Weekly Movie Recommendations

Movies to See Right Now

by
Al Pacino and Joe Pesci in THE IRISHMAN

Happy Holidays! Here is my year-end Top Ten list: Best Movies of 2019.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is playing in just a couple Bay Area theaters and is now streaming on Netflix.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s both in theaters and streaming on Netflix.
  • Rian Johnson’s Knives Out turns a drawing room murder mystery into awickedly funny send-up of totally unjustified entitlement.
  • Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter.
  • In his Pain and Glory, master filmmaker Pedro Almodovar invites us into the most personal aspects of his own life, illuminated by Antonio Banderas’ career-topping performance.

ON VIDEO

Tao Zhao in ASH IS PUREST WHITE

My Streams of the Week are the six Best Movies of 2019 – So Far that are already available to stream. This week, I’m featuring Amazing Grace : pure, sanctified Aretha.  Amazing Grace can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play; the DVD can be rented from Redbox.

Plus I just wrote about Ash Is Purest White: a survivor’s journey. Actress Tao Zhao’s tour de force performance powers this portrait of an unforgettable woman surviving betrayal, the crime world and the tidal waves of change in modern China, all embedded in writer-director Zhangke Jia’s gangster neo-noir. It’s also on my Top Ten and can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

Once again, Turner Classic Movies is giving us a wonderful New Year’s Eve present – an all-day Thin Man marathon. William Powell and Myrna Loy are cinema’s favorite movie couple for a reason – just settle in and watch Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man and its sequels do what they do best – banter, canoodle, solve crimes and, of course, tipple.

Myrna Loy and William Powell as Nora and Nick Charles during the Holidays

Streams of the Week: 2019’s best movies

by
Aretha Franklin in AMAZING GRACE

Six of my Best Movies of 2019 – So Far are already available to stream. This week, I’m featuring Amazing Grace : pure, sanctified Aretha.  This Aretha Franklin concert filmis, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience. Amazing Grace can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play; the DVD can be rented from Redbox.

Also available to stream:

  • Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood: masterpiece. Quentin Tarantino’s exquisite filmmaking skills blend together verisimilitude of time and place, vivid performances and a rock ’em, sock ’em story to make Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood an instant classic. Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Leonardo DiCaprio and a host of others create tremendous performances, and Tarantino delivers the most startling ending in recent cinema.  And it’s a love letter to a Hollywood that six-year-old Quentin Tarantino lived near to, but was not a part of. This is a Tarantino masterpiece, right up there with his best, Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction. It’s available to stream on Amazon and the other major platforms.
  • The Last Black Man in San Francisco:  the most stark reality, only dream-like.  This uncommonly clear-eyed love letter to San Francisco is an absorbing exploration of the inner lives of two friends as they react to their changing city.  The brilliantly original filmmaking by director and co-writer Joe Talbot portrays the starkly real as dreamlike. It’s available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Long Day’s Journey into Night:  obsession and a vivid darkness.   This brilliantly original film explores memory – a man obsessed with a doomed romance from twenty years ago plunges into a neo-noir underworld.  After a slow burn beginning, his search reaches its climax in a spectacular ONE-HOUR single shot. It can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.
  • They Shall Not Grow Old: a generation finally understood. Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson has, for the first time, layered humanity over our understanding of World War I. By slowing down the speed of the jerky WWI film footage and adding sound and color, Jackson has allowed us to relate to the real people in the Great War. This film is a generational achievement. Now you can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Booksmart: smart, fresh and hilarious. This wildly successful comedy is an entirely fresh take on the coming of age film, and a high school graduation party romp like you’ve never seen. Directed and written by women, BTW. It’s available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

by
MARRIAGE STORY

It doesn’t get much better at the movies than Christmas week. There’s a great selection and you don’t even need to leave home to watch Marriage Story or The Irishman.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is playing in just a couple Bay Area theaters and is now streaming on Netflix.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s both in theaters and streaming on Netflix.
  • Rian Johnson’s Knives Out turns a drawing room murder mystery into awickedly funny send-up of totally unjustified entitlement.
  • Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter.
  • In his Pain and Glory, master filmmaker Pedro Almodovar invites us into the most personal aspects of his own life, illuminated by Antonio Banderas’ career-topping performance.

ON VIDEO

My Streams of the Week are the six Best Movies of 2019 – So Far that are already available to stream. This week, I’m featuring Long Day’s Journey into Night:  obsession and a vivid darkness. It can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

ON TV

On December 23, Turner Classic Movies is airing BOTH the 1940 and 1944 versions of Gaslight. My essay on both movies and gaslighting in domestic violence is here.

