I’ve been forced to take another look at Spotlight, a movie that I really liked and admired, but in which I incorrectly found a flaw. I didn’t like Mark Ruffalo’s performance as the real life Boston Globe reporter Michael Rezendes. Ruffalo plays Rezendes as high-strung, intensely fidgety and perpetually restless. I wrote:
“Ruffalo has the most showy part, as a frenetic and volatile reporter, and his scenery-chewing put me off.
But then I played some poker. It turns out that several guys in my monthly poker game KNOW Michael Rezendes from his time with a Bay Area newspaper. They report that, in Spotlight, Ruffalo completely captured Rezendes’ characteristics and persona. So my initial criticism of Ruffalo’s performance for his nervous demeanor was as valid as criticizing Anthony Hopkins for playing Hitler as too evil.
As a result, I’m taking Spotlightup a notch higher in my own rankings, and I’m pretty sure it will end up on my Best of the Year list.
Just for Halloween, The Movie Gourmet is presenting a special SCARE WEEK. It’s all horror, all of the time. But even folks who normally avoid the horror genre will find someone to enjoy here. I don’t like Gore Horror, so there’s relatively little blood and guts in this international program. Here’s the lineup.
Monday: Borgman (2014 – Netherlands). This is horror for adults, without the gore and with lots of wit. Borgman is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
Tuesday: The Conjuring (2013 – US). Based on true events, The Conjuring scares without ANY gore. There are a few scary images, but The Conjuring relies on good, old-fashioned surprises and our discomfort with the occult to supply the fright. Women, in particular, who avoid this genre will relate to the performances of Vera Farmiga and Lili Taylor. The Conjuring is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.
Wednesday: Witching and Bitching(2014 – Spain). Witching and Bitching is a witty comment on misogyny inside a rockin’ horror spoof. Witching and Bitching is now streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.
Thursday: Peeping Tom (1960 – UK). This is the best-ever psycho serial killer movie, better than its contemporary Psycho. It’s so scary and unsettling that it ruined the career of its storied director Michael Powell. It’s undoubtedly the best movie in The Movie Gourmet’s Scare Week program. You can also find it on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
Friday: It Follows (2015 – US). The key to It Follows is its originality – without expensive f/x or disgusting gore – it’s likely the best horror movie of this year. It Follows is available on DVD from both Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
Also Friday: My Movies to See Right Now will include the ultra-campy The Tinglerwith Vincent Price.
Saturday: Freaks (1932 – UK) with real circus freaks. If you have teenagers jaded by today’s empty horror flicks, this will knock them for a loop. Only 64 minutes. Freaks is often televised around Halloween. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.
So enjoy – and don’t go alone into the darkened basement to investigate that strange sound!
Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Segel in THE END OF THE TOUR
[SPOILER ALERT: There spoilers in this post, but – as usual – NOT in my comments on the film.]
I saw The End of the Tourat the San Francisco International Film Festival. Director James Ponsoldt, Producer David Kanter, editor Darrin Navarro, Producer James Dahl and actor Jason Segel all spoke after the screening.
Ponsoldt said that he generally doesn’t like biopics, and didn’t want to make a film that exists “from the neck up”. He wanted to avoid a movie that was ” just two smart guys trying to top each other”.
Ponsoldt decribed The End of the Tour as an “unrequited platonic love story, from the perspective of Lipsky” The moment at the end when Lipsky receives a package from Wallace tells it all. Ponsoldt said that the Rolling Stone article was killed because it wasn’t juicy enough – and Lipsky felt relieved.
Ponsoldt got access to Lipsky’s tapes of the real conversations between the two, and Eisenberg and Segel got to listen to them. Segel noted that “popular culture was the great equalizer”, the common denominator between the two.
And how do you make a compelling movie about two guys talking? Ponsoldt adopts Waldo Salt’s guidance about screenwriting: articulate the character’s greatest human need and recognize whose story it is it? Ask if it’s a struggle for power. Focus on whose scene it is.
Navarro said the key is to allow the conversations to feel as real as possible, making it feel like you were in the room. He lets the “inconsistencies and inaccuracies of speech” let you know about where the characters are going.
