The Movie Gourmet

Cinequest: LOS HAMSTERS

February 24, 2015 by movie gourmet

The Hamsters (Los Hamsters) is a delightfully dark social satire about a riotously dysfunctional Tijuana family. The dad, mom and two teenagers are going to such lengths to hide secrets from each other that they are completely oblivious to the drama in the others lives. In his first narrative feature, writer-director Gil Gonzalez has crafted a comedy that is completely character-driven, compressed into a very fun 71 minutes.

This family is in the upper middle class and the dad is desperately trying to stay there, the mom is denying any signs to the contrary and the kids are too spoiled and self-absorbed to notice any odd behavior by the parents. The acting is strong, especially by Angel Norzagaray, who plays the weary but driven, hangdog dad.

And here’s a bonus – Los Hamsters was filmed in Tijuana, and it’s great for a US audience to see this city as it is seen by its residents, not by its visitors.

Los Hamsters will have its North American premiere on February 27 at the California Theatre and plays again on March 5 and 7 at Camera 12.

Cinequest: ANTOINE ET MARIE

February 24, 2015 by movie gourmet

In the French-Canadian drama Antoine et Marie, a woman’s life is changed by an event. What happens to her is something that Marie herself must figure out, as must the audience. When we meet her, Marie is a forty-two-year-old clerk at an auto-repair business with a lust for life. She’s living with a guy who adores her, and she enjoys socializing with her with her work buddies. But something makes her unsettled and gradually sucks the spark out of her life. Will she find out the cause and decide what to do about it?

Antoine et Marie is extremely topical, but revealing that topic would be a significant spoiler, so you’re just gonna have to take my word for it.

Martine Francke delivers a superbly modulated performance as Marie. Sebastien Ricard is equally compelling as a repressed and dissatisfied blue collar husband and father.

This is writer-director Jimmy Larouche’s second feature film, and he has delivered a brilliantly constructed story with two unforgettable characters – and performances to match. Antoine et Marie is an unqualified success, tense and riveting all the way through.

Antoine et Marie’s US premiere will be February 28 at Cinequest, and it plays again on March 2 and 4, all at Camera 12.

One last glance at the Oscars

February 23, 2015 by movie gourmet

The Academy has just gotta do something because this show is becoming more and more unwatchable every year. The three hours and 9 minutes of this year’s extravanagnza had only seven memorable “Oscar moments” and six of them were not in the script – the heartfelt acceptance speeches of winners J.K. Simmons, Patricia Arquette, Pawel Pawlikowski, Common, Graham Moore and Alejandro G. Iñárritu. The ONLY brilliant moment in the telecast that had been planned by the producers was John Legend’s performance of the song Glory from the movie Selma.

But, generally, the Best Song category chews up way too much time and is often a buzz kill. Except for Legend, it was bad this year, too – and the Everything Is Awesome number was hallucinogenicly bad.

In the last two years, the Academy has even ruined the Memorium montage – usually one of the most moving and evocative moments. This year, the producers didn’t even show any stills or clips from the artist’s cinematic work, and they bracketed it with an acting school emoting lesson by Meryl Streep and an irrelevant song by Jennifer Hudson.

The worst of the broadcast, of course, was the serious of forced gags like the one about Octavia Spencer guarding the Neil Patrick Harris’ Oscar predictions; unfunny the first time, it wore and wore until Harris’ and Spencer’s dignity were completely eroded. Horrible.

As to the awards themselves? I was deliriously happy that Ida got its due as Best Foreign Language Picture, a choice that proved that some taste and decency lingers in the Academy. I was sorry that Boyhood – the best movie of the decade, let alone the year – didn’t win Best Picture, but Birdman is pretty special, too.

Coincidentally, I was recording the 2006 Children of Men during the Oscar broadcast, so afterwards I could revisit the amazing 8-minute battle scene shot by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (deserving winner for Birdman). One of the greatest single shots in cinema. Felicidades, Chivo.

Oscar Dinner 2015

February 22, 2015 by movie gourmet

Here’s our Oscar menu for 2015:

Table decorations

Camellias – In Birdman, Riggan (Michael Keaton) asks for camellias for his dressing room and wants anything except roses; his daughter later brings him lilacs. (We could have also gone with the theater critic’s martinis or the sliced lunch meat in Riggan’s dressing room.)

Beverages

Pub pints of beer – Frequently consumed in pub scenes in The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything.

Starter

Pizza – from Andrew and Nicole’s pizza date in Whiplash.

Hummus – Chris Kyle and his buddies share a family meal at the Iraqi home of the guy hiding a cache of arms in American Sniper. (With so many excellent recent movies set in the Middle East, we’ve had Hummus before along with Kabob Koubideh, Khoresh Ghormeh and Fatayer bi Sabanekh.)