And on December 26, Turner Classic Movies presents Richard Attenborough’s Young Winston (1972), with Simon Ward as the young Winston Churchill. As a young man, Churchill was already risking life and limb to gain celebrity and build a public reputation. Young Churchill depicts his brief career in the military as an insubordinate daredevil in India, Sudan and the Boer War. It’s a good story, and, as a bonus, Simon Ward bears a remarkable physical resemblance to the young Churchill.

Simon Ward in YOUNG WINSTON

Streams of the Week: 2019’s best movies

by

Six of my Best Movies of 2019 – So Far are already available to stream. This week, I’m featuring Long Day’s Journey into Night:  obsession and a vivid darkness.   This brilliantly original film explores memory – a man obsessed with a doomed romance from twenty years ago plunges into a neo-noir underworld.  After a slow burn beginning, his search reaches its climax in a spectacular ONE-HOUR single shot. It can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

Also available to stream:

  • Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood: masterpiece. Quentin Tarantino’s exquisite filmmaking skills blend together verisimilitude of time and place, vivid performances and a rock ’em, sock ’em story to make Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood an instant classic. Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Leonardo DiCaprio and a host of others create tremendous performances, and Tarantino delivers the most startling ending in recent cinema.  And it’s a love letter to a Hollywood that six-year-old Quentin Tarantino lived near to, but was not a part of. This is a Tarantino masterpiece, right up there with his best, Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction. It’s available to stream on Amazon and the other major platforms.
  • The Last Black Man in San Francisco:  the most stark reality, only dream-like.  This uncommonly clear-eyed love letter to San Francisco is an absorbing exploration of the inner lives of two friends as they react to their changing city.  The brilliantly original filmmaking by director and co-writer Joe Talbot portrays the starkly real as dreamlike. It’s available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • They Shall Not Grow Old: a generation finally understood. Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson has, for the first time, layered humanity over our understanding of World War I. By slowing down the speed of the jerky WWI film footage and adding sound and color, Jackson has allowed us to relate to the real people in the Great War. This film is a generational achievement. Now you can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Amazing Grace : pure, sanctified Aretha.  This Aretha Franklin concert filmis, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience. Amazing Grace can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play; the DVD can be rented from Redbox.
  • Booksmart: smart, fresh and hilarious. This wildly successful comedy is an entirely fresh take on the coming of age film, and a high school graduation party romp like you’ve never seen. Directed and written by women, BTW. It’s available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Ana de Armas in KNIVES OUT

All the movies listed in this week’s OUT NOW are on my list of Best Movies of 2019. New this week: Rian Johnson’s wickedly funny Knives Out, plus I’ll be writing soon about the compelling documentary Midnight Family, opening today at the Roxie in San Francisco.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is playing in just a couple Bay Area theaters and is now streaming on Netflix.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s both in theaters and streaming on Netflix.
  • Rian Johnson’s Knives Out turns a drawing room murder mystery into awickedly funny send-up of totally unjustified entitlement.
  • Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter.
  • In his Pain and Glory, master filmmaker Pedro Almodovar invites us into the most personal aspects of his own life, illuminated by Antonio Banderas’ career-topping performance.

ON VIDEO

My Streams of the Week are the six Best Movies of 2019 – So Far that are already available to stream. This week, I’m featuring The Last Black Man in San Francisco:  the most stark reality, only dream-like.  It’s available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play

ON TV

If you have found the work of Ingmar Bergman just too dreary, Wild Strawberries is a great choice (December 18 on Turner Classic Movies). There’s no denying that Bergman is a film genius, and he’s influenced the likes of Woody Allen, Scorsese, Coppola, Altman, Kieślowski and basically much of the last two generations of filmmakers. But I don’t recommend that casual movie fans watch Bergman’s gloomiest movies just because they “are good for you” – I want you to have a good time at the movies.

Wild Strawberries is the story of an accomplished but cranky geezer. His indifferent daughter-in-law is taking him to be honored at his college. On their road trip, they pick up some young hitch-hikers and then a stranded couple. Each encounter reminds the old doctor of an episode in his youth. As he reminisces, he can finally emotionally process the experiences that had troubled him, helping him finally achieve an inner peace. It’s a wonderful film.

