’71: keeping the thrill in thriller

by
'71
’71

The title of the harrowing thriller ’71 refers to the tumultuous year 1971 in Northern Ireland’s Troubles. An ill-prepared unit of British soldiers gets their first taste of action in Belfast, and the rookie Private Gary Hook (Jack O’Connell) gets inadvertently left behind in hostile territory. Private Hook races around an unfamiliar and dangerous city at night. He is being hunted by his own regular troops, a shadowy and sketchy military intelligence unit, the regular IRA, the hotheaded Provisional IRA and Ulster paramilitaries – all with their own conflicting agendas. Any civilian who helps him will be at direct and lethal risk from the partisans.

In their feature debuts, director Jann Demange and cinematographer Tat Ratcliffe take us on a Wild Ride, with just a couple of chances for the audience to catch its collective breath. Importantly, the way Private Hook gets left behind amid the escalating chaos is very believable. Then there’s an exhilarating footrace through the alleys and over brick walls. Every encounter with another person is fraught with tension. Finally, there’s a long and thrilling climactic set piece in a Belfast apartment block.

O’Connell is in 90% of the shots and carries it off very well. All of the acting in ’71 is excellent. Corey McKinley is special as the toughest and most confident ten-year-old you’ll ever meet. Barry Keoghan takes the impassive stone face to a new level. And I always enjoy David Wilmot (so hilarious in The Guard).

I thank the casting and the direction for making it easy for us to tell all of these pale, ginger characters apart. To the credit of writer Gregory Burke, the beginning of the film economically sets up Private Hook as having the fitness and stamina to survive what befalls him throughout the night.

With all the different sides playing each other, the action (and the action is compelling) is set in an especially treacherous version of three-dimensional chess. Some of the double- and triple-crossing at the end is breathtaking. But what ’71 does best is putting the thrill in a thriller – keeping the audience on the edge of our seats for all 99 minutes.

’71, which I saw at Cinequest, makes my list of the Best Movies of 2015 – So Far. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Movies to See Right Now

by
John Cusack and Elizabeth Banks in LOVE & MERCY
John Cusack and Elizabeth Banks in LOVE & MERCY

If you haven’t seen it yet, you owe it to yourself to see the CAN’T MISS coming of age masterpiece Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.  Besides Me and Earl, two more of my Best Movies of 2015 – So Far are playing in theaters:

Don’t miss Fabrice Luchini in the delightfully dark comedy Gemma Bovery. The coming of age comedy Dope is a nice little movie that trashes stereotypes. Alicia Vikander’s strong performance carries the anti-war memoir Testament of Youth. This summer’s animated Pixar blockbuster Inside Out is very smart, but a little preachy, often very sad and underwhelming. The Melissa McCarthy spy spoof Spy is a very funny diversion. Mad Max: Fury Road is a rock ’em sock ’em action tour de force but ultimately empty-headed and empty-hearted.

My Stream of the Week is the thriller Nightcrawler, with Jake Gyllenhaal as a highly functioning psychotic. You can stream it from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes and Vudu and rent it on DirecTV PPV.

Don’t forget that Turner Classic Movies is filling each June and July Friday with film noir in its Summer of Darkness series, hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir. The series schedule includes several favorites of my Overlooked Noir. Tonight I recommend D.O.A. and Caged; next Friday, look out for 99 River Street.

On July 15, Turner Classic Movies features the 1948 film noir Pitfall. Dick Powell plays a bored middle class married guy who is aching for some excitement. In his humdrum job as an insurance investigator, he investigates an embezzlement and meets the captivating Lizabeth Scott, the girlfriend of the imprisoned embezzler. They fall into a torrid but short-lived affair. Just when Powell thinks that he’s back to his normal family life, both he and Scott are dragged into a thriller by two baddies – the sexually obsessed sickie of a private eye (Raymond Burr) and the nasty and very jealous embezzler (Byron Barr), just released from the hoosegow. Jane Wyatt plays Powell’s wife.

Pitfall is especially interesting because it deviates from two prototypical characterizations. Unlike the usual noir sap, Powell doesn’t fall for Scott “all in”; although he has a brief extramarital fling, he’s never going to leave his family for her. And Scott, although she allures Powell, is not femme fatale. She’s not a Bad Girl, just an unlucky one. She has horrible taste in a boyfriend and the bad luck to attract a menacing stalker (Burr), but she’s fundamentally decent. Will her sexual promiscuity be punished at the end of this 1948 movie?

I feature Pitfall in my list of Overlooked Noir.

