2014 at the Movie: farewells

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James Shigeta (Right) in THE CRIMSON KIMONO
James Shigeta (Right) in THE CRIMSON KIMONO

Actor James Shigeta, who along with writer-director Sam Fuller, broke ground in 1959’s The Crimson Kimono, died in July at age 85. Shigeta’s  first movie role was in The Crimson Kimono, another sensationalistic and deliciously exploitative cop noir from the great Sam Fuller. Always looking to add some shock value, Fuller delivered a Japanese-American leading man (Shigeta), an inter-racial romance and a stripper victim. The groundbreaking aspect of The Crimson Kimono is that Fuller’s writing and Shigeta’s performance normalized the Japanese-American character. Shigeta’s Detective Joe Kojaku is a regular hardboiled, jaded and troubled film noir protagonist.  Of course, Fuller certainly relished the fact that many 1959 Americans would have been unsettled by a Japanese-American man’s intimate encounter with a white woman – another groundbreaking moment in American cinema.

We’re going to miss some other cinematic masters.  Some icons.  And some that we were expecting to create yet more film treasure:

And Philip Seymour Hoffman: His heartbreaking death was a punch to the gut on Super Bowl Sunday.  That’s the thing about addiction – not everybody makes it.

Philip Seymour Hoffman in CAPOTE
Philip Seymour Hoffman in CAPOTE

Happy Anniversary to The Wife

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Myrna Loy in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES – the second best wife ever

Happy Anniversary to The Wife, also known as Lisa The Love of My Life!

This year, I cherished sharing my VERY BEST movie experiences with her – my top two movies Boyhood and Ida, along with the very moving Alive Inside.  (She loves to catch me weeping at a movie.)

She tolerated my spending huge chunks of time at Cinequest, the San Francisco International Film Festival, Noir City and French Cinema Now.  She even accompanied me to four Cinequest screenings (The Grand Seduction- YAAY!) and sat through the looooong Mr. Turner at the Mill Valley Film Fest.

Without her pressing me, I wouldn’t have seen Gone Girl, and that would have been a big loss for me.  It was even HER glorious idea to settle in for a Bogie double feature of The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep!

She’s the biggest fan and supporter of this blog, and I appreciate her and love her.  Happy Anniversary, Honey!

Best Movies of 2014

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Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD
Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD

Visit my Best Movies of 2014 for my list of the year’s best films, complete with images, trailers and my comments on each movies. My top nine for 2014 are:

Boyhood
Ida
Dear White People
Birdman
Gone Girl
Locke
Force Majeure
Calvary
Alive Inside

The other best films of the year are: True Detective (the HBO mini-series), A Coffee in Berlin, Borgman and The Grand Seduction.

I’m saving space for these promising films that I haven’t seen yet: A Most Violent Year, Inherent Vice, Selma, American Sniper, The Overnighters and Two Days, One Night.

DVD/Stream of the Week: THE TRIP TO ITALY – wit, more wit and amazing food

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Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in THE TRIP TO ITALY
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in THE TRIP TO ITALY

The smart and hilarious The Trip to Italy showcases the improvisational wit of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, along with some serious tourism/foodie porn. As in The Trip, the two British comics are sent off on a hedonistic road trip to review spectacular restaurants – this time in Italy’s most stunningly beautiful destinations. Along the way, they needle each other and virtually any occurrence can trigger a very funny riff. As in The Trip, they compete for the funniest Michael Caine impression; but this time, their funniest impression is of a harried Assistant Director trying to give notes to the mask-wearing Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises.

And – if you enjoy travel and fine dining – the restaurant scenes are unsurpassed. The Trip to Italy is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

BIG EYES: amazing story, lite movie

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Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams in BIG EYES
Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams in BIG EYES

Now here’s an amazing true story:  those ubiquitous but creepy images of waifs with exaggerated eyes were created by painter Margaret Keane, but the credit for them – and income from them – were taken by her con man husband Walter Keane.  In the entertaining Big Eyes, the couple is played by Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz.

Adams’ performance is perfectly tuned, so we can understand how Margaret could be charmed and bullied into such a disadvantageous situation.  Waltz does a good job in the first two-thirds of the movie, when he depicts Walter’s charm and chutzpah;  but his performance in the final third of the movie seems very broad.  Big Eyes also features especially fun supporting turns by Danny Huston and Terence Stamp.

Big Eyes does a good job of illustrating the overt sexism of the pre-Women’s Lib 1950s.  And the serious issue of domination and control in a relationship lurks in the background.  But Big Eyes has been distilled down to a simplistic Good Gal/Bad Guy story.

Denizens of the San Francisco Bay Area will enjoy the familiar Bay Area locations, especially the recreation of North Beach in the Beat Era and Woodside in the Sunset Magazine 1960s.

Bottom line: Big Eyes is a satisfying audience-pleaser, but not a movie I’ll be thinking about tomorrow.

2014 at the Movies: most overlooked

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Macon Blair in BLUE RUIN
Macon Blair in BLUE RUIN

Talk about “overlooked” – there were some great movies this year that didn’t even get a meaningful theatrical release. Let’s start with Blue Ruin – a completely fresh take on the revenge thriller.

Then there’s the romantic drama a la Twilight Zone, The One I Love, with brilliant performances by Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass.

The year’s best documentary – Alive Inside – didn’t even get shortlisted for the best Documentary Oscar. I dare you to watch this movie without tearing up.

I thought that the Canadian comedy The Grand Seduction would become a long running art house hit like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel or The Full Monty. But, despite being the year’s funniest and most audience-friendly comedy, it came and went quickly.

