The Movie Gourmet

Stream of the Week: THE WAVE

May 24, 2016 by movie gourmet

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. The Norwegian The Wave successfully delivers on both counts.

As a non-Norwegian, I didn’t know that, every few decades, an unstable mountainside somewhere in Norway breaks loose, plunging hundreds of tons of rock into a fjord; this triggers a tsunami, which rages down the fjord, destroying everything and every one that doesn’t reach high ground. Norwegian geologists are even perched above these fjords to trigger early warning systems. A siren goes off, and everyone downstream has TEN MINUTES to climb to safety. As disasters go, this is pretty novel – not your ordinary earthquake, fire, flood, shipwreck and not even your ordinary tsunami (Hereafter, The Impossible). In The Wave, the tidal wave itself is pretty impressive, and the special effects are believable.

But the best part about The Wave is the tension produced by, not one, but TWO ticking clock scenarios. The filmmakers build the tension as we wonder just when the upcoming disaster is going to hit and whether the characters will have time to escape. And then, there’s an excruciating race-against-time to save family members from a hopeless situation.

The main characters are sympathetic, the acting is very good and the dialogue is very witty for the genre. Ane Dahl Torp plays the mom, and her character’s off-the-charts take-charge heroism and resilience is a big part of the fun. I’m not a real fan of disaster movies, but I still stayed with The Wave for its entire length.

I saw The Wave at Cinequest, where it gripped and exhausted the audience (in a good way). You probably misses its very brief theatrical release in March, but, fortunately, The Wave is available to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and a variety of TV PPV outlets.

Movies to See Right Now

May 20, 2016 by movie gourmet

My recommended movies in theaters this week:

The bloody thriller Green Room is a fresh and satisfying, well, bloody thriller. Very intense and very violent. Director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin) proves again that he’s the rising master of the genre movie.
If you like dystopian sci-fi, then the satire High-Rise is for you. Otherwise, not a Must See.
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 movie has been out since March and has shown remarkable staying power.

The mismatched buddy movie Dough is light, fluffy and empty – just like a Twinkie.

My Stream of the Week is a remarkable filmmaking achievement – the entire movie Victoria the was filmed in a SINGLE SHOT (and it is a successful thriller, not just a gimmick). Make sure that you watch it in one uninterrupted sitting. Victoria is available to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

On May 21, Turner Classic Movies features one of my Overlooked Noir, Pitfall (1948), a noir thriller without either a conventional sap or femme fatale.

Then, on May 23 TCM airs the 1997 political biopic George Wallace with Gary Sinise as the the segregationist Alabama governor and Presidential candidate. Made for TV by master director John Frankenheimer, George Wallace won multiple Emmys, Golden Globes and SAG awards. Sinise is brilliant, and his supporting cast includes Joe Don Baker, William Sanderson, Mare Winningham, Clarence Williams III and Angelina Jolie as sexy second wife Cornelia.

Gary Sinise in WALLACE — Gary Sinise in GEORGE WALLACE

Stream of the Week: VICTORIA – a thrill ride filmed in one shot

December 15, 2016May 17, 2016 by movie gourmet

Victoria is worth watching as a thriller, but it has become notorious for a pretty important aspect of its filmmaking – the entire movie was filmed in a SINGLE SHOT. Its tagline is One girl. One city. One night. One take. (Actually, the successful take was on the third try.) Rope and Birdman are famously filmed to LOOK like they are one shot. But all of Victoria really IS just one shot.

That would be noteworthy enough if Victoria were a drawing-room story like Rope, but it is amazing for a story that zips between interior and exterior locations, runs from nighttime through daybreak and includes chase scenes through the streets of Berlin. It’s a stunning achievement for director Sebastian Shipper.

After a career disappointment, young Spanish woman (Laia Costa) has moved to Germany – where she knows no one – and has taken a service job while she licks her wounds. Out for a beer after work, she meets a bunch of drunk German guys. Partying with them leads to an entanglement with one of those low-level criminal enterprises that just isn’t going to turn out well. Things get life-or-death serious, and the characters are soon on the run for their lives.