Graduation party appetizers – from Boyhood , a movie with MANY unforgettable scenes (lots of family dining, snacks and the diner scene), but with pretty unmemorable food choices. We thought that tortilla chips with a five layer bean and guacamole dip would fit with this Texas graduation party.

Main Course

Fried chicken and fixins – requested by the appreciative Southern Christian Leadership Conference team upon their arrival at their hostess’ home in Selma.

Dessert

Courtesan au chocolate – the elaborate filled pastry smuggled to Gustave (Ray Fiennes) in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

On my Oscar Dinner page, you can see past menus and some photos of past Oscar Dinners, including the famous Severed Hand Ice Sculpture for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone.

planning the annual Oscar dinner

February 20, 2015 by movie gourmet

Every year, we watch the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. For example, we had sushi for Lost in Translation and cowboy campfire beans for Brokeback Mountain – you get the idea.

On my Oscar Dinner page, you can see past menus and some photos. In 2009, Frost/Nixon and Milk were stumping me until I realized that they were all set in the 1970s. So we had celery sticks stuffed with pimento spread, pigs in a blanket and Tequila Sunrises. And we’ll never top the Severed Hand Ice Sculpture for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone (above).

Anyway, here’s our menu for 2015:

Table decorations

Lilacs – In Birdman, Riggan asks for camellias for his dressing room and wants anything except roses; his daughter later brings him lilacs. (We could have also gone with the theater critic’s martinis or the sliced lunch meat in Riggan’s dressing room.)

Beverages

Pub pints of beer – Frequently consumed in pub scenes in The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything. (I drink Ballast Point Sculpin, but we’re going to pretend that it’s Newcastle.)

Starter

Pizza – from the pizza date in Whiplash.

Graduation party appetizers – from Boyhood , a movie with MANY unforgettable scenes (lots of family dining, snacks and the diner scene), but with pretty unmemorable food choices.

Main Course

Fried chicken and fixins – requested by the appreciative Southern Christian Leadership Conference team upon their arrival at their hostess’ home in Selma.

Dessert

Courtesan au chocolate – the elaborate filled pastry smuggled to the Ray Fiennes character in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Movies to See Right Now

February 20, 2015 by movie gourmet

Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD

It’s time for the Oscars, so you really should watch the year’s best film (and Oscar favorite) Boyhood if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video. Otherwise:

Clint Eastwood’s thoughtful and compelling American Sniper, with harrowing action and a career-best performance from Bradley Cooper.
The inspiring Selma, well-crafted and gripping throughout (but with an unfortunate historical depiction of LBJ).
The Belgian drama Two Days, One Night with Marion Cotillard, which explores the limits of emotional endurance.
The cinematically important and very funny Birdman. You can still find Birdman, but you may have to look around a bit. It has justifiably garnered several Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
Reese Witherspoon is superb in the Fight Your Demons drama Wild, and Laura Dern may be even better.
The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
Julianne Moore’s superb performance is the only reason to see Still Alice;
The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.
I was underwhelmed by the brooding drama A Most Violent Year – well-acted and a superb sense of time and place (NYC in 1981) but not gripping enough to thrill.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the droll Swedish dramedy Force Majeure, Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. It is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

It’s time for Turner Classic Movies’ annual 31 Days of Oscar – a glorious month of Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films on TCM. This week, I am highlighting:

The Producers (February 21): This zany 1967 Mel Brooks madcap classic is probably my nominee for Funniest Movie of All Time. (Much better than the 2005 remake.) Deliverance (February 21): Our of my all-time favorites – still gripping today – with a famous scene that still shocks. Jon Voigt, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox form an impressive ensemble cast.
Seven Days in May (February 26): A GREAT political thriller
The Emigrants (February 27): This Swedish film remains the best depiction of pioneer settlers in the American West.

DVD/Stream of the Week: FORCE MAJEURE – some things you just can’t get past

October 25, 2017February 17, 2015 by movie gourmet

In the droll Swedish dramedy Force Majeure, a smugly affluent family of four vacations at an upscale ski resort in the French Alps. The wife explains to a friend that they take the vacation because otherwise the husband never sees the family. But, while the wife is blissed out, the kids fidget and complain, and the hubby sneaks peeks at his phone.

Then there’s a sudden moment of apparent life-and-death peril; the husband has a chance to protect the wife and kids, but instead – after first securing his iPhone – runs for his life. How do they all go on from that revealing moment? The extent that one incident can bring relationships into focus is the core of Force Majeure.

Clearly, the family has a serious issue to resolve, but there’s plenty of dry humor. In the most cringe worthy moments, the wife tries to contain her disgust, but can’t keep it bottled up when she’s in the most social situations. The couple repeatedly huddle outside their room in their underwear to talk things out, only to find themselves observed by the same impassive French hotel worker. The most tense moments are interrupted by an insistent cell phone vibration, another guest’s birthday party and a child’s remotely out-of-control flying toy.

