The Movie Gourmet

Movies to See Right Now

June 10, 2016 by movie gourmet

WEINER. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society.

Don’t miss the political documentary Weiner. I haven’t had the chance to post about it yet, but it’s probably the best documentary of the year. Weiner has more than its share of forehead-slapping moments and is often funny and always captivating. It also provokes some reflection on the media in this age.

Another movie that I enjoyed but haven’t had the opportunity to post about is the nice little comedy Maggie’s Plan.

Also in theaters:

Love & Friendship – a sharply witty adaptation of a Jane Austen story with an adept turn by Kate Beckinsale.
The Nice Guys – Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in a very funny mismatched buddy movie from the creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise.

You can find the best movie out right now on HBO. It’s All the Way, the story of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, warts and all, ending official racial segregation in America with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bryan Cranston brings LBJ alive as no actor has before.

Stay away from the dark comedy The Lobster. A grim and tedious misfire, it’s the biggest movie disappointment of the year.

My Stream of the Week is Meet the Patels, both a documentary and a comedy – and ultimately, a satisfying crowd-pleaser. Meet the Patels is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play. It’s hilarious and heart-warming, so don’t miss it.

Wow – Turner Classic Movies should keep your DVR humming on Tuesday, June 14. TCM will be broadcasting one of the great movies that you have likely NOT seen, having just been released on DVD in 2009: The Earrings of Madame de… (1953). Max Ophuls directed what is perhaps the most visually evocative romance ever in black and white. It’s worth seeing for the ballroom scene alone. The shallow and privileged wife of a stick-in-the-mud general takes a lover, but the earrings she pawned reveal the affair and consequences ensue. The great Italian director Vittorio De Sica plays the impossibly handsome lover.

And ALSO on June 14, TCM will present The Graduate, The French Connection, The Last Detail and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Just for fun, on June 16, TCM will screen a series of Lupe Velez’ Mexican Spitfire movies from the early 1940s. I find startling similarities between Velez’ Mexican Spitfire and Sofia Vergara’s character of Gloria on Modern Family.

The Earrings of Madame de... — The Earrings of Madame de…

Least Convincing Movie Monsters

June 9, 2016 by movie gourmet

Tomorrow, June 10, Turner Classic Movies is airing two films on my list of Least Convincing Movie Monsters. We’ll get to see The Black Scorpion and The Killer Shrews.

In The Killer Shrews, the voraciously predatory mutant shrews are played by dogs in fright masks. Yes, dogs. As you can see from the bottom photo, the filmmakers have also applied shaggy patches to the sides of the dogs and ropy rat tails to their backs. [SPOILER ALERT: When humans escape from their island, the killer shrews die of overpopulation.]

The Killer Shrews is only #3 on my list. Visit Least Convincing Movie Monsters to see the two even sillier movie monsters.

Killer Shrews2 — Killer Shrews shag and tails

Stream of the Week: MEET THE PATELS – a documentary funnier than most comedies

June 7, 2016 by movie gourmet

Meet the Patels is both a documentary and a comedy – and ultimately, a satisfying crowd-pleaser. Over several years, filmmaker Geeta Patel filmed her own brother Ravi and their parents in their quest to find a wife for Ravi. Ravi and Geeta’s parents were born in India, had a traditional arranged marriage which has resulted in decades of happiness. Their American-born kids, of course, reject the very idea of an arranged marriage. But Ravi finds the pull of his Indian heritage compelling enough to dump his redheaded girlfriend and try to find a nice Indian-American girl. His parents try to help him with unbounded and unrelenting enthusiasm.

Meet the Patels is very funny – much funnier than most fictional comedies. It’s always awkward when parents involve themselves in their child’s romantic aspirations. That’s true here, and produces some side-splitting moments. It helps that the Patel parents are very expressive, and downright hilarious. The dad is so funny that I could watch him read a telephone book for 90 minutes, and the mom is herself a force of nature.

We learn that the Patels of Gujarat have adapted an entire menu of marriage opportunities unfamiliar to mainstream American society: a matchmaking profile system called “biodata”, matrimonial fairs, “the wedding season” and more.

