I recommend the totally unpredictable and well-crafted drama Take Me to the River, a very strong feature debut for writer-director Matt Sobel, a San Jose native.
Thriller meets thinker in Eye in the Sky, a parable from modern drone warfare starring Helen Mirren and with a wonderful final performance from the late Alan Rickman.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is the character-driven The Gift, even more than the satisfying suspense thriller that it is. It’s also a surprisingly thoughtful film and a filmmaking triumph for writer-director-producer-actor Joel Edgerton. The Gift is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and a host of cable/satellite PPV platforms.
On April 7, Turner Classic Movies showcases the films of one of the earliest female directors, the movie star Ida Lupino. In her early 30s,she broke the glass ceiling by writing and producing her own low-budget topical movies. TCM is screening Hard, Fast & Beautiful, Never Fear,The Bigamistand Outrage (one of the very first movies about rape). Lupino’s signature movie is the noir thriller The Hitch-Hiker. The bad guy is a sadistic serial killer played by William Talman (most well known as DA Hamilton Berger in Perry Mason). He kidnaps and terrorizes two guys played by noir favorites Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy. It’s a tension-filled story that still holds up today.
Frank Lovejoy, William Talman and Edmond O’Brien in THE HITCH-HIKER
Rebecca Hall, Jason Bateman and Joel Edgerton in THE GIFT
The character-driven The Gift is more than a satisfying suspense thriller – it’s a well-made and surprisingly thoughtful film that I keep mulling over. It’s a filmmaking triumph for writer-director-producer-actor Joel Edgerton, the hunky Australian action star (the Navy Seal leader in Zero Dark Thirty).
Simon (Jason Batemen), a take-no-prisoners corporate riser, has moved back to Southern California with his sweetly meek and anxiety-riddled wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall). In a chance encounter, they meet Gordo (Edgerton), who knew Simon in high school. Gordo is an odd duck, but the couple feels obligated to meet him socially when he keeps dropping by with welcome gifts. At first, The Gift seems like a comedy of manners, as Jason and Robyn try to figure out a socially appropriate escape from this awkward entanglement. But then, the audience senses that Gordo may be dangerously unhinged, and it turns out that Simon and Gordo have more of a past than first apparent. Things get scary.
Edgerton uses – and even toys with – all the conventions of the suspense thriller – the woman alone, the suspicious noise in the darkened house, the feeling of being watched. And there’s a cathartic Big Reveal at the end.
But The Gift isn’t a plot-driven shocker – although it works on that level. Instead it’s a study of the three characters. Just who is Gordo? And who is Simon? And who is Robyn? None of these characters are what we think at the movie’s start. Each turns out to be capable of much more than we could imagine. I particularly liked Bateman’s performance as a guy who is masking his true character through the first half of the movie, but dropping hints along the way. Hall is as good as she is always, and Edgerton really nails Gordo’s off-putting affect.
And, after you’ve watched The Gift, consider this – just what is the gift in the title?
The Gift is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and a host of cable/satellite PPV platforms.
Thriller meets thinker in Eye in the Sky, a parable from modern drone warfare starring Helen Mirren and with a wonderful final performance from the late Alan Rickman.
This week, I featured the documentary Last Days in Vietnam. If you miss it on PBS’ American Experience, you can still stream it from Netflix Instant, Amazon Video, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.
One of the most underrated films of the 1990s will be on Turner Classic Movies on March 29. Ulee’s Gold (1997) features Peter Fonda as a keep-to-himself rural beekeeper who finds himself in a thriller when actions of his no-good adult son threaten the rest of the family; watch for a 15-year-old Jessica Biel. For a more sordid choice on TCM, Sam Fuller’s typically sensationalistic psych ward movie Shock Corridor (1959) plays on March 30.
Thriller meets thinker in Eye in the Sky, a parable from modern drone warfare starring Helen Mirren and with a wonderful final performance from the late Alan Rickman.
I also really liked the gripping Norwegian disaster movie The Wave, with its ticking clock tension and cool disaster effects. (Now hard to find.)
You have to look hard to find it now, but you should still try to see the awesome and authentic survival tale The Revenant on the BIG SCREEN.
