Weekly Movie Recommendations

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

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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 in RUBY SPARKS

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

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LEAVE NO TRACE

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

Andy Griffith in A FACE IN THE CROWD

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

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THE TEACHER
THE TEACHER

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

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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.

Claire Trevor in KEY LARGO

Movies to See Right Now

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Ben Foster in LEAVE NO TRACE

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

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caesar must die
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

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Ethan Hawke in FIRST REFORMED

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).

Cary Grant in NORTH BY NORTHWEST

DVD/Stream of the Week: YOU WILL BE MY SON

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YOU WILL BE MY SON

Niels Arestrup (A Prophet, War Horse) stars as the owner of French wine estate who places impossible expectations on his son, with lethal results. The poor son has gotten a degree in winemaking, has worked his ass off on his father’s estate for years and has even married well – but it’s just not enough for his old man. The father’s interactions with the son range from dismissive to deeply cruel.

The father’s best friend is his longtime estate manager, whose health is faltering. The son is the natural choice for a successor, but the owner openly prefers the son’s boyhood friend, the son of the manager. The first half of You Will Be My Son focuses on the estate owner’s nastiness toward his son, which smolders throughout the film. But then the relationship between the sons turns from old buddies to that of the usurper and the usurped. And, finally, things come down to the decades-long relationship between the two old men.

Deep into the movie, we learn something about the father that colors his view of his son. And then, there’s a startling development that makes for a thrilling and operatic ending.

It’s one of several good 2013 films about fathers and sons, like The Place Beyond the Pines and At Any Price. (This is also a food porn movie, with some tantalizing wine tasting scenes that should earn a spot on my Best Food Porn Movies.)

You Will Be My Son is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Tunes, Vudu, YouTube and GooglePlay.

Movies to See Right Now

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Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn in BEAST

It seems to be the season for psychological thrillers, and it’s hard to say which of Beast and First Reformed has the more surprising and powerful ending.

OUT NOW

  • Beast: Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in this psychological thriller.
  • 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.
  • A Quiet Place is as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.

 

ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is a thinking person’s psychological thriller from Cinequest, Prodigy. You can now stream Prodigy on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu YouTube and Google Play.

 

ON TV
On June 16, Turner Classic Movies will air Sydney Pollack’s under recognized 1972 masterpiece Jeremiah Johnson, which features a brilliantly understated but compelling performance by Robert Redford. If you want to understand why Redford is a movie star, watch this movie. Give lots of credit to Pollack – it’s only 108 minutes long, and today’s filmmakers would bloat this epic tale by 40 minutes longer.

Robert Redford in JEREMIAH JOHNSON
Robert Redford in JEREMIAH JOHNSON

Movies to See Right Now

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Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn in BEAST

This week, I’m featuring two psychological thrillers with powerful endings and a comic heist documentary.

OUT NOW

  • Beast: Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in this psychological thriller.
  • 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.
  • A Quiet Place is as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.

ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the very funny and sentimental The Last Movie Star with 82-year-old Burt Reynolds and Ariel Winter (Alex Dunphy in Modern Family).  You can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE

Faithful readers know that I revere the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood/Ennio Morricone spaghetti westerns. On June 13, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the three great Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. All star Clint Eastwood and feature wonderfully idiosyncratic scores by Ennio Morricone.

Eastwood’s character in the trilogy is referred to in film literature as “the man with no name”. But actually, the character is named Joe, Monco and Blondie in the three movies, respectively.

Here’s Morricone’s theme for A Fistful of Dollars.