Meet the Patels has its share of cultural tourism and the clash of generations. But it is so damn appealing because it’s much more than that – it’s a completely authentic saga of family dynamics, dynamics that we’ve all experienced or at least observed. The family members’ mutual love for each other drives family conflict and, finally, family unity.

I saw Meet the Patels at the Camera Cinema Club last year, and it had a brief theatrical run in the Bay Area. Meet the Patels is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play. It’s hilarious and heart-warming, so don’t miss it.

Movies to See Right Now

June 3, 2016 by movie gourmet

Another week with good choices – two outright comedies plus a comedy-within-a-thriller:

Love & Friendship – a sharply witty adaptation of a Jane Austen story with an adept turn by Kate Beckinsale.
The Nice Guys – Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in a very funny mismatched buddy movie from the creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise.
A Bigger Splash – a sensual travelogue turned comedy turned thriller with a raucous and oft-naked performance by Ralph Fiennes.

Stay away from the dark comedy The Lobster. A grim and tedious misfire, it’s the biggest movie disappointment of the year.

My Stream of the Week is the TOTALLY OVERLOOKED romantic comedy Man Up (and another good rom com written by a woman). Man Up is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.

On June 8, Turner Classic Movies presents Born to Be Bad. Joan Fontaine is a manipulative evildoer, who is trying to finagle the affections of Zachary Scott away from his goodhearted fiance, all while canoodling with Robert Ryan. Classic movie fans will enjoy the casting against type – Fontaine usually played goodie goodies and Scott was often a slimeball (which he’s not here).

Peter van Eyck: the Nazi who wasn’t

June 2, 2016 by movie gourmet

Peter van Eyck in THE WAGES OF FEAR — Peter van Eyck (left) in THE WAGES OF FEAR

During World War II, Hollywood looked for cruel-visaged actors to play Nazi characters that were cruel-looking and who could accomplish evil with chilling efficiency. With his Aryan poster boy looks and German accent, Peter van Eyck became Hollywood’s favorite on-screen Nazi. The irony is that, in real life, the German-born van Eyck was a fervent anti-fascist who had fled just before Hitler took power.

Van Eyck bobbed around the world doing odd jobs until he landed in New York and befriended Aaron Copland, Irving Berlin and, finally, Billy Wilder. Van Eyck’s first attention-grabbing performance was in Wilder’s Five Graves to Cairo, which airs tomorrow night on Turner Classic Movies.

His role as Lt. Schwegler in Five Graves to Cairo is embedded in a sequence of nine straight German soldier movie roles during 1943-44. Sometimes his roles didn’t even have names – “German officer”, “SS Captain”, “Gestapo”.

Back to real life – van Eyck served as a film officer in the US Army’s occupation of post-Germany. Returning to Hollywood, his roles diversified to the point that he was only playing a German officer about half the time. He ended up with 94 screen credits on IMDb, including high-ranking Wehrmacht officers in The Longest Day (1962) and The Bridge at Remagen (his final film in 1969). One of Van Eyck’s most notable roles is as one of the drivers in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s hyper-suspenseful The Wages of Fear.

It is said that acting is pretending. Typecast by looks and accent, van Eyck was a refugee who happened into a prolific acting career – playing exactly what he wasn’t.

the young Peter van Eyck (center rear) in FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO

a more mature van Eyck in THE LONGEST DAY

THE LOBSTER: the movie disappointment of the year

June 1, 2016 by movie gourmet

The Lobster, which is supposed to be a dark comedy, won the Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, along with acclaim at the Toronto and Sundance fests, so I had been eagerly awaiting it for just over twelve months. I had liked Director Yorgos Lanthimos’ Greek absurdist film Dogtooth. Unfortunately, The Lobster is a disagreeable misfire, which makes it the biggest movie disappointment of the year.

The Lobster takes place in an imagined world that looks like ours, but where being single is the worst status possible. Single people go to a woodsy resort hotel, where they are under a time limit to find a partner or be turned into the animal of their choice. After all, in the city, they are challenged by law enforcement to produce their most important form of identification – the certificate that proves they are in a couple. Guests at the resort go on daily hunts in the forest, where they shoot escaped single people – the Loners – with tranquilizer darts. (The Loners have their own monstrous leader (Lea Seydoux) and harsh rules.)

