Weekly Movie Recommendations

Movies to See Right Now

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Richard Linklater's BOYHOOD - opening widely next week
Richard Linklater’s BOYHOOD – opening widely next week

Pickins are slim in theaters this week, but we’ve got a great week coming up. Opening here in Silicon Valley next Friday are:

  • 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.
  • The quirky indie comedy Land Ho!.
  • Lucy – a Scarlet Johansson action vehicle that looks like it rocks.

While we’re waiting for THOSE movies:

  • Jersey Boys is mostly fun – and features another jaunty performance by Christopher Walken.
  • The Wife enjoyed Code Black – the documentary about emergency rooms in urban public hospitals.
  • 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 art vs. technology documentary Tim’s Vermeer is a yawner.

My summertime DVD/Stream of the Week recommendations are the superb surfing documentaries Step Into Liquid and Riding Giants.  Step Into Liquid is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Hulu and Xbox Video.  Riding Giants is available streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play and Xbox Video.

DVD/Stream of the Week: hang ten this summer!

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Let’s go surfin’ now

Everybody’s learning how

Come on and safari with me

It’s a great time for the two most awesome and gnarly surfing movies, the documentaries Step Into Liquid and Riding Giants.

Step Into Liquid (2003): We see the world’s best pro surfers in the most extreme locations. We also see devoted amateurs in the tiny ripples of Lake Michigan and surfing evangelists teaching Irish school children. The cinematography is remarkable – critic Elvis Mitchell called the film “insanely gorgeous”. The filmmaker is Dana Brown, son of Bruce Brown, who made The Endless Summer (1966) and The Endless Summer II (1994).

 

Riding Giants (2004): This film focuses on the obsessive search for the best wave by some of the greatest surfers in history. We see “the biggest wave ever ridden” and then a monster that could be bigger. The movie traces the discovery of the Half Moon Bay surf spot Mavericks. And more and more, all wonderfully shot.

The filmmaker is Stacy Peralta, a surfer and one the pioneers of modern skateboarding (and a founder of the Powell Peralta skateboard product company). Peralta also made Dogtown and Z-boys (2001), the great documentary about the roots of skateboarding, and wrote the 2005 Lords of Dogtown.

Movies to See Right Now

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WITCHING AND BITCHING
WITCHING AND BITCHING

I loved the rockin’ Spanish Witching and Bitching – a witty comment on misogyny inside a madcap horror spoof.  You can stream it on Amazon instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.

Roger Ebert fans will need to see 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 playing theaters and also steams on Amazon instant, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

It’s not up to Clint Eastwood’s usual standard, but Jersey Boys, is mostly fun – and features another jaunty performance by Christopher Walken.

If you look for it in theaters, you can still find my top movie of the year so far, the transcendent Polish drama Ida.

The documentary Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger has an interesting subject, but the filmmaking is clunky. It does, however, make my list of Longest Movie Titles.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the Erroll Morris documentary The Unknown Known: Iraq War architect Donald Rumsfeld is apparently completely immune from self-doubt, but ultimately reveals more about himself than he would like. You can find The Unknown Known on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Set your DVRs for Turner Classic Movies on July 23 for Blow-up. 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.

BLOW-UP
BLOW-UP

DVD/Stream of the Week: The Unknown Known

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Rumsfeld: unruffled by the Errol Morris documentary treatmentErrol Morris is a master documentarian (Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, Standard Operating Procedure), so he is the perfect guy to explore the personality and career – and, above all, the self-certainty – of Donald Rumsfeld, architect of the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. For most of the film, Rumsfeld himself is on-screen talking to Morris’ camera. Rumsfeld is apparently completely immune from self-doubt, but ultimately reveals more about himself than he would like.

The title of the picture comes from a Rumsfeld memo that describes a policy maker’s “unknown known” as that which you thought you know but it turns out that you didn’t. Of course, the classic “unknown known” is the certainty that the Iraq War would be justified and would turn out well.

In contrast, the “unknown unknown” is something that you don’t know that you don’t know and that Rumsfeld says that you have to imagine (such as the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks). Of course, the imagining of all kinds of such attacks drives the neo-conservative theory of preemptive war – to strike at those who can be IMAGINED to threaten you.

Rumsfeld is remarkably glib and very effective at selling his own version of reality. Morris takes this on early in the documentary by getting Rumsfeld to deny linking Saddam with Al Qaeda and then shows him doing exactly that in a pre-Iraq War news conference. Indeed, Morris himself is an effective off-screen participant throughout, sparring with Rumsfeld, with each guy winning his share of verbal tussles.

When Rumsfeld thinks that he’s won a point, he grins the infuriating grin in the image above. The one time he loses his smile is when Morris mentions a moment when Rumsfeld almost became Reagan’s Vice-President (and then future President), and Rumsfeld acknowledges that, yes, this was possible. The film is brilliantly edited, and Morris knows EXACTLY how long to extend a shot to catch Rumsfeld in moments of reflection.