In honor of the recently concluded Cinequest, my DVD/Stream of the Week is from the 2013 fest: The Sapphires, a triumph of a Feel Good Movie. The Sapphires is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, GooglePlay and Flixster.
The best movie pick on TV this week will come on March 20, when Turner Classic Movies will present Touch of Evil(1958). This Orson Welles masterpiece begins with one of cinema’s great opening scenes, as our lead characters walk from a Mexican border town into an American border town in a single tracking shot of well over 3 minutes. Unbeknownst to them, they are being shadowed by a car bomb. There’s a lot to enjoy here in this cesspool of corruption: a repellent sheriff-gone-bad played by Welles himself, one of Joseph Calleia’s finest supporting turns, one of Dennis Weaver’s first roles (written just for him by Welles) and Charlton Heston as a Mexican.
In honor of the recently concluded Cinequest, here’s a nugget from the 2013 fest: 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.
I really liked the gripping Norwegian disaster movie The Wave, with its ticking clock tension and cool disaster effects. I saw The Wave last week at Cinequest, and it opens in theaters this weekend. I also liked Cinequest’s Eye in the Sky, with Helen Mirren, and I’ll be writing about that by next week before it opens widely in the Bay Area.
I remain completely absorbed with Silicon Valley’s own film festival, Cinequest. Check out my up-to-the-moment coverage both on my Cinequest page and follow me on Twitter for the latest. I especially recommend the exquisite Chilean contemplation of grief The Memory of Water, which plays Cinequest tomorrow evening; I’ve seen 25 Cinequest movies so far, and this is the best one. Tomorrow night, I’ll be checking out two movies I haven’t seen yet: The Adderall Diarieswith James Franco, Ed Harris and Amber Heard, Christian Slater and Cynthia Nixon and February, a horror flick with Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka.
Then there are the Oscar winners and contenders, whose theatrical runs are winding down but still out in theaters:
Spotlight – a riveting, edge-of-your-seat drama with some especially compelling performances.
The Revenant, an awesome and authentic survival tale that must be seen on the BIG SCREEN. I predict that The Revenant will be the biggest winner at the Oscars.
The Irish romantic drama Brooklyn, an audience-pleaser with a superb performance by Saoirse Ronan.
The deserved Oscar winner for Screenplay, The Big Short – a supremely entertaining thriller – both funny and anger-provoking.
The Italian drama My Mother is a deeply personal film about loss with some comedic highlights from John Turturro. The Coen Brothers’ disappointingly empty comedy Hail, Caesar contains some cool Hollywood parodies.
In honor of Cinequest, my Stream of the Week is the delightful dark comedy Gemma Bovery from last year’s festival. Gemma Bovery is available to stream from Amazon Video (free with Amazon Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
This week, watch for two wonderfully fun gender-crossing comedies on Turner Classic Movies on March 13: Victor/Victoria and Tootsie. TCM is playing Blow-up on March 17. Set in the Mod London of the mid-60s, a fashion photographer (David Hemmings) is living a fun but shallow life filled with sports cars, discos and and scoring with supermodels (think Jane Birkin, Sarah Miles and Verushka). Then he discovers that his random photograph of a landscape may contain a clue in a murder and meets a mystery woman (Vanessa Redgrave). After taking us into a vivid depiction of the Mod world, director Michelangelo Antonioni brilliantly turns the story into a suspenseful story of spiraling obsession. His L’Avventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse made Antonioni an icon of cinema, but Blow-up is his most accessible and enjoyable masterwork. There’s also a cameo performance by the Jeff Beck/Jimmy Page version of the Yardbirds and a quick sighting of Michael Palin in a nightclub.
Fabrice Luchini and Gemma Arterton in GEMMA BOVERY
In honor of Cinequest, here’s a highlight from last year’s fest. In the delightful dark comedy Gemma Bovery, Fabrice Luchini plays a guy who has left his Type A job in Paris to take over his father’s bakery in a sleepy village in Normandy. He gets new neighbors when a young British couple named Bovery moves in. The young British woman (played by the delectable Gemma Arterton) is named Gemma Bovery, and only the baker notices the similarity to Emma Bovary. But, like the protagonist of Madame Bovary, the young British woman is also married to a Charles, becomes bored and restless and develops a wandering eye. The baker rapidly becomes obsessed with the Flaubert novel being re-enacted before his eyes and soon jumps into the plot himself. Gemma Bovery, which I saw at Cinequest 2015, is a French movie that is mostly in English.
