Weekly Movie Recommendations

Movies to See Right Now

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Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass in THE ONE I LOVE
Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass in THE ONE I LOVE

Plenty of good choices in theaters:

  • The smart and hilarious The Trip to Italy showcases the improvisational wit of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, along with some serious tourism/foodie porn.
  • Alive Inside: The profoundly moving documentary showing Alzheimer patients being pulled out of isolation by music.
  • Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.
  • The mesmerizing drama Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson.  Gleeson again teams with John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard.
  • I really liked The One I Love – a relationship romance, a dark comedy and a modern day episode of The Twilight Zone rolled into one successful movie.  It’s also available streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
  • Don’t miss Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.

Boyhood tops my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far, and Alive Inside and Calvary also make the list.

Poor writing and directing sabotage the delightful performances of Alfred molina and john Lithgow in the romantic drama Love Is Strange.  I was also disappointed by the tiresome Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.  I nodded off during Woody Allen’s disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Go For Sisters , a border thriller with three more great movie characters from master indie writer-director John Sayles. Go for Sisters is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon and Vudu.

As I wrote yesterday, Turner Classic Movies is airing the prototype for Orange Is the New Black – Caged from 1950 – set your DVR tonight..

On September 7, TCM plays The Battle of Algiers (1966), the story of 1950s French colonialists struggling to suppress the guerrilla uprising of Algerian independence fighters.  Although it looks like a documentary, it is not.  Instead, filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo recreated the actual events so realistically that we believe that we are watching strategy councils of each side.  Urban insurgency and counter-insurgency are nasty, brutal and not very short – and we see some horrifically inhumane butchering by both sides. Among the great war films, it may be the best film on counter-insurgency.  In 2003, the Pentagon screened the film for its special operations commanders. Re-released to theaters in 2004, The Battle of Algiers made many critics’ top ten lists the second time around.

Movies to See Right Now

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Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD
Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD

OK – it’s the Labor Day weekend – we all have three days off and a need to seek an air-conditioned theater.  So there’s just no excuse if you haven’t yet seen these movies on my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far:

  • Alive Inside: The profoundly moving documentary showing Alzheimer patients being pulled out of isolation by music.
  • Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.
  • The mesmerizing drama Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson again teams with John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard.

I really liked The One I Love – a relationship romance, a dark comedy and a modern day episode of The Twilight Zone rolled into one successful movie. Don’t miss Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.

I was disappointed by the tiresome Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.  I nodded off during Woody Allen’s disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Go For Sisters , a border thriller with three more great movie characters from master indie writer-director John Sayles.  Go for Sisters is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon and Vudu.

On September 1, TCM is airing The Crying Game – with one of the great movie plot twists of all time and one of my Best Films About the Troubles (Northern Ireland).

DVD/Stream of the Week: GO FOR SISTERS: three more great characters from John Sayles

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go for sistersMy favorite indie writer-director John Sayles has created three more wonderful characters in Go for Sisters. Bernice (LisaGay Hamilton from Men of a Certain Age and Jackie Brown) is a no-nonsense parole officer. Fontayne (Yolonda Ross) is an ex-con fighting to maintain her sobriety through minimum wage jobs in a drug-filled neighborhood. Freddy (Edward James Olmos) is an unfairly disgraced cop who is almost blind from macular degeneration. Bernice and Fontayne were high school friends who took different paths. Bernice’s adult son has gotten involved in some illegal activity, and when he disappears, Bernice need Fontayne’s street connections to help find him. They need to enlist Freddy, and soon the three are off on a chase back and forth through the underworld on both sides of the US-Mexico border. All three characters are emotionally damaged from personal loss – and all three are fighting through their pain.

Go for Sisters is in the construct of a thriller, but it’s not the greatest thriller around, although Sayles gets what he can from a radio tracking device and an attempted miggung in a Tijuana dildo shop. What makes Go for Sister – and all of Sayles’ films – worthwhile is the characters. We’ve never met these individuals before, but they are believable and we care about them. Excellent acting from the three stars helps a lot. (And there’s a nice scene with Hector Elizondo.)

This is minor Sayles – it doesn’t compare to Eight Men Out, Passion Fish, The Secret of Roan Inish, City of Hope or his 1996 masterpiece Lone Star. Still, it’s a solid character driven film and great video choice. Go for Sisters is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon and Vudu.

