Filmmaker Harold Ramis has died at age 69. Most of us remember Ramis from his performance in Ghostbusters, a movie that he also wrote. But he also wrote one of the funniest movies ever – and one of my all-time favorites – Animal House. He also wrote and directed Groundhog Day, a comedy masterpiece that will last forever.
There’s a tendency to inflate the achievements in dramatic filmmaking. After all, that’s where the Important Pictures come from. But comedy is very difficult to do well, and a good comedy can be every bit as artistic and intelligent as a serious picture. Now I wouldn’t put Ramis quite up there with Billy Wilder, Jacques Tati and Preston Sturges. Nevertheless, how many filmmakers have written anything – dramas or comedies – as good as Animal House and Groundhog Day?
The Palestinian Omaris a heartbreaking romance inside a tense thriller; Omar is nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. The Chilean drama Gloria is about an especially resilient 58-year-old woman. Harder to find, Stranger by the Lake is an effective French thriller with LOTS of explicit gay sex.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is the flawless true story thriller Captain Phillips, my choice as the best Hollywood movie of the year. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
In theaters, you can still find Oscar nominees Nebraska, American Hustle and Her, which all made my Best Movies of 2013. I also strongly recommend Best Picture nominees The Wolf of Wall Street and Philomena. Dallas Buyers Club, with its splendid performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, is formulaic but still a pretty good watch. The Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts is also a good bet.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is another fine thriller from that franchise, with another amazing performance by Jennifer Lawrence. I also like the Mumblecore romance Drinking Buddies, now available on VOD.
We’re still enjoying Turner Classic Movies magical month of Oscar-nominated films – 31 Days of Oscar. This week I recommend the brilliant 1971 drama The Last Picture Show and the classic Bogart/Bacall thriller Key Largo.
The gripping and thought-provoking Palestinian drama Omar, which opens tomorrow, is a fundamentally a love story that drives an action thriller. It seems to be about a college-age Palestinian guy named Omar and his two buddies. They live in a West Bank Arab community that is repressed by apparently omniscient and omnipotent Israeli security forces. It’s an environment where one bad choice can spiral one’s life completely out of control – and one that is toxic with betrayals.
There are thrills aplenty when the Israeli security teams are chasing our hero. We’ve never seen more riveting chase scenes through the alleys and rooftops of West Bank cities. Shot in Nazareth and Nablus, Omar gives us a novel look at these Arab communities and the Israeli security wall.
But it is basically a love story, albeit a heartbreaking one, because most of the plot is motivated by Omar’s love for his sweetheart Nadia. The first action by the three young guys stems from politics, testosterone and the foolhardiness of youth. But everything that happens after is because of Omar’s yearning for Nadia. We also see the chaste Palestinian courtship rituals; the kids are burning with passion for each other as they exchange letters and discreet glances.
Omar is not for everyone. For one thing, it doesn’t try to be even-handed about the Israeli Occupation – everything is seen through the Palestinian lens. It’s realistic – one Israeli character in particular is humanized and it’s easy for the audience to disapprove of the boneheaded behavior by the young Palestinians. But if you aren’t open to that Palestinian perspective, you’re not going to like this movie. And the ending is unusually jarring – my fellow audience members sat in shocked silence for a few seconds.
Omar won a jury prize at Cannes and is nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Oscar.
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Here’s my pick for 2013’s best Hollywood movie. InCaptain Phillips, Tom Hanks stars as the real-life ship captain hijacked by Somali pirates and rescued by American commandos in 2009. The real-life Phillips survived his terrifying ordeal with guts and smarts, and Hanks and director Paul Greengrass bring the story alive. Greengrass is an old hand at movies with urgency and tension: Bloody Sunday, two movies in the Bourne franchise and an Oscar nomination for United 93.