Fabrice Luchini is a treasure of world cinema. No screen actor can deliver a funnier reaction than Luchini, and he’s the master of squeezing laughs out of an awkward moment. For me, his signature role is in the 2004 French Intimate Strangers, in which he plays a tax lawyer with a practice in a Parisian professional office building. A beautiful woman (Sandrine Bonnaire), mistakes Luchini’s office for that of her new shrink, plops herself down and, before he can interrupt, starts unloading her sexual issues. It quickly becomes awkward for him to tell her of the error, and he’s completely entranced with her revelations, so he keeps impersonating her shrink. As they move from appointment to appointment, their relationship takes some unusual twists. It’s a very funny movie, and a great performance.
Gemma Bovery is directed and co-written by Anne Fontaine (The Girl from Monaco, Coco Before Chanel). Fontaine has a taste for offbeat takes on female sexuality, which she aired in the very trashy Adore (Naomi Watts and Robin Wright as Australian cougars who take on each other’s sons as lovers) and the much better Nathalie (wife pays prostitute to seduce her cheating hubby and report back on the details).
Gemma Bovery isn’t as Out There as Nathalie, but it’s just as good. The absurdity of the coincidences in Gemma Bovery makes for a funny situation, which Luchini elevates into a very funny movie. Gemma Bovery is available to stream from Amazon Video (free with Amazon Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
I am completely absorbed with Silicon Valley’s own film festival, Cinequest. Check out my up-to-the-moment coverage both on my Cinequest page and follow me on Twitter for the latest. I especially recommend tonight’s world premieres of Heaven’s Floor and Lost Solace. Both films will screen again Sunday night. You’ll also have a final chance to Lost Solace on Thursday and Heaven’s Floor on next Friday.
In theaters:
The Oscar-winning Best Picture Spotlight – a riveting, edge-of-your-seat drama with some especially compelling performances.
The movie that should have won Best Picture, The Revenant, an awesome and authentic survival tale that must be seen on the BIG SCREEN. I predict that The Revenant will be the biggest winner at the Oscars.
The movie that I admired more than either of those, the Irish romantic drama Brooklyn, an audience-pleaser with a superb performance by Saoirse Ronan.
The deserved Oscar winner for Screenplay, The Big Short – a supremely entertaining thriller – both funny and anger-provoking.
The Coen Brothers’ disappointingly empty comedy Hail, Caesar contains some cool Hollywood parodies.
In honor of the opening of this year’s Cinequest, this week’s DVD/Stream of the Week is the Danish drama The Hunt from the 2013 Cinequest. The Hunt is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and PlayStation Video.
Here are two very contrasting recommendations for movies playing on Turner Classic Movies this week. First, 0n March 8, we have a time capsule comedy from the master of movie silliness Richard Lester (Help, The Three Musketeers). The Ritz is a farce set in a gay bathhouse – in 1976, when this was a remarkably novel setting. Look for the not-yet-famous F. Murray Abraham, Treat Williams and John Ratzenberger. Then on March 10, TCM screens M (scroll down for comments), a proto-noir and a most darkly compelling serial killer movie from 1931.
I’ve already seen over twenty offerings from Cinequest 2016, and here are my initial recommendations.
MUST SEE
The Memory of Water: This Chilean drama explores grief, its process and its impact and might just be most masterful filmmaking achievement at Cinequest 2016. Exquisite. March 2, 10, 11.
WORLD PREMIERES
Lost Solace: Highly original psychological thriller and a brilliant directorial debut. World Premiere March 4, 6, 10.
Heaven’s Floor: Absorbing and character-driven autobiographical drama about a most complicated woman and the choices that indelibly affect several lives.World Premiere March 4, 6, 11.
Cinequest hosts the world premiere of LOST SOLACE
DRAMA
Demimonde: Sex, intrigue and murder in this operatic Hungarian period drama. U.S. Premiere March 2, 3, 9, 10.
The Daughter: Based on an Ibsen play, this Australian drama is Cinequest’s Closing Night film and packs a powerfully emotional punch. March 13.
