The Movie Gourmet

Movies to See Right Now

May 3, 2013 by movie gourmet

Go see the gripping and thoughtful Mud. Two Arkansas boys embark on a secret adventure with a man hiding from the authorities, and they learn more than they expected about love and loyalty. Mud is one of the best movies of 2013.

Best bets in theaters this week:

If you see the thought-provoking drama The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, you’ll still be mulling it over days later;
I guarantee that you will enjoy the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.
Don’t overlook the heartwarming British indie The Angel’s Share about a hard luck guy’s struggle to turn his life around with unexpected help from some ultra-rare Scotch whisky.

The compelling documentary The Central Park Five from Ken Burns, et al, is available streaming from Amazon Instant and other VOD providers. Football fans should tune into ESPN’s 30 for 30 for Elway to Marino, an inside look at several astonishing stories from the 1983 NFL draft.

There are two big releases this weekend: The Reluctant Fundamentalist and At Any Price. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Flight, starring Denzel Washington as an airline pilot who becomes a hero after saving his passengers in a miraculous crash landing, but then risks legal jeopardy unless he can get his drinking under control. Flight is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from many VOD outlets.

On May 7, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the three film noir classics: Out of the Past, The Asphalt Jungle and The Naked City.

Mud: a big dose of realism about love

May 3, 2013 by movie gourmet

In the brilliant drama Mud, two Arkansas boys venture onto a river island and discover a man named Mud (Michael McConaughey) hiding from the authorities. Ellis (Tye Sheridan of The Tree of Life) is a hopeless romantic, consumed by an ideal view of love. His more hard-eyed buddy Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) is on the outlook for cool stuff. Both are ready for the excitement of a secret adventure.

Mud is another triumph for writer-director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter). The story has aspects of a boyhood adventure and of an escape thriller which hook the audience. But Mud is, at its heart, a coming of age story in which Ellis (primarily) gets a big dose of realism about love and human constancy.

Neckbone doesn’t have many illusions about human nature. His parents aren’t in the picture, and he lives with his wacky uncle Galen (Michael Shannon) in a trailer. Neckbone has a knack for immediately getting to the core of situation by bargaining an errand for a pistol or asking “Didja feel her titties?”.

A step down from Neckbone’s trailer lifestyle, Ellis lives on a floating shack tied to the riverbank. His parents are together, but, it seems, not for long. Somehow, Ellis believes in an ideal and forever love. There are many relationships for Ellis to observe: his parents’ troubled journey, the sacrifices Mud makes for his lover (Reese Witherspoon), the mysterious relationship between Mud and another houseboat dweller (Sam Shepherd), a rich man’s (Joe Don Baker) own obsession with his sons, his partnership with Neckbone and Ellis’ own first foray into dating. It’s all a bigger mouthful than Ellis was expecting.

The two kid actors are great. So are McConaughey, Shepherd, Witherspoon, Baker and Nichol’s favorite actor, Shannon. Mud primarily succeeds because Nichols has created compelling characters and woven a top-rate story, both gripping and thoughtful. Mud is one of the best movies of 2013.

Elway to Marino: a great story in 1983 and a better story now

May 3, 2013 by movie gourmet

ESPN’s fine documentary series 30 for 30 has produced another winner in Marino to Elway, an insider’s view of the 1983 NFL draft. That year, an astonishing six QBs were picked in the first round, including Hall of Famers John Elway, Dan Marino and Jim Kelly. That crop of QBs would lead the AFC Super Bowl teams in eleven of the next sixteen years. The impact to NFL history aside, the draft contained some forehead slapping individual stories:

Elway’s threat to play baseball for the New York Yankees if he were drafted by the Baltimore Colts;
five QBs getting drafted ahead of Marino, whose stock dropped because of inaccurate rumors of drug use;
Jim Kelly swearing that he would never play in Buffalo and jumping to the USFL’s Houston Gamblers;
Steeler first round pick Gabriel Rivera, an amazingly fast defensive tackle who paralyzed himself in a drunk driving accident after just 6 games in the NFL;
plus an assortment of draft busts and the machinations of NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and Raiders owner Al Davis.