I loved the darkly droll German slacker comedy A Coffee in Berlin, but only a few other folks saw it in this country.  It was a big hit in Europe – for a reason.

Fortunately, Blue Ruin, The One I Love, The Grand Seduction and A Coffee in Berlin are all available on DVD and/or streaming. Follow the links above to find out how to watch them. But two wonderful films that I saw at Cinequest – the outrageously dark Hungarian comedy Heavenly Shift and the provocative Slovenian classroom drama Class Enemy are not currently available to US audiences. When they are, I’ll let you know.

2014 at the Movies: the year of the dual performance

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Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass in THE ONE I LOVE
Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass in THE ONE I LOVE

This year we’ve seen an unusual number of actors playing multiple roles in the same movie. Jesse Eisenberg in The Double and Jake Gyllenhaal in Enemy play guys who encounter their dopplegangers – and the fun is in the contrasting personalities of the lookalikes.

In The Face of Love, a grieving widow falls for the exact double of her late husband (but she doesn’t tell the new boyfriend about the resemblance).  Ed Harris plays both roles.

In the The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy plays a couple who have experiences a tragedy. In a Rashomon-like manner, part of the movie is told from her perspective and part from his, so McAvoy and Chastain are playing the same character, but shaded by the differing viewpoints.

And here’s my favorite.  In The One I Love, Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass each play two characters, but I’m not going to spoil,the movie by telling you who they are. It’s a superb Twilight Zone-like experience.  Just watch the movie.

Movies to See Right Now

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Michael Keaton and Edward Norton in BIRDMAN
Michael Keaton and Edward Norton in BIRDMAN

It’s that Prestige Movie time of year, and theaters are featuring movies from my Best Movies of 2014- So Far list:

  • The cinematically important and very funny Birdman.
  • The best Hollywood movie of 2014, the thriller Gone Girl, with a career-topping performance by Rosamund Pike.
  • I liked the droll Swedish dramedy Force Majeure, which won an award at Cannes and is Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

And here are some other hearty recommendations:

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Set in the macho world of Olympic wrestling, Foxcatcher is really a relationship movie with a stunning dramatic performance by Steve Carell.
  • J.K. Simmons is brilliant in the intense indie drama Whiplash, a study of motivation and abuse, ambition and obsession.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the thoughtful dramedy The Skeleton Twins – a mostly hilarious movie that seriously explores the subject of depression. The Skeleton Twins is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On New Year’s Eve, set your DVR for one of my FAVORITE movies, The Paper Chase, which traces a young man’s (Timothy Bottoms) first year at Harvard Law School and is based on the memoir of a recent  grad.    Although IMDb labels The Paper Chase as 1973 movie, I saw it in the summer of 1975, just as I was about to enter law school myself.   It’s such a personal favorite because  just about EVERYTHING in the movie is something that I experienced myself at in my first year at Georgetown Law – everything, that is, EXCEPT dating Lindsay Wagner.  It’s a compelling story and the great producer John Houseman won an acting Oscar for his performance as the mentor/nemesis law professor; Houseman immediately cashed in with his “”They make money the old fashioned way… they EARN it” commercials for Smith Barney.

The Paper Chase is also notable as the first feature film credit for actors Craig Richard Nelson, Graham Beckel (Brokeback Mountain, L.A. Confidential)  and Edward Herrmann (known for many portrayals of FDR).  All three are stellar as members of the law school study group, and these guys have now combined for over 300 screen acting credits.  The Paper Chase is also available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant Video, Vudu and Xbox Video.

THE PAPER CHASE
THE PAPER CHASE

2014 at the Movies: most fun at the movies

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DEAR WHITE PEOPLE
DEAR WHITE PEOPLE

I do this for fun.  This year, my most fun at the movies happened at film festivals (Cinequest, San Francisco International Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, Noir City), the SFFS French Cinema Now film series and my movie club, the Camera Cinema Club.

These gave me an early look at some of the Best Movies of 2014 – Ida at Cinequest, Dear White People and Calvary at SFIFF and Alive Inside at Camera Cinema Club.  The screening of Dear White People, with a packed, appreciative audience and a Q&A with writer-director Justin Simien, was a howl!  And I hope that two foreign films from Cinequest, Heavenly Shift and Class Enemy, will become available – on DVD or VOD – to US audiences.

And I always value my steady companion Turner Classic Movies.  TCM always turns me on to new favorites in film noir; this year TCM introduced me to Pitfall with Dick Powell and I Wake Up Screaming with Victor Mature and the irreplaceable Laird Cregar.

THE IMITATION GAME: the corrosiveness of secrets

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Keira Knightly and Benedict Cumberbatch in THE IMITATION GAME
Keira Knightly and Benedict Cumberbatch in THE IMITATION GAME

So – here’s a pretty good true story: the guy who invented the computer and played a key role in defeating the Nazis was hounded for his homosexuality.  And The Imitation Game tells that story very well and is a pretty good movie.  Benedict Cumberbatch is excellent as Alan Turing, the mathematical genius who was able to create a proto-computer that could break the codes of the German Enigma cipher machine.  To make his character even more interesting, Turing had appalling, almost Asberger-like personal skills and needed to conceal his sexual preference.  Cumberbatch nails the role, and will reap an Oscar nomination for his efforts.

It’s a top-to-bottom excellent English cast.  Keira Knightley is especially good as Joan Clarke, the real life female codebreaker who overcame sexism and who became, briefly, Turing’s fiance.