Jason Segel sees playing David Foster Wallace as about Wallace’s feeling of “not enough”. Segel believes that Wallace’s Infinite Jest poses question “does anyone else feel this way?” and Segel says that sometimes he DOES feel that way.
Jason Segel said that the tapes constitute the “best conversation I’ve ever heard”. The End of the Tour is the best movie about conversation that I’ve seen.
The BBC has surveyed film critics and came up with BBC’s list of 100 Greatest American Films. I’m a sucker for lists, and this is a rare “Best List” that’s focused only on American Cinema. American films only constuitute about 50-65% of the movies on my list of Greatest Movies of All-Time and my yearly “Best”lists, and I relish this chance to delve into the canon of American films.
Naturally, I have opinions, having seen 96 of the 100 (all but The Band Wagon, Love Streams, Letter from an Unknown Woman and the 1959 Imitation of Life). (Confession – I had never heard of the short film Meshes of the Afternoon, but was able to view it on YouTube.) The list has gotten some notoriety because Gone With the Wind is only #97 (which is okay with me).
Bottom line: it’s a really good list. I especially appreciate the inclusion of some films that are truly great but tend not to get recognized on “great” lists: 25th Hour, In a Lonely Place, Deliverance, Groundhog Day, The Right Stuff, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, It’s a Wonderful Life and Pulp Fiction. I also was tickled by the inclusion (at #85) of George Romero’s 1968 seminal zombie classic Night of the Living Dead, which really was a groundbreaking film.
I do have some quibbles. I can’t fathom why anyone would think that Marnie and Johnny Guitar would rise to this list. Michael Cimino’s cinematic disaster Heaven’s Gate was reassessed by critics a couple of years ago; I rewatched it again, too, but I still found it laughably awful today. Just as indefensible as including Heaven’s Gate was the omission of Cimino’s REAL masterpiece The Deer Hunter.
Though I personally loathe Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, a critic can make a plausible argument for them. Still, the list is too reverential to Kubrick, Malick and David Lynch (both Mulholland Drive AND Blue Velvet?).
Documentaries are represented here by Killer of Sheep and Grey Gables, two groundbreaking films from the late 60s/early 70s that have been seen by everyone who’s taken a film course between 1980 and 2000. But I actually prefer Salesman from that period. And there are much better American documentaries that I would include instead: Harlan County USA, Hoop Dreams and the entire work of Errol Morris, especially Gates of Heaven and/or The Thin Blue Line.
Here’s another serious beef. The only animated film on the list is The Lion King, which I think is an excellent movie, but probably not in my top ten of American animated films. The BBC list excludes the Toy Story series and Fantasia (and all of the other Disney movies from Disney’s classic period) – CRIMINAL!
There’s also an “Eat Your Broccoli, It’s Good For You” aspect to the list – as if every movie important to study in film class is “great”. There are some hard slogs on this list. I wouldn’t recommend that most movie fans run out and see, as important as they are, Sunrise, Greed, the Cassavetes films, Killer of Sheep, Meshes of the Afternoon or The Magnificent Ambersons. (By all reports, Orson Welles made a masterpiece in The Magnificent Ambersons – but none of us has seen it because it was mangled by studio editors; frankly, I have really tried to embrace the available version of Ambersons, but it’s never rung my chimes.) Hey, Bonnie and Clyde is a really important movie, too, and it’s not on the BBC list.
There are some missed opportunities, too. Any list of great American cinema MUST include: All About Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, Fargo, Out of the Past, Laura and last year’s masterpiece, Boyhood. The BBC also whiffed on the entire work of Clint Eastwood; I would have included Million Dollar Baby, but Mystic River and Unforgiven are deserving, too.
Woody Allen gets two of his deserving movies on the list, but how about Manhattan and Hannah and Her Sisters, too? Similarly, Robert Altman’s recognition should also include The Player(and Gosford Park, if it counts as an “American” film).
I could also make a case for: The Producers, High Noon, All the President’s Men, American Graffiti, All That Jazz, Bull Durham, Cool Hand Luke, Five Easy Pieces, My Man Godfrey, Best in Show and Sideways.
Still, I always enjoy haggling over a list, and it’s great to focus once in a while on purely American cinema.