Elway and Marino were represented by the same agent, Marvin Demoff, who kept a daily journal. That journal, plus interviews with Demoff, Elway and Marino, is the core of the movie. But there are also interviews with Colts General Manager Ernie Accorsi, and first-rounders Rivera, Ken O’Brien, Todd Blackledge, Chris Hinton and Jimbo Covert.

It was a great story in 1983, and Elway to Marino fills in the blanks with nugget after nugget. It’s a must see for NFL fans.

Coming Up on TV: 3 noir classics

May 2, 2013 by movie gourmet

On May 7, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting three classics of film noir.

You really haven’t sampled film noir if you haven’t seen Out of the Past (1947). Perhaps the model of a film noir hero, Robert Mitchum plays a guy who is cynical, strong, smart and resourceful – but still a sap for the femme fatale…played by the irresistible Jane Greer. Greer later reported that she received this guidance from director Jacques Tourneur: “First half of the picture – good girl. Second half – bad girl.” Kirk Douglas plays The Bad Guy You Don’t Want to Mess With, emanating a mix of evil and power. With Out of the Past, Tourneur crafted one of the most dramatically lit and photographed noirs – not one puff of cigarette smoke goes uncelebrated.

In The Asphalt Jungle (1950), the crooks assemble a team and pull off the big heist…and then things begin to go wrong. There aren’t many noirs with better casting – the crooks include Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Sam Jaffe and James Whitmore. The 23-year-old Marilyn Monroe plays Calhern’s companion in her first real speaking part. How noir is it? Even the cop who breaks the case goes to jail. Directed by the great John Huston.

Every police procedural from 1948 through today’s Law and Order and CSI owes something to the prototypical The Naked City (1948). Tenacious New York City cops solve a murder amid gritty streets and shady characters. Unusual for the time, it was shot on location. Directed by noir great Jules Dassin, The Naked City won Oscars for black and white cinematography and film editing.

DVD of the Week: Flight

April 30, 2013 by movie gourmet

Denzel Washington stars in this top rate thriller about an airline pilot who becomes a hero after saving his passengers in a miraculous crash landing, but then falls into legal jeopardy when alcohol is found in his blood. The plane crash is thrilling, but the high stakes suspense in the final 90 minutes is about whether he can get his drinking under control. (The trailer below overemphasizes the plane crash and paints Flight as an action movie, thereby qualifying it for my list of Most Misleading Trailers.)

What makes Flight singular is that the hero can take control of a crisis at 35,000 feet and rise to superhuman performance, but is completely out of control when he spots a mini bottle of Ketel One.

And what a hero Denzel Washington makes! The guy is among our very best actors, and here, his edginess and bluster mask the pilot’s achingly vulnerable loneliness and self-loathing. And the charisma and confidence in Denzel’s screen presence makes him totally credible as an action hero.

Director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future) delivers a plane crash scene for the ages, and he does an excellent job of keeping up the suspense. Flight is pedal-to-the-metal intensity until the final ten minutes, when the ending didn’t quite work for me. For me, only the ending kept Flight from being a Must See and one of the year’s best; however, The Wife and several of my friends did like the ending.

The English actress Kelly Reilly is really, really good as a trashy southern heroin addict whose life intersects with the pilot’s, and who must make the same choice between recovery and demise. John Goodman is hilarious as a gonzo enabler right out of Hunter S. Thompson. The rest of the cast shines, too, especially Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood and Tamara Tunie.

Flight is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from many VOD outlets.

The Prowler: Van Heflin takes a dark turn

April 28, 2013 by movie gourmet

On April 30, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the oft overlooked 1951 film noir The Prowler, starring usually sympathetic good guy Van Heflin as the twisted bad guy. Heflin is a beat cop responding to a call – a woman has reported a prowler outside her house. By the time Heflin and his partner arrive, the prowler is long gone, but Heflin is lusting after the comely woman (Evelyn Keyes), who is home alone every night because her husband works as an all-night DJ. Under the ruse of making sure that the prowler has vamoosed, Heflin returns and overcoming her reticence, seduces her. As befits a film noir, once he finds out about the husband’s insurance policy, sleeping with the guy’s wife just isn’t enough anymore.

