Haute Cuisine is the French foodie saga of the woman who rose to work as personal chef to France’s president, based on the true story of Daniele Mazet-Delpeuch. She is remarkably obsessed with sourcing premium ingredients, and it’s not hard for her to satisfy the President, who prefers simple country cooking. But palace intrigue takes its toll as she battles both sexism in the downstairs kitchens and a soul-killing bureaucracy upstairs.
Veteran French actress Catherine Frot successfully portrays the chef’s determination and moxy. Haute Cuisine is watchable, but not particularly compelling. The food, however, is outrageously tantalizing, and Haute Cuisine goes on my list of Best Food Porn Movies.
InCaptain Phillips, Tom Hanks stars as the real-life ship captain hijacked by Somali pirates and rescued by American commandos in 2009. The real-life Phillips survived his terrifying ordeal with guts and smarts, and Hanks and director Paul Greengrass bring the story alive. Greengrass is an old hand at movies with urgency and tension: Bloody Sunday, two movies in the Bourne franchise and an Oscar nomination for United 93.
Another key is that Captain Phillips was shot on the high seas on an actual container ship, an actual lifeboat and a skiff just like the real pirates use. As a result, it’s amazingly real when the pirates clamber up the side of the massive ship while both vessels roll in the waves and when the seamen and pirates play hide-and-go-seek below decks in the dark.
That being said, the movie wouldn’t work without Tom Hanks, who is unsurpassed at playing an Everyman thrust into a perilous situation. Hanks is our generation’s Jimmy Stewart, and I can see Hanks playing Stewart’s roles in Rear Window, Vertigo, Anatomy of a Murder and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Most of the pirates are standard types, but the lead pirate is a much more textured character, superbly played by Barkad Abdi, hitherto a Somali-American limo driver from Minneapolis. The depth in Abdi’s performance is also essential to the film’s success. The cast also features character actor Michael Chernus, so good in Higher Ground and Men in Black 3, as the #2 on the ship.
All in all, Captain Phillips is a flawless true story thriller.
Although I haven’t had a chance to write about them yet, I like the suspense thriller Prisoners (with Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman) and Joseph Gordon Levitt’s offbeat comedy Don Jon. I hope to post about them this weekend.
I haven’t yet seen the Tom Hanks thriller Captain Phillips or the rollicking Danny Trejo action comedy Machete Kills, which open today. You can read descriptions and view trailers of it and other upcoming films atMovies I’m Looking Forward To.
My other top recommendations:
Woody Allen’s very funny Blue Jasmine centers on an Oscar-worthy performance by Cate Blanchett.
Check out my new feature VOD Roundup, where you can find my comments on over twenty current movies available on Video on Demand. There are some good ones, some bad ones and some really, really good ones (including Letters from the Big Man).
My DVD/Stream of the Week is the provocative eco-terrorism drama The East.
On October 17, Turner Classic Movies will be showcasing the excellent prison drama Convicts 4. It’s not aptly titled – it’s about one convict (Ben Gazzara), whose talent as a visual artist blossoms in prison. Convicts 4 is soon to be on my list of Best Prison Movies.
The Year & the Vineyard is an interesting, funny, original movie, shot without a budget. It was written, directed and edited by Spanish director Jonathan Cenzual Burley. The story is set in a small village in the beautiful countryside of Spain in 2012. It begins when a strong macho Italian, who is a fighter for the International Brigade, literally falls through a hole in the sky and lands in a vineyard. He believes he is fighting the Spanish Civil war in 1937. The local priest, who is very funny, flamboyant and a little odd, is convinced the Italian is either an angel or a saint, and, after a thorough examination, concludes that neither is correct.
The Italian stays at the home of a very shy teacher and the 2 men become friends. The teacher is in love with a local girl and the priest and the fighter encourage him to sing to her to minimize his nerves, so that he can actually declare his love to her through song. The scene reminded me of Romeo and Juliet when Romeo declares his love to Juliet when she is standing on a balcony.
The Italian sees a picture of his lover from 1937 in a history book and notices that she is also fighting in the war. His sole desire is to be reconnected with her back in 1937, and so the men try to figure out how he fell out of the sky in the first place. Finally, by throwing stones up in the air close to where he fell, they finally realize that there is a hole in the sky that he is able to climb over to go back to 1937. He does this with the help of a ladder and his friends.
What struck me about the director is his absolute passion and belief in what he is doing. His Grandfather fought in the civil war and played a small role in the movie. In addition, filming took place where Burley spent his summers as a child, so his personal connection was apparent. You could see how hard he worked to put this piece together. It took him about a year to make the whole film from start to finish without a budget. His actors are not well-known, but I was impressed with their ability. He finally finished the movie on Sunday, days before the world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival, and I was lucky enough to attend and see him introduce it to the audience. It was exciting to see how dedicated Jonathan Burley is to his work.
