Weekly Movie Recommendations

Movies to See Right Now

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MUD

Go see the gripping and thoughtful Mud.  Two Arkansas boys embark on a secret adventure with a man hiding from the authorities, and they learn more than they expected about love and loyalty.   Mud is one of the best movies of 2013.

Best bets in theaters this week:

      • If you see the thought-provoking drama The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, you’ll still be mulling it over days later;
      • I guarantee that you will enjoy the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.
      • Don’t overlook the heartwarming British indie The Angel’s Share about a hard luck guy’s struggle to turn his life around with unexpected help from some ultra-rare Scotch whisky.  

The compelling documentary The Central Park Five from Ken Burns, et al, is available streaming from Amazon Instant and other VOD providers. Football fans should tune into ESPN’s 30 for 30 for Elway to Marino, an inside look at several astonishing stories from the 1983 NFL draft.

There are two big releases this weekend:  The Reluctant Fundamentalist and At Any Price.   You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Flight, starring Denzel Washington as an airline pilot who becomes a hero after saving his passengers in a miraculous crash landing, but then risks legal jeopardy unless he can get his drinking under control. Flight is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from many VOD outlets.

On May 7, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the three film noir classics: Out of the Past, The Asphalt Jungle and The Naked City.

DVD of the Week: Flight

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Denzel Washington stars in this top rate thriller about an airline pilot who becomes a hero after saving his passengers in a miraculous crash landing, but then falls into legal jeopardy when alcohol is found in his blood.  The plane crash is thrilling, but the high stakes suspense in the final 90 minutes is about whether he can get his drinking under control.  (The trailer below overemphasizes the plane crash and paints Flight as an action movie, thereby qualifying it for my list of Most Misleading Trailers.)

What makes Flight singular is that the hero can take control of a crisis at 35,000 feet and rise to superhuman performance, but is completely out of control when he spots a mini bottle of Ketel One. 

And what a hero Denzel Washington makes!  The guy is among our very best actors, and here, his edginess and bluster mask the pilot’s achingly vulnerable loneliness and self-loathing.  And the charisma and confidence in Denzel’s screen presence makes him totally credible as an action hero.

Director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future) delivers a plane crash scene for the ages, and he does an excellent job of keeping up the suspense.  Flight is pedal-to-the-metal intensity until the final ten minutes, when the ending didn’t quite work for me.  For me, only the ending kept Flight from being a Must See and one of the year’s best; however, The Wife and several of my friends did like the ending.

The English actress Kelly Reilly is really, really good as a trashy southern heroin addict whose life intersects with the pilot’s, and who must make the same choice between recovery and demise.  John Goodman is hilarious as a gonzo enabler right out of Hunter S. Thompson.  The rest of the cast shines, too, especially Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood and Tamara Tunie.

Flight is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from many VOD outlets.

Movies to See Right Now

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Bradley Cooper in THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES

Best bets in theaters this week:

  • If you see the thought-provoking drama The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, you’ll still be mulling it over days later;
  • I guarantee that you will enjoy the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.
  • Read my ambivalent comments before going to see the enigmatic Upstream Color.

I haven’t yet seen (but I’ve been eagerly awaiting) the drama Mud, with Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Sam Shepherd, Michael Shannon and the kid from The Tree of Life.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

PBS is broadcasting the compelling doumentary The Central Park Five from Ken Burns, et al.  It’s also available streaming from Amazon Instant and other VOD providers.

On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel, with surprisingly little energy.  I’m not a big fan of the shaky cam noir Sun Don’t Shine from promising indie director Amy Seimetz, available from various VOD outlets.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the authentic and evocative coming of age movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and other VOD providers.

On April 30, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the oft overlooked film noir The Prowler, starring usually sympathetic good guy Van Heflin as the twisted bad guy.