The movie traces Rumsfeld’s remarkable life and career from his marriage and early start as a young Congressman thru his roles in the Nixon and Ford administrations with the end of Watergate, the fall of Saigon, his salesmanship for defense spending increases in the 1970s and his service as Reagan’s Middle East envoy. After a time in the wilderness during Bush I, of course, he came to his greatest power during Bush II. He gives a stirring first-person account of the 9/11 attack of the Pentagon, relating what the scene was like even before the first responders arrived. But the core of the film is about the Rumsfeld decisions about Iraq.

Unusual for a current events documentary, there’s also some top shelf music from Danny Elfman, Oscar nominated for Good Will Hunting and Milk.

You can find The Unknown Known on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Movies to See Right Now

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Matthew McConaughey in TRUE DETECTIVE
Matthew McConaughey in TRUE DETECTIVE

My top picks:

  • Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin hits every note perfectly. I love this little movie, and it may only be in theaters for another week, so see it while you can.
  • It’s not up to Clint Eastwood’s usual standard, but Jersey Boys, is mostly fun – and features another jaunty performance by Christopher Walken.
  • If you look for it in theaters, you can still find my top movie of the year so far, the transcendent Polish drama Ida.

Among other movies out now:

My DVD/Stream of the week – perfect for binge-viewing on the holiday weekend – is the eight one-hour episodes of HBO’s True Detective. It’s a dark tale of two mismatched detectives – each tormented by his own demons – obsessed by a whodunit in contemporary back bayou Lousiana. Wood Harrelson is very good, and Matthew McConaughey’s performance may have been the best on TV this year. True Detective is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from HBO GO.

Turner Classic Movies also offers a pretty appetizing movie smorgasbord this week, starting with The Big Steal (1949) on July 8  – Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer are chased all over Mexico by William Bendix.  Then on July 10, we have three great documentaries:

  • The 1968 Salesman – as good of a depiction of the sales life as Glengarry Glen Ross);
  • Harlan County, U.S.A, the 1979 Oscar-winner Filmmaker Barbara Kopple embedded herself among the striking coal miners and got amazing footage – including of herself threatened and shot at.  Also one of my 5 Great Hillbilly Movies.
  • The Times of Harvey Milk  – the Oscar winner from 1984.  The real story behind Milk with the original witnesses.  One of the best political movies ever.

Movies to See Right Now

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A COFFEE IN BERLIN (OH BOY)
A COFFEE IN BERLIN (OH BOY)

Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin hits every note perfectly.  I love this little movie, and it may only be in theaters for another week, so see it while you can.

It’s not up to Clint Eastwood’s usual standard, but Jersey Boys, is mostly fun – and features another jaunty performance by Christopher Walken.

Among other movies in theaters now:

  • I found the political documentary Citizen Koch to be righteous but lame.
  • I wasn’t a big fan of the bleak and hyperviolent The Rover, either;watch writer-director David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom instead.

My DVD/Stream of the week is the Backwoods thriller Joe, starring an unusually retrained Nicholas Cage and featuring two other great performances from lesser knowns. Joe is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

This week Turner Classic Movies is airing a very fun heist movie – the original 1969 The Italian Job with Michael Caine.  Another good choice is the WW II spy thriller The Fallen Sparrow with John Garfield and a 22-year-old Maureen O’Hara.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Joe

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JoeIn Joe, Nicholas Cage plays the title character, who lives a solitary life in backwoods Texas – self-isolated by problems with anger management and booze that long ago estranged his family and cost him some time in the state pen. Somehow Joe has stayed out of trouble for years, but he’s always on a slow simmer, seemingly close to boiling over. Joe meets Gary (Tye Sheridan of Mud), a boy who belongs to a family of drifters led by a father who beats them and takes all their money to spend on cheap likker. Joe bonds with Gary, and ultimately finds redemption in a sacrifice he makes for the boy. Dark and violent, Joe is ultimately successful as a gripping drama.

Indie writer-director David Gordon Green excels at authentic character-driven Southern dramas (George Washington, All the Real Girls and Undertow). Here he brings us to a world of nasty chained-up dogs, where everyone smokes cigarettes and eats canned food, and nobody has heard of espresso or the Internet.

Cage’s performance is excellent – never over-the-top and much more modulated and realistic than we’ve come to expect from him.

Sheridan, so good in Mud, might be even better here; he smolders at the abuse and neglect the family suffers at the hands of his father. He’s become a strapping kid who came employ violence against an adult, but the father-son tie keeps him from unleashing it on his despicable father. Sheridan is especially brilliant in an early scene where he playfully banters with his drunken dad and in another where Joe teaches him how to fake a pained smile to attract girls.

The biggest revelation in Joe is a searing performance by non-actor Gary Poulter as the drunken father who may shamble like a zombie, but is always cruising like a shark, on the hunt for someone to manipulate or rob. It’s stirring portrait of final stage alcoholism, where there is no moral filter anymore – he will resort to ANY conduct for some three dollar wine. There is nothing left but evil borne of desperation for a drink. Although Poulter was a reliable member of the filmmaking team, within two months after the conclusion of photography, he had resorted to his previous self-destructive lifestyle and died. Thanks to Green, he leaves one great cinematic performance as his legacy.