If a guest finds a partner, they enjoy a double room for two weeks and then a holiday on a yacht. The hotel manager (Olivia Colman) drily announces, that if the new relationship becomes troubled, “We will assign you children. That always helps.”

It’s all very deadpan. As the cast earnestly complies with ever more absurd rules at the hotel, The Lobster is darkly funny.

But then, The Lobster runs off its rails. We lose the drollery and find our way in a survivalist love story with Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz, and then, into a what is essentially a horror ending. Inside all this mess is an allegory about society putting obstacles in the way of our reaching happiness through a love match. But it stops being funny, and starts becoming tedious and uncomfortable.

Colin Farrell leads a fine cast with Weisz, Colman, Seydoux and James C. Reilly. The failings of The Lobster are not their fault.

The first third of the The Lobster is amusing, and I hung hopefully with the second third. The final third is dark, without much, if any, leavening humor, and the last fifteen minutes is almost unwatchable. Stay away.

Stream of the Week: MAN UP – our dating insecurities revealed

May 31, 2016 by movie gourmet

Here’s a delightful movie that you haven’t seen – the grievously overlooked romantic comedy Man Up. The British Man Up had a very brief US theatrical run last November that did not even reach the Bay Area. I suspect that’s because it doesn’t have any big name American stars. But it’s better than any other romantic comedy from 2015.

Nancy (Lake Bell) is on a four-year dating drought and has given up all hope when she inadvertently stumbles into a blind date meant for another woman. She’s intrigued with what she sees in Jack (Simon Pegg from Shaun of the Dead) and decides to impersonate his real date. As they get more and more into each other, the elephant in the room is when she will be exposed.

Like many of the best recent romantic comedies, Man Up was written by a woman, the British television writer Tess Morris. Again and again in Man Up, Morris authentically captures dating behaviors and female and male insecurities. Nervous at meeting Nancy, Jack just can’t stop talking; in a later date with someone who he’s not so much into, he checks off the same conversation points in a fraction of the time. Everyone who has dated will recognize himself or herself at some moment in this film.

The very talented Lake Bell wrote/directed/starred in the American indie comedy In the World…, which I really, really liked. Simon Pegg is a comedy star, and he’s very appealing here, but Bell has seriously good comedic chops.

Rory Kinnear, who you might remember as persistent but sensitive detective in The Imitation Game and as Tanner in the James Bond movies, plays an outrageously inappropriate admirer from Nancy’s youth.

Man Up is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.

THE NICE GUYS: good dirty fun in the dirty air of 1970s LA

May 30, 2016 by movie gourmet

Ryan Gosling and Angourie Rice in THE NICE GUYS

Director Shane Black created the Lethal Weapon franchise, so he is pretty much the Jedi Master of the mismatched cop buddy genre. His latest action comedy, The Nice Guys, is an entertaining romp through 1970s LA. Russell Crowe plays LA’s toughest goon – but a goon who is a man-of-his-word stand up guy. Ryan Gosling plays LA’s seediest private eye, a morally ambiguous drunk and and an epically unreliable single dad. Circumstances force them to work a mystery together, and the fun begins.

Ryan Gosling delivers a comic tour de force performance. His losing battle with the door of a toilet stall rates with the best work of Charlie Chaplin and Peter Sellers. He even delivers a reaction that’s a wonderful homage to Stan Laurel. Crowe turns out to be a very able straight man.

The MacGuffin that the guys are chasing is the print of a porn flick with an activist political message. The conspiratorial villain is Detroit’s US auto industry. The plot is so absurd that it’s actually a pretty fair parody of another genre – the paranoid political thriller. In a nice touch, the super scary evil hit man doesn’t look a bit like you would expect.

