Life Itself is playing theaters and also steams on Amazon instant, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

It’s not up to Clint Eastwood’s usual standard, but Jersey Boys, is mostly fun – and features another jaunty performance by Christopher Walken.

If you look for it in theaters, you can still find my top movie of the year so far, the transcendent Polish drama Ida.

The documentary Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger has an interesting subject, but the filmmaking is clunky. It does, however, make my list of Longest Movie Titles.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the Erroll Morris documentary The Unknown Known: Iraq War architect Donald Rumsfeld is apparently completely immune from self-doubt, but ultimately reveals more about himself than he would like. You can find The Unknown Known on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Set your DVRs for Turner Classic Movies on July 23 for Blow-up. Set in the Mod London of the mid-60s, a fashion photographer (David Hemmings) is living a fun but shallow life filled with sports cars, discos and and scoring with supermodels (think Jane Birkin, Sarah Miles and Verushka). Then he discovers that his random photograph of a landscape may contain a clue in a murder and meets a mystery woman (Vanessa Redgrave). After taking us into a vivid depiction of the Mod world, director Michelangelo Antonioni brilliantly turns the story into a suspenseful story of spiraling obsession. His L’Avventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse made Antonioni an icon of cinema, but Blow-up is his most accessible and enjoyable masterwork. There’s also a cameo performance by the Jeff Beck/Jimmy Page version of the Yardbirds and a quick sighting of Michael Palin in a nightclub.

BLOW-UP
BLOW-UP

In Secret: predictable, stilted and too many clothes

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in secret

In Secret is a period romance with the look and set-up of a Jane Austin movie, the plot of The Postman Always Rings Twice and the appeal of neither.  A poor orphan girl (Elizabeth Olsen) is dispatched to living with her wealthy relatives, who eventually force a marriage to her sickly cousin Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies).  His hunky friend (Oscar Isaacs from Inside Llewyn Davis) shows up and, before ya know it, he and the young bride are humping like bunnies.  And before you can say “Double Indemnity”, it occurs to them that they could be together forever with a lot of money if only the husband met his end.  This being the 19th Century, the poor cuckold hasn’t yet seen A Place in the Sun or Leave Her to Heaven, so he gets in the boat…

Unfortunately, In Secret telegraphs every point in the plot, so the audience is never surprised.  In Secret fails to deliver the edginess of a noir thriller, but it retains the worst of the Austin period movies – the stilted dialogue and all the boring stuff.

Olsen is a fine actress and she makes the most of the material.  Unfortunately, Jessica Lange, as the family matriarch, has some meltdowns that are embarrassing.

One more complaint: the two lovers may well be having a torrid affair, but one of my pet peeves is movie-sex-in-clothes.  I understand that women wore more layers of garments in the 19th Century, but – trust me – NOBODY has this much sex without undressing.

In Secret is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

Witching and Bitching: witty comment on mysogyny inside a rockin’ horror spoof

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WITCHING AND BITCHING
WITCHING AND BITCHING

The rockin’ Witching and Bitching (Las brujas de Zugarramurdi), by Spanish cult director Alex de la Iglesia, features a gang of robbers – one is dressed as a silver Jesus on the cross and another as a Green Army Guy – on the lam rocketing into an occult nightmare.  They run smack dab into a coven of witches – the full-out Macbeth-stir-the-cauldron kind of witches.  This film has the feel of an early Almodovar madcap comedy – if Almodovar were into goth horror. It’s all rapid-pulsed fun – and surprisingly smart.

The underlying theme is misogyny.  The male characters grouse about the stereotypical complaints about women – all while themselves exemplifying the worst of the stereotypical male flaws.  For example, one guy complains that his ex won’t consent to joint custody on the grounds of his irresponsibility – yet he brings their seven-year-old along on an armed robbery.  One underlying joke is that the men see women as bitches, but it’s the men who spend the whole movie bitching.  Another is that the men become trapped by REAL witches whose ball busting far exceeds the men’s most negative misogynistic fantasies.

These Spanish actors are wonderful, including the great Carmen Maura (Almodovar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Volver) and appropriately named hottie Carolina Bang. They’re very adept at the deadpan delivery of lines like this:

Driver: This village is damned. They hold witches sabbaths.
Boy: What’s that?
Robber: Like a kegger but medieval.

De la Iglesia maintains a deliciously frantic pace throughout.  The final orgiastic ritual goes on a long time but maintains audience engagement.

This was the first de la Iglesia movie that I’d seen, but I’m definitely going to check out more of his work.  Speaking of which, he nicely sets up a sequel.  But go ahead and watch Witching and Bitching now – streaming in Amazon Instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.

DVD/Stream of the Week: The Unknown Known

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Rumsfeld: unruffled by the Errol Morris documentary treatmentErrol Morris is a master documentarian (Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, Standard Operating Procedure), so he is the perfect guy to explore the personality and career – and, above all, the self-certainty – of Donald Rumsfeld, architect of the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. For most of the film, Rumsfeld himself is on-screen talking to Morris’ camera. Rumsfeld is apparently completely immune from self-doubt, but ultimately reveals more about himself than he would like.