Lizabeth Scott, Dick Powell and Raymond Burr in PITFALL
Lizabeth Scott, Dick Powell and the looming Raymond Burr in PITFALL

Stream of the Week: NIGHTCRAWLER – Gyllenhaal finally plays 100% psycho

by
Jake Gyllenhaal in NIGHTCRAWLER
Jake Gyllenhaal in NIGHTCRAWLER

The all-around outstanding actor Jake Gyllenhaal excels at playing guys who are just a little too obsessive (Zodiac, Prisoners, Enemy) to let you get comfortable with them.  In the thriller Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal gets to play a 100% psycho.  His character is seriously twisted, but in that high functioning way so the other characters don’t suspect it until IT’S TOO LATE.

Gyllenhaal’s bug eyes come in handy in playing the ever-too-intense Lou Bloom, a hustler who talks like a super-caffeinated sales guy, full of the argot of self-help and inspirational speakers.  His bromides about success seem mainstream, but his hyper affect puts off regular folks.  He’s thieving copper when he sees an opportunity to turn himself into a free-lance video journalist.  Nightcrawler is an acid commentary on the TV news world, and Lou has finally found an arena where being balanced is not an asset.

In fact, a cynical TV producer (Rene Russo) finds Lou’s intrusiveness and utter disregard for social boundaries to be helpful.  When placing her order with Lou, she can be entirely unfiltered: “What we re looking for is a woman running down the street with her throat cut”, preferably a “White well-off victim”.

Riz Ahmed, so compelling as The Reluctant Fundamentalist
is unrecognizable here as Lou’s tweaked and shifty homeless assistant Rick.  It’s an effective transformation, and it’s equally great not to see Ahmed stuck playing a terrorist again.

Nightcrawler is successful both as a biting satire and as a charter-driven thriller.  You can stream Nightcrawler from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes and Vudu and rent it on DirecTV PPV.

Netflix No More

by
BOB LE FLAMBEUR, one of the movies that I once could only see on Netflix DVD
BOB LE FLAMBEUR, one of the movies that I once could only see on Netflix DVD

This month I did something that was once unthinkable for me – I cancelled my Netflix DVD service.

Let me explain why this seemed like a big deal.  I embraced the early Netflix as the best source to satisfy my insatiable appetite for indie, foreign and documentary films – the kinds of quality cinema that chain video stores didn’t carry.  Not only that, I evangelized for the service – encouraging everyone I knew to subscribe.

In the early years, I was a super Netflix customer, receiving and watching up to 22 DVDs each month.  I used Netflix as a film school, as I studied the entire Francois Truffaut filmography and plumbed the depths of French and Japanese film noir.  If one of those cool Sundance or Cannes festival hits didn’t make it to Bay Area theaters, I could catch it on Netflix DVD.

But, in 2007, Netflix began to move away from DVDs and toward streaming.  The Netflix DVD collection suffered.

In 2008 I saw 130 movies on Netflix. In 2014, after I had gone down to 1-DVD-out-at-a-time, I watched only 13 Netflix DVDs.

In 2006, I saw 36 recent (2005 and 2006) movies on Netflix DVD.  In 2014, I only saw 5 recent movies on Netflix.

Have I adapted to streaming?  Yes, but I haven’t moved completely to Netflix streaming.  I live for the indie/foreign/doc titles, and for those,  Netflix streaming isn’t nearly as good for me as Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

The 1955 French film noir Bob le Flambeur is a great example.   If you’re into either film noir or French cinema (and I love both), it’s a Must See – and it’s available on a typically superb Criterion Collection DVD.   Just ten years ago, I could only rent Bob le Flambeur on Netflix DVD.  Today, I can also stream it on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.  How about on Netflix Instant?  Nope.

The way I see it, I’m not so much leaving Netflix as that Netflix left me.

BLOOD IN, BLOOD OUT - the last movie I watched on Netflix DVD
BLOOD IN, BLOOD OUT – the last movie I watched on Netflix DVD

 

TESTAMENT OF YOUTH: the tragedy of war

by
Alicia Viksander in TESTAMENT OF YOUTH
Alicia Viksander bids farewell to Kit Harington in TESTAMENT OF YOUTH

In Testament of Youth, Alicia Viksander plays Vera, a gifted and determined young British woman who overcomes the conventions of the day and the objections of her father to attend Oxford in the 1910s. In 1914, Vera’s brother, fiance and closest male friends all enlist in Britain’s WW I army. No one at the time could have imagined the industrialized carnage that WW I would become, and it’s poignant when the young men say that the war will probably be over before they’ve completed their basic training. The war is, of course, an unspeakable horror. We don’t expect the young men to fare well in the War, and they don’t. Vera suspends her Oxford education to work as a nurse, first in Britain and later at the front. She is in position to observe the effects of war both at the front and on the home front, where her parents are especially impacted.

