Movies – Page 118 – The Movie Gourmet

DVD/Stream of the Week: THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES – see the real Oscar winner before the Hollywood version

August 4, 2015 by movie gourmet

Ricardo Darin in THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES

The superb The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) won the 2010 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture. The Hollywood remake is coming out this fall, but you should first see the original. The Secret in Their Eyes is a police procedural set in Argentina with two breathtaking plot twists, original characters, a mature romance and one breathtaking, “how did they do it?” shot. The story centers on a murder in Argentina’s politically turbulent 1970s, but most of the story takes place twenty years later when a retired cop revisits the murder.

Veteran Argentine actor Ricardo Darin shines once again in a Joe Mantegna-type role. Darin leads an excellent cast, including Guillermo Francella, who brings alive the character of Darin’s drunk assistant. Darin’s detective is a solitary guy who retracts into his lair to bang away at a novel. He has feelings for his boss, a tough judge played by Soledad Villamil. Her career and her personal life can’t wait for the detective to get his own stuff together. All three characters throw themselves into solving the murder and, when stymied, are all scarred by the lack of resolution.

The movie is titled after one element that I hadn’t seen before in a crime movie. And then there are the major plot twists. The final one is a jaw-dropper.

Director Juan Jose Campanella received justifiable praise for the amazing shot of a police search in a filled and frenzied soccer stadium. It ranks as one of the great single shots of extremely long duration, right up there with the opening sequence of Touch of Evil, the kitchen entrance in Goodfellas and the battle scene in Children of Men. This shot alone makes watching the movie worthwhile.

Filmmaker Billy Ray has remade the Argentine film as Secret in Their Eyes, to be released October 23 starring Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts and Chiwetelu Ejiofor. Ray is no hack – he’s adapted the screenplays for Shattered Glass (which he also directed), Captain Phillips and the first The Hunger Games. The plot has been turned into a story about thee US federal law enforcement officials and the murder of one of their children; unfortunately, the trailer looks more like a plot-driven Law & Order, with none of the characters as singular or as memorable as in the Argentine original. We shall see.

The Secret in Their Eyes is high on my Best Movies of 2010. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

TRAINWRECK: some raunchy laughs and a surprisingly good LeBron James

August 3, 2015 by movie gourmet

Amy Schumer and LeBron James in TRAINWRECK

The comedienne (do we still use that word?) Amy Schumer stars in the bawdy comedy Trainwreck as a gal whose childhood trust and intimacy issues have resulted in a chaotic adult life of wall-banging and random guy-banging. She gives promiscuity a bad name. When she finally happens on the perfect guy (Bill Hader), will she sabotage this opportunity? Schumer herself wrote Trainwreck, which was directed by the current king of lowbrow comedy Judd Apatow.

Trainwreck has plenty of LOL moments, and even some shoulder-quaking laughs. But it’s two hours long, and that’s too long to sustain the basic jokes here. Trainwreck has jumped the shark before we get to an improbable celebrity intervention and the Madison Square Garden grand finale.

There are some glimpses of comedic genius here and there, including a brilliant take on the all-night male-female argument – the kind where the woman is amped up in a full-throttle rage and the man keeps fighting to stay awake. Both men and women in the audience were laughing knowingly.

Trainwreck does benefit from a superb cast. I always love to see Hader and Brie Larson (good but wasted here). Tilda Swinton bops in for a turn as a supremely confident and self-absorbed boss. Pro wrestler John Cena is very good as the first boyfriend, a bodybuilder with some denial issues of his own. And Daniel Radcliffe and Marisa Tomei are very funny in a profoundly bad movie-within-the-movie.

But the real revelation here is LeBron James,who is playing himself as best friend of Hader’s character, an orthopedic surgeon. LeBron is very, very good – just as good as the real actors. He has an excellent sense of timing and a lot of natural appeal. There aren’t that many movie roles for 6-foot 8-inch black men, but LeBron can definitely act. He’s consistently a joy to watch in Trainwreck.

Amy Schumer delivers a lot of raunchy laughs in Trainwreck, just not two hours worth. It’s definitely not a really good movie, but it will offer an evening of light laughs on home video.