Force Majeure is exceptionally well-written by writer-director Ruben Ostlund. It’s just his fourth feature and the first widely seen outside Scandinavia. He transitions between scenes by showing the machinery of the ski resort accompanied by Baroque organ music – a singular and very effective directorial choice.

Force Majeure was Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. It is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

[I’ve included the trailer as always, but I recommend that you see the movie WITHOUT watching this trailer – mild spoilers]

Movies to See Right Now

January 28, 2018February 13, 2015 by movie gourmet

My recommendation this week – don’t go see Fifty Shades of Grey; instead see a good movie and then have real sex.

Clint Eastwood’s thoughtful and compelling American Sniper, with harrowing action and a career-best performance from Bradley Cooper.
The inspiring Selma, well-crafted and gripping throughout (but with an unfortunate historical depiction of LBJ).
The Belgian drama Two Days, One Night with Marion Cotillard, which explores the limits of emotional endurance.
The cinematically important and very funny Birdman. You can still find Birdman, but you may have to look around a bit. It has justifiably garnered several Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
Reese Witherspoon is superb in the Fight Your Demons drama Wild, and Laura Dern may be even better.
The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
Julianne Moore’s superb performance is the only reason to see Still Alice;
The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.
I was underwhelmed by the brooding drama A Most Violent Year – well-acted and a superb sense of time and place (NYC in 1981) but not gripping enough to thrill.

My DVD/Stream of the week is the period thriller The Two Faces of January, available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

We’re enjoying Turner Classic Movies’ annual 31 Days of Oscar – a glorious month of Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films on TCM. This week, I am highlighting:

I Want to Live! (February 15): Susan Hayward’s performance as a good hearted but very unlucky floozy won her an Oscar. It’s about a party girl who takes up with a couple of lowlifes. The lowlifes commit a murder and pin it on her. There is a great jazz soundtrack and a dramatic walk to The Chair.
Inherit the Wind (February 19): Watch Spencer Tracy and Frederic March recreate the Scopes Monkey Trial in this character-driven courtroom drama.
Caged (February 20): Want to see the prototype for Orange Is the New Black? Eleanor Parker (who died last year) played the naive young woman plunged into a harsh women’s prison filled with hard-bitten fellow prisoners and compassion-free guards. Parker was nominated for an acting Oscar, but her performance pales next to that of Hope Emerson, whose electric portrayal of a hulking guard also got an Oscar nod. Caged also features the fine character actresses Thelma Moorhead, Jane Darwell (Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath) and Ellen Corby (Grandma Walton here as a young woman). Sixty-four years later, Caged might still be the best women’s prison movie ever. Here’s my post on Caged for the 31 Days of Oscar blogathon.

Easter always triggers television networks to pull out their Biblical epics. If you’re going to watch just one Sword-and-Sandal classic, I recommend going full tilt with Barrabas, broadcast by Turner Classic Movies on April 16. This 1961 cornball stars Anthony Quinn as the Zelig-like title character. The story begins with the thief Barabbas avoiding crucifixion when Pontius Pilate swaps him out for Jesus (this part is actually in the Bible). Because the Crucifixion isn’t enough action for a two hour 17 minute movie, Barabbas is soon sent off as a slave to the salt mines, where he is rescued by a miraculously timely earthquake. He then joins the Roman gladiators, complete with a javelin-firing squad, gets lost in the catacombs and emerges to the Burning of Rome. He has encounters with the Emperor Nero and the Apostle Peter before he converts to Christianity – just in time for the mass crucifixion. Watch for an uncredited Sharon Tate as a patrician in the arena.

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

February 10, 2015 by movie gourmet

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.

STILL ALICE: Julianne Moore gleams in pedestrian drama

February 9, 2015 by movie gourmet

Julianne Moore will win this year’s Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of a professor faced with the early onset of Alzheimer’s in the otherwise pedestrian disease drama Still Alice. Moore’s character is a brainiac who is by nature a hyper-achiever, so the disease strips away both her memories and the identity that she has striven to mold for herself. Of course, once she receives the diagnosis, she harnesses both her brainpower and drive to prepare herself and her family for the eventualities. It’s a breathtakingly brilliant performance, with never a false note, as we see the professor slipping from the occasional memory lapse to the ravages of dementia.

The movie’s strongest scenes are those when she is floundering with the as yet undiagnosed affliction and when she tells her family about her diagnosis, with a particularly wrenching implication for her kids. Disease movies present a challenge for any filmmaker – how can the grimness of an irreversible and progressive illness be leavened by moments of redemption and humor so it’s not too painful to watch? And here, Still Alice falls short – the redemptive moments, most particularly a corny speech before Alzheimer’s advocates, just seem phony and manipulative. And the story walks right up to the edge of a better ending and then steps away.

The supporting cast, including Kristen Stewart, are all okay (although Alec Baldwin seems a bit checked out). All in all, there’s not much else here. But Julianne Moore might be enough.