WILD STRAWBERRIES

Streams of the Week: 2019’s best movies

by
THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO

Six of my Best Movies of 2019 – So Far are already available to stream. This week, I’m featuring The Last Black Man in San Francisco:  the most stark reality, only dream-like.  This uncommonly clear-eyed love letter to San Francisco is an absorbing exploration of the inner lives of two friends as they react to their changing city.  The brilliantly original filmmaking by director and co-writer Joe Talbot portrays the starkly real as dreamlike. It’s available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Also available to stream:

  • Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood: masterpiece. Quentin Tarantino’s exquisite filmmaking skills blend together verisimilitude of time and place, vivid performances and a rock ’em, sock ’em story to make Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood an instant classic. Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Leonardo DiCaprio and a host of others create tremendous performances, and Tarantino delivers the most startling ending in recent cinema.  And it’s a love letter to a Hollywood that six-year-old Quentin Tarantino lived near to, but was not a part of. This is a Tarantino masterpiece, right up there with his best, Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction. It’s available to stream on Amazon and the other major platforms.
  • Long Day’s Journey into Night:  obsession and a vivid darkness.   This brilliantly original film explores memory – a man obsessed with a doomed romance from twenty years ago plunges into a neo-noir underworld.  After a slow burn beginning, his search reaches its climax in a spectacular ONE-HOUR single shot. It can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.
  • They Shall Not Grow Old: a generation finally understood. Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson has, for the first time, layered humanity over our understanding of World War I. By slowing down the speed of the jerky WWI film footage and adding sound and color, Jackson has allowed us to relate to the real people in the Great War. This film is a generational achievement. Now you can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Amazing Grace : pure, sanctified Aretha.  This Aretha Franklin concert filmis, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience. Amazing Grace can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play; the DVD can be rented from Redbox.
  • Booksmart: smart, fresh and hilarious. This wildly successful comedy is an entirely fresh take on the coming of age film, and a high school graduation party romp like you’ve never seen. Directed and written by women, BTW. It’s available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Scarlett Johannson and Adam Driver in MARRIAGE STORY

Of the four top movies of the year, you can still find Parasite in theaters and you can already stream Marriage Story, The Irishman and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.

Watch out for the very special opportunity to see a virtually lost film from 1976, Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein at the Roxie and BAMPFA.

If you enjoy Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, check out his equally inventive take on another genre, the neo-noir Brick.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is playing in just a couple Bay Area theaters and is now streaming on Netflix.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s both in theaters and streaming on Netflix.
  • Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter.
  • In his Pain and Glory, master filmmaker Pedro Almodovar invites us into the most personal aspects of his own life, illuminated by Antonio Banderas’ career-topping performance.
  • Harriet is excellent history (and Harriet Tubman belongs on the twenty dollar bill), but it’s not great cinema.
  • The atmospheric slow burn neo-noir Motherless Brooklyn gets postwar New York City right, but it’s too long.
  • Loro, Paolo Sorrentino’s send-up of Silvio Berlusconi is much more interesting visually than it is thematically.

ON VIDEO

My Streams of the Week are the six Best Movies of 2019 – So Far that are already available to stream. This week, I’m featuring Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood: masterpiece.

ON TV

I have NO TV recommendations this week – get out there and see the year’s best in theaters!

Streams of the Week: 2019’s best movies

by

Six of my Best Movies of 2019 – So Far are already available to stream. This week, I’m featuring Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood: masterpiece. Quentin Tarantino’s exquisite filmmaking skills blend together verisimilitude of time and place, vivid performances and a rock ’em, sock ’em story to make Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood an instant classic. Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Leonardo DiCaprio and a host of others create tremendous performances, and Tarantino delivers the most startling ending in recent cinema.  And it’s a love letter to a Hollywood that six-year-old Quentin Tarantino lived near to, but was not a part of. This is a Tarantino masterpiece, right up there with his best, Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction. It’s available to stream on Amazon and the other major platforms.

Also available to stream:

  • The Last Black Man in San Francisco:  the most stark reality, only dream-like.  This uncommonly clear-eyed love letter to San Francisco is an absorbing exploration of the inner lives of two friends as they react to their changing city.  The brilliantly original filmmaking by director and co-writer Joe Talbot portrays the starkly real as dreamlike. It’s available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Long Day’s Journey into Night:  obsession and a vivid darkness.   This brilliantly original film explores memory – a man obsessed with a doomed romance from twenty years ago plunges into a neo-noir underworld.  After a slow burn beginning, his search reaches its climax in a spectacular ONE-HOUR single shot. It can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.
  • They Shall Not Grow Old: a generation finally understood. Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson has, for the first time, layered humanity over our understanding of World War I. By slowing down the speed of the jerky WWI film footage and adding sound and color, Jackson has allowed us to relate to the real people in the Great War. This film is a generational achievement. Now you can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Amazing Grace : pure, sanctified Aretha.  This Aretha Franklin concert film is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience. Amazing Grace can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play; the DVD can be rented from Redbox.
  • Booksmart: smart, fresh and hilarious. This wildly successful comedy is an entirely fresh take on the coming of age film, and a high school graduation party romp like you’ve never seen. Directed and written by women, BTW. It’s available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Stream of the Week: BRICK – hardboiled neo-noir in high school

by
Joseph Gordon-Levitt in BRICK

Writer-director Rian Johnson’s gloriously inventive 2005 debut, Brick, was inspired by Johnson’s love of Dashiell Hammett’s novels and his own dark memories of high school.