The German characters don’t speak Spanish and the Spanish girl doesn’t speak German, so they speak to each other in broken English; the only English subtitles are when the German guys are talking to each other in German about the girl in her presence.

Costa is on-screen for the entire movie, and she’s very, very good. She nails the character, somebody who is basically good but who can impulsively make the wrong choice, too. Anyone who sees her as a mere adornment underestimates her at his own risk. She is full of moxie and is damn practical.

Frederick Lau is especially good as the guy who connects most personally with the girl. Franz Rogoski is also outstanding as the guy whose troubled past catches up to him and devours his friends, too.

Anyone who has watched a film noir will find Victoria’s ending is disappointingly predictable. Otherwise, this would have been one of the top ten films of 2015.

But Victoria is still a gripping 138-minute thrill ride. Director and co-writer Shipper acted in Run, Lola, Run which had previously set the standard for movie freneticism. Make sure that you watch it in one uninterrupted sitting. Victoria is available to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

May 13, 2016 by movie gourmet

Patrick Stewart and Macon Blair in GREEN ROOM. photo courtesy of Scott Green/© A24. — Patrick Stewart and Macon Blair in GREEN ROOM. Photo: Scott Green/© A24.

My recommended movies in theaters this week:

The bloody thriller Green Room is a fresh and satisfying, well, bloody thriller. Very intense and very violent. Director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin) proves again that he’s the rising master of the genre movie.
If you like dystopian sci-fi, then the satire High-Rise is for you. Otherwise, not a Must See.
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 movie has been out since March and has shown remarkable staying power.

The mismatched buddy movie Dough is light, fluffy and empty – just like a Twinkie.

My Stream of the Week is the thought-provoking documentary The Brainwashing of My Dad, which explores how right-wing media impacts the mood and personality of its consumers as well as their political outlook. The Brainwashing of My Dad is available streaming on Amazon Video, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On May 19, Turner Classic Movies bring us Roger Corman’s time-capsule LSD exploitation film The Trip, which is featured in my Bad Movie Festival (scroll down to No. 9). Peter Fonda buys acid from Dennis Hopper and trips at Bruce Dern’s house – but wanders away to stagger down Sunset Boulevard.

On May 20, TCM airs a time capsule from the 1970s, the crime/revenge drama The Outfit, starring Robert Duvall, Linda Black and Joe Don Baker. The supporting cast is itself an homage to 1950s film noir: Robert Ryan (mob kingpin), Timothy Carey (chief henchman), Jane Greer, Elisha Cook Jr., Marie Windsor and Richard Jaeckel. The Outfit is the masterpiece of director John Flynn, whose other work consisted of pedestrian action movies.

Robert Duvall pisses off Timothy Carey in THE OUTFIT

HIGH-RISE: the villain is an oligarchy

May 12, 2016 by movie gourmet

Tom Hiddleston in HIGH-RISE. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.

The dystopian sci-fi satire High-Rise, adapted from a J.G. Ballard novel, makes a droll and cynical comment on our species. Taking place in the near future, the very wealthy live on the top floors of a self-contained high-rise, just above the middle class. Human greed and jealousy creates scarcity for the residents – not Third World-type scarcity, but scarcity of amenities like swimming pool access and power brownouts. Class competition erupts and a morbid descent into murderous chaos ensues. We plunge into this complacent, and then hellish, world from the perspective of a young middle class striver (Tom Hiddleston).

The designer of the complex of high-rises (Jeremy Irons) lives in a luxurious penthouse with a staggeringly pastoral garden. The character’s name is Royal, but he’s not the ruler. (We actually come to wish that he were benignly in charge.) And despite his trappings, Royal is not the omnipotent Bond-type villain. The villain turns out instead to be an oligarchy of the One Percent, along with the darkest aspects of every character’s humanness.

Tom Hiddleston is fine, and the rest of the cast is solid. The two standouts are Jeremy Irons as Royal and Sienna Miller, dressed in Carnaby Street retro, as a deliciously voracious man-hunter. The wonderful Elisabeth Moss is wasted in a role where she just doesn’t have much to do.