DVD/Stream of the Week: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

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In a fine movie debut, Stephen Chbosky directs the screen version of his novel.  A shy high school freshman in 1991 is adopted by two unapologetically misfit seniors, played by Harry Potter’s Emma Watson and Ezra Miller (very different here than in We Need to Talk About Kevin).  The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a coming of age story, and a very good one. We’ve all experienced adolescence, so my test for a film in this genre is whether the moments of adolescent awkwardness, peer obsession, self-doubt and discovery feel real.  I felt that authenticity with Perks.  In addition, the story is textured and unpredictable, and the performances – especially those by Watson and Miller –  are excellent.  It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and other VOD providers.

Movies to See Right Now

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Amy Seimetz in UPSTREAM COLOR

Best bets in theaters this week:

  • If you see the thought-provoking drama The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, you’ll still be mulling it over days later;
  • I guarantee that you will enjoy the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.
  • Read my ambivalent comments before going to see the enigmatic Upstream Color.

PBS is broadcasting the compelling doumentary The Central Park Five from Ken Burns, et al.

On Video on Demand:

  • Letters from the Big Man: a beautifully looking and sounding fable about a prickly woman with a guy and a Bigfoot competing for her affections.
  • Electrick Children: an entirely unique teen coming of age story with fundamentalist Mormon teens in Las Vegas.
  • Music fans will enjoy the bio-documentary Beware of Mr. Baker.

On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel, with surprisingly little energy. The HBO movie Phil Spector is really just a freak show.

I haven’t yet seen the Norwegian scientific true adventure Kon-Tiki. Also opening today is Terence Malick’s To The Wonder.   You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the week is the indie drama Smashed, with its breakthrough performance by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and other VOD providers.

DVD of the Week: Smashed

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In this indie drama, a couple navigates life while drunk.  Can they stay together and flourish when she sobers up?  Smashed is a remarkably realistic portrayal of the drinking life and the challenges of recovery and relapse, informed by the personal experience of co-writer Susan Burke.

The best thing about Smashed is the performance of Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the wife.  Winstead realistically takes her character through the carelessness, denial, humiliation and self-degradation of drinking and the fears and determination that co-exist in her recovery.  It’s a stellar performance, and I’ll be looking for Winstead in bigger roles.

Also very good are Nick Offerman as the wife’s colleague, Megan Mullally, unrecognizable as the wife’s boss, and the always delightful Octavia Spencer.

As The Wife pointed out, the amount of time that director and co-writer James Ponsoldt spent on the drinking part of the story means that lots of plot points whiz by in the final ten minutes.  Still, Smashed is very watchable and benefits from the breakthrough performance by Winstead.  It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and other VOD providers.

Movies to See Right Now

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The Sapphires

I’m still recommending the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War. The other side of the coin is the bleak, but masterful Romanian drama Beyond the Hills.

And I still love two indies on Video on Demand:

  • Letters from the Big Man: a beautifully looking and sounding fable about a prickly woman with a guy and a Bigfoot competing for her affections.
  • Electrick Children: an entirely unique teen coming of age story with fundamentalist Mormon teens in Las Vegas.

The other best choices in theaters:

  • No: Gael Garcia Bernal stars as the regular guy who brainstormed the guerrilla advertising campaign that dethroned Chilean dictator Pinochet.
  • The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: a pleasant comedy and a showcase for Jim Carrey.
  • Side Effects: Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
  • Quartet: a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances.

Music fans will enjoy the bio-documentary Beware of Mr. Baker, available on VOD.

On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel, with surprisingly little energy. The HBO movie Phil Spector is really just a freak show.

You may still be able to catch the fine PBS documentary Philip Roth: Unmasked. Roth himself gets lots of screen time to explain his career and his creative process.

I haven’t yet seen the much anticipated The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, which opens today.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the week is the campy 1994 sci fi western Oblivion, which I’m betting is more entertaining than this week’s Hollywood remake.