THE GO-GO BOYS: THE INSIDE STORY OF CANNON FILMS: an improbable, wild ride

August 1, 2015 by movie gourmet

The two Israeli filmmakers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus had a very wild ride, and the documentary The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films is their improbable story. Golan began as a director of Israeli films and his cousin Globus (twelve years younger) became his partner; Golan was the idea man and hands-on producer and Globus secured the financing and handled the business deals. Together, they produced over 150 movies.

In the early 1960s, they were very successful in Israel, producing many Israeli hits, including the Oscar-nominated Sallah, which won the Golden Globe. Ambitious, they moved to Hollywood and set up shop with a Roger Cormanesque business model – make lots of cheap exploitation movies. They hurtled to the top of the action movie genre with movies like Death Wish II, American Ninja and The Delta Force. Along the way, they introduced us to movie ninjas, Claude Van Dam and Chuck Norris. The Cannon Group’s signature was the simple revenge story, adorned by naked breasts and vivid explosions. Soon the Cannon Group was making more movies each year than all the Hollywood major studios combined.

What happened? As Icarus, the ever-aspirational Golan began to seek more mainstream credibility by producing art films and big-budget Hollywood fare. Cannon paid Sylvester Stallone twice his usual fee to star in their arm wrestling movie Over the Top. Generally, when a company abandons its tried and true business model…Well, you can guess what happened.

I saw The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. It doesn’t yet have an US theatrical release date, but I’ll try to let you all know when it’s in theaters or available on DVD or streaming. Be sure to keep watching The Go-Go Boys right through the ending credits.

THE END OF THE TOUR: smartest road trip movie ever

July 30, 2015 by movie gourmet

Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Segel in THE END OF THE TOUR

The brilliantly witty and insightful road trip movie The End of the Tour isn’t great because of what happens on the road – it’s great because we drill into two fascinating characters and see how their relationship evolves (or doesn’t evolve). Leads Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg are both Oscar-worthy, and The End of the Tour is on my Best Movies of 2015 – So Far.

In 1996, David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) is a novelist of modest success, having deeply embraced the New York City writer’s scene, and is supporting himself as a journalist for Rolling Stone Magazine. Suddenly- and out of nowhere – David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) explodes on the scene with his masterpiece Infinite Jest and is immediately recognized as a literary genius. Lipsky is confounded by Wallace’s meteoric rise – and jealous and resentful, too.

Lipsky arranges to accompany Wallace on the last few stops of his book tour and record their conversations, so Lipsky can write a profile of Wallace for Rolling Stone. It’s clear that Lipsky plans to write a sensationalistic celebrity take down – and Wallace is so odd that there’s plenty of ammunition.

All of this REALLY HAPPENED. Years later, after Wallace’s death, Lipsky wrote a memoir of the encounters, on which the movie is based. Eisenberg and Segel got to listen to the tapes of the actual conversations between the two.

The End of the Tour is a battle of wits between two very smart but contrasting guys. Wallace is new to fame, very personally awkward, not at all confident and gloriously goofy; he seems to be an innocent, but he’s VERY smart and not entirely naive. Lipsky is all Chip On the Shoulder as he probes for Wallace’s weaknesses. As different as they are, the two are competitive and snap back and forth, verbally jousting for the entire trip. At one point, Lipsky accuses Wallace of pretending to be not as smart as he is as a “social strategy”.

As funny as is their repartee, it becomes clear that Wallace is inwardly troubled, and clinging to functionality by his fingernails. Wallace gets more confident and begins to trust Lipsky, but Lipsky is still predatory, glimpsing into Wallace’s medicine cabinet and chatting up an old flame of Wallace’s. Still, the intimacy of a road trip forces them to share experiences, which COULD become the basis for a bond.

They even share moments of friendship. But will they become friends? Is there real reciprocity between them?

Who has the power here? Wallace has the power of celebrity, and dominates Lipsky’s chosen vocation. Lipsky has the power to destroy and humiliate Wallace. Ultimately, as we see in the movie, the person who NEEDS the most will cede the power in the relationship.

Director James Ponsoldt has succeeded in making a brilliantly entertaining drama about two smart guys talking. There’s never a slow moment. We’re constantly wondering what is gonna happen. Ponsoldt has already made two movies that I love – Smashed and The Spectacular Now. No one else has made conversation so compelling since the My Dinner with Andre, and The End of the Tour is much more accessible and fun than that 80s art house hit.

