Movies to See Right Now

by
THE HUNT

This week’s MUST SEE is The Hunt – the best movie of 2013 so far.

I haven’t yet see the critically acclaimed heart breaker Fruitvale Station, which also opens today.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My other recommendations:

Also out right now:

  • the gross-out comedy This is the End, which has its moments.
  • There’s cleverness in the psychological thriller Berberian Sound Studio, but just not enough thrills for a thriller.
  • Also out on VOD, Nancy, Please is a dark comedy about neurotic obsession among the over-educated. Not that funny.
  • Neither is the VOD comedy Bert and Arnie’s Guide to Friendship.
  • Do not see the wretched crime thriller Only God Forgives, which I’ll write about next week.

My most recent DVD/Stream of the Week picks are the unintentionally hilarious Troll 2 and the documentary about it, Best Worst Movie.  Troll 2 is available streaming on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.  Best Worst Movie is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.  You can see some of the finer bits of Troll 2 by doing a YouTube search for “You can’t piss on hospitality” and “Troll 2 O my God”.

On August 1, Turner Classic Movies is showing In a Lonely Place, an under appreciated film noir.  Two of my favorite classic stars, Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, each deliver one of their signature performances.  Bogie plays a screenwriter with a drinking problem and a volatile temper – exactly the perpetrator profile for a local murder; good time girl Grahame wants to fall for him…and things will go better if he’s innocent.

The Hunt: terrifyingly plausible and the year’s best movie?

by
THE HUNT

In the Danish drama The Hunt (Jagten), Mads Mikkelsen plays a man whose life is ruined by a false claim of child sexual abuse. You’ll recognize Mikkelsen, a big star in Europe, from After the Wedding and the 2006 Casino Royale (he was the villain with the bleeding eye). He won the 2012 Cannes Best Actor award for this performance.

The story is terrifyingly plausible. The protagonist, Lucas, is getting his bearings after a job change and a divorce. He lives in a small Danish town where everyone knows everyone else, next door to his best friend. The best friend drinks too much and his wife is a little high-strung, but Lucas embraces them for who they are. He’s a regular guy who hunts and drinks with his buddies and is adored by the kids at the kindergarten where he works. He’s not a saint – his ex-wife can get him to fly off the handle with little effort.

A little girl hears a sexual reference at home that she does not understand (and no one in the story could ever find out how she heard it). When she innocently repeats it at school, the staff is alarmed and starts to investigate. Except for one mistake by the school principal, everyone in the story acts reasonably. One step in the process builds upon another until the town’s parents become so understandably upset that a public hysteria ensues.

Director Thomas Vinterburg had previously created the underappreciated Celebration (Festen). The Hunt is gripping – we’re on the edges of our seats as the investigation snowballs and Lucas is put at risk of losing everything – his reputation, his job, his child, his friends, his liberty and even his life. Can Lucas be cleared, and, if he is, how scarred will he be? The Hunt is a superbly crafted film with a magnificent performance by Mikkelsen.

I saw The Hunt earlier this year at Cinequest.

The Conjuring: satisfying shocker

by
THE CONJURING

The satisfying shocker The Conjuring begins in a familiar way.  In 1971, a couple (Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor) moves into an old, isolated farmhouse with their five daughters.  The youngest kid finds a creepy old music box, the dog refuses to come inside the house, all the clocks stop at 3:07 AM, the house is always chilly and there’s a boarded-up cellar.  If you’ve ever seen a scary movie, you know that THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED.  Soon, the family desperately seeks the help of husband and wife ghostbusters (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson).

Interestingly, the story is based on a real occurrence.  The real ghost experts  soon afterward took on the notorious house in Amityville, Long Island.

What makes The Conjuring work so well?  First, the performances of Vera Farmiga and Lili Taylor elevate the material.  Each is gifted with the capacity to mix passion, inner strength and fragility.

Director James Wan superbly paces the action, letting our sense of dread build and build until we jump in our seats.  He uses a handheld (but not jumpy) camera to provide cool angles and a point of view that helps us relate to the characters.

And there is no gore.  There are a few scary images, but The Conjuring relies on good, old-fashioned surprises and our discomfort with the occult to supply the fright.

