Movie Recommendations, Rants and Ruminations
movie gourmet Want to curl up with some DVDs for the long weekend? It’s a great chance to catch up with some of the year’s best. Here are three from
my Best Movies of 2011 – So Far: the wonderfully sweet Beginners, with Ewan MacGregor and Christopher Plummer, Incendies (the year’s best movie so far) and Errol Morris’ gutbustingly funny documentary Tabloid.
Here’s the trailer for Tabloid.
The Academy’s short list of candidates for the Best Documentary Oscar includes two films on my Best Movies of 2011 – So Far: Buck and Project Nim. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory from the HBO Paradise series also made the list. All fifteen films on the short list are here.
Promising films coming out in the last part of November include:
The Descendants with George Clooney, director Alexander Payne’s first film since Sideways.
Into the Abyss: Werner Herzog’s documentary exploring American capital punishment.
My Week with Marilyn: Reputedly dazzling performance by Michele Williams as Marilyn Monroe.
You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To. Here’s the trailer to My Week with Marilyn.
You’ll find director Clint Eastwood’s biopic of J. Edgar Hoover to be an interesting take on Hoover’s twisted psyche, if you can stay awake.
Leonardo DiCaprio is excellent playing Hoover over the course of 50 years. So is Armie Hammer (who played the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network) as Hoover’s long time companion Clyde Tolson. Judi Dench nails the role of Hoover’s nightmare mom.
Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (who won an Oscar for Milk) see Hoover as a man tortured by the expectations of his scary mother, which keep him from physically completing his lifelong love affair with Tolson. That’s an interesting take.
Yet the movie drags. When your protagonist is arresting celebrity gangsters, solving the Crime of the Century, persecuting left-wingers and blackmailing Presidents, your story should pop and sizzle.
The movie also suffers from distractingly bad make-up on the older Clyde Tolson and the Richard Nixon characters.
Come on, you’re yearning to see our irresistible stoners in a Christmas movie. There’s not much of a story here – just the two appealing characters and lots and lots of jokes. The light hearted but very raunchy humor targets recreational drugs, racial stereotypes, the 3D movie fad, and lots more.
Neil Patrick Harris returns in another hilarious cameo. And the reliably frightening Danny Trejo shows up as Harold’s menacing new father-in-law. See my Danny Trejo and his scary friends.
You don’t need to see this movie in 3D. I saw it in 2D and enjoyed the 3D jokes, which are apparent in 2D.
As we go deeper into autumn, we’re getting quite the menu of movie choices. Like Crazy is a romance, pure and not so simple.
PBS is featuring the top rate British spy drama Page Eight on this week’s Masterpiece Contemporary.
J. Edgar, Clint Eastwood’s interesting take on J. Edgar Hoover’s twisted psyche has some fine performances, but draaaaags. In contrast, Margin Call is a taut financial meltdown drama with superb performances by Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany and Stanley Tucci. Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In is a beautiful and disturbing thriller – Out There as only Almodovar can do. The Ides of March is a fine political drama with Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and George Clooney. Drive is a stylishly arty and ultraviolent action film, also with Ryan Gosling.
On the lighter side, 50/50 is an engaging cancer comedy with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. The raunchy comedy A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas is filled with lots of jokes and hilarious cameos by Neil Patrick Harris and Danny Trejo.
If you can still find it, don’t miss Take Shelter, Jeff Nichols’ brilliant tale of a psychotic breakdown with Oscar-worthy performances by Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain. One of the Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.
I haven’t yet seen the psychological thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD of the Week is the wonderfully sweet Beginners, with Ewan MacGregor and Christopher Plummer. Other recent DVD picks have been Incendies (the year’s best movie so far), Errol Morris’ gutbustingly funny documentary Tabloid, the Jenna Fischer dramedy A Little Help , the heartwarming documentary Buck, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy (1979).
If you’re looking for a pure romance, this long distance love story is unadulterated by the irony and gross-out humor so prevalent today. The girl and guy don’t meet cute. She has a crush and acts on it; he falls for her. They are separated by her unwise impulse to overstay her student visa. Now the romance is complicated – as real life relationships are. The ending is not contrived, and provokes questions about the pair’s future.
In tracing the initial falling-love-love, writer-director Drake Doremus rescues the film technique of montage from the schmaltzy chiches produced by lazier filmmakers.
The stars, Felicity Jones and AntonYelchin, are appealing, and I look forward to seeing them again. As expected, Jennifer Lawrence is very good in a supporting role.
This was a big hit with the audience at Sundance, and I expected that it might became a huge word-of-mouth hit. It won’t be that successful because, ultimately, it’s a good but not great movie. Still, it brings some much needed intelligence and authenticity to the genre.
PBS is featuring the excellent British spy drama Page Eight on this week’s Masterpiece Contemporary. It’s top rate.
How do the British do this so well? First, they cut out all of the explosions and chase scenes. Then they get a high-brow screenwriter – here it is David Hare (The Reader, The Hours, Damage) – to write a character driven whodunit with plenty of paranoid political intrigue. Finally, they deliver a first rate cast: Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon, Rachel Weisz, Judy Davis, Ralph Fiennes, Ewen Bremner (Spud in Trainspotting) and Felicity Jones (starring in this week’s Like Crazy).
Page Eight is definitely worth a Tivo. Look for it.
Ewan McGregor’s dad (Christopher Plummer) has just died, shortly after coming out of the closet. As if this weren’t enough to deal with, McGregor is a depressive anyway, with a rich history of sabotaging his relationships. But then he meets Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds)(and they meet cute).
This is a winning comedy – one of the year’s best movies. It’s smart, sweet and original. All of the performances are excellent, especially Plummer’s, which should garner him an Oscar nomination. All in all, Beginners is a notable achievement by director Mike Mills (Thumbsucker).
50/50 is an engaging cancer comedy with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. Margin Call is a taut financial meltdown drama with superb performances by Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany and Stanley Tucci. Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In is a beautiful and disturbing thriller – Out There as only Almodovar can do. The Ides of March is a fine political drama with Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and George Clooney. Drive is a stylishly arty and ultraviolent action film with Ryan Gosling.
If you can still find it, don’t miss Take Shelter, Jeff Nichols’ brilliant tale of a psychotic breakdown with Oscar-worthy performances by Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain. One of the Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.
I haven’t yet seen J. Edgar, Clint Eastwood’s biopic of J. Edgar Hoover, or the raunchy comedy A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas or the psychological thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD of the Week is Errol Morris’ gutbustingly funny documentary Tabloid. Other recent DVD picks have been Incendies (the year’s best movie so far), the romcom Crazy Stupid Love, the Jenna Fischer dramedy A Little Help , the heartwarming documentary Buck, the very original teen misfit movie Terri, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy (1979).