In the droll Swedish dramedy Force Majeure, a smugly affluent family of four vacations at an upscale ski resort in the French Alps. The wife explains to a friend that they take the vacation because otherwise the husband never sees the family. But, while the wife is blissed out, the kids fidget and complain, and the hubby sneaks peeks at his phone.
Then there’s a sudden moment of apparent life-and-death peril; the husband has a chance to protect the wife and kids, but instead – after first securing his iPhone – runs for his life. How do they all go on from that revealing moment? The extent that one incident can bring relationships into focus is the core of Force Majeure.
Clearly, the family has a serious issue to resolve, but there’s plenty of dry humor. In the most cringe worthy moments, the wife tries to contain her disgust, but can’t keep it bottled up when she’s in the most social situations. The couple repeatedly huddle outside their room in their underwear to talk things out, only to find themselves observed by the same impassive French hotel worker. The most tense moments are interrupted by an insistent cell phone vibration, another guest’s birthday party and a child’s remotely out-of-control flying toy.
Force Majeure is exceptionally well-written by writer-director Ruben Ostlund. It’s just his fourth feature and the first widely seen outside Scandinavia. He transitions between scenes by showing the machinery of the ski resort accompanied by Baroque organ music – a singular and very effective directorial choice.
Force Majeure was Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. It is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
[I’ve included the trailer as always, but I recommend that you see the movie WITHOUT watching this trailer – mild spoilers]
Woody Harrelson and Frances McDormand in THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Storyis the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch.
These Oscar winners are still in theaters:
The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s imaginative, operatic inter-species romance may become the most-remembered film of 2017.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a powerful combination of raw emotion and dark hilarity with an acting tour de force from Frances McDormand and a slew of great actors.
Pixar’s Coco is a moving and authentic dive into Mexican culture, and it’s visually spectacular.
I, Tonya is a marvelously entertaining movie, filled with wicked wit and sympathetic social comment.
Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland are excellent in the otherwise underwhelming The Leisure Seeker, an Alzheimer’s road trip dramedy.
Speaking of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, you can see the Oscar-winner Frances McDormand‘s 1984 screen debut in Blood Simple tomorrow on TCM.
On March 18, Turner Classic Movies presents the grievously underrated Don Siegel thriller Charley Varrick. Siegel was a master of crime movies (and was the primary filmmaking mentor to Clint Eastwood). I particularly love Siegel’s San Francisco noirThe Lineup, the guilty pleasure Two Mules for Sister Sara and John Wayne’s goodbye, The Shootist. The 1973 neo-noir Charley Varrick is right up there with Siegel’s best. Walter Matthau stars as the title character, an expert heist man who sets up a “perfect crime” bank robbery which, of course, goes awry. Worst of all, it turns out that Varrick has stolen a secret Mob fortune being laundered by the bank, and now the underworld organization is after him. Only his wits can save him. I’ve rewatched Charley Varrick a couple of times recently, and it still holds up for me.
On March 17, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1984 film that was Oscar winner Frances McDormand’s first screen credit, Blood Simple. That was also the storied Coen Brothers’s first feature film (and sparked McDormands’ 34-year marriage to Joel Cohen). Since their debut, the Coens have gone on to win Oscars for Fargo and No Country for Old Men, and their True Grit and the very, very underrated A Serious Man are just as good. Along the way, they also gave us the unforgettable The Big Lebowski.
It all started with their highly original neo-noir Blood Simple. It’s dark, it’s funny and damned entertaining. The highlight is the singular performance by veteran character actor M. Emmet Walsh as a Stetson-topped gunsel. The suspenseful finale, when Walsh is methodically hunting down the 27-year-old McDormand, is brilliant.
M. Emmet Walsh in BLOOD SIMPLEFrances McDormand in BLOOD SIMPLEDan Hedaya and M. Emmet Walsh in BLOOD SIMPLE
Here’s an entirely fresh take on the revenge thriller. Blue Ruin, an audience favorite on the festival circuit in 2013, didn’t get a theatrical release, and I would have missed it entirely but for a suggestion from my friend Jose.