The Year & the Vineyard was funny and cute and, even though the start was slow, I really enjoyed the whole production. The audience was clearly engaged, and being present and hearing the answers to our questions, you can see that this man is committed to his art.
Our Marin correspondent Zeke Ortiz represented us at this year’s Mill Valley Film Festival.
The East is a smart and gripping thriller that explores both our response to corporate criminality and the unfamiliar world of anarchist collectives. Brit Marling plays a brilliant up-and-comer in an industrial security firm who goes undercover to hunt down and infiltrate a band of eco-terrorists named The East.
The East seeks to brings deadly personal accountability to corporate leaders who injure people and the environment. These aren’t Hollywoodized corporate villains – all of the corporate crimes depicted in the movie have occurred in real life. Lesser filmmakers would have made The East into a revenge fantasy with a Robin Hood-like merry band of earnest kids – or a conventional espionage procedural, hunting down a gang of wild-eyed terrorists.
The East is so good because it explores our helplessness in the face of corporate malfeasance. The corporate targets deserve to be held accountable, and their crimes cry out for punishment. Yet the vigilante violence of The East is clearly unacceptable. No self-selected group of avengers – no matter how legitimate their grievance – should be able to inflict extra-legal violence. (If you don’t think so, just substitute white supremacist militia, fundamentalist Mormons or Chechen immigrants for the hippies in this movie.)
We view this dilemma through the perspective of Marling’s protagonist, whose own views evolve through the course of the story. Marling co-wrote the screenplay with director Zal Batmanglij. Marling and Batmanglij spent over three months in an anarchist collective, living a cash-free life off the grid; that experience has paid off with an unusual authenticity in the depiction of the anarchist lifestyle.
Marling and Batmanglij also co-wrote the indie The Sound of My Voice, and Marling wrote and starred in last year’s sci-fi hit Another Earth. Here, they have created a set of original characters and invented some really ingenious plot points, especially a very powerful initiation dinner and an astounding bit of tradecraft involving dental floss.
Besides Marling, Ellen Page is especially good as one of the eco-terrorists. Julia Ormond is brilliant in a tiny part as a business executive. There are other fine performances by Patricia Clarkson as Marling’s nasty boss and by Alexander Skarsgaard and Toby Kebell as anarchists.
There may be some holes in the plot, but The East is such a tautly crafted thriller, that we don’t have time to notice. There is one unfortunately corny scene between Ellen Page’s character and Jamey Sheridan’s (he’s become the Go To Guy for entitled white male scumbags). But those are quibbles – The East is a very strong film.
The East is available on DVD from both Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, Vudu, iTunes, GooglePlay and other VOD outlets.
The Iceman is based on the true story of Richard Kuklinski, a New Jersey hitman said to have killed at least 100 (and possibly more than 250) people over thirty years until 1985. Besides his prolific trail of carnage, the most interesting aspect of The Iceman is its take on Kuklinski’s personality and its portrayal by Michael Shannon.
Shannon’s Kuklinski deeply loves his wife and daughters – and is psychotically indifferent to the fate of any other human (even his own). To him, killing another person is as unencumbered by morality or emotion as delivering a pizza or fixing a muffler. His “Iceman” nickname derives from his practice of freezing his victims and dumping their bodies months later – so investigators could not fix the time of death. But “Iceman” just as aptly applies to Kuklinski’s fearlessness and utter lack of empathy.
Ever since Shotgun Stories, Michael Shannon has been one of my favorite actors. He’s perfect for Kuklinski, because Shannon can combine impassivity and intensity like no one else. He can also use his hulking frame to enhance his menace (or, in Mud, his goofiness).
His fellow actors – including Winona Ryder, Ray Liotta and David Schwimmer – do a fine job. I particularly enjoyed Chris Evans as fellow hitman Mr. Freezy, who works out of his ice cream truck. Because I don’t watch superhero movies, I was unaware that Evans has recently starred as Captain America in The Avengers and as Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four movies.
The Iceman is a solid true-life crime movie with an outstanding performance by Michael Shannon. The Iceman is available on DVD from both Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, Vudu, iTunes, GooglePlay, YouTube and other purveyors of VOD.
This week’s MUST SEE is the affecting foster facility dramaShort Term 12, with its powerful performance by performance by Brie Larson (Rampart, The Spectacular Now). Another good choice is You Will Be My Son, a good French movie with a great ending (and it will likely be in theaters for only another week or so).
