Movie Recommendations, Rants and Ruminations
How many of the original cast members of Star Wars can you identify in the photo above? Everybody is going to get Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill. Scroll down for the others.
From left, they are Harrison Ford (Han Solo), David Prowse, (Darth Vader), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia), Kenny Baker (R2-D2), Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker). Anthony Daniels played C3PO. All seven are still alive; Kenny Baker, born in 1934, is the oldest.
My movie taste is pretty much in line with critical consensus, but there are some instances where I think other folks are WRONG. Here are four movies that are getting year-end recognition, but not from me.
Mad Max: Fury Road: Some of my favorite critics, Manohla Dargis and Christy Lemire, have even named Mad Max to the #1 spot on their lists. It’s 120 minutes long, of which at least 105 minutes are chase scenes that are really mobile battles. They are remarkable battles, but they are just battles. Writer-director George Miller has produced an adrenaline-filled thrill ride with some unique elements. But there just really isn’t anything exceptional – characters, dialogue, plot, setting – besides the action. I enjoyed Mad Max, but I don’t rate it as a great movie – I sure wasn’t thinking about it the day after I saw it.
Inside Out: I’m a huge Pixar admirer, and I usually walk out of a Pixar movie THRILLED. That didn’t happen with Inside Out, a smart and entertaining movie, but one that got more attention from my head than my heart.
The Clouds of Sils Maria: Man, what a disappointment! Somehow The Clouds of Sils Maria lets us lose interest in the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche and wastes a performance by Kristen Stewart that made her the first American actress to win a César (the French Oscar). Sometimes confusing as well as boring, it’s just a muddled mess.
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck: An odd case of too much insight. I liked the talking heads that told the story of Cobain’s life before Nirvana. But Cobain’s own thoughts, feelings and artistic impulses as revealed through his journal and scribblings did not serve to elevate him. In fact, it made him LESS interesting.
You don’t need to wait until December to see my list of top 2015 films because, beginning in late March, I keep a running list – Best of 2015 – So Far. By the end of the calendar year, I will have a Top Ten plus another 8-18 or so. I’ll publish my official year end list on December 31, but here’s a sneak preview of my Best Movies of 2015 (I’ve removed the “- So Far”).
Four of the movies on the list are in theaters right now: Brooklyn, Spotlight, Creed and The Martian. Eight films on my list are ALREADY available to stream or rent on DVD. Throughout the Holidays, I’ve been featuring these in my weekly Movies to See Right Now posts.
I haven’t yet seen these movies, which I believe will be candidates for my final list: The Big Short, Carol, The Danish Girl, 45 Years, Youth, The Revenant, The Hateful Eight and Room. When I see them, I’ll revise my list accordingly.
If you’ve been waiting all year for excellent cinema, you’re in luck. This week, I have THIRTEEN recommendations, with four of them on my list of Best Movies of 2015:
Here are nine more choices. There’s something for everyone.
Getting Biblical just in time for Christmas, on December 23 Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting the 1959 sand-and-sandal classic Ben-Hur, adapted from the novel Ben-Hur A Tale of the Christ. Its star Charlton Heston was advised by the stunt supervisor, “Don’t worry, Chuck. Just stay in the chariot and I’ll make sure you win the race.”
And for the Holidays, here are movies from my Best Movies of 2015 – So Far that are available to stream or to rent on DVD:
The best crime film of 2015, Legend, tells the true-life story of Reggie and Ron Kray, the gangster twins who ruled 1960s London. Tom Hardy convincingly plays both guys. Occasionally the two twins are on camera at the same time (I counted six set-ups).
Both of these East End twin thugs are tough as nails, merciless and relentless. But besides being brutal, Reggie is crafty. Ron is a raving psychopath, what the Brits call starkers. Ron is also homosexual.
The rise of the Kray gang, spurred on by a combination of initiative, ruthlessness and luck, is fascinating. But, of course, it’s just not sustainable to have someone who is certifiably insane as one of the decision-makers. There’s plenty of humor, mostly deriving from Ron’s antics.
Legend benefits from a strong cast. Emily Browning pulls off a major role as Reggie’s wife. David Thewlis is really good as the brains in the Kray’s enterprise. Even the actors playing various gang members are good, especially Reggie’s massive enforcer and Ron’s two pretty boys. And Chazz Palminteri has a hilarious turn as an American mobster.
Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard star in Justin Kurzeil’s take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth – sexier and more psychological than most versions and very medieval.
In interviews, Fassbender has said that his Macbeth suffers from battlefield PTSD. As we see in this version of Macbeth, medieval warfare consisted of muddy guys rushing each other to hack, stab and bludgeon each other to death. Mostly, it seems, to hack. The soldiers wear facial warpaint that looks like it would if smeared on by men just before a battle.
Macbeth comes already damaged. Unlike Richard III, a Shakespearean villain who is just deliciously evil to the core, Macbeth is troubled, a man whose “dreams abuse the curtain of sleep.” But, as he is haunted by his own atrocities (especially killing his most loyal friend Banquo after Macbeth has already obtained the crown), Macbeth decompensates.
Lady Macbeth is the prototype of social climbers and strivers, pushing her hubbie to the forefront no matter the requisite carnage. Cotillard’s Lady Macbeth uses sex to persuade him on a course of action, and he exhales a post-orgasmic “settled” in agreement with her plot. After all, what’s sexier than power? Hearing Macbeth’s “I have done the deed” gets Lady Macbeth breathing really hard.
Both of them have fits in which they wander the windswept highlands in their sleepwear. Even with her over-the-top ruthlessness, Lady Macbeth starts out more stable and functional, trying valiantly to distract the court from gauging Macbeth’s ever more tottering sanity. But finally, the totality of their misdeeds becomes too heavy for even her to bear. Fassbender and Cotillard are excellent. So are Paddy Considine as Banquo and Sean Harris as Macduff.
All of the classic Macbethisms are here – “the be all and end all”, “out, damn spot!”, “unsex me here”, “the poisoned chalice” and “vaulting ambition”. That last term – the central subject of Macbeth – is a marvel of precision because ambition requires one to vault over and past other people. Ruthlessness is acting without or despite empathy for others. Those who are not sociopaths can be haunted by their own vaulting acts of ruthlessness. Kurzeil asks us to make that assessment of the two lead characters.
I really like Shakespeare movies because there are ways to advance Shakepeare’s stories that you just can’t do on stage. Realistic medieval filth is one. Large battle scenes, partially in slow motion is another. And Macbeth and Banquo are able to quietly reflect on their foretold futures while bedding down on the battlefield, not while pacing the stage and speaking loud enough for a live audience to hear. The soundtrack is filled with reedy drones that evoke bagpipes and covey dread and moral bleakness. (See my Best Shakespeare Movies – I’ll be adding this movie to that list.)
In just his second feature, Australian director Justin Kurzeil consistently make superb choices. Instead of novelties, the witches are spooky and mostly silent witnesses to the story; when Macbeth’s fortune is complete, they turn silently and melt away. I prefer the traditional way that Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Castle over Kurzeil’s solution, but’s that’s just me. The final shots are wholly original and leave us with a remind of the historical consequences yet to come.
Kurzeil’s Macbeth is well-crafted and thought-provoking, and one of the very best Shakespeare movies.
The documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut is a Must See for cinéastes. In 1962, Francois Truffaut spent a week in Hollywood interviewing Alfred Hitchcock. These interviews formed the basis of Truffaut’s seminal 1966 book Hitchcock/Truffaut. At this moment, Truffaut was the hottest new thing in international cinema. He was horrified that Hitchcock was viewed in the U.S. as only a genre director and pop celebrity, but not as the master of cinema that influenced Truffaut and the rest of the French New Wave. Vertigo, now rated by many as the greatest of films, had only broken even at the box office four years before.
Filmmaker Kent Jones took the audiotapes and stills from those 1962 interview sessions and adds what Truffaut could not – illustrative clips from the Hitchcock films themselves. Because Truffaut is no longer with us, Jones also provides commentary from directors like martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Peter Bogdanovich and others. The result is an insightful celebration of Hitchcock’s body of work.
I had thought that I had a pretty fair grasp of Hitchcock, especially his love of surprise and the MacGuffin, his subversion of convention in Psycho and obsession with blonde actresses. But Hitchcock/Truffaut gave me a much richer understanding of Hitchcock’s visual sensibilities, his mastery of overhead shots, and his very limited expectations of his actors, as well as his compression and expansion of time.
