Weekly Movie Recommendations – Page 53

Movies to See Right Now

July 29, 2018 by movie gourmet

Subject Sammy Davis Jr. in a still from SAMMY DAVIS JR.: I’VE GOTTA BE ME. Photo courtesy Menemsha Films/JFI.

This week, Dark Money and Puzzle have opened in Bay Area theaters. And one of the Bay Area’s top cinema events: the 38th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF38), has opened and runs through August 5 in San Francisco, Palo Alto, San Rafael, Albany and Oakland. The SFJFF is the world’s oldest Jewish film festival, and, with a 2017 attendance figure of 40,000, still the largest. As always, there’s an especially strong slate of documentaries, including my recommended Must See docs; I especially liked the closing night film Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me.

OUT NOW

Please make every attempt to see the best movie of the year, now in Bay Area theaters: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone). Superbly well-crafted, impeccably acted, thoughtful and emotionally powerful, it’s a Must See.
The savagely funny social satire Sorry to Bother You carries the message that humans are more than just their commercial value as consumers and labor to be exploited.
The political documentary Dark Money exposes the growing threat of unlimited secret money in political campaigns.
Puzzle intelligently and authentically traces one woman’s journey of self discovery.
The surprisingly emotional biodoc Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is about Fred Rogers’ fierce devotion to the principle that every child is deserving of love and our protection.
First Reformed: Ethan Hawke stars in this bleak, bleak psychological thriller with an intense ending.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exhuverance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
American Animals is funny documentary/reenactment of a preposterous heist.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

ON VIDEO
In honor of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, now underway, my this week’s video pick comes from last year’s festival. Israel was created as a home for refugees. What happens when African refugees overwhelm a neglected Tel Aviv neighborhood is the subject of the topical documentary Levinsky Park. Levinsky Park is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

On July 31, Turner Classic Movies brings us two generationally iconic films – one from The Greatest Generation and one for Baby Boomers.

First there’s the WW II melodrama From Here to Eternity. Sure, it’s a soap opera with that much lampooned Burt Lancaster-Debroah Kerr embrace in the crashing surf. But it’s packed with a great cast, and the story threads are expertly braided together by director Fred Zinneman. Besides Lancaster and Kerr, there’s Montgomery Clift, Jack Warden and – resurrecting his career – Frank Sinatra. One of the best performances is by Ernst Borgnine as the hulking bully named Fatso.

Next, it’s easy to recognize the greatness of The Graduate today, but it’s hard to appreciate how groundbreaking it was – all because of Mike Nichol’s directorial choices. Dustin Hoffman’s performance was central to the success of the film, yet he was a nobody at the time and Nichols had to fight for him – the studio preferred a conventionally handsome leading man. Nichols sure wasn’t copying anybody else when he put the Simon and Garfunkle songs in the soundtrack. And the final shot – where Nichols kept his camera lingering on Hoffman and Katherine Ross until the actors became uncomfortable – is one of cinema’s best.

Dustin Hoffman (and Anne Bancroft’s leg) in THE GRADUATE

Stream of the Week: LEVINSKY PARK – refuge for refugees?

July 24, 2018 by movie gourmet

In honor of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, now underway, my this week’s video pick comes from last year’s festival. Israel was created as a home for refugees. What happens when African refugees overwhelm a neglected Tel Aviv neighborhood is the subject of the topical documentary Levinsky Park.

Director Beth Toni Kruvant takes us to Tel Aviv’s hardscrabble Hatikva neighborhood, now burdened with an influx of African refugees from sub-Saharan Africa. The refugees aren’t Jewish, they don’t speak Hebrew and they sure aren’t white. Discouraged from working legally, the refugees encamp on the streets and do what they need to survive. The Israeli government senses a lose-lose media profile on the issue and tries to duck it entirely.

So how do the local Israelis react? There is a wide spectrum. Some welcome and try to help these people fleeing for their lives. Others tag the newcomers with the loaded pejorative “infiltrators” and try to kick them out. We see some ugly, overt racism in Levinsky Park, but nothing unlike what we’ve seen in the US in the Trump Era.

It’s the same question that confronts all countries in the West about political asylum-seekers – who will actually invite them in? What’s different about Levinsky Park, of course, is that this is Israel – the one nation created by and for refugees.

A leader emerges from the refugees, the charismatic and articulate Mutasim Ali. He frames their plight as a movement, and they strive to regain some control over their own futures.