ROMANCE
Fever at Dawn: Urgent period romance between Holocaust survivors, with an unexpected nugget at the end.
DOCUMENTARIES
Chuck Norris vs. Communism: The subversive impact of movies (ANY movies) on a culture-starved society. March 4, 6 and 12
Dan and Margot: A very personal look at schizophrenia from the schizophrenic’s point of view. U.S. Premiere March 6, 7, 8.
The Promised Band: A group of Israeli and Palestinian women seek to fight through the cultural, legal, political, military and security barriers between them by forming a girl band. World Premiere March 4, 6, 10.
The Brainwashing of My Dad: Personalizes the effects of right-wing media on mood and personality as well as on the political culture. US Premiere March 5, 6, 9.
Gordon Getty: There Will Be Music: Insights into the quiet passion and creative process of a most unusual classical composer. March 6, 11, 12.
SOMETHING YOU HAVEN’T SEEN BEFORE
Parabellum: This absurdist and trippy Argentine drama is set in a pre-apocalyptic near future; clearly everyone should be panicking, but no one is. March 2. 10, 12.
COMEDY
A Beginner’s Guide to Snuff: Broad, dark and shamelessly low brow comedy with a sparkling performance by an actress as an actress. World Premiere March 4, 6, 11.
WOMEN FILMMAKERS
This year, Cinequest presents the world or US premieres of sixty features and sixty-nine shorts. And of these 129 debut films, 64 were directed by women! These include Heaven’s Floor, The Brainwashing of My Dad, Dan and Margot and The Promised Band.
HEAVEN’S FLOOR
PREVIEWS
Several Cinequest films already have U.S. distributors and are planned for theatrical release later this year. I haven’t seen them yet, but you can see them first at Cinequest:
The Helen Mirren thriller Eye in the Sky on Opening Night, March 1;
The Wave (Borgen) March 2;
Ma Ma (Penelope Cruz) March 6;
Colonia (Emma Watson) March 10;
February(Shipka Kiernan from Mad Men, Emma Roberts) March 12; and
The Adderall Diaries (James Franco, who will be making a personal appearance) March 12;
The Little Prince (already spoken of as a contender for the 2017 Animated Feature Oscar) March 13.
Take a look at the entire program, the schedule and the passes and tickets. (If you want to support Silicon Valley’s most important cinema event while skipping the lines, the tax-deductible $100 donation for Express Line Access is an awesome deal.)
As usual, I’ll be covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. I usually screen (and write about) over thirty films from around the world. Bookmark my Cinequest 2016 page, with links to all my coverage. Follow me on Twitter for the latest.
Tomorrow: Cinequest insiders look at the 2016 festival
In honor of the opening of this year’s Cinequest, this week’s pick is the Danish drama The Hunt from the 2013 Cinequest. Mads Mikkelsen plays a man whose life is ruined by a false claim of child sexual abuse. You’ll recognize Mikkelsen, a big star in Europe, from After the Wedding and the 2006 Casino Royale (he was the villain with the bleeding eye). He won the 2012 Cannes Best Actor award for this performance.
The story is terrifyingly plausible. The protagonist, Lucas, is getting his bearings after a job change and a divorce. He lives in a small Danish town where everyone knows everyone else, next door to his best friend. The best friend drinks too much and his wife is a little high-strung, but Lucas embraces them for who they are. He’s a regular guy who hunts and drinks with his buddies and is adored by the kids at the kindergarten where he works. He’s not a saint – his ex-wife can get him to fly off the handle with little effort.
A little girl hears a sexual reference at home that she does not understand (and no one in the story could ever find out how she heard it). When she innocently repeats it at school, the staff is alarmed and starts to investigate. Except for one mistake by the school principal, everyone in the story acts reasonably. One step in the process builds upon another until the town’s parents become so understandably upset that a public hysteria ensues.
Director Thomas Vinterburg had previously created the underappreciated Celebration (Festen).The Hunt is gripping – we’re on the edges of our seats as the investigation snowballs and Lucas is put at risk of losing everything – his reputation, his job, his child, his friends, his liberty and even his life. Can Lucas be cleared, and, if he is, how scarred will he be? The Hunt is a superbly crafted film with a magnificent performance by Mikkelsen.
The Hunt is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and PlayStation Video.