Ponsoldt fills the movie with sublime moments. In one scene, we see the two watching a movie with two female companions. In the darkened theater, two characters are focused on the screen and two are gazing at others. It’s a shot of a couple of seconds, nothing happens, and there’s no dialogue – but the moment is almost a short story in and of itself.

For a true-life drama, The End of the Tour is very funny. The humor stems from situations (the two rhapsodize on Alanis Morisette, of all people), behavior (Wallace’s peculiarities and Lipsky’s limitless snoopiness) and the very witty dialogue. There’s a classic moment when Lipsky has Wallace talk on the phone to Lipsky’s wife (Anna Chlumsky) and is very uncomfortable with the results.

What is the funniest line in the movie? Who wins the battle of wits? And what’s their relationship at the end? Those questions propel the audience along the smartest road trip movie ever – The End of the Tour.

THE LOOK OF SILENCE: chilling and powerful

July 30, 2015 by movie gourmet

In the powerful and chilling The Look of Silence, documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer explores the aftermath of genocide in a society that has never experienced a truth and reconciliation process. This is Oppenheimer’s second masterpiece on the Indonesian genocide of 1965-66 in which regime-sponsored death squads executed over one million suspected political opponents. Today, the victims’ families live among the murderers.

The Look of Silence centers on 44-year-old optometrist Adi, as he investigates the murder of Ramli, the older brother he never knew. Earlier, Oppenheimer had filmed Ramli’s killers as they describe and act out Ramli’s savage torture, mutilation and murder. They are unrepentant and even nostalgic about their crimes. Their matter-of-fact recollections are sickening. We see Adi watching this video, trying to contain his rage and disgust. Later, Adi – in the guise of fitting them for new glasses – is able to confront those responsible. He faces the actual machete-wielding killers, the leader of the village death squad, the higher-up who ordered the killings and even one of his own relatives.

What makes this bearable to watch (and even more affecting) is meeting Adi’s family: his earthy 80-something mother, his frail and batty 103-year-old father, his giggly 7-year old daughter and his 10-year-old son. There’s plenty of humor in this warm family. But in one scene, the son receives a ridiculously twisted propaganda version of the genocide in public school.

The “Silence” in The Look of Silence is reinforced by the spare soundtrack. We often hear only “crickets” (frogs, actually).

The Look of Silence is the companion to Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing, which made my list of Best Movies of 2013. In The Act of Killing, Oppenheimer got the unapologetic killers to re-enact their atrocities for the camera – even relishing their deeds. The Act of Killing contains some of the most bizarre moments in any documentary EVER, including a cross-dressing mass murderer and a staged Bollywood-like musical number of Born Free, complete with dancing-girls in front of a waterfall, in which the garotted dead reappear to thank the killers for sending them on to the afterlife. The Act of Killing is more of a jaw-dropper. The Look of Silence – because it is more personal, is more powerful.

The Look of Silence stands alone – you can fully appreciate it without having seen The Act of Killing. But what I wrote about The Act of Killing is true for both films: “hypnotically compelling – you can’t believe what’s on the screen, can’t believe that you’re still watching it and can’t stop watching”.

I saw The Look of Silence at the San Francisco International Film Festival before its limited theatrical release slated for July 17. It’s one of the best films of 2015.

AN HONEST LIAR: deception and the deceived

July 29, 2015 by movie gourmet

The enjoyable documentary An Honest Liar tells the at times surprising story of magician James Randi – “The Amazing Randi”. A staple of television talk shows for decades, Randi relished exposing and debunking fakirs who claimed that mere trickery constituted some supernatural power.

Randi became famous for hounding celebrity spoon-bender Uri Geller (and good sport Geller shows up in the movie). I didn’t know that magic fan Johnny Carson had reached out to Randi before Geller’s appearance on The Tonight Show with satisfying results.

The Can’t Miss segment of this film is Randi’s elaborate unmasking of Peter Popov, the Christian “faith healer” – it’s priceless.

Finally, An Honest Liar takes a VERY unexpected turn when there turns out to be a deception at the heart of Randi’s own personal life. This makes the movie’s ending especially heartfelt.

An Honest Liar is available streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

AMY: emotionally affecting and thought-provoking

July 24, 2015 by movie gourmet

Amy, documentarian Asif Kapadia’s innovative biopic of singer-songwriter is one of the most heart-felt and engaging movies of the year.