Joe is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Movies to See Right Now

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Juliette Binoche in BLUE
Juliette Binoche in BLUE

This a GREAT WEEK for cinema. The wonderfully wry German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin opens today. In a brilliant debut feature, writer-director Jan Ole Gerster has created a warm-hearted but lost character who needs to connect with others – but sabotages his every opportunity. Besides laughing through A Coffee in Berlin, you’ll probably also notice the singularly complementary soundtrack and the vivid sense of time and place.

And don’t miss the two MUST SEE movies out now. The first is the Canadian knee-slapper The Grand Seduction – the funniest film of the year so far and a guaranteed audience pleaser. The second is my pick for the year’s best movie so far – the Polish drama Ida, about a novice nun who is stunned to learn that her biological parents were Jewish victims of the Holocaust – watching shot after shot in Ida is like walking through a museum gazing at masterpiece paintings one after the other. Ida may only be in theaters for another week or so.

Here are other good movie choices:

My DVD/Stream of the week is the Italian Caesar Must Die, with maximum security prisoners putting on a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Caesar Must Die is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Hulu.

Julie Delpy in WHITE
Julie Delpy in WHITE

Okay, fire up the DVR for something special coming up on June 22 on Turner Classic Movies: the masterpiece Three Colors trilogy Blue, White and Red from the mid-1990s. The films are in French, and made by the director that I may admire more than any other, Krzysztof Kieslowski of Poland. The first film, Blue, stars Juliette Binoche and addresses grief; it is somber but its humanity is inspiring. Julie Delpy stars in White the second and much lighter film – a relationship dramedy. In Red, Irene Jacob stars in a story about how strangers treat each each other in modern society, with a redemptive conclusion to the trilogy. Together, the three movies profoundly explore aspects of the human condition, and the result is evocative, intelligent and emotionally satisfying. The stories of the three films intersect – and you can spot the characters from the first two movies in the third.

Kieslowski labored in obscurity in Communist Poland until he attained European recognition and US art house hits with The Decalogue (1988) and The Double Life of Véronique (1990). The Blue/White/Red trilogy came out in 1993 and 1994 to international acclaim, but Kieslowski, reportedly suffering from AIDS, had to retire and died two years later at age 54.  I can’t imagine what cinematic masterpieces would have been produced in two more decades of Kieslowski.

Just so folks can calibrate my taste, I keep a list of the 50 Greatest Movies of All Time, and the Blue/White/Red trilogy is in the first ten films on that list. This trilogy is very special – and perfect for binge viewing.

Irene Jacob in RED
Irene Jacob in RED

Movies to See Right Now

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IDA
IDA

Don’t miss the two MUST SEE movies out now. The first is the Canadian knee-slapper The Grand Seduction – the funniest film of the year so far and a guaranteed audience pleaser. The second is my pick for the year’s best movie so far – the Polish drama Ida, about a novice nun who is stunned to learn that her biological parents were Jewish victims of the Holocaust – watching shot after shot in Ida is like walking through a museum gazing at masterpiece paintings one after the other.  Ida may only be in theaters for another week or so.

Here are other good movie choices:

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Run & Jump, an Irish film by a Bay Area filmmaker that works equally well as a romance and as a family drama. Run & Jump is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube and Xbox Video.

Set your DVR to Turner Classic Movies for next Friday’s showing of the wonderful noir mystery Laura from 1944. What lifts any great film above the others in its genre is the depth of the characterization, and here we have the unforgettable star columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) – a compelling mixture of megalomania and insecurity; there’s also the proto-career woman Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney at her most stunning) and the cynical detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), a guy whose emotions have been depleted but are rekindled by a murder victim he’s never met. Watch for future horror movie regular Vincent Price in an early role as an oily gigolo. David Raksin composed one of cinema’s most evocative musical themes. Laura makes my list of Greatest Movies of All Time.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Run & Jump

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Maxine Peake in RUN & JUMP
Maxine Peake in RUN & JUMP

In the indie Run & Jump, a rare type of stroke has changed the personality of an Irish furniture maker; he has survived, but now prone to rages and catatonia, he is never going to be the same as before. He is returned to his family, led by his firecracker wife (Maxine Peake). Along comes an American medical researcher (Will Forte from Saturday Night Live and Nebraska), who moves with the family so he can continually film his patient’s symptoms.

The family initially resents the constant filming, although they desperately need the income from the research stipend. The researcher is so socially awkward that he’s almost catatonic himself, but he is able to provide the adult male presence that the family now misses, and they are eventually drawn to his kindness. Although he tries to maintain clinical distance, he is inevitably attracted to the vitality of the wife – a real live wire. But this isn’t going where you might expect…

Run & Jump succeeds both as a romance and as a family drama. The primary credit goes to co-writer and director Steph Green. A Bay Area filmmaker who now works in Ireland, Green was Oscar nominated for a live action short. Run & Jump is her first feature.

Maxine Peake’s affecting performance as the wife drives the film; Run & Jump is really the story of the wife’s struggles as she fights to keep her family afloat while making a near impossible adjustment.

Run & Jump is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube and Xbox Video.