Movies to See Right Now

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Dan Cohen (RightI in ALIVE INSIDE
ALIVE INSIDE

Last night I saw Alive Inside for the second time, this time with The Wife, and it was as profoundly moving as the first screening.  This documentary showing Alzheimer patients being pulled out of isolation by music is on my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far (along with three other movies in this post – Boyhood, Calvary and Locke).

Other top picks:

  • Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.
  • The mesmerizing drama Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson again teams with John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard.
  • Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.

The sci fi thriller Snowpiercer is both thoughtful and exciting, plus it features amazing production design; you can also stream Snowpiercer on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and DirecTV.   Lucy is a Scarlet Johansson action vehicle that rocks.  I nodded off during Woody Allen’s disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight.

There’s also an assortment of recent releases to Video on Demand:

  • I loved the rockin’ Spanish Witching and Bitching – a witty comment on misogyny inside a madcap horror spoof, which you can stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.
  • The oddly undisturbing documentary A Brony Tale, about grown men with very unusual taste in television shows. Brony Tale is available streaming on iTunes.
  • The Congress: a thoughtful live action fable followed by a less compelling an animated sci fi story. The Congress is available streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Robert Duvall’s geezer-gone-wild roadtrip in A Night in Old Mexico. A Night in Old Mexico is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

My DVD/Stream of the week is Locke, a thriller about responsibility – and it’s also on my list of the year’s best so far.  Locke is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

It’s another good week for film noir coming up on Turner Classic Movies.

  • On August 25, TCM will air the 1944 Murder, My Sweet. Rebelling against being typecast in the sappy musical roles that he knew he was aging out of, Dick Powell took on the role of hardboiled detective Philip Marlowe and knocked it out of the park. He rejuvenated his own career in a similar arc to what we’ve recently seen from Alec Baldwin and Matthew McConaughey.
  • The Hitch-hiker (August 27 on TCM) is notable for being the first film noir directed by a woman (the veteran noir actress Ida Lupino). The ruthless bad guy is played by William Talman, who Baby Boomers will remember as the luckless District Attorney Hamilton Burger on TV’s Perry Mason – kind of a proto-Wiley Coyote.
  • I’m going to be featuring the noir thriller D.O.A. in a post on Monday.

DVD/Stream of the week: LOCKE: a thriller about responsibility

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lockeThe thriller Locke is about an extremely responsible guy (Tom Hardy) who has made one mistake – and he’s trying to make it right. But trying to do the responsible thing in one part of your life can have uncomfortable consequences in the others. The title character drives all night trying to keep aspects of his life from crashing and burning.

In fact, he never leaves the car and, for the entire duration of the movie, we only see his upper body, his eyes in the rearview mirror, the dashboard and the roadway lit by his headlights. All the other characters are voiced – he talks to them on the Bluetooth device in his BMW. Sure, that’s a gimmick – but it works because it complements the core story about the consequences of responsibility.

Locke is written and directed by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises). The story is actually a domestic drama – there are no explosions to dodge, no one in peril to rescue and no bad guys to dispatch. But it’s definitely a thriller because we care about whether Locke meets the two deadlines he will face early the next morning.

It’s a masterful job of film editing by Justine Wright (Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland). After all, her cuts help keep us on the edge of our seats, despite her working with a very finite variety of shots (Locke’s eyes, the dashboard, etc.).

Hardy, who’s known as an action star, is excellent at portraying this guy who must try to keep his family, biggest career project and self-respect from unraveling at the same time, only armed with his ability to persuade others. It’s a fine film.  Locke is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Movies to See Right Now

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Brendan Gleeson and Kelly Reilly in CALVARY
Brendan Gleeson and Kelly Reilly in CALVARY

Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade. But two other movies that are ALSO on my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far are also in theaters:

  • The emotionally gripping documentary Alive Inside, showing Alzheimer patients being pulled out of isolation by music. This will be one of the two favorites for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
  • The mesmerizing drama Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson again teams with John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard.

Boyhood and Alive Inside, in particular, are MUST SEEs. Don’t miss them.

Also in theaters:

  • Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.
  • The sci fi thriller Snowpiercer is both thoughtful and exciting, plus it features amazing production design. You can also stream Snowpiercer on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and DirecTV.
  • Lucy – a Scarlet Johansson action vehicle that rocks.

I nodded off during Woody Allen’s disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight.