On April 15, Turner Classic Movies is showing all four of the Clint Eastwood Man with No Name movies:  the Sergio Leone trilogy (For a Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) plus Hang Em High.

DVD of the Week: the campy 1994 Oblivion

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There’s a big budget Hollywood movie named Oblivion opening this week.  I really enjoyed the original version, the sci fi spoof 1994 Oblivion, now available on DVD.    It is set in the year 3030 on the planet Oblivion, which strongly resembles a frontier town from a spaghetti Western, peppered with the occasional cyborg, ray gun and ATM machine.

Oblivion is intentionally campy, has a silly plot and lots of tongue-in-cheek dialogue.  The scene where the funeral is interrupted by the weekly bingo game upstairs is especially funny.  The cast seems to be having lots of fun with the material. Musetta Vander as the  rawhide whip-wielding dominatrix Lash and Carel Struycken as the death-forboding undertaker Gaunt are especially over-the-top good.  In addition, Julie Newmar plays a cougarish saloon proprietor, and Star Trek’s George Takei is the Jim Beam-swilling town doc.  Amazingly, Oblivion rated a 1996 sequel, Oblivion 2:  Backlash, in which most of the cast returned.

Movies to See Right Now

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THE SAPPHIRES

This week’s top recommendation is pretty obvious – the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.

I still love two indies on Video on Demand:

  • Letters from the Big Man: a beautifully looking and sounding fable about a prickly woman with a guy and a Bigfoot competing for her affections.
  • Electrick Children: an entirely unique teen coming of age story with fundamentalist Mormon teens in Las Vegas.

The other best choices in theaters:

  • No: Gael Garcia Bernal stars as the regular guy who brainstormed the guerrilla advertising campaign that dethroned Chilean dictator Pinochet.
  • The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: a pleasant comedy and a showcase for Jim Carrey.
  • Side Effects: Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
  • Quartet: a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances.

Music fans will enjoy the bio-documentary Beware of Mr. Baker, available on VOD.

Emperor, with Tommy Lee Jones as Gen. Douglas MacArthur leading the American occupation of Japan, is historical but plodding. On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel, with surprisingly little energy. The HBO movie Phil Spector is really just a freak show.

You may still be able to catch the fine PBS documentary Philip Roth: Unmasked.  Roth himself gets lots of screen time to explain his career and his creative process.

I haven’t yet seen the bleak Romanian drama Beyond the Hills.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the week is the superbly acted drama A Late Quartet.

On April 7, Turner Classic Movies has the film noir masterpiece Double Indemnity.  But, if you like noir,  don’t miss the underrated The Set-Up on April 10; for more on The Set-Up, scroll down to #5 on my 10 Best Boxing Movies.

DVD of the Week: A Late Quartet

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A Late Quartet is a compelling character-driven drama about the individuals that make up an elite and successful classical string quartet.  After twenty-five years, the cellist and leader develops Parkinson’s and must consider retirement.  This development takes the lid off an array of long-simmering issues and triggers personal and interpersonal crises.

What makes A Late Quartet so gripping is the level of performance – not surprising considering the top shelf cast.  Christopher Walken plays a man of uncommon dignity and stateliness, without the creepiness or even the eccentricity that his characters are usually imbued.  Philip Seymour Hoffman is superb as a man who unleashes deeply buried resentments and vulnerabilities.  Catherine Keener is also striking as a woman who cannot answer the question, “Do you love me?”.  Mark Ivanir (who I didn’t remember from Schindler’s List and who often plays Russian gangsters) is excellent as a callous perfectionist brought literally to his knees by something he never expected.  Imogen Poots (Solitary Man) also shines as the prodigy daughter whose drops her youthful playfulness when it’s time to settle a score with her mother.

One more note:  I relished the delightful homage to Dinner with Andre when we suddenly see Wallace Shawn holding forth in a New York restaurant.

We aren’t surprised by any of the plot points, but we are continually surprised by the reactions of the characters, so masterfully delivered by the actors.