The Cheshire Murders: beyond the police procedural

by
THE CHESHIRE MURDERS

The Cheshire Murders, another in HBO’s fine summer documentary series, takes us beyond the familiar police procedural.  This is not a whodunit – we immediately know what happened and who committed the crimes.  Three murders were committed in a home invasion, and the two perpetrators were caught red-handed – their guilt confirmed by confessions and DNA and other forensic  evidence.

Instead, as The Cheshire Murders peels back the onion, we hear about the crime’s impact on a quiet Connecticut suburb and on the families of the victims and the perpetrators. We trace the unanswered questions on the police response.  We follow the life journeys of the murderers which culminate in this horrific crime.  We see how the case affected the political debate over capital punishment in Connecticut, and test our own views on capital punishment with the facts of  a heinous crime, certain guilt and monstrous offenders.

The Cheshire Murders is all the more effective because the filmmakers refused to sensationalize the case.  The facts, speaking for themselves, are compelling enough.

The Cheshire Murders is currently playing on HBO.  Note: Some of the victims of this wanton, senseless and disgusting crime were children; although there are no grisly images, the facts of the case are disturbing.

I’m So Excited: good dirty fun

by
I'M SO EXCITED

I’m So Excited is a silly romp from Spanish director Pedro Almodovar.  After mastering intense dramas (Talk to Her, Bad Education and Broken Embraces),  Almodovar returns to his early success (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) with this over-the-top sex comedy.

When the landing gear malfunctions on a flight from Madrid to Mexico City, the flight crew prepares for an emergency landing in Spain by dosing the coach passengers with a muscle relaxant.  The pilots, flight stewards and business class passengers self-medicate their nerves with lots of drugs and have a lot of sex with each other.  The all-gay stewards perform a hilariously choreographed lip sync to the Pointer Sisters’ I’m So Excited.  The sex and drugs have less shock value than in Almodovar’s comedies of the 1980s and early 1990s.  It’s all just good dirty fun.

The cast includes veterans of many Almodovar films, including Javier Cámara of Talk to Her and Bad Education, obviously enjoying himself here with an uncharacteristically daffy performance.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Troll 2 and Best Worst Movie

by

I love movies that are unintentionally hilarious – at once both undeniably bad and entertaining.  Troll 2 has recently gotten some buzz as the worst movie of all time”, largely because of Best Worst Movie, a 2009 documentary about how horrible and funny Troll 2 is.  It may not be the worst, but Troll 2 belongs in the conversation and has earned a place in my Bad Movie Festival.

A white bread suburban family vacations in the mountain village of Nilbog (“Goblin” spelled backwards, get it?) in which all the locals are vegetarian predator goblins who can take the form of regular humans.  The goblins are able to turn humans into vegetative matter (a green slime) that the goblins can ingest.

The movie was made with very primitive production values by a non-English speaking Italian crew and a non-Italian speaking Z-list American cast.  Inept acting and directing aside, the screenplay is probably the source of the most laughs.  There’s the dead grandpa Seth who keeps appearing to the boy, the boy’s saving his family by urinating on the family dinner, the make out scene so “hot” that it pops popcorn and so much more. Another of the funny aspects of Troll 2 is that it is completely unrelated to the movie Troll and has no trolls in it.

Troll 2 is available on Netflix Streaming.  You can see some of the finer bits of Troll 2 by doing a YouTube search for “You can’t piss on hospitality” and “Troll 2 O my God”.  Here’s the trailer.

 

As to Best Worst Movie, it’s very entertaining.  There are some squirmy scenes with cast members whose mental health issues have since worsened.  The Italian director is a jerk who, although happy to bask in Troll 2‘s new found cult status,  is narcissistically unwilling to acknowledge its badness.  But the goodhearted goofiness of star George Hardy, a cast of good sports and Troll 2‘s cult following dominates, and Best Worst Movie is fun to watch.  Best Worst Move is available on DVD.

The hilariously bad movie Troll 2 is available streaming on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.  The documentary Best Worst Movie is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

The Way, Way Back: when parents are no help whatsoever

by
THE WAY WAY BACK

In the appealing coming of age story The Way, Way Back,  a betrodden teen (Liam James) gains confidence when mentored at his summer job by a lowlife (Sam Rockwell).  The kid’s mom (Toni Collette) has been rocked by a divorce (hubby found a young thing), and has rediscovered some self esteem in the attentions of a creep (Steve Carrell).  Now the kid, his mom, her insufferable boyfriend and the boyfriend’s bratty daughter are off to his summer home on the Atlantic shore.  The kid finds a job at a cheesy local water park, and funny stuff happens.

