Movies to See Right Now

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Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale in The Fighter

Now is the time to catch future Oscar contenders on the big screen, especially crowd pleasers like True Grit, The King’s Speech and Black Swan.

True Grit is the Coen Brothers’ splendid Old West story of Mattie Ross, a girl of unrelenting resolve and moxie played by 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld in a breakthrough performance, and Jeff Bridges is perfect as the hilarious, oft-besotted and frequently lethal Rooster Cogburn. The King’s Speech is the crowd pleasing story of a good man (Colin Firth) overcoming his stammer to inspire his nation in wartime with the help of a brassy commoner (Geoffrey Rush). Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is a rip roaring thriller and a showcase for Natalie Portman and Barbara Hershey.

I strongly recommend Rabbit Hole, an exquisite exploration of the grieving process with great performances by Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhardt, Diane Wiest, Sandra Oh and Miles Tenner. The Fighter is an excellent drama, starring Mark Wahlberg as a boxer trying to succeed despite his crack addict brother (Christian Bale) and trashy mom (Melissa Leo). Fair Game, the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson story with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, is also excellent.  All are on my list of Best Movies of 2010.

I Love You, Phillip Morris is an entertaining offbeat combo of the con man, prison and romantic comedy genres.  Red Hill is a stylish contemporary Aussie Western.  Season of the Witch is a bad Nicholas Cage/Ron Perlman buddy movie set among the plague, crusades and witch hunts of the 13th century.

For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now. You can see the trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is In the Name of the Father. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.

Movies on TV include 12 Angry Men, I Want to Live! and Glory on TCM.

Red Hill

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There’s not much original in Red Hill, a contemporary Aussie Western, but it is stylish and well-made – and we don’t see a lot of Westerns these days.  Some critics has remarked on the violence in Red Hill, but it is not extreme.

At 95 minutes, the story moves along quickly.  There is a lot of subtle humor, not from gag lines, but from the absurdly relentless persistence of the rookie cop, the facial scarring that makes the outlaw even scarier and the inopportune appearance of a very hungry panther.

Pete Postlethwaite and my DVD of the Week

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The great character actor Pete Postlethwaite died last week, and this week’s DVD pick honors his finest film work. In the Name of the Father (1993)  is based on the true story of Gerry Conlon (Daniel Day-Lewis) of the Guildford Four, wrongly convicted of an IRA bombing that killed four British soldiers and a civilian.  The four were coerced into confessions by torture and threats against their families.  The real IRA terrorists, captured later for another act, confessed to the crime, but the British government suppressed the evidence of the Guildford Four’s innocence.   Gerry Conlon wound up in prison with his father Giuseppe (Postlethwaite), also convicted of an IRA plot as a member of the Maguire Seven – and Postlethwaite’s performance is one of uncommon inner strength.

The film was nominated for seven Oscars and is on my 10 Best Prison Movies.

The New Year's Movies To See Right Now

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True Grit

Don’t miss the great movies released during the Holidays.  This is the time of year that I live for – lots of great choices in the theater, especially crowd pleasers like True Grit, The King’s Speech and Black Swan.

True Grit is the Coen Brothers’ splendid Old West story of Mattie Ross, a girl of unrelenting resolve and moxie played by 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld in a breakthrough performance, and Jeff Bridges is perfect as the hilarious, oft-besotted and frequently lethal Rooster Cogburn. The King’s Speech is the  crowd pleasing story of a good man (Colin Firth) overcoming his stammer to inspire his nation in wartime with the help of a brassy commoner (Geoffrey Rush).  Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is a rip roaring thriller and a showcase for Natalie Portman and Barbara Hershey.

I strongly recommend Rabbit Hole, an exquisite exploration of the grieving process with great performances by Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhardt, Diane Wiest, Sandra Oh and Miles Tenner.  The Fighter is an excellent drama, starring Mark Wahlberg as a boxer trying to succeed despite his crack addict brother (Christian Bale) and trashy mom (Melissa Leo). Fair Game, the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson story with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, is also excellent. I Love You, Phillip Morris is an entertaining offbeat combo of the con man, prison and romantic comedy genres. For some delectable food porn, see Kings of Pastry.

Love and Other Drugs is a passable comedy.

There are some Must See films still kicking around in theaters this week: Inside Job and The Social Network. Both are on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far.

For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.

I have not yet seen Restless or Red Hill, opening this weekend. You can see the trailers at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is The American.   For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.

Movies on TV include The Producers, The Third Man, 12 Angry Men, I Want to Live! and Glory on TCM.

2010 in Movies: The Year of Food Porn

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To conclude my 2010 in Movies series, here’s another very fun trend:  2010 brought us more food-centric films than any year in memory: I Am Love (Io sono l’amore), Mid-August Lunch, The Kings of Pastry, Today’s Special, A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle House and Soul Kitchen.  The Movie Gourmet approves of this trend.

You can get the idea here from I Am Love‘s trailer.  Check out the plate of glazed prawns about 58 seconds into the trailer.

Here’s my list of 10 Food Porn Movies.

2010 in Movies: The Year of the Crime Drama

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2010 continued a trend of really good recent crime dramas.  This year, most of them came from overseas:  The Secrets in Their Eyes (Argentina) won the most recent Best Foreign Language Oscar and A Prophet (France) and Ajami (Palestine/Israel) were nominated.

All three made my list of the year’s best movies and my list of  Best Recent Crime Dramas.

We also had other strong imports in this genre:  the Mesrine films (France), Animal Kingdom (Australia) and Mother (Korea).

The best American crime drama was The Town, in which the rockin’ first two acts were betrayed by a sappy and implausible climax.