I saw High-Rise at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF). It opens in Bay Area theaters tomorrow.

GREEN ROOM: blood and suspense

December 4, 2016May 11, 2016 by movie gourmet

The bloody thriller Green Room is a fresh and satisfying, well, bloody thriller. A vagabond rock band (Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat and a couple of others) finds themselves playing a gig at a remote white nationalist compound in the woodsy Northwest. Inadvertently, they witness a murder and the chief skinhead (Patrick Stewart!) needs to eliminate all the witnesses. The band members and a local girl (Imogen Poots) are trapped in a room with just one way out, as the skinheads send in waves of machete- and shotgun-wielding thugs and vicious pit bulls. Who will survive and how?

Director Jeremy Saulnier proves again that he’s the rising master of the genre movie. Saulnier’s writing and directorial debut was 2014’s Blue Ruin, an entirely fresh take on the revenge thriller. An audience favorite on the festival circuit in 2013, Blue Ruin didn’t get a theatrical release, and I would have missed it entirely but for a suggestion from my friend Jose. In Blue Ruin, Saulnier was responsible for the wholly original lead character and the intense pace of the film, along with the meticulously economical storytelling; the exposition never relies on even one extra word of dialogue. Blue Ruin is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube and Xbox Video.

In his superb leading performance in Blue Ruin, Macon Blair was believable both as a damaged down-and-outer and as a man-on-a-mission. In Green Room, Blair plays Gabe, the put-upon middle manager of Patrick Stewart’s compound. Blair is just so interesting an actor. Here, he brings an unusual humanity to his role as a henchman.

The actor who drives the story, however, is Imogen Poots. Her character is very practical – realistic enough to see that the situation is hopeless. At first, she is numbed by the murder of her friend. But when she finally decides that she is going to survive – watch out! Since 2012, Poots has becoming a preferred indie leading lady with Greetings from Tim Buckley, A Late Quartet , The Look of Love, A Country Called Home, Green Room and her most complex role so far in the upcoming Frank & Lola. Here in Green Room, she’s a force of nature.

Once again, Saulnier delivers a very fresh and original genre movie. The total effect is very intense and very violent. If you’re okay with some gory violence, then Green Room is a thrill ride worth taking.

Stream of the Week: THE BRAINWASHING OF MY DAD

May 10, 2016 by movie gourmet

Ever notice how people who watch a lot of Fox News or listen to talk radio become bitter, angry and, most telling, fact-resistant? In the documentary The Brainwashing of My Dad, filmmaker Jan Senko as she explores how right-wing media impacts the mood and personality of its consumers as well as their political outlook. Senko uses her own father Frank as a case study.

We see Frank Senko become continually mad and, well, mean. And we hear testimony about many, many others with the identical experience. Experts explain the existence of a biological addiction to anger.

Senko traces the history of right-wing media from the mid-1960s, with the contributions of Lewis Powell, Richard Nixon, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Senko even gets right-wing wordsmith Frank Luntz on camera to explain the power of buzz words. If you don’t know this story (Hillary was right about the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”) , Senko spins the tale very comprehensively. If you do know the material (and my day job is in politics), it is methodical.

This topic is usually explored for its impact on political opinion. Senko’s focus on mood and personality is original and The Brainwashing of My Dad contributes an important addition to the conversation. One last thing about the brainwashing of Senko’s dad – it may not be irreversible…

I first reviewed The Brainwashing of My Dad for its U.S. Premiere at Cinequest 2016. The Brainwashing of My Dad is available streaming on Amazon Video, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

May 6, 2016 by movie gourmet

Here’s my slate of recommended movies in theaters this week:

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 movie has been out since March and has shown remarkable staying power.
Eccentric meets quirky in the historical comedy Elvis & Nixon, with Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey.
Everybody Wants Some!! is a dead-on 1980 time capsule and an amusing frolic with lots of ball busting and girl chasing – but probably more fun for a heterosexual male audience.