In a brilliant directorial choice, Amy opens with a call phone video of a birthday party. It’s a typically rowdy bunch of 14 year-old girls, and, when they sing “Happy Birthday”, the song is taken over and finished spectacularly by one of the girls, who turns out to be the young Amy Winehouse. It shows us a regular girl in a moment of unaffected joy and friendship, but a girl with monstrous talent.

In fact ALL we see in Amy is footage of Amy. Her family and friends were devoted to home movies and cell phone video, resulting in a massive trove of candid video of Amy Winehouse and an especially rich palette for Kapadia.

We have a ringside seat for Amy’s artistic rise and her demise, fueled by bulimia and substance addiction. In a tragically startling sequence, her eyes signal the moment when her abuse of alcohol and pot gave way to crack and heroin.

We also see when she becomes the object of tabloid obsession. It’s hard enough for an addict to get clean, but it’s nigh impossible while being when harassed by the merciless paparazzi.

Amy makes us think about using a celebrity’s disease as a source of amusement – mocking the behaviorally unhealthy for our sport. Some people act like jerks because they are jerks – others because they are sick. Winehouse was cruelly painted as a brat, but she was really suffering through a spiral of despair.

The Amy Winehouse story is a tragic one, but Amy is very watchable because Amy herself was very funny and sharply witty. As maddening as it was for those who shared her journey, it was also fun, from all reports. Everyone who watches Amy will like Amy, making her fate all the more tragic.

ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS: his alibi for one murder is another murder

July 23, 2015July 23, 2015 by movie gourmet

Jeanne Moreau in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

Tomorrow night, July 24, Turner Classic Movies presents the groundbreaking French noir Elevator to the Gallows. It’s one of my Overlooked Noir.

Elevator to the Gallows (1958) is such a groundbreaking film, you can argue that it’s the first of the neo-noir. It’s the debut of director Louis Malle, shot when he was only 24 years old. It’s difficult now to appreciate the originality of Elevator the Gallows; but in 1958, no one had seen a film with a Miles Davis soundtrack or one where the two romantic leads were never on-screen together.

A thriller that still stands up today, Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l’échafaud) is about the perfect crime that goes awry. The French war hero Julien (Marcel Ronet), is now working as an executive for a military supplier. He’s having an affair with Florence (Jeanne Moreau), whose husband owns the firm. Seeking to possess both his lover and his company, Julien implements an elaborately detailed plan to get away with his boss’ murder. Everything goes perfectly until he makes one oversight; then the dominoes begin to fall, and soon he is trapped in a very vulnerable situation. He is incommunicado, and he remains ignorant of the related events that transpire outside.

Almost every character makes false assumptions about what is going on. Florence mistakenly believes that Julien has run off with a young trollop. A young punk and his peppy girlfriend incorrectly assume that they are on the verge of arrest. The police pin a murder on Julien that he didn’t commit – but his alibi is the murder that he DID commit. And there’s a great scene where Julien is striding confidently into a busy cafe, unaware that he has become the most recognizable fugitive in France.

It’s a page-turner of a plot, and the acting is superb, but Malle’s choices make this film. When Florence thinks that she’s been dumped, she walks through Paris after dark. Jeanne Moreau doesn’t have any lines (although her interior thoughts are spoken in voice-over). Instead, she embodies sadness and shock through her eyes and her carriage – the effect is heartbreaking. Mile Davis’ trumpet reinforces the sadness of her midnight stroll.

The Miles Davis score is brilliant, but Malle often makes effective use of near silence, too. And he reinforces the kids’ shallowness and over-dramatizing with strings. Every audio choice is perfect.

There’s vivid verisimilitude in a Paris police station at 5 am – all grittiness with drunks sobering up, and the holding cage filled with thieves and prostitutes. The contrast in how the police treat the wealthy and influential is stark and realistic.

The young couple is completely believable. The joyride is absolutely what these characters would do. The young guy is sullen and the girl is hooked on his moodiness. And, of course, with the self-absorption of youth, they over-dramatize their own situation.

Every scene in Elevator to the Gallows is strong, but the scenes with Moreau pop off the screen. This was her star-making role, and perhaps the definitive Jeanne Moreau role (yes – even more than Jules et Jim).