There’s also an assortment of recent releases to Video on Demand:

          • I loved the rockin’ Spanish Witching and Bitching – a witty comment on misogyny inside a madcap horror spoof, which you can stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.
          • Life Itself, the affectionate but not worshipful documentary on movie critic Ebert’s groundbreaking career, courageous battle against disease and uncommonly graceful death Life Itself is streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
          • The oddly undisturbing documentary A Brony Tale, about grown men with very unusual taste in television shows. Brony Tale is available streaming on iTunes.
          • The Congress: a thoughtful live action fable followed by a less compelling an animated sci fi story. The Congress is available streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
          • Robert Duvall’s geezer-gone-wild roadtrip in A Night in Old Mexico. A Night in Old Mexico is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET
PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET

This week Turner Classic Movies is featuring Pickup on South Street, an entertaining Sam Fuller film noir with a protagonist thief (Richard Widmark) who pocket picks himself into being targeted by a Commie spy ring. And then there’s the 1967 thriller Wait Until Dark, where Audrey Hepburn plays a blind woman trapped in her apartment by a gang of thugs led by a psychotic Alan Arkin in his breakout movie role.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Robin Williams’ finest performance

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This brilliant scene (above) from Aladdin (mostly improvised) showcases Robin Williams’ comic genius – irrepressible until yesterday. Taking in Williams’ rapid fire torrents of creativity was often like standing in front of a fire hose, but in a good way.

Williams was in a bunch of fine movies – Moscow on the Hudson, Good Morning Vietnam, Aladdin, Deconstructing Harry, Good Will Hunting, Insomnia and The Face of Love. Even though he won an acting Oscar for Good Will Hunting, his best performance was as a character very much unlike Robin Williams – the frighteningly contained Sy Parrish in One Hour Photo. Nothing seems more ordinary and harmless than this guy in a drugstore vest at the photo stand, but Sy’s building obsession with a family of customers – a family completely oblivious to his preoccupation with them – goes from uneasy to chilling to terrifying.  One Hour Photo is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Xbox Video and on FHEsearchlightconnect on YouTube.

Movies to See Right Now – more than one MUST SEE

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Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD
Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD

Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.  But two other movies that are ALSO on my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far open this weekend:

  • The emotionally gripping documentary Alive Inside, showing Alzheimer patients being pulled out of isolation by music.  This will be one of the two favorites for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
  • The mesmerizing drama Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson again teams with John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard.

Boyhood and Alive Inside, in particular, are MUST SEEs.  Don’t miss them.

Also in theaters:

  • Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.
  • The smart and entertaining I Origins, which works both as a scientific detective story and as a meditation on romance.
  • The quirky comedy Land Ho!, with an uproarious and yet genuine geezer road trip to Iceland.
  • The sci fi thriller Snowpiercer is both thoughtful and exciting, plus it features amazing production design. You can also stream Snowpiercer on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and DirecTV.
  • Lucy – a Scarlet Johansson action vehicle that rocks.
  • The credible and politically important HBO documentary The Newburgh Sting, which exposes the FBI’s manufacture of a fake terrorist attack to arrest some New York dumbasses. It’s playing on HBO.

I nodded off during Woody Allen’s disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight.

There’s also an assortment of recent releases to Video on Demand:

        • I loved the rockin’ Spanish Witching and Bitching – a witty comment on misogyny inside a madcap horror spoof, which you can stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.
        • Life Itself, the affectionate but not worshipful documentary on movie critic Ebert’s groundbreaking career, courageous battle against disease and uncommonly graceful death Life Itself is streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
        • The oddly undisturbing documentary A Brony Tale, about grown men with very unusual taste in television shows. Brony Tale is available streaming on iTunes.
        • The Congress: a thoughtful live action fable followed by a less compelling an animated sci fi story. The Congress is available streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
        • Robert Duvall’s geezer-gone-wild roadtrip in A Night in Old Mexico. A Night in Old Mexico is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
        • The art vs. technology documentary Tim’s Vermeer is a yawner.

One of my all-time favorite comedies, Twentieth Century, shows up on Turner Classic Movies on August 10. The next day, TCM will air The Wild One and The Gold Rush. The Wild One has the iconic 1953 Marlon Brando performance as the leader of bikers that terrorize a small town (based on a real incident in Hollister, California). Brando is asked “What are you rebelling against?” and replies “Whadda you got?”. Charlie Chaplin’s comic masterpiece The Gold Rush includes the wonderful scene where hulking Mack Swain, crazed by winter starvation, imagines Charlie to be a succulent chicken and chases him around their Alaskan cabin.