Testament of Youth is based on Vera Brittain’s popular and influential 1933 memoir of the same name, which is also an icon of feminist literature. Brittain became a pacifist leader.

This story follows a familiar arc, and I often ask “why did someone feel the need to make this movie?”. Testament of Youth, however, is fairly compelling. Credit goes to Viksander and to director James Kent, who somehow prevent the film from slipping into an unwatchable slog of grimness.

The most impressive element of Testament of Youth is the performance of Alicia Viksander as Vera Brittain. Viksander is onscreen in every scene, often in close-up and she carries the film with a flawless performance.  As good as she is here, Viksander is even better in this year’s sci-fi hit Ex Machina, where she plays a machine embedded with artificial intelligence. (Ex Machina is the best American movie of the year so far.)

With Ex Machina, Viksander is exploding into cinema as a major star.  Most Americans first saw the 26-year-old Swede in two 2012 movies.  She played a key supporting role in Anna Karenina and a lead in the Mads Mikkelsen period drama A Royal Affair. Although I thought it too long, A Royal Affair won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.  Now she has five films completed or in post-production, including upcoming Derek Cianfrance film The Light Between the Oscars, co-starring Michael Fassbender, who she ihas been dating.  She also has the top credit in the upcoming The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which looks wretched from the trailer.  Plus, she slated to co-star with Matt Damon in the next Bourne movie.  It’s quite a career trajectory, and from what I’ve seen, richly deserved.

Americans will find this odd, but the Swedish Viksander reportedly had to struggle to learn Danish for A Royal Affair.  It seems especially odd, given that she speaks English with a perfect American accent in Ex Machina and perfect middle class British accent in Testament of Youth.

Back to Last Testament of Youth – it’s not a Must See, but it is a well-made and evocative treatment of the tragedy of war.

Movies to See Right Now

by
ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL

This is as good as it gets until December – FOUR of my Best Movies of 2015 – So Far are playing in theaters:

Don’t miss Fabrice Luchini in the delightfully dark comedy Gemma Bovery. The coming of age comedy Dope is a nice little movie that trashes stereotypes.  This summer’s animated Pixar blockbuster Inside Out is very smart, but a little preachy, often very sad and underwhelming.  The Melissa McCarthy spy spoof Spy is a very funny diversion.  Mad Max: Fury Road is a rock ’em sock ’em action tour de force but ultimately empty-headed and empty-hearted.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the period thriller The Two Faces of January – a tale of dark hearts in sunny Greece. The Two Faces of January is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Don’t forget that Turner Classic Movies is filling each June and July Friday with film noir in its Summer of Darkness series, hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir. The series schedule includes several favorites of my Overlooked Noir.

On July 8, Turner Classic Movies will present The Leopard (Il gattopardo), an Italian period epic starring Burt Lancaster as a 19th century Sicilian prince who is trying to remain master of his changing time. Director Luchino Visconti came from Italian nobility himself. As befits an epic of this scope, it’s a sweeping 187 minutes long. One highlight is stunning entrance by 24-year-old Claudia Cardinale as the local mayor’s daughter, suddenly all grown up.

On July 10, TCM is playing Caged, the 1950 prototype for Orange Is the New Black; (I wrote the linked article for for the annual blogathon in celebration of Turner Classic Movies’ 31 Days of Oscars). Sixty-five years later, Caged might still be the best women’s prison movie ever, and it features a rich female cast and two Oscar-nominated performances.

Claudia Cardinale and Burt Lancaster in THE LEOPARD
Claudia Cardinale and Burt Lancaster in THE LEOPARD

DOPE: nice little movie

by
DOPE
DOPE

The appealing coming of age comedy Dope turns a well-worn plot into an engaging movie by juxtaposing stereotypes.  The conventional plot device is the Regular Guy Finds $100,000 of Drug Money In His Backpack.  The regular guy, however, is not just an African-American teen who lives in a nightmarish hood (Shameik Moore), but ALSO a nerdish brainiac who aspires to vault from Inglewood to Harvard.  Writer-director Rick Famuyiwa grew up in Inglewood, so the story and the characters ring true.