This year’s SFJFF runs from July 19 through August 5 at theaters in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Albany, San Rafael and Oakland. You can peruse the entire program and buy tickets and passes at San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

Levinsky Park, which originally played in the Bay Area at Cinequest, is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

July 20, 2018July 20, 2018 by movie gourmet

Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson in SORRY TO BOTHER YOU

OK – stay with me here – I’m recommending the most oddly-paired double bill of Sorry to Bother You and Won’t You Be My Neighbor?. Both films fiercely stake out positions in support of basic human worth. The savagely funny social satire Sorry to Bother You carries the message that humans are more than just their commercial value as consumers and labor to be exploited. The surprisingly emotional biodoc Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is about Fred Rogers’ fierce devotion to the principle that every child is deserving of love and our protection.

One of the Bay Area’s top cinema events: the 38th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF38), has opened and runs through August 5 in San Francisco, Palo Alto, San Rafael, Albany and Oakland. The SFJFF is the world’s oldest Jewish film festival, and, with a 2017 attendance figure of 40,000, still the largest. As always, there’s an especially strong slate of documentaries; I’ll be writing about the Must See docs tomorrow.

OUT NOW

Please make every attempt to see the best movie of the year, now in Bay Area theaters: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone). Superbly well-crafted, impeccably acted, thoughtful and emotionally powerful, it’s a Must See.
First Reformed: Ethan Hawke stars in this bleak, bleak psychological thriller with an intense ending.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exhuverance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
American Animals is funny documentary/reenactment of a preposterous heist.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

ON VIDEO

This week’s video pick, the inventive Ruby Sparks, is about romance and it’s very, very funny, but it transcends the genre of romantic comedy. It’s clear that its co-star Zoe Kazan is a major talent as a screenwriter. Ruby Sparks is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

This week’s offerings from Turner Classic Movies are remarkably diverse. On July 24, there’s George Cukor’s Dinner at Eight, an all-star 1933 Hollywood dramedy that mostly still stands up today. Jean Harlow is hilarious as the trophy bride of the course noveau-millionaire played by Wallace Beery. Marie Dressler is at least as funny as a former star yearning to relive an old romance. John Barrymore adds a heartbreaking performance as a man facing disgrace. If all this weren’t enough, we also get Lionel Barrymore, some ditziness from Billie Burke and a splash of sarcasm from quick-patter artist Lee Tracy. Harlow, who died at 26, is usually remembered as a platinum blonde sex symbol, but Dinner at Eight reminds us of her comic brilliance.

On July 26 , TCM presents The Getaway, a 1972 crime thriller starring the charismatic Steve McQueen and his real-life squeeze Ali MacGraw. McQueen and MacGraw are delightful to watch as they move between violent clashes and double- and triple-crosses. As befits a Sam Peckinpah film, there’s an intense shootout at the end. The grossly underrated character actor Al Lettieri (Sollozzo the Turk in The Godfather) gets to play perhaps his most delicious villain; when he comes across a oddly matched married couple – the nubile Sally Struthers and the nerdy Jack Dodson (county clerk Howard Sprague in The Andy Griffith Show), Lettieri layers on some glorious sexual perversity. Speaking of character actors, we also get to enjoy the crew of Peckinpah favorites: Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Dub Taylor, Bo Hopkins and Richard Bright.

And, just for fun, on July 23, TCM will air the original Godzilla and two movies from my list of Least Convincing Movie Monsters: The Black Scorpion and The Killer Shrews.

Stream of the Week: RUBY SPARKS – be careful what you ask for

July 17, 2018 by movie gourmet

Paul Dano and Chloe Kazan in RUBY SPARKS

The inventive Ruby Sparks is about romance and it’s very, very funny, but it transcends the genre of romantic comedy. A shy writer who has produced a great novel at an early age is now drifting, his writing is blocked and he has isolated himself into a lonely existence. He imagines his perfect love object, and he can suddenly write in torrents about her until…she becomes real. Yes, suddenly he has a real life girlfriend of his own design.

This is everyone’s fantasy of a perfect partner – but what are the limits of a partner that you have designed yourself? Because he can tweak her behavior by rewriting it, this brings up the adage “Be careful what you ask for”. When he is threatened by her independence, he changes her personality on the page and she becomes unattractively clinging and needy. Can his realized fantasy make him happy?