BOB LE FLAMBEUR, one of the movies that I once could only see on Netflix DVD
This month I did something that was once unthinkable for me – I cancelled my Netflix DVD service.
Let me explain why this seemed like a big deal. I embraced the early Netflix as the best source to satisfy my insatiable appetite for indie, foreign and documentary films – the kinds of quality cinema that chain video stores didn’t carry. Not only that, I evangelized for the service – encouraging everyone I knew to subscribe.
In the early years, I was a super Netflix customer, receiving and watching up to 22 DVDs each month. I used Netflix as a film school, as I studied the entire Francois Truffaut filmography and plumbed the depths of French and Japanese film noir. If one of those cool Sundance or Cannes festival hits didn’t make it to Bay Area theaters, I could catch it on Netflix DVD.
But, in 2007, Netflix began to move away from DVDs and toward streaming. The Netflix DVD collection suffered.
In 2008 I saw 130 movies on Netflix. In 2014, after I had gone down to 1-DVD-out-at-a-time, I watched only 13 Netflix DVDs.
In 2006, I saw 36 recent (2005 and 2006) movies on Netflix DVD. In 2014, I only saw 5 recent movies on Netflix.
Have I adapted to streaming? Yes, but I haven’t moved completely to Netflix streaming. I live for the indie/foreign/doc titles, and for those, Netflix streaming isn’t nearly as good for me as Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.
The 1955 French film noirBob le Flambeur is a great example. If you’re into either film noir or French cinema (and I love both), it’s a Must See – and it’s available on a typically superb Criterion Collection DVD. Just ten years ago, I could only rent Bob le Flambeur on Netflix DVD. Today, I can also stream it on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play. How about on Netflix Instant? Nope.
The way I see it, I’m not so much leaving Netflix as that Netflix left me.
BLOOD IN, BLOOD OUT – the last movie I watched on Netflix DVD
Turner Classic Movies has announced a CAN’T MISS summer film noir series. The “Summer of Darkness” will be hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir. Here’s the complete schedule.
TCM will be presenting 24 hours of film noir on each Friday in June and July. Every week, Eddie Muller himself will present four movies in prime time in TCM’s “Friday Night Spotlight.” Muller has penned this introductory article.
The Film Noir Foundation performs an invaluable mission: preserving and restoring classic film noir that would otherwise be lost to us and to posterity. And Muller and the Foundation host one of my absolute film festivals every winter in San Francisco – Noir City. Noir City has been expanding into other cities. Muller is a respected film historian, and his DVD commentaries are excellent. Here’s your chance to experience the Czar of Noir on television.
I’ll be calling out specific recommendations from the Summertime of Darkness in my regular Movies to See Right Now posts on Fridays, as well as writing some special posts on my favorite Overlooked Noir, including Woman on the Run and Elevator to the Gallows. Stay tuned.
Wow, we’ve had a great start to 2015 in the movies. I’ve already placed eight films on my running list of Best Movies of 2015 – So Far. Usually, I only have three or four at this time of year. Here’s my Best of 2015 to date:
Wild Tales (saw at Cinequest; DVD release in June)
Leviathan (available to stream from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and DirecTV)
Ex Machina (in theaters now)
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (saw at San Francisco International Film Festival; releases June 12)
The End of the Tour (saw at San Francisco International Film Festival; releases July 30)
’71 (saw at Cinequest; DVD release in July)
The Look of Silence (saw at San Francisco International Film Festival; limited release July 16)
The Grief of Others (saw at Camera Cinema Club; release undetermined)
I’m also mulling over adding to the list I’ll See You in My Dreams (in theaters now). And I know I’ll include Corn Island, an exquisite Georgian film that I saw at Cinequest, if it gets a US release. This is a GREAT and uncharacteristic start to the year in movies!
I’m already looking forward to some especially promising films that debuted at the Cannes International Film Festival. The universally acclaimed, heartbreaking biodoc of Amy Winehouse, Amy, releases July 3. Other Cannes films that will contend for my top ten list include The Lobster, Louder Than Bombs, Mia Madre, The Measure of a Man, Sicario (releases September 18), Youth, Green Room, The Assassin and Dheepan.