The title of the picture comes from a Rumsfeld memo that describes a policy maker’s “unknown known” as that which you thought you know but it turns out that you didn’t. Of course, the classic “unknown known” is the certainty that the Iraq War would be justified and would turn out well.

In contrast, the “unknown unknown” is something that you don’t know that you don’t know and that Rumsfeld says that you have to imagine (such as the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks). Of course, the imagining of all kinds of such attacks drives the neo-conservative theory of preemptive war – to strike at those who can be IMAGINED to threaten you.

Rumsfeld is remarkably glib and very effective at selling his own version of reality. Morris takes this on early in the documentary by getting Rumsfeld to deny linking Saddam with Al Qaeda and then shows him doing exactly that in a pre-Iraq War news conference. Indeed, Morris himself is an effective off-screen participant throughout, sparring with Rumsfeld, with each guy winning his share of verbal tussles.

When Rumsfeld thinks that he’s won a point, he grins the infuriating grin in the image above. The one time he loses his smile is when Morris mentions a moment when Rumsfeld almost became Reagan’s Vice-President (and then future President), and Rumsfeld acknowledges that, yes, this was possible. The film is brilliantly edited, and Morris knows EXACTLY how long to extend a shot to catch Rumsfeld in moments of reflection.

The movie traces Rumsfeld’s remarkable life and career from his marriage and early start as a young Congressman thru his roles in the Nixon and Ford administrations with the end of Watergate, the fall of Saigon, his salesmanship for defense spending increases in the 1970s and his service as Reagan’s Middle East envoy. After a time in the wilderness during Bush I, of course, he came to his greatest power during Bush II. He gives a stirring first-person account of the 9/11 attack of the Pentagon, relating what the scene was like even before the first responders arrived. But the core of the film is about the Rumsfeld decisions about Iraq.

Unusual for a current events documentary, there’s also some top shelf music from Danny Elfman, Oscar nominated for Good Will Hunting and Milk.

You can find The Unknown Known on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Life Itself: an additional personal thought

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Yesterday I commented on the Roger Ebert documentary Life Itself.  Today I’m reflecting on Roger Ebert as the main reason that my love of cinema grew, as did my passion for sharing under appreciated and overlooked movies. In other words, I wouldn’t be writing this blog if not for Ebert.

My college History of Film class and the groundbreaking movies of the 70s (The Godfather, Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces) had awakened my interest in movies.  But Roger Ebert was the leading evangelist for independent and foreign cinema in the US. Without the Siskel & Ebert TV shows, I wouldn’t have known to seek out a French film like La cage aux folles or the debut features of indie directors John Sayles (Return of the Secaucus Seven) and Spike Lee (She’s Gotta Have It).  Heck, I just looked at my list of 50 Greatest Movies of All Time, and, without Ebert’s guidance, I never would have seen The Seven Up series, Blue/White/Red, Secrets and Lies, and, probably, Do the Right Thing.

Along the way (and from technology to technology), I made it a point to seek out Ebert’s movie recommendations.  The first show that I set up my massive 1982 VCR to record was Siskel & Ebert’s Sneak Previews. In the early 2000s, Roger Ebert’s was the first blog that I checked every day. The reason that I signed up for Twitter was to follow Roger Ebert.

So, thanks, Roger.  Thanks from The Movie Gourmet.

Life Itself: Roger Ebert’s truth

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Roger Ebert in LIFE ITSELF
Roger Ebert in LIFE ITSELF

Life Itself is the affectionate but not worshipful documentary on movie critic Roger Ebert’s groundbreaking career, courageous battle against disease and uncommonly graceful death.  Ebert popularized movie criticism and evangelized for the lesser known foreign films, documentaries and indies that I love.  In a 2002 cancer treatment, Ebert lost his lower jaw and, with it, his ability to talk or eat.  Astonishingly, this didn’t slow him down; he replaced his television show with a pioneering blog and Twitter account – and remained just as productive and influential as ever.

Filmmaker Steve James set out to make a movie of Ebert’s memoir of the same name, but – just as the project started – Ebert’s cancer returned.  So the story includes Ebert’s final illness and death.  Ebert retained the joy in his life far longer than could most in his situation – it’s a marvel and a model for the rest of us.

James is one of the deserving filmmakers whose art was boosted by Ebert, who picked James’ obscure documentary Hoop Dreams as the best film of the year. Ebert similarly helped directors from Spike Lee in the 1980s to Raman Bahrani in the 2000s. In Life Itself, Errol Morris says that he would have had no career without Ebert and Siskel, and Martin Scorsese says that they saved his career.

But the primary theme of Life Itself is truth.  In his work, Ebert demanded truth from himself and from the cinema that he reviewed.  In this film, Ebert insisted on showing the person he was at the end – with his infirmities on full display.  There are moments of frustration where he is not so lovable and stories about his personal flaws.  We are all packages of virtues and weaknesses; seeing Roger’s weaknesses just adds credibility to his strengths and accomplishments.