In depicting the ways that parents make their teen kids miserable, The Way, Way Back is spot on.  I’m not talking about the uncool cluelessness that makes all teens embarrassed about the even most perfect parents.  The Way, Way Back focuses on children from broken marriages who are made to feel unvalued or whose weaknesses are picked at or whose parents become too involved with their own issues.  Indeed all the kids in The Way, Way Back come from divorced families.  Even one childless marriage (Rob Corddry from Warm Bodies and Amanda Peet) is very imperfect.

Collette’s performance nails the desperation of a woman, once abandoned, for a relationship that will meet at least some of her needs.  Alison Janney is hilarious as the neighboring divorcee who is embracing her alcoholism.  The rest of the cast, including Maya Rudolph, is good, too.  Give credit to Carrell for taking on a very unsympathetic role, something not every bankable star will do.

It may not be a Must See, but The Way, Way Back is sweet, perceptive and pretty funny.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Four Lions

by
FOUR LIONS

A terrorist comedy, anyone?  This couldn’t have been made in the US, but fortunately the British have made the terrorist equivalent of Waiting for Guffman.   A group of homegrown Brits of Pakistani heritage decide to join the jihad and try to organize a terror mission.  Fortunately, the smartest one is both inept and unlucky, and each of the others is dumber than the last.   The cell’s intramural competition reminds me of the hilarious People’s Liberation Front scene in Monty Python’s Life of Python.

Four Lions stars Riz Ahmed, the charismatic star of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, who will appear in the upcoming thriller Closed Circuit.

Four Lions is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play and other VOD outlets.

Bert and Arnie’s Guide to Friendship: why watch these guys?

by
BERT AND ARNIE'S GUIDE TO FRIENDSHIP

Now out on VOD, Bert and Arnie’s Guide to Friendship is an odd couple comedy with the promising premise that the two main characters become entangled when one has an affair with the other’s wife. The good news is that the comedy is driven by the characters, one an abrasive womanizer and the other a pretentious and self-involved minor novelist.  The bad news is that the broad characters are neither textured or interesting or sympathetic enough to sustain a movie of longer than 49 minutes (which is when I stopped watching).  And worse, Bert and Arnie wastes a supporting performance by the delightful Anna Chlumsky.

Bert and Arnie’s Guide to Friendship is available  streaming from Amazon and iTunes.

Dead Man’s Burden: times are hard and the women are harder

by
DEAD MAN'S BURDEN

I always welcome a new Western, and writer-director Jared Moshe’s impressive debut Dead Man’s Burden takes us to a darkly realistic Old West.  The dry New Mexico landscape is beautiful but unforgiving, and the law is three days ride away.  The times are hard and the women are harder.  The Civil War ended five years before, but families are still reeling from losing a generation of young men.

As the film opens, a man rides away on horseback.  A petite woman, young but worn, hoists an 1853 Enfield rifle to her shoulder, takes aim and fires.  We later learn the identity of the man, his relationship to the woman and her reason for firing.  It’s not what you might guess.  And the villain is not who you expect it to be.

Moshe’s story reveals some characters to be bound by duty and others to be opportunistic.  They are caught in the same web of circumstance, which funnels inevitably them to conflict.  The movie’s final two shots echo an earlier moment, and neatly (if grimly) wrap up the tale.

The cast – Barlow Jacobs, Clare Bowen (Scarlet in ABC’s Nashville), David Call and veteran Richard Riehle – is uniformly good.  Jacobs (Kid in Shotgun Stories) is especially well suited for a Western hero, with expressive eyes that narrow like Eastwood’s or Van Cleef’s.

There’s a gunfight that is more historically typical than the usual cinematic facedown in the street.  These men, hunters and former soldiers, chase each other through the brush, firing from cover.  It ain’t heroic.  And Dead Man’s Burden is remarkably unsentimental.

DEAD MAN'S BURDEN

Dead Man’s Burden was shot on 35mm by Robert Hauer, and the look of the film brings out the isolating vastness of the land.  Sadly, the sound is substandard, and I had difficulty comprehending some of the dialogue.

Dead Man’s Burden is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, Vudu and other VOD outlets.