Plus there will be some superb documentaries that I don’t know about yet AND the usual stream of Oscar Bait movies released in the fall by the prestige arms of the Hollywood studios. We should have a pretty good handle on 2015’s pool of excellent cinema at the time of the Toronto and Telluride film festivals in September.
2015 has been an excellent year so far and has the potential to be a great year of cinema.
A pronounced overall success, Cinequest 2015 delivered hearty audience-pleasers from a varied and satisfying menu that featured some real gems from the indie, documentary and world cinema categories.
The fest kicked off with two huge popular successes: the feel-good BATKID BEGINSand the hilariously dark WILD TALES, and kept up the pace throughout the first weekend with an assortment of successful premieres.
Cinequest’s Director of Programming Mike Rabehl presented a fest especially rich in first features, including:
THE CENTER: An absorbing and topical American indie drama about the seductiveness of a cult; and especially promising debut from filmmaker Charlie Griak.
ANTOINE ET MARIE: A brilliantly constructed French-Canadian drama with two unforgettable characters (actually a second feature).
IN THE COMPANY OF WOMEN: Unexpectedly sweet, this starts out with a Boys Behaving Badly set-up and then morphs into a tribute to enduring love. A festival surprise hit.
Cinequest’s international film scout Charlie Cockey came through once again with the fest’s best film, the transcendent Georgian drama CORN ISLAND, which won the Jury Award for Best Narrative Drama.
ASPIE SEEKS LOVE
This 2015 fest was the strongest recent Cinequest for documentaries. The well-deserved Jury Award for best Documentary went to ASPIE SEEKS LOVE, the story of a surprisingly sympathetic subject. Other excellent docs included:
Not every film was a home run. Director John Boorman’s personal appearance was a hit, but his QUEEN AND COUNTRY was only moderately entertaining. And the eagerly awaited CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (Cesar-winning Kristen Stewart) and the Sundance award-winning SLOW WEST were clunkers.
Richard von Busack, the highly respected local film critic, picked Tuesday night’s L’ATALANTE:, rarely seen on the big screen. It’s the 1934 masterpiece of French writer-director Jean Vigo, who died at age 29 soon after its completion. A packed house agreed that this was one of Cinequest 2015’s top experiences.
The most underrated movie at Cinequest? Somehow, the biting darkly hilarious Mexican social satire LOS HAMSTERS is flying under the radar. I think this tale of a dysfunctional family is both very smart and very funny.
BARCO Escape showcased developing three-screen technology to envelope the audience in the cinematic experience. I have reservations about the BARCO experience, but the short film WITHDRAWAL was a definite winner.
Here’s all my Cinequest coverage – with several features and comments on over twenty-five movies – conveniently linked on one page.
Don’t miss the most overlooked nugget at Cinequest 2015. The Hamsters (Los Hamsters) is a delightfully dark social satire about a riotously dysfunctional Tijuana family. The dad, mom and two teenagers are going to such lengths to hide secrets from each other that they are completely oblivious to the drama in the others lives. In his first narrative feature, writer-director Gil Gonzalez has crafted a comedy that is completely character-driven, compressed into a very fun 71 minutes.
This family is in the upper middle class and the dad is desperately trying to stay there, the mom is denying any signs to the contrary and the kids are too spoiled and self-absorbed to notice any odd behavior by the parents. The acting is strong, especially by Angel Norzagaray, who plays the weary but driven, hangdog dad.
And here’s a bonus – Los Hamsters was filmed in Tijuana, and it’s great for a US audience to see this city as it is seen by its residents, not by its visitors.
Los Hamsters plays Cinequest today again on March 7 at Camera 12. See you around the fest. You can find my festival coverage, including both features and movie recommendations, on my Cinequest page. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest.
The final (scheduled) screenings of these gems are today:
CORN ISLAND: This exquisite and lyrical Georgian drama is a Must See for Cinephiles. If it doesn’t turn out to be the best contemporary art movie at Cinequest 2015, I’ll be shocked.
ASPIE SEEKS LOVE: A surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a guy looking for love like anyone else, but whose social skills are handicapped by Asberger’s.
ANTOINE ET MARIE: A brilliantly constructed French-Canadian drama with two unforgettable characters.
See you around the fest. You can find my festival coverage, including both features and movie recommendations, on my Cinequest page. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest.