Another key is that Captain Phillips was shot on the high seas on an actual container ship, an actual lifeboat and a skiff just like the real pirates use. As a result, it’s amazingly real when the pirates clamber up the side of the massive ship while both vessels roll in the waves and when the seamen and pirates play hide-and-go-seek below decks in the dark.
That being said, the movie wouldn’t work without Tom Hanks, who is unsurpassed at playing an Everyman thrust into a perilous situation. Hanks is our generation’s Jimmy Stewart, and I can see Hanks playing Stewart’s roles in Rear Window, Vertigo, Anatomy of a Murder and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Most of the pirates are standard types, but the lead pirate is a much more textured character, superbly played by Barkad Abdi, hitherto a Somali-American limo driver from Minneapolis. The depth in Abdi’s performance is also essential to the film’s success. The cast also features character actor Michael Chernus, so good in Higher Ground and Men in Black 3, as the #2 on the ship.
All in all, Captain Phillips is a flawless true story thriller. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
This week, I’m featuring three movies that are flying under the radar. The Chilean drama Gloria is about an especially resilient 58-year-old woman. Harder to find, Stranger by the Lake is an effective French thriller with LOTS of explicit gay sex.
And my DVD/Stream of the Week is the compelling and affecting foster care drama Short Term 12. This movie made both my Best Movies of 2013 and my Most Overlooked Movies of 2013, with its star making performance by Brie Larson. Short Term 12 is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, GooglePlay and Xbox Video.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is another fine thriller from that franchise, with another amazing performance by Jennifer Lawrence. I also like the Mumblecore romance Drinking Buddies, now available on VOD.
I saw this year’s Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts and was disappointed. There was nothing to match recent gems like The God of Love or Curfew. I liked the British short about a particularly bored and malevolent God masquerading as a convict, but that 13 minutes didn’t justify the two hours that I had invested. A 30-minute Spanish film about child soldiers in Africa was to excruciatingly brutal to justify the trite attempt at a redemptive payoff. (I haven’t seen the Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts, but I have heard good things about that program.)
Turner Classic Movies has launched its wonderful annual 31 Days of Oscar – filling the entire month with Oscar-nominated movies. This week I recommend the romantic French musicalThe Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) which is notable for three things: 1) the actors sing all of the dialogue; 2) the breakout performance by then 20-year-old Catherine Deneuve; and 3) an epilogue scene at a gas station – one of the great weepers in cinema history. I also recommend two great performances by Peter O’Toole screening on February 20, as a lethally driven movie director in The Stunt Man(1980) and as a gloriously dipsomaniacal screen icon in the comedy My Favorite Year (1982).
Writer-director Alain Giraudie uses the milieu of gay cruising to set his thriller, Stranger by the Lake (L’inconnu du lac), launched with great notoriety at Cannes. A young man frequents a secluded beach to hook up with other gays. He spots a dreamy newcomer, but he just can’t seem to meet the new guy. After a few frustrating days, he witnesses a murder by drowning – and the murderer is the guy that he’s hot for. The next day, the murderer comes on to him and our hero can’t resist…until his new boy toy suggests that they go for a swim.
Stranger by the Lake is notorious because of lots of genitals-in-your-face male nudity and LOTS of explicit gay sex acts. At least some of the sex is actual (not just simulated) sex. I saw Stranger by the Lake in an audience that must have been 80% gay male, and there were lots of knowing chuckles at the cruising behaviors (along with gasps at an episode of decidedly unsafe sex).
Stranger by the Lake does work as a thriller, and a limited US release is underway; in the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s currently playing in just two theaters – the Clay and the Shattuck. It is unrated, but would certainly qualify for a NC-17.
Here’s number 7 on my Best Movies of 2013. The compelling and affecting Short Term 12 is set in a foster care facility unit named Short Term 12; since the kids can live there for years, it seems pretty long-term to me. These are kids who have suffered abuse and neglect and who act out with disruptive and dangerous behaviors. Runaways, assaults and suicide attempts are commonplace, and some of the kids thrive on creating drama.