Life Itself is a Must See for fans of Roger Ebert and for people musing on their own mortality.  People with less of an interest in Ebert may find the movie a little too long.  But the human story of a life – challenged and then ending – is very strong.

Movies to See Right Now

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Matthew McConaughey in TRUE DETECTIVE
Matthew McConaughey in TRUE DETECTIVE

My top picks:

  • Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin hits every note perfectly. I love this little movie, and it may only be in theaters for another week, so see it while you can.
  • It’s not up to Clint Eastwood’s usual standard, but Jersey Boys, is mostly fun – and features another jaunty performance by Christopher Walken.
  • If you look for it in theaters, you can still find my top movie of the year so far, the transcendent Polish drama Ida.

Among other movies out now:

My DVD/Stream of the week – perfect for binge-viewing on the holiday weekend – is the eight one-hour episodes of HBO’s True Detective. It’s a dark tale of two mismatched detectives – each tormented by his own demons – obsessed by a whodunit in contemporary back bayou Lousiana. Wood Harrelson is very good, and Matthew McConaughey’s performance may have been the best on TV this year. True Detective is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from HBO GO.

Turner Classic Movies also offers a pretty appetizing movie smorgasbord this week, starting with The Big Steal (1949) on July 8  – Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer are chased all over Mexico by William Bendix.  Then on July 10, we have three great documentaries:

  • The 1968 Salesman – as good of a depiction of the sales life as Glengarry Glen Ross);
  • Harlan County, U.S.A, the 1979 Oscar-winner Filmmaker Barbara Kopple embedded herself among the striking coal miners and got amazing footage – including of herself threatened and shot at.  Also one of my 5 Great Hillbilly Movies.
  • The Times of Harvey Milk  – the Oscar winner from 1984.  The real story behind Milk with the original witnesses.  One of the best political movies ever.

Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger: mildly interesting

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WHITEY: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICAN V. JAMES J. BULGER
WHITEY: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICAN V. JAMES J. BULGER

The documentary Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger is about the trial of Whitey Bulger, the Irish mob boss who ruled the Boston crime scene for 25 years until he went on the lam in 1994 and evaded the FBI until 2011.  It turns out that he had been protected from arrest because he had been an informant to corrupt local FBI agents.  In his 2013 trial, he was convicted of 11 murders.

The Whitey Bulger saga has been most notable for the protection by the FBI, the long manhunt and his dramatic capture in Santa Monica.  This documentary focuses on the trial and Bulger’s odd defense.  Bulger was perfectly willing to admit to murderous crimes, but demanded a chance to deny that he had been an FBI snitch (which was totally irrelevant to whether he had committed the crimes that he was charged with).  Equally oddly, the prosecution was intent on proving Bulger’s snitchdom (although not needed for his conviction).

We hear from some of the people who Bulger victimized, and we get a sense of the lives that Bulger ruined, not just the cops and robbers aspect of his story.  We also hear Bulger himself on phone calls to his lawyers.

It’s an interesting story, but the filmmaking has look and feel of cable TV non-fiction shows, repeating over and over the same shots of black SUV’s hauling Whitey to trail and helicopter sweeps across Boston harbor, aerial shots of the Boston federal courthouse,  and the like.  On the whole, I didn’t find Whitey very compelling.

Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger is available streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

My favorite Paul Mazursky movie

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DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS
DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS

The director Paul Mazursky, a master of the social satire and the topical movie, has died.  He’s chiefly (and rightly) being remembered for his cinematic social landmarks: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, An Unmarried Woman and Harry and Tonto.

But my favorite Mazursky film is the 1986 comedy Down and Out in Beverly Hills. Mazursky directed and co-adapted the screenplay.   Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler play a rich and very unfulfilled couple.  Through circumstance, they invite a homeless guy (Nick Nolte) to stay in their Beverly Hills mansion.  This fish-out-of-water exposes the shallowness of their lifestyle, and he personally touches – and awakens – each member of the household.  And there are PLENTY of LOL moments.  It’s a 28-year-old movie that stands up very well today.  Watch for the fine actress Elizabeth Pena as Carmen the maid in her first highly visible role.  Down and Out in Beverly Hills is available streaming on Netflix Instant, iTunes, Amazon and Vudu.

My friend Steve also loves Mazursky’s most overlooked film, Moon Over Parador, in which Dreyfuss plays a down-on-his-luck actor who gets trapped into impersonating a dead Latin American dictator.  It’s very funny.  Moon Over Parador is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

Tidbit: Although his major contribution was as a director, Mazursky started out as an actor, amassing 76 screen credits through 2011.  In one of his first roles, he played a hard case teen in the troubled urban school saga Blackboard Jungle.

Paul Mazursky (left), some other guy and Vic Morrow in BLACKBOARD JUNGLE
Paul Mazursky (left), some other guy and Vic Morrow in BLACKBOARD JUNGLE