Tom Hiddleston makes a believable Hank Williams, but that can’t save the plodding I Saw the Light, which fails to capture any of the pathos in Hank’s life and death. The mismatched buddy movie Dough is light, fluffy and empty – just like a Twinkie.

My Stream of the Week is the Lily Tomlin vehicle Grandma, which is worthwhile watching just for the searing performance by Sam Elliott. Grandma is available to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

All About Eve: "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!" — All About Eve: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!”

On May 7, Turner Classic Movies brings us one of the greatest movies of all time – All About Eve (1950). Bette Davis plays the middle-aging Broadway superstar Margot Channing, who fears losing her popularity with age. Who can eclipse her in the dog eat dog world of show biz? George Sanders is wonderful as the cynical critic Addison DeWitt, whose bimbo de jour is played by Marilyn Monroe. All About Eve was nominated for fourteen Oscars and won six.

1973’s The French Connection won five Oscars, including Best Picture and statues for Director William Friedkin and for star Gene Hackman. Hackman turned in an iconic performance as the driven, politically incorrect police detective Popeye Doyle. The film features a deliciously sly supporting performance by Fernando Rey, and also boosted the career of Roy Scheider (who played Doyle’s sidekick). The French Connection also features one of the greatest movie chase scenes. It plays on Turner Classic Movies on May 11.

Stream of the Week: GRANDMA – worth seeing for ten minutes of Sam Elliott

May 3, 2016 by movie gourmet

I don’t throw around the term “genius” loosely, but Lily Tomlin’s imagination and comic timing really merits the term. It’s always a pleasure to watch her work and the Tomlin vehicle Grandma, although minor Tomlin, is worthwhile. Tomlin plays a crusty retiree whose high school-age granddaughter (Julia Garner) shows up at her door with an urgent need that she doesn’t want to tell her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) about. They go on an adventurous quest for a solution – all in suburban LA.

Grandma is not a great movie, but it’s much more than a curmudgeonly geezer movie. Writer-director Paul Weitz, who co-wrote and co-directed About a Boy, gives Tomlin a vivid character to play, and there are some excellent performances for Tomlin to interact with. Judy Greer is brilliant as Tomlin’s recent lover. And this is the final performance for one of my favorites, the late Elizabeth Peña (Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Lone Star).

The biggest surprise in Grandma is Sam Elliott, who is ALWAYS good, but I’ve never seen him explode in as searing a performance as this. It’s remarkable, and Elliott steals the movie.

Grandma is available to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

April 29, 2016 by movie gourmet

I’m still covering the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF); the fest runs through May 5. Throughout the fest, I’ll be linking more festival coverage to my SFFIF 2016 page, including both features and movie recommendations. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest coverage.Here’s some of my SFIFF coverage:

I’m also writing about the fine slate of documentaries at this weekend’s International Film Festival of North Hollywood (IFFNOHO).

Here’s my slate of recommended movies in theaters this week:

Critical reception has been mixed on the intricately constructed family drama Louder Than Bombs, but I strongly recommend it.
Ethan Hawke’s performance makes the Chet Baker biopic Born to Be Blue a success.
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.
Eccentric meets quirky in the historical comedy Elvis & Nixon, with Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey.
I enjoyed every minute of Jake Gyllenhaal’s breakdown in Demolition (but was ambivalent about why I did).
Everybody Wants Some!! is a dead-on 1980 time capsule and an amusing frolic with lots of ball busting and girl chasing – but probably more fun for a heterosexual male audience.

My Stream of the Week is the offbeat documentary Meet the Hitlers, about those few people who choose NOT to change their birth name of “Hitler”. Meet the Hitlers is available for streaming rental from Amazon Video and Vudu and for streaming purchase from iTunes.

Screenwriter Anthony Veiller fleshed out a very brief Hemingway short story, resulting in Robert Siodmak’s compelling 1946 film noir The Killers, which Turner Classic Movies airs on May 4. The Killers was the screen debut of former circus acrobat Burt Lancaster and the breakthrough for the 23-year-old Ava Gardner. The toughest of noir tough guys – Charles McGraw and Broderick Crawford are hunting down Lancaster for offending their mob boss…and the clock is ticking.