Paul Dano is outstanding as the writer and screenwriter Zoe Kazan (granddaughter of Elia Kazan) dazzles as his creation. (Off screen, Kazan and Dano are a couple.) Chris Messina is dead on perfect as the writer’s brother, and the film benefits from an especially strong cast: Annette Bening, Antonio Banderas, Steve Coogan, Aasif Mandvi and Elliot Gould. Ruby Sparks is ably directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the co-directors of another exceptional indie comedy, Little Miss Sunshine.

The biggest star in Ruby Sparks is Zoe Kazan’s ingenious screenplay. It’s funny without being silly, profound without being pretentious, bright without being precious. Every moment is authentic. It’s clear that Kazan is a major talent as a screenwriter.

Ruby Sparks is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

July 13, 2018 by movie gourmet

Please make every attempt to see the best movie of the year, now in Bay Area theaters: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone). Superbly well-crafted, impeccably acted, thoughtful and emotionally powerful, it’s a Must See.

OUT NOW

First Reformed: Ethan Hawke stars in this bleak, bleak psychological thriller with an intense ending.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exhuverance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
American Animals is funny documentary/reenactment of a preposterous heist.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

ON VIDEO

My video pick was the best foreign film at the 2017 Cinequest, the Czech and Slovak drama The Teacher. It’s a visceral peek inside the everyday dread inherent in society behind the Iron Curtain. The Teacher can now be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

ON TV

On July 17, Turner Classic Movies is airing A Face in the Crowd. During every year of the 1960s, Andy Griffith entered the living rooms of most Baby Boomers as Sheriff Andy Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show and in guest appearances on Mayberry R.F.D. Younger folks knew him from another ten seasons on television starring as Matlock.

But, in his very first feature film, Griffith shed the likeability and decency that made him a TV megastar and became a searingly unforgettable villain. In the 1957 Elia Kazan classic A Face in the Crowd, Griffith plays Lonesome Rhodes, a failed country guitar picker who is hauled out of an Arkansas drunk tank by talent scout Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal). It turns out that he has a folksy charm that is dynamite in the new medium of television. He quickly rises in the infotainment universe until he is an A List celeb and a political power broker. To Jeffries’ horror, Rhodes reveals himself to be an evil, power-hungry megalomaniac. Jeffries made him – can she break him? The seduction of a gullible public by a good timin’ charmer predicts the careers of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, although Lonesome Rhodes is meaner than Reagan and less ideological than Bush. The seduction of a gullible public by a corrupt demagogue also predicts Donald Trump although Lonesome Rhodes is far less narcissistic and fascistic than Trump.

Amazingly, A Face in the Crowd did not garner even a nomination for an Academy Award for Griffith – or for any of its other filmmakers. Today, it is well-regarded, having been added to the library of Congress’ preservation list in the US National Film Registry and rating 91% in the critical reviews tallied by Rotten Tomatoes. It is one of the greatest political films.

Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal in A FACE IN THE CROWD

Stream of the Week: THE TEACHER – a peek into communist dread

July 10, 2018 by movie gourmet

In the superb drama The Teacher, it’s the mid-1980s and the Iron Curtain is still defining Czechoslovakia; (The Teacher is a Czech movie in the Slovak language). The title character’s position as a high school teacher makes her a gatekeeper to the children’s futures, and she’s unaccountable because she’s a minor Communist Party functionary. Wielding blatant academic favoritism and even overt blackmail, she uses the advantage of her political status for her own petty benefit – coercing shopping errands, car rides, pastries and other favors from the parents of her students. Finally, she causes so much harm to one student that some of the parents rebel and seek her ouster.

Will the other parents support them? What of the parents who benefit from the regime? And what of the majority of the parents who must decide whether to risk their own futures? The risk is real: the regime has already reassigned one parent, a scientist, to a menial job after his wife had defected.

The Teacher benefits from a brilliant, award-winning performance from Zuzana Mauréry in the title role. What makes this character especially loathsome is that she’s not just heavy-handed, but grossly manipulative. Mauréry is a master at delivering reasonable words with both sweet civility and the unmistakable menace of the unspoken “or else”.

The acting from the entire company is exceptional, especially from Csongor Kassai, Martin Havelka and the Slovak director Peter Bebjak as aggrieved parents. Writer Petr Jarchovský has created textured, authentic characters. Director Jan Hrebejk not only keeps the story alive but adds some clever filmmaking fluorishes as he moves the story between flashbacks and the present.

The Teacher was the best foreign film at the 2017 Cinequest. It can now be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

Movies to See Right Now

July 6, 2018 by movie gourmet

Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE. Courtesy of SFFILM.