Marcel Ronet is also excellent as Julien. Julien is a guy with serious skills, and the confidence and poise to use them. When Julien is trapped in the situation that would cause most of us to freak out, he immediately starts working on an Apollo 13-like solution without any hint of panic. The harrowing scenes of Julien’s entrapment and escape fit alongside the mot suspenseful moments in the great French crime thrillers Rififi (1955) and Le trou (1960). The means of his eventual escape is one of the most ironic moments in cinema.

Eventually we see the marvelous Lino Ventura as the detective captain. A former European wrestling champion, Ventura had debuted five years earlier in the great Touchez pas au grisbi and had followed that with several gangster/cop supporting roles. Immediately after Elevator to the Gallows, Ventura started getting lead roles. Ventura had an almost unique combination of charm, wit and hulking physicality; he’s one of the few actors I can envision playing Tony Soprano.

The high contrast black and white photography, the voiceovers and the city at night all scream “noir”. So does the amorality of the main characters seeking to get what they want by murder, the ironies of the miscommunications and mistaken assumptions and the profoundly cynical ending.

But the look and sound of Elevator to the Gallows is entirely new. The experience of viewing Elevator to the Gallows seems closer to the American indie triumphs of the early 1970s (The Godfather, Chinatown, The Conversation) than to the likes of The Postman Always Rings Twice or The Big Sleep. Elevator to the Gallows remains a starkly modern film that is still as fresh today as in 1958.

DVD of the Week: OMAGH – after an atrocity, a search for justice

July 21, 2015 by movie gourmet

The compelling and affecting true-life drama Omagh (2004) begins with the infamous 1999 car bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland. But Omagh is more about the aftermath – the pain and grief of the survivors as they strive for justice and accountability.

The bombing, by a nationalist splinter group, killed 29 on the small town’s market street. It had been just four months since the Good Friday Accord, and both mainstream republicans and unionists were getting used to the day-to-day peace of a post-Troubles era. The bombing was a jarring interruption of that peace, and many felt even more betrayed because the “warning” actually worked to draw more victims toward the lethal blast.

Omagh vividly depicts the carnage and chaos after the blast. The desperate search for loved ones amid the confusion is profoundly moving. We experience Omagh through the perspective of Michael Gallagher, father of one of the victims. He takes the helm of the survivors group as they seek answers – and run into a series of stone walls and cover-ups. The soft-spoken Gallagher may be the least histrionic leader in human history, and he is able to lead because the other survivors rely on his decency, good sense and quiet courage. We also see that – as in real life – people grieve at different paces, and the obsession of some in the family doesn’t work for others.

Michael Gallagher is played by the veteran actor Gerard McSorley (In the Name of the Father, Widow’s Peak, Braveheart, The Boxer, Bloody Sunday). It is McSorley’s powerful and profoundly sad performance that elevates Omagh.

Director Pete Travis employs a jiggly camera and a spare soundtrack to focus our attention on the characters with intimacy and immediacy. When we hear the door closed after the last guest leaves a funeral, the sound of the latch communicates more finality than would any dialogue.

Omagh is high on my list of Best Movies About the Troubles. It is available on DVD from Netflix.

WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE?: an already turbulent life disrupted

July 20, 2015 by movie gourmet

The biodoc What Happened, Miss Simone? opens with the middle-aged singer Nina Simone coming on-stage for a come-back concert in the mid-1970s. We see her regarding the audience – and we ask, is she a temperamental artist or is she high or is she unhinged?

Nina Simone led a remarkable life, presented in this documentary by filmmaker Liz Garbus. Growing up as a poor girl in the segregated South, Simone’s talent as a classical pianist led her to Julliard. A racial glass ceiling in classical music, redirected her to earning a living singing blues in nightclubs. Her gifts as a vocalist and as a songwriter earned her a recording deal. Then she became consumed by militant political activism to the expense of her career.

That’s a pretty interesting arc, but the core of What Happened, Miss Simone? is that she was bipolar and long undiagnosed and untreated. The illness made what was already a turbulent life more erratic and self-destructive. Garbus has the benefit of testimony from Simone’s intimates – her daughter, husband, musical director, managers and friends. We even see Simone’s own thoughts through her often heartbreaking journal entries.

What Happened, Miss Simone? is available to stream on Netflix Instant.