As the film opens, we are following a homeless man and observing his survival tactics; once we’re hooked, we learn that a traumatic incident led to his homelessness. Then we watch him methodically prepare for an entirely different mission. There is very little dialogue in the first 30 minutes. And then we have 60 minutes of lethal cat-and-mouse, with intense suspense about which of the characters will survive and how. As a thriller, this is first class.
What makes Blue Ruin so fresh is the lead character, who has been shattered by a tragedy in his life – and who isn’t at all confident about his ability to redress it. This ain’t a Charles Bronson or Liam Neeson type hunter-of-bad-guys. Instead, our hero is as scared and fragile as most of us would be if we were being hunted for our lives – and so we relate to him.
Macon Blair is superb as the protagonist. He’s entirely believable both as a damaged down-and-outer and as a man-on-a-mission. Man, I hope Blair gets cast in more movies – he’s just great here.
Devin Ratray, one of the execrable, buffoonish cousins in Nebraska, is very good in an entirely different role here – a slacker scarred by his war experiences who nevertheless remains very skilled.
Blue Ruin was written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier. He is responsible for the wholly original lead character and the intense pace of the film, along with the meticulously economical storytelling; the exposition never relies on even one extra word of dialogue.
Blue Ruin is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube and Xbox Video.
As usual, I’m deep into covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. Bookmark my Cinequest 2018 page, with links to all my coverage. Follow me on Twitter for the latest.
Opening in the Bay Area today, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Storyis the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch.
Also opening is The Leisure Seeker, an Alzheimer’s road trip dramedy with Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. Mirren and Sutherland are excellent, possibly enough to see this in a theater.
These Oscar winners are still in theaters:
The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s imaginative, operatic inter-species romance may become the most-remembered film of 2017.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a powerful combination of raw emotion and dark hilarity with an acting tour de force from Frances McDormand and a slew of great actors.
Pixar’s Coco is a moving and authentic dive into Mexican culture, and it’s visually spectacular.
I, Tonya is a marvelously entertaining movie, filled with wicked wit and sympathetic social comment.
My Stream of the Week, the insightful and topical documentary The Brainwashing of My Dad, comes from the 2016 Cinequest. The Brainwashing of My Dad is available streaming on Amazon Video, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
On March 10, Turner Classic Movies airs 99 River Street (1953), featured in my Overlooked Noir.Film noir tends to be about guys with bad luck, but nobody would trade their luck with Ernie Driscoll (John Payne), the anti-hero of 99 River Street; a former boxer with a career cut short, he’s being emotionally abused AND cuckolded by his no good wife, framed for a murder, beaten up, and THEN he’s set up by the Good Girl, of all people. That Good Girl is played by one of the most underrated of 1950s actresses, Evelyn Keyes. She has two killer scenes in 99 River Street. An “acting scene” on a darkened theater stage is one of the movie’s highlights. And later, her character gets to pretend to be a boozy floozy who lights her cigarette in the most suggestive manner possible.
Off-screen, Evelyn Keyes enjoyed a very rich personal life. “I always took up with the man of the moment and there were many such moments,” she said. She married directors Charles Vidor and John Huston and big band leader Artie Shaw. Her kiss-and-tell autobiography recounted affairs with Glenn Ford, Sterling Hayden, Dick Powell, Anthony Quinn, David Niven, Kirk Douglas.and Mike Todd (who left her for Elizabeth Taylor). Wow.
In honor of Cinequest, this week’s video pick is The Brainwashing of My Dad, which had its US Premiere at the 2016 Cinequest.
Ever notice how people who watch a lot of Fox News or listen to talk radio become bitter, angry and, most telling, fact-resistant? In the documentary The Brainwashing of My Dad, filmmaker Jan Senko as she explores how right-wing media impacts the mood and personality of its consumers as well as their political outlook. Senko uses her own father Frank as a case study.
We see Frank Senko become continually mad and, well, mean. And we hear testimony about many, many others with the identical experience. Experts explain the existence of a biological addiction to anger.
Senko traces the history of right-wing media from the mid-1960s, with the contributions of Lewis Powell, Richard Nixon, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Senko even gets right-wing wordsmith Frank Luntz on camera to explain the power of buzz words. If you don’t know this story (Hillary was right about the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”) , Senko spins the tale very comprehensively. If you do know the material (and my day job is in politics), it is methodical.