Hitchcock/Truffaut will be interesting to any audience, but essential to serious movie fans.
If you’re like me and you worship the cartoons in The New Yorker, then the documentary Very Semi-Serious is a Must See. Very Semi-Serious takes us inside The New Yorker for a glimpse inside the process of creating and selecting the cartoons, chiefly from the perspective of cartoonist and currently Cartoon Editor Bob Mankoff. You will know Mankoff from his cartoon with the caption, “How about never? Is never good for you?”.
We also meet rick star cartoonists that include Roz Chast and George Booth, along with The New Yorker Editor David Remnick and some aspiring cartoonist newcomers. We are boggled by the tens of cartoons each cartoonist pitches each week and the hundreds that Mankoff must review. Rejection is a major part of the cartoon life.
We also learn how Mankoff scientifically studies the eye movements of readers to see how/when/if we “get” the jokes. And we get to laugh again at HUNDREDS of cartoons.
I saw Very Semi-Serious in May at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and now you can see it beginning tonight on HBO. Set your DVRs.
In the thought-provoking documentary The Spymasters — CIA in the Crosshairs, we hear from all twelve directors of the CIA, from George H.W. Bush through current Director John Brennan. They weigh in on the agency’s role in the War Against Terror, including harsh interrogation, drone warfare, the Kill List and “signature strikes”. They disagree among themselves on torture, with Iraq War era directors George Tenet and Porter Goss, taking especially belligerent positions. But there is a unified answer to this fundamental question about the War on Terror, “Can we kill our way out of it?”
The Spymasters — CIA in the Crosshairs showcases the decisions that a CIA Director must make, Leon Panetta poses one situation that he actually faced – do you take a rarely available missile shot at a terrorist who has just killed nine of your agents – when you know he is with his wife and kids? And several directors address the question, “What keeps you up at night?”
Besides the directors, we get to know a CIA operative with experience in Afghanistan, along with the agency’s chief of counter-terrorism. And we meet a most colorful character, the CIA’s former clandestine operations chief, Jose Rodriguez, who openly admits destroying the videos of CIA waterboarding.
The Spymasters echoes another talking head documentary The Gatekeepers, with the retired directors of the Shin Bet, Israel’s super-secret internal security force. I recommend a double feature with these two companion films. The Gatekeepers is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and for streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.
The Spymasters — CIA in the Crosshairs is currently playing on Showtime.
Rocky Balboa returns in writer-director Ryan Coogler’s superb Creed. Creed is the story of a young man, the posthumous son of Rocky’s rival and friend Apollo Creed, who seeks out Rocky as a mentor. Played by Michael B. Jordan (star of Coogler’s Fruitvale Station), the young Creed must face off against his own demons, as imposing as any opponents in the ring. Stallone’s Rocky Balboa is still a lovable galoot, humble and adoring the long-dead Adrian. Tessa Thompson (Dear White People, Selma) plays the younger man’s love interest. Creed isn’t just about The Big Fight – all three of the main characters must overcome a distinct nemesis within each of them.
There’s not that much actual boxing in Creed, and folks who don’t like boxing will still enjoy the movie. The boxing scenes, however, are brilliant. The opponent in the climactic fight is played by real pro boxer Tony Bellew.
The most impressive scene, however, is mid-movie when Rocky’s protegé is tested against a local up-and-comer (the actor Gabe Rosado). The three-minute rounds are photographed as uninterrupted action (no cuts are apparent) from WITHIN the ring. We feel like we’re in the ring with the fighters – right at shoulder-level. It’s a tour de force by veteran cinematographer Maryse Alberti (most of her work has been in documentaries).
Stallone’s performance is excellent. Even though it’s the zillionth time he’s played this character, he’s not just mailing this in for a paycheck, and he’s justifiably getting some award buzz. Johnson and Thompson again prove themselves as rising talents. Phylicia Rashad is excellent as the young fighter’s mother figure.
Coogler is the brilliant young Bay Area filmmaker whose brilliant debut was the indie docudrama Fruitvale Station, which was #8 on my Best Movies of 2013. (Fruitvale Station is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube and Xbox Video.)
Coogler gets lots of credit for breathing freshness and originality into a movie franchise that had grown tiresome. Creed is an exploration into the internal struggles of three people – and it’s also irresistibly entertaining.