Brick is a hard-boiled detective story, complete with a femme fatale and a plot right out of a Dick Powell classic noir like Murder, My Sweet or Cry Danger.

The genius of Brick is that it takes place in the teenage culture of 2005 San Clemente. The characters roam the isolated school corridors where the nerd eats lunch by himself, the drama room, the vice-principal’s office, the empty football field where kids can meet after school the party at the popular girl’s house. The kingpin crime lord operates out of his mother’s basement; he and his gang emerge upstairs in the kitchen where his mom supplies breakfast cereal and dispenses milk from a pitcher shaped like a chicken.

The dialogue is Hammettesque:

  • I gave you Jerr to see him eaten, not to see you fed.
  • The ape blows or I clam.
  • Bulls would gum it. They’d flash their dusty standards at the wide-eyes and probably find some yegg to pin, probably even the right one. No cops, not for a bit
  • Brad was a sap. You weren’t. You were with him, and so you were playing him. So you’re a player. With you behind me I’d have to tie one eye up watching both your hands, and I can’t spare it.

The noir patter works because Johnson and the cast play it dead seriously, with no hint of irony.

In Nate Jones’ interview in Vulture, Johnson says “One thing I don’t believe in is the notion that this is a dusty old genre and you have to find a way to flip the old tropes on their heads. The basic machinery of it, the tropes of it, are why it works.”

Brick was at that point in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s career, between Mysterious Skin (2004) and Lookout (2007), when it was becoming clear what a major talent he is.

Norah Zehetner in BRICK

The femme fatale is played by Norah Zehetner in an unforgettable performance. Zehetner works a lot, and did ten episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, but Brick may be her career-topper.

Rian Johnson went on to make another original feature with Gordon-Levitt, Looper, along with the 2017 Star Wars movie. Knives Out, Johnson’s new take on the drawing room mystery, hits theaters this weekend.

Brick is available to stream on Netflix, AYouTube and Google Play.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt in BRICK

Movies to See Right Now

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PARASITE. Photo courtesy of Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) .

Three of the best four movies of the year so far are in theaters this weekend: Parasite, Marriage Story and The Irishman.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is playing in just a couple Bay Area theaters and will be streaming on Netflix on December 6. Complete review coming this weekend.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s in theaters now, and will stream on Netflix on November 27. Complete review coming this weekend.
  • Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter.
  • In his Pain and Glory, master filmmaker Pedro Almodovar invites us into the most personal aspects of his own life, illuminated by Antonio Banderas’ career-topping performance.
  • Harriet is excellent history (and Harriet Tubman belongs on the twenty dollar bill), but it’s not great cinema.
  • The atmospheric slow burn neo-noir Motherless Brooklyn gets postwar New York City right, but it’s too long.
  • The raucous romp Zombieland Double Tap is a fun change of pace to the serious fare in theaters.
  • I liked the Isabelle Huppert drama Frankie, but the Mill Valley Film Festival audience was very indifferent at the screening; I’m guessing that folks failed to warm to an ambiguous ending that leaves some plot threads unresolved.
  • Loro, Paolo Sorrentino’s send-up of Silvio Berlusconi is much more interesting visually than it is thematically.

ON VIDEO

My Stream of the Week is All the Way, with Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Trumbo) becoming the first actor to capture LBJ in all his facets – a man who was boring and square on television but frenetic, forceful and ever-dominating in person. LBJ’s 1964 makes for a stirring story, and All the Way is a compelling film. You can stream it from HBO GO, Amazon’s HBO Now,  iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

On November 27, Turner Classic Movies will air Harry Dean Stanton’s masterpiece in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas. In Paris Texas, Harry Dean plays Travis, a man so traumatized that he has disappeared and is found wandering across the desert and mistaken for a mute.  As he is cared for by his brother (Dean Stockwell), he evolves from feral to erratic to troubled, but with a sense of tenderness and a determination to put things right.  We see Travis as a madman who gains extraordinary lucidity about what wrong in his life and his own responsibility for it.

At the film’s climax, Travis speaks to Jane (Natassja Kinski) through a one-way mirror (she can’t see him).  Spinning what at first seems like parable, Travis explains what happened to him – and to her – and why it happened.  It’s a 20-minute monologue so captivating and touching that it rises to be recognized as one of the very greatest screen performances.

Harry Dean Stanton in PARIS, TEXAS
Natassja Kinski and Harry Dean Stanton in PARIS, TEXAS