This topic is usually explored for its impact on political opinion. Senko’s focus on mood and personality is original and The Brainwashing of My Dad contributes an important addition to the conversation. One last thing about the brainwashing of Senko’s dad – it may not be irreversible…
I first reviewed The Brainwashing of My Dad for its U.S. Premiere at Cinequest 2016. The Brainwashing of My Dad is available streaming on Amazon Video, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Condola Rashad in BIKINI MOON, premiering this weekend at Cinequest
As usual, I’m deep into covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. My Cinequest Preview highlights this weekend’s United States premiere of the brilliant indie drama Bikini Moon. Bookmark my Cinequest 2018 page, with links to all my coverage. Follow me on Twitter for the latest.
Before Sunday night’s Oscar show, you’re going to want to see the Oscar favorites Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Shape of Water. (I’ve also written If I Picked the Oscars – before the nominations were announced.) Here are the best movie choices in theaters this week:
The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s imaginative, operatic inter-species romance may become the most-remembered film of 2017.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a powerful combination of raw emotion and dark hilarity with an acting tour de force from Frances McDormand and a slew of great actors.
Steven Spielberg’s docudrama on the Pentagon Papers, The Post, is both a riveting thriller and an astonishingly insightful portrait of Katharine Graham by Meryl Streep. It’s one of the best movies of the year – and one of the most important. Also see my notes on historical figures in The Post.
Pixar’s Coco is a moving and authentic dive into Mexican culture, and it’s visually spectacular.
Lady Bird , an entirely fresh coming of age comedy that explores the mother-daughter relationship – an impressive debut for Greta Gerwig as a writer and director.
I, Tonya is a marvelously entertaining movie, filled with wicked wit and sympathetic social comment.
Here’s the rest of my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far. Most of the ones from earlier this year are available on video. Here’s another current (and Oscar-nominated) choice:
Call Me By Your Name is an extraordinarily beautiful story of sexual awakening set in a luscious Italian summer, but I didn’t buy the impossibly cool parents or the two pop ballad musical interludes.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is a crowd-pleaser from the 2013 Cinequest, The Sapphires. The Sapphires is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, GooglePlay and Flixster.
Turner Classic Movies is in its 31 Days of Oscars, and I’m calling out the March 9 telecast of High Noon. This is a movie that I rank among my 50 or so Greatest Movies of All Time. It’s also a movie that John Wayne called “the most un-American thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life”. I’m right, and the Duke was wrong.
Gary Cooper plays Will Kane, a veteran town sheriff who is about to retire to a ranch with his Quaker bride (Grace Kelly). A thug that he sent to prison is about to get out and vows to return and take his revenge on Kane. His pacifist wife demands that he continue with the plan to retire and leave town. But Kane lives by a code – he can’t abandon his town to criminal disorder, and he can’t be seen as running away from a fight. He can handle the threat if only a few of the folks he has been protecting will step up and have his back.
High Noon is worth watching just for director Fred Zinnemann’s iconic montage when the clock is about to strike noon – it’s really the gold standard for any montage in cinema. But Gary Cooper’s performance as the stoic Will Kane, whose determination is bringing him more and more desperation, is a masterpiece of understatement. There are also two supporting performances for the ages. Thomas Mitchell (Uncle Billy in It’s a Wonderful Life) plays the mayor, Will Kane’s stoutest defender, who finds it politically convenient to take his chances with the outlaws; his speech of support-turned-into-betrayal can be compared only to Marc Antony’s burial speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. And the smoldering Katy Jurado is unforgettable as Will Kane’s ex; a woman who acts practically, but who respects a man with a code. Plus, there’s Dmitri Tiomkin’s Oscar-winning song Do Not Forsake Me, O My Darlin’.
High Noon is generally interpreted as a statement against the Hollywood Blacklist (hence John Wayne’s complaint). That’s the way it was intended by its soon-to-be-blacklisted screenwriter Carl Forman. I recommend author Glenn Frankel’s interview on NPR’s Fresh Air about his book High Noon. But, message aside, it works as a thriller without any political subtext.
Baby Boomers who remember Sea Hunt will be jarred by Lloyd Bridges as a less than heroic persona. Lee Van Cleef (without any spoken lines) looks menacing in his film debut.