It’s a strong screenplay, penned by the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (who also provides the voice of the DJ). Heflin sheds his usual decency to cast a predatory eye at another man’s wife and stuff. This isn’t the Double Indemnity film noir sap who does the bidding of the femme fatale; it’s all his idea, and she just triggers his rapaciousness. Keyes plays a woman who wants to pretend she’s on the level, but kinda knows what’s going on.

And of course, the cop has figured out how to get away with the scheme…except for one thing.

The Prowler has been restored by the Film Noir Foundation and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. It’s an underrated noir thriller.

Movies to See Right Now

April 26, 2013 by movie gourmet

Place Beyond Pines2 — Bradley Cooper in THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES

Best bets in theaters this week:

If you see the thought-provoking drama The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, you’ll still be mulling it over days later;
I guarantee that you will enjoy the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.
Read my ambivalent comments before going to see the enigmatic Upstream Color.

I haven’t yet seen (but I’ve been eagerly awaiting) the drama Mud, with Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Sam Shepherd, Michael Shannon and the kid from The Tree of Life. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

PBS is broadcasting the compelling doumentary The Central Park Five from Ken Burns, et al. It’s also available streaming from Amazon Instant and other VOD providers.

On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel, with surprisingly little energy. I’m not a big fan of the shaky cam noir Sun Don’t Shine from promising indie director Amy Seimetz, available from various VOD outlets.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the authentic and evocative coming of age movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and other VOD providers.

On April 30, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the oft overlooked film noir The Prowler, starring usually sympathetic good guy Van Heflin as the twisted bad guy.

Sun Don’t Shine: shaky cam noir

April 25, 2013 by movie gourmet

sun diont shine — Kate Lyn Shein and Kentucker Audley in SUN DON'T SHINE

Thirtyish Crystal and Leo are on the run and coaxing his weathered (and probably uninsured) sedan through central Florida. Crystal is a white-hot mess. I was going to describe her as needy and erratic, but those adjectives seem inadequate. She is a unfiltered, explosive bundle of nerves, filled with impulses that are unfailingly ruinous. The suspense in Sun Don’t Shine stems from whether Leo can navigate an escape path through her emotional minefield; we can tell from the neo-noir undercurrent that she’s going to bring him down no matter what.

In her first feature, writer-director Amy Seimetz combines a command of pacing with a Malickesque visual sense. Watching her sweaty characters, we can feel both the Floridian humidity and the relief from air conditioning in a tourist trap. (A promising actor, Seimetz just turned in a compelling performance in the controversial Upstream Color.)

The strength of the screenplay is that the audience only gradually learns why the two are on the run, from what and to where. However, those revelations are not surprising. Fortunately, Seimetz has chosen not to send her characters on yet another hyper-violent nihilistic crime spree.

But why doesn’t Leo leave Crystal on the side of the road and drive the hell away? After about fifteen minutes, we know that’s his only chance. He’s not very bright, but he is grounded in reality, and we wonder why he is so drawn to this wackadoodle. It may be a fim noir, but she sure isn’t Mary Astor’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy in Maltese Falcon.

Watching Sun Don’t Shine is a 96-minute simulation of having an annoyingly clingy and scarily volatile girlfriend. Long ago my friend Steve advised me, “Never sleep with anyone crazier than you are”. Sage words, my friend.

Sun Don’t Shine is available for streaming from Amazon Instant and other VOD outlets, and is beginning a limited theatrical release.

DVD/Stream of the Week: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

April 22, 2013 by movie gourmet

In a fine movie debut, Stephen Chbosky directs the screen version of his novel. A shy high school freshman in 1991 is adopted by two unapologetically misfit seniors, played by Harry Potter’s Emma Watson and Ezra Miller (very different here than in We Need to Talk About Kevin). The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a coming of age story, and a very good one. We’ve all experienced adolescence, so my test for a film in this genre is whether the moments of adolescent awkwardness, peer obsession, self-doubt and discovery feel real. I felt that authenticity with Perks. In addition, the story is textured and unpredictable, and the performances – especially those by Watson and Miller – are excellent. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and other VOD providers.