The best movie of the year so far is in Bay Area theaters: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone). Superbly well-crafted, impeccably acted, thoughtful and emotionally powerful, it’s a Must See.

OUT NOW

First Reformed: Ethan Hawke stars in this bleak, bleak psychological thriller with an intense ending.
Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exhuverance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
American Animals is funny documentary/reenactment of a preposterous heist.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

ON VIDEO

My DVD/Stream of the Week is still the taut 76 minutes of Caesar Must Die, in which Italian maximum security prison convicts put on a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. It’s an excellent Shakespeare movie, and a fine prison movie, too. Caesar Must Die is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

On July 10, Turner Classic Movies airs Key Largo (1948), one of the classic film noirs and still satisfying to this day. Trapped in a claustrophobic Florida island resort by a hurricane, Humphrey Bogart has to face down sadistic mobster Edward G. Robinson. 23-year-old Lauren Bacall was at her most appealing. Claire Trevor’s heartbreaking performance as a gangster’s moll aging out of her looks is one of her best.

Movies to See Right Now

June 30, 2018 by movie gourmet

The best movie of the year so far is in at least one Bay Area theater: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone).

OUT NOW

First Reformed: Ethan Hawke stars in this bleak, bleak psychological thriller with an intense ending.
American Animals is funny documentary/reenactment of a preposterous heist.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

ON VIDEO
My DVD/Stream of the Week is the taut 76 minutes of Caesar Must Die, in which Italian maximum security prison convicts put on a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. It’s an excellent Shakespeare movie, and a fine prison movie, too. Caesar Must Die is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV
The claustrophobic setting of a submarine movie can really propel a drama by magnifying the story’s conflict. Today, Turner Classic Movies plays Run Silent, Run Deep, in which the primary conflict is between two of the sub’s officers, played by the two charismatic stars Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster. Run Silent, Run Deep is not in the class of Das Boot or The Enemy Below, but it’s still one of the best of the genre.

Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster in RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP

DVD/Stream of the Week: CAESAR MUST DIE

June 26, 2018 by movie gourmet

In the taut 76 minutes of Caesar Must Die, convicts in an Italian maximum security prison put on a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Every year, there’s a drama laboratory at this prison. It turns out that Julius Caesar is a perfect choice.

Julius Caesar is, most of all, a play about high stakes. And high stakes, where a decision can result in life or death or power or failure or freedom or incarceration, is something these guys profoundly understand – and have had time to reflect upon. During rehearsal, one actor snaps at the director, “I’ve been in here for 20 tears, and you’re telling me not to waste time?”. When Cassius states that he has wagered his life on the outcome of one battle and lost, the line is more powerful because we know the actor playing Cassius is himself a lifer.

When the prisoners audition, we learn that their sentences range from 14 years to “life meaning life”. Most of them are naturalistic and very effective actors. The guy who plays Caesar is especially powerful in his acting and reacting.

The Julius Caesar story unfolds in black-and-white as the prisoners rehearse and then play the early scenes in the contemporary prison setting. Segments from the performance itself – about 15 minutes worth – are filmed in color.

It all works very well as a successful Shakespeare movie – and as a prison movie, too. Caesar Must Die is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

June 22, 2018 by movie gourmet

My pick for the year’s best film so far, Leave No Trace, will be released next week. In the meantime, don’t forget to catch the previously ultra-rare The Man Who Cheated Himself Saturday and Sunday on TCM’s Noir Alley. The psychological thriller First Reformed is a significant work of art, but it’s a tough watch.

OUT NOW

First Reformed: Ethan Hawke stars in this bleak, bleak psychological thriller with an intense ending.
American Animals is funny documentary/reenactment of a preposterous heist.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

ON VIDEO
This week’s video pick is You Will Be My Son, a father-son saga with a thrilling and operatic ending. Set in French wine country, it’s also a pretty fair food porn movie. You Will Be My Son is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Tunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV
On June 27, Turner Classic Movies will present one of my very favorite Alfred Hitchcock films, North by Northwest, with perhaps the greatest ever collection of iconic set pieces – especially the cornfield and Mount Rushmore scenes, but also those in the UN Building, hotel, mansion, art auction and the 20th Century Limited train – they’re all great. Back in the days of the Production Code, some filmmakers could deliver sexual and erotic content without actually showing nudity or simulated sexual activity; one of the best examples is the flirtation between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint on the train (and it even culminates with the notorious allegory of the train penetrating the tunnel).