This week’s video recommendation celebrates the opening of Cinequest with a nugget from the 2013 festival: The Sapphires is a triumph of a Feel Good Movie. Set in the 1960s, a singing group from an Australian Aboriginal family faces racial obstacles at home, but blossoms when the girls learn Motown hits to entertain US troops in Vietnam. Remarkably, Tony Briggs based the screenplay on his mother’s real experience – make sure you stay for the Where Are They Now end credits.
The ever amiable Chris O’Dowd (one of the best things about Bridesmaids) is funny and charming as the girls’ dissolute manager. Jessica Mauboy, who plays the lead singer, has a great voice for soul music. A surprisingly beautiful song by the girls’ mom, played by veteran actress Kylie Belling, is an especially touching moment.
The Sapphires is not a deep movie, but it is a satisfying one. It’s predictable and manipulative, but I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t enjoy it. The Sapphires is a guaranteed good time at the movies.
The Sapphires is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, GooglePlay and Flixster.
Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell in THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI
Don’t forget to plan to attend Cinequest in San Jose and Redwood City from February 17 through March 11. My festival preview will be online this weekend.
I just watched the splendid Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri again, this time with The Wife. Before the Oscars, you’re going to want to see Three Billboards and The Shape of Water. (I’ve also written If I Picked the Oscars – before the nominations were announced.) Here are the best movie choices in theaters this week:
The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s imaginative, operatic inter-species romance may become the most-remembered film of 2017.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a powerful combination of raw emotion and dark hilarity with an acting tour de force from Frances McDormand and a slew of great actors.
Steven Spielberg’s docudrama on the Pentagon Papers, The Post, is both a riveting thriller and an astonishingly insightful portrait of Katharine Graham by Meryl Streep. It’s one of the best movies of the year – and one of the most important. Also see my notes on historical figures in The Post.
Pixar’s Coco is a moving and authentic dive into Mexican culture, and it’s visually spectacular.
Lady Bird , an entirely fresh coming of age comedy that explores the mother-daughter relationship – an impressive debut for Greta Gerwig as a writer and director.
I, Tonya is a marvelously entertaining movie, filled with wicked wit and sympathetic social comment.
Here’s the rest of my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far. Most of the ones from earlier this year are available on video. Here’s another current (and Oscar-nominated) choice:
Call Me By Your Name is an extraordinarily beautiful story of sexual awakening set in a luscious Italian summer, but I didn’t buy the impossibly cool parents or the two pop ballad musical interludes.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is the actor Michael Shannon’s breakthrough film, Shotgun Stories. The first of director Jeff Nichols’ “Arkansas Trilogy”, Shotgun Stories ranked #7 on my Best Movies of 2007. Shotgun Stories is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix and iTunes.
Turner Classic Movies is celebrating 31 Days of Oscars, so we have many good choices of movies that often play on TCM. My choice this week is one of the great American political movies – Network playing on February 24. Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar winning original screenplay is both bitingly satirical and frighteningly prescient. Its leads, Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway both also won Oscars, as did Beatrice Straight for Supporting Actress. Director Sidney Lumet and five others from the cast and crew were nominated.
You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’
I am celebrating the great Michael Shannon this week by recommending writer-director Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories. Nichols followed Shotgun Stories with Take Shelter and Mud, which together constitute his “Arkansas Trilogy”. Shotgun Stories was also the breakout film for Nichols’ favorite leading man, Shannon, who has since gone on to Boardwalk Empire, The Ice Man, 99 Homes, Frank & Lola, Nocturnal Animals (Shannon is brilliant but the movie sucks) and, of course, the current Oscar favorite, The Shape of Water.
Shotgun Stories opens with three brothers learning about the death of their no good father. He had abandoned them and their mother in poverty – and was such an indifferent father that he named his children Son, Boy and Kid. After walking away from his family, he found religion and started another, more prosperous, family with another set of three sons. The three older sons crash the funeral to express their bitterness, and it becomes clear that the two sets of brothers are headed for a clash.
Shannon plays the oldest brother, who has been forged into stony strength and determination by deprivation and long-smoldering resentment. Nichols uses that resentment to light a fuse that burns fitfully but inexorably for most of Shotgun Stories’ 92 minutes.
Shotgun Stories ranked #7 on my Best Movies of 2007. Shotgun Stories is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix and iTunes.