The cast is uniformly good.  Zoe Kravitz, who has been stuck in secondary roles in the Divergent movies and Mad Max: Fury Road, plays the mouth-watering love interest here, and she dominates the movie.  Gotta see more of her.  Veteran supporting actor Roger Guenveur Smith is especially good as the kid’s would-be gateway to the Ivy League; Smith’s 76 screen credits include American Gangster and a whole bunch of Spike Lee films.

It may not be life-transforming, but Dope is a smart, original and entertaining little movie.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD – mobile battles and little else

by
Charlize Theron in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
Charlize Theron in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

For some reason, the critical consensus on Mad Max:Fury Road has been pretty favorable. 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.

Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy are just fine as the good guys. Poor Hardy has to wear a steel mask for a third of the movie like he did for the entire The Dark Knight Rises. Theron is a fantastic actress, but all she has to do here is glint over her shoulder a lot (and she’s looks great doing that). I really loved Nicholas Hoult, who was so engaging in Warm Bodies, here as a Takes A Licking But Keeps On Ticking pawn-of-the-villain.  Zoe Kravitz rides along with Theron and Hardy, looking adorable.

If you feel the need for a simplistic rock ’em, sock’em action movie, this will fill the bill.  Don’t expect any more.

INSIDE OUT: smart but not gripping

by
INSIDE OUT
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.

Inside Out is the story of a well-adjusted girl named Riley, who is yanked out of her comfort zone when her Dad’s job suddenly takes the family to San Francisco.  The story is told from the perspective of her emotions, five characters (Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust) who command her behavior from a Head-Quarters (get it?).   In watching what happens to Riley, kids in the audience get to understand how emotions are okay and how  even sadness is normal; that’s all fine, but, as The Wife reminded me, Inside Out, along with Pixar’s recent Up and Wall-E, is a little preachy.

As one would expect, the animation and the voice acting are top-rate.  Where writers-directors Pete Dockter and Ronaldo Del Carmen really excel, however, is in imagining and then depicting the mechanisms of human thinking and feeling: the Emotions, Islands of Personality, Core Memories, the Train of Thought and the Subconscious.  It’s very smart and original stuff.

The sad parts are very pronounced and, in my opinion, too slow and deeply sad.   As someone scarred by the death of Bambi’s mother,  I was distracted by worrying about the little kids in the theater.  That being said, I accompanied eight-year-old twins and a ten-year-old to Inside Out.  The eight-year-olds were engrossed, and afterwards didn’t mention being too scared or too sad.  The ten-year-old grunted apprehensively a few times during the movie, but afterwards resolutely denied that it was ever too scary.  So there.  But, still, it was too sad for ME in places.

None of the children at the screening got fidgety, despite there being far less than usual of the slapstick humor that kids favor.   Most of the humor seemed adult-centered, evoking lots of knowing chuckles from the grown-ups.  The end credits – with dog, and then cat, emotions – are hilarious.

After those meh comments, I need to draw attention to Lava, the Pixar animated short that precedes the feature.  It’s seven minutes of cinema magic by filmmaker James Ford Murphy.  It’s a musical love story between two Hawaiian volcanoes.  The volcanoes are named Uku and Lele, and the message is a simple and sentimental one (“I Lava You”), but Lava isn’t the least bit corny.  The story is told through song – just two voices accompanied by ukulele – by Hawaiian musicians Kuana Torres Kehele and Napua Greig.   For sheer beauty, it’s up there with the recording of Over the Rainbow by the late Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.  I’m pretty jaded, but anyone too cynical to enjoy Lava should re-examine himself. Loved it.

DVD/Stream of the Week: THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY – dark hearts in sunny Greece

by

two faces of january2
The successful period thriller The Two Faces of January, set in gloriously bright Greek tourist destinations, may not have the shadowy look of a traditional film noir, but its story is fundamentally noirish. Viggo Mortenson and Kirsten Dunst play an affluent couple vacationing in Athens in the early 1960s. They meet a handsome young American expat (Oscar Isaacs from Inside Llewyn Davis) knocking around Greece. The husband quickly and accurately sizes up the younger man as a con man – “I wouldn’t trust him to mow my lawn”. The central noir element is that NO ONE is as innocent as they seem, and the three become interlocked in a situation that becomes increasingly desperate for all three, culminating in a thrilling manhunt.

It’s the first feature directed by Hossein Amini, who adapted the screenplay for the markedly intense Drive, and he does a fine job here with a film that becomes more and more tense each time more information about the characters is revealed.

The Two Faces of January is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.