Charlie Chaplin and Mack Swain in THE GOLD RUSH
Charlie Chaplin and Mack Swain in THE GOLD RUSH

Movies to See Right Now

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Eller Coltrane in BOYHOOD
Eller Coltrane in BOYHOOD

First things first –  Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood tops my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far and it may turn out to be the best film of the decade. It’s a Must See.

And there are plenty of other good movie choices.  Here are some more recommendations:

  • Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.
  • The smart and entertaining I Origins, which works both as a scientific detective story and as a meditation on romance.
  • The quirky comedy Land Ho!, with an uproarious and yet genuine geezer road trip to Iceland.
  • The sci fi thriller Snowpiercer is both thoughtful and exciting, plus it features amazing production design. You can also stream Snowpiercer on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and DirecTV.
  • Lucy – a Scarlet Johansson action vehicle that rocks.
  • The credible and politically important HBO documentary The Newburgh Sting, which exposes the FBI’s manufacture of a fake terrorist attack to arrest some New York dumbasses. It’s playing on HBO.

There’s also an assortment of recent releases to Video on Demand:

      • I loved the rockin’ Spanish Witching and Bitching – a witty comment on misogyny inside a madcap horror spoof, which you can stream on Amazon instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.
      • Life Itself, the affectionate but not worshipful documentary on movie critic Ebert’s groundbreaking career, courageous battle against disease and uncommonly graceful death Life Itself is streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
      • The oddly undisturbing documentary A Brony Tale, about grown men with very unusual taste in television shows. Brony Tale is available streaming on iTunes.
      • The Congress: a thoughtful live action fable followed by a less compelling an animated sci fi story. The Congress is available streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
      • Robert Duvall’s geezer-gone-wild roadtrip in A Night in Old Mexico. A Night in Old Mexico is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
      • The art vs. technology documentary Tim’s Vermeer is a yawner.

My Stream of the Week is the satisfying French drama On My Way, with the extraordinary Catherine Deneuve on an escapist road trip. On My Way is available streaming on Amazon Instant and iTunes.

On August 7, Turner Classic Movies will air the classic 1940 romance The Shop Around the Corner with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. It was remade a half-century later as You’ve Got Mail. The Wife and I watched it recently – I thought it was sweet, but she thought it a little dated and draggy in places. On a different note, TCM will show Juarez and Bordertown on August 6 – two Paul Muni movies that show up on my list of Least Convincing Mexicans.

Movies to See Right Now – the really good movies are here

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Patricia Arquette and Eller Coltrane in BOYHOOD
Patricia Arquette and Eller Coltrane in BOYHOOD

Our patience has been rewarded – an onslaught of really good movies is finally out now. I haven’t yet seen two of the highly anticipated movies that are out today:

    • Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood – potentially the best movie of the year.
    • Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final performance in the John LeCarre espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.

I HAVE seen and recommend:

  • The smart and entertaining I Origins , which works both as a scientific detective story and as a meditation on romance.
  • The sci fi thriller  Snowpiercer is both thoughtful and exciting, plus it features amazing production design. You can also stream Snowpiercer on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and DirecTV.
  • Lucy – a Scarlet Johansson action vehicle that rocks.
  • The credible and politically important HBO documentary The Newburgh Sting, which exposes the FBI’s manufacture of a fake terrorist attack to arrest some New York dumbasses.  It’s playing on HBO.

There’s also an assortment of recent releases to Video on Demand:

    • I loved the rockin’ Spanish Witching and Bitching – a witty comment on misogyny inside a madcap horror spoof, which you can stream on Amazon instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.
    • Life Itself, the affectionate but not worshipful documentary on movie critic Ebert’s groundbreaking career, courageous battle against disease and uncommonly graceful death Life Itself is streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
    • The oddly undisturbing documentary A Brony Tale, about grown men with very unusual taste in television shows.  Brony Tale is available streaming on iTunes.
    • The Congress: a thoughtful live action fable followed by a less compelling an animated sci fi story.  The Congress is available streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
    • Robert Duvall’s geezer-gone-wild roadtrip in A Night in Old Mexico.  A Night in Old Mexico is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
    • The art vs. technology documentary Tim’s Vermeer is a yawner.

I recommend setting your DVR to record Wild Strawberries on July 28. If you have found the work of Ingmar Bergman just too dreary, this is a great choice. 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 gloomy movies that “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
WILD STRAWBERRIES