And then there’s the private eye’s child rearing habits, which today would prompt calls to Child Protective Services. Just like much of the fun in Mad Men is the interior smoking, day drinking and secretary-chasing, here we get to mock the capital I Inappropriateness of Gosling’s 1970s single dad. He lets his 13-year-old hang out at a vacant lot after dark and then accompany him to a drug-filled bacchanalian orgy.

That daughter is played by Aussie child actor Angourie Rice, who is just about perfect in this role. The last two-thirds of The Nice Guys becomes a three-hander with Crowe, Gosling and Rice.

Black takes us right back to the late seventies with more than just bad clothes, hair and music. We see gas lines, smog alerts, crawling freeways and pre-catylitic converter cars. Characters write checks, and there’s nary a cell phone.

The Nice Guys may not be deep, but it sure is funny. (And it sets up a sequel.)

Movies to See Right Now

May 30, 2016May 30, 2016 by movie gourmet

Something for everyone in theaters this week:
Love & Friendship – a sharply witty adaptation of a Jane Austen story with an adept turn by Kate Beckinsale.
The Nice Guys – Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in a very funny mismatched buddy movie from the creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise.
A Bigger Splash – a sensual travelogue turned comedy turned thriller with a raucous and oft-naked performance by Ralph Fiennes.

Here’s what you want in a disaster movie: 1) a really impressive disaster and 2) lots of suspense about which of the main characters will survive. My Stream of the Week, the Norwegian The Wave, successfully delivers on both counts. It’s available to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and a variety of TV PPV outlets.

June 3 is Billy Wilder Day on Turner Classic Movies, which features some wonders from my favorite writer-director: Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, Days of Wine and Roses and Five Graves to Cairo. Everyone recognizes Some Like It Hot and Double Indemnity as masterpieces, but I want to highlight Wilder’s very successful second film as a director – Five Graves to Cairo is a combo spy mystery and war film set in Nazi-overrun North Africa. Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter and Erich Von Stroheim star. The cast also includes two of my favorite character actors, Akim Tamiroff and Peter van Eyck.

Franchot Tone, xxx and XXX in FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO — Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter and Erich Von Stroheim in FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO

A BIGGER SPLASH: another exercise in sensuality

May 29, 2016 by movie gourmet

Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton in A BIGGER SPLASH

Harry Hawkes (Ralph Fiennes) is the kind of guy who gives a bad name to joie de vivre. The ultimate disrupter, his gift is to seize all the attention, change any social situation into a party and take everyone else out of their comfort zones. In A Bigger Splash, he inflicts himself on his former rock star lover Marianne (Tilda Swinton), who is trying to enjoy a quiet romantic respite with her current lover Paul (Matthias Shoenaerts) on the secluded Italian island of Pantelleria. Enter Harry, exit solitude.

With only five minutes notice, Harry shows up, expecting to become a houseguest in Marianne and Paul’s borrowed villa. To make matters worse, Harry brings along his newly discovered daughter (Dakota Johnson), a highly sexual nymphet with eyes for Paul. And, and the first day, he invites two of his other friends to join them. Harry repeatedly tears off his clothes, starts everyone dancing (one of his dances is right up there in cinema history with the one in Napoleon Dynamite) and even turns a village cafe into an overflowing karaoke after-party. Because Marianne is recuperating from vocal cord surgery, she can’t talk, which makes Harry’s social intrusions even more unbearable.

Harry’s antics are very entertaining, and we watch with apprehension for the other shoe to drop – when are the others going to explode in reaction? Harry is also trying to insinuate himself back into Marianne’s bed, an intention apparent to the hunky/dreamy Paul, for whom still waters run deep.

This is Guadagnino’s first English language movie. He had a recent US art house hit with I Am Love, (also starring Swinton). I Am Love was notorious for its food porn, and there are tantalizing scenes in A Bigger Splash, too, with homemade fresh ricotta and a spectacular outdoor restaurant set amid hillside ruins.

Guadagnino’s greatest gift may be the sensuality of his films. Whether it’s food, a place or a social situation, he makes the audience feel like we’re experiencing it right along with the character. In A Bigger Splash, we start out as tourists in a hideout for the super rich, and then Guadagnino takes to us through a raucous comedy of manners to, finally, a suspense thriller.