The gifted lead counselor on the unit is Grace (Brie Larson), who isn’t much older than the kids. She’s kind of a Troubled Kid Whisperer who, in each impossible situation, knows exactly what to do to defuse or comfort or protect. But while she is in total command of her volatile and fragile charges, she is profoundly troubled herself. She and her boyfriend Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), who also works on the unit, are themselves survivors and former foster youth. Mason seems to have resolved his issues, but Grace’s demons lurk just under her skin.
In Short Term 12’s taut 96 minutes, we watch Grace navigate through crisis after crisis until she must face her own. We share many of the most powerful moments in 2013 cinema, particularly one kid’s unexpectedly painful insightful and sensitive rap, another kid’s authoring a wrenching children’s story and Grace’s own outburst of ferocity to protect a kid from a parent.
Brie Larson’s performance as Grace is being widely and justifiably described as star-making, and I think she deserves an Oscar nomination. I noticed her performances in much smaller roles in Rampart and The Spectacular Now , and I’m really looking forward to the launch of a major career. Think Jennifer Lawrence.
John Gallagher Jr. must be a superb actor, because nobody in real life can be as appealing and sympathetic as his characters in Margaret, Newsroom and Short Term 12. I’ll watch any movie with Gallagher in it, and he’s almost good enough to help me stomach Newsroom.
In his debut feature, writer-director Destin Cretton has hit a home run with one of the year’s best dramas. Some might find the hopeful ending too pat, but I say So What – I have met many former foster youth who have transcended horrific childhoods to become exemplary adults.
Short Term 12 is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, GooglePlay and Xbox Video.
In the Chilean gem Gloria, we meet a 58-year-old woman who has been divorced for ten years. This ain’t An Unmarried Woman where a woman must learn to adapt and become independent. She supports herself with an office job, and she gets along with her adult kids, but they have their own lives. She doesn’t stay cooped up in her apartment, she tries out yoga and laugh therapy and cruises a certain Santiago disco – a meat market for the over 50 set. She already is plenty independent, and she knows what she wants – some adult companionship and a little nookie.
On one outing to the disco, she meets a distinguished and sweet-tempered gentleman who is a great dancer and who absolutely adores her. Of course, he also has some flaws, to be discovered later. Gloria eagerly embraces the good things that happen to her, and when there are bumps in her road, she refuses to wilt.
Gloria was a big hit at last year’s Berlin Film Festival. Part of Gloria’s appeal to some audiences is, no doubt, an unusual amount of nudity and sex for a film about people in their late 50s and 60s. But I think the best part about Gloria is the resiliency of the main character – she takes her lumps for sure but refuses to withdraw into victimhood.
Paulina Garcia is extraordinarily good as Gloria – her performance carries the movie. She has the ability to suffer an indignity without becoming pathetic. Sergio Hernandez is very, very good as Gloria’s new flame, as is Alejandro Goic as her ex. Gloria is a crowd pleaser.
Not nominated, but pretty damn good, is The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, another fine thriller from that franchise, with another amazing performance by Jennifer Lawrence. I also admire the compelling French drama The Past. And I also like the Mumblecore romance Drinking Buddies, now available on VOD.
I haven’t yet seen the Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts, but I’m gonna because they’re always good.
I’m not a fan of Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks (sentimental and predictable) or the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (about an unlovable loser – and I didn’t love the movie, either).
My DVD/Stream of the Week features Philip Seymour Hoffman in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Hulu.
Turner Classic Movies has launched its wonderful annual 31 Days of Oscar – filling the entire month with Oscar-nominated movies. This week I recommend two wickedly funny Preston Sturges films – The Great McGinty (inside workings of a corrupt political machine) on February 10 and The Lady Eve (con artist Barbara Stanwyck tries to land the clueless but wealthy Henry Fonda) on February 11. TCM is also cablecasting the Howard Hawks screwball comedy Ball of Fire, with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, on February 11.