Other recommendations from the most current movies:
In A World… is the year’s best comedy so far – it’s a Hollywood satire, an insider’s glimpse into the voice-over industry, a family dramedy and a romantic comedy all in one.
The Family, Luc Besson’s tongue-in-cheek Mafioso-moves-to-France comedy has its moments.
I haven’t yet seen the Joseph Gordon Levitt comedy Don Jon, which opens today. You can read descriptions and view trailers of it and other upcoming films atMovies I’m Looking Forward To.
Check out my new feature VOD Roundup, where you can find my comments on over twenty current movies available on Video on Demand. There are some good ones, some bad ones and some really, really good ones (including Letters from the Big Man).
My DVD/Stream of the Week is The Sapphires, a Feel Good triumph from Australia. The Sapphires is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, GooglePlay and other VOD outlets.
On September 28, you can watch Trouble Along the Way, featuring John Wayne as a crooked college football coach who says “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing” (years before Vince Lombardi).
Critics love the artsyMuseum Hours (it has a Metacritic rating of 83), in which a Canadian woman visits Vienna and meets a museum guard; I found it intellectually interesting but not emotionally compelling. The museum guard sits behind a velvet rope all day watching visitors peruse the oil paintings; he passes his time with mental games, like counting the eggs depicted in the paintings or imagining the museum patrons without their clothes. The woman’s last surviving relative, a cousin whom she has not seen in years, has become comatose and she feels obligated to visit her.
We piece together the essence of the characters from nuggets in the screenplay. The man managed unsuccessful rock bans in his youth, is gay, lost his partner along the way and now isolates himself by spending his free time on the Internet. The woman, who gets by with a series of part-time, dead-end jobs, is also socially isolated. They strike up a platonic friendship.
Here’s the interesting part – director Jem Cohen has filled the film with visually arresting shots of the bleak parts of Vienna, sometimes in direct juxtaposition with the artworks in the museum, allowing us to contemplate composition, subject and colors. In the middle of the film, a docent engages a tour group in a provocative discussion of Breugel.
That’s all fine, but it doesn’t make for much entertainment. There’s not much story, and the characters, while interesting, are not in themselves enough to carry the 107 minutes. Museum Hours is a worthy choice, but not a Must See, for art film devotees.
The Sapphires is a triumph of a Feel Good Movie. Set in the 1960s, a singing group from an Australian Aboriginal family faces racial obstacles at home, but blossoms when the girls learn Motown hits to entertain US troops in Vietnam. Remarkably, Tony Briggs based the screenplay on his mother’s real experience – make sure you stay for the Where Are They Now end credits.
The ever amiable Chris O’Dowd (one of the best things about Bridesmaids) is funny and charming as the girls’ dissolute manager. Jessica Mauboy, who plays the lead singer, has a great voice for soul music. A surprisingly beautiful song by the girls’ mom, played by veteran actress Kylie Belling, is an especially touching moment.
The Sapphires is not a deep movie, but it is a satisfying one. It’s predictable and manipulative, but I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t enjoy it. The Sapphires is a guaranteed good time at the movies.
The Sapphires is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, GooglePlay and other VOD outlets.
This week’s MUST SEE is the affecting foster facility dramaShort Term 12, with its powerful performance by performance by Brie Larson (Rampart, The Spectacular Now). Another good choice is You Will Be My Son, a good French movie with a great ending (and it will likely be in theaters for only two weeks).
Other recommendations from the most current movies:
In A Word… is the year’s best comedy so far – it’s a Hollywood satire, an insider’s glimpse into the voice-over industry, a family dramedy and a romantic comedy all in one.
The Family, Luc Besson’s tongue-in-cheek Mafioso-moves-to-France comedy has its moments.
I haven’t yet seenPrisoners, which opens today. It’s a thriller from Denis Villenueve, the director of Incendies (my top movie of 2011). Other promising movies opening today include the festival hit Museum Hours and the literary bio-documentary Salinger. You can read descriptions and view trailers of it and other upcoming films atMovies I’m Looking Forward To.
Check out my new feature VOD Roundup, where you can find my comments on over twenty current movies available on Video on Demand. There are some good ones, some bad ones and some really, really good ones (including Letters from the Big Man).
My DVD/Stream is the brilliant drama Mud, with Michael McConaughey. It’s a great choice to watch and then discuss with your pre-teens and young teens. Mud, one of my Best Movies of 2013 – So Far, is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, GooglePlay, YouTube and other VOD outlets.
Turner Classic Movies will broadcast the riotously funny screwball comedy Twentieth Century on September 23.