Here’s the trailer for Ajami, an ultra-realistic crime drama set in a scruffy neighborhood in Jaffa, Israel.  The story weaves together Arab Christians and Arab Muslims and both religious and non-religious Israeli Jews.  Everyone aspires to make a living and live in personal safety, but the circumstances and tribal identities make this very difficult at best.  There are two trans-religious romances, but no one is going to live happily ever after. Ajami was co-written and co-directed by Scandar Copti, a Jaffa-born Palestinian, and Yaron Shoni, an Israeli Jew.   After seeing the film, I was surprised to learn that it has no trained actors – all of the roles are played by real-life residents who improvised their lines to follow the story line.

DVD of the Week: The American

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In this 2010 thriller, George Clooney plays an international master assassin.  He lives a life of crushing loneliness.  Anyone who gets close to him will either die or betray him.  He is exhausted by years of perpetual vigilance, unnourished by human affection.  I remember this loneliness from my own years as an international master assassin.

Clooney’s character is written and played well.  This is a smart, arty film that transcends its hackneyed set-up:  the assassin takes One Last Job and encounters some beautiful, available and potentially dangerous women who may be Up To No Good.  The climax reminds me of the greatest assassin movie, Day of the Jackal.

For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.

2010 in Movies: Biggest Disappointments

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1. I couldn’t see some of the Cannes and Sundance Festival favorites because they haven’t been released where I live: Poetry, Certified Copy, Uncle Boonmee, Cane Toads: The Conquest, Aurora, The Princess of Montpensier.

2. After director Niels Arden Opley’s super rockin’ The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the second and third films in Stieg Larsson’s Milenium trilogy were dragged down by plodding director Daniel Alfredson.

3. The 2004 French action movie District B13 introduced us to thrilling parkour and was an original, offbeat spectacle.   But this year’s sequel District 13: Ultimatum was cartoonish and very, very dumb.

4.  Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps:  First of all, I hoped that the movie was going to be primarily about the Michael Douglas characterization of Gordon Gekko – which Douglas knocked out of the park yet again. Will someone explain to me why Shia LaBeouf seems to be a movie star? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Second, the screenplay keeps raising the issue of moral hazard (whether to bail out people from the consequences of risks that they knew they were taking).  Yet, at the end, the two flawed main characters each get exactly what they wanted at the beginning of the film despite making risky or evil choices throughout.  The movie’s payoff (things will turn out OK no matter how badly or foolishly you behave) is exactly opposite of the movie’s sermonette.

5. No one could find a better vehicle for the sublime Amy Adams than the execrable Leap Year?

6.  Pirate Radio:  Has Philip Seymour Hoffman been in a worse film?

7. From the trailer and the buzz, I thought that The Kids Are All Right was shaping up to contend for Best Picture.  It’s a good movie with a wonderful performance by Annette Bening, but  it didn’t fulfill its promise as one of the year’s best.

8. I really wanted to like Ireland’s animated The Secret of Kells, but it was a snoozer.

9. The German comedy Soul Kitchen had a fun trailer (that contained the actually funny three minutes in the entire film).

10.  Shutter Island:  Marty, what were you thinking?

2010 in Movies: Breakthroughs

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One of the most rewarding aspects of watching movies is seeing the emergence of new talent.  Here are some pleasant surprises from the past year.

With just her second feature, Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone) has emerged as an important filmmaker to watch.  She presented an unflinching look at the Ozark meth dealer subculture without ever resorting to stereotype.  Granik hit a home run with every artistic choice, from the locations to the spare soundtrack to the pacing to the casting.  I’ll be watching for her next film.

20-year-old Jennifer Lawrence is in every scene of Winter’s Bone.  With a minimum of dialogue, she creates a lead character of rarely seen determination.

14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld plays the main character in the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, a girl of unrelenting resolve and moxie.  Without her performance, the movie could not have been the success that it is, and she has no problem standing up to the likes of Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin and Matt Damon.

The Swedish actress Noomi Rapace was new to us Americans when she originated the very original character of damaged, angry, master hacker Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  Although Rooney Mara will play Lisbeth in the upcoming David Fincher versions, I’m sure that Noomi Rapace will fetch some Hollywood offers.

Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) and Jonah Hill (Cyrus) showed us that their acting ranges are far wider than previously evident.

Mia Wasilova had a very good year in The Kids Are All Right and Alice in Wonderland.  I’m looking forward to see her work in 2011, starting with Restless.

Screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe tried a novel approach in Going the Distance that respected the audience – creating characters like the ones we know in real life, who talk and act like real people do.  And, instead of an implausible set-up, the conflict was the real problem of a bi-coastal romance.  He wound up writing the year’s best rom com.

Edgar Ramirez carries the 5 1/2 hours of Carlos.  I’m sure we’ll see the Venezuelan star soon in a Hollywood vehicle.

Ajami was co-written and co-directed by Scandar Copti, a Jaffa-born Palestinian, and Yaron Shoni, an Israeli Jew.   After seeing the film, I was surprised to learn that it has no trained actors – all of the roles are played by real-life residents who improvised their lines to follow the story line.  Ajami is a unique project, but I hope that Copti and Shoni continue their collaboration.

Touching Home is a little movie with a big performance by Ed Harris  The film was written and directed by and stars the Miller twins, Logan and Noah, who tell the story of their own alcoholic father.  The authenticity of the writing and Harris’ performance make this an exceptionally realistic depiction of alcoholism. The Miller twins made the most of their debut, and I look forward to what they do next.

Tom Hooper: John Adams, The Damned United and The King's Speech

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The King’s Speech was directed by Tom Hooper, who also directed John Adams and The Damned United.  In this interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, Hooper gives us some nuggets about the making of all three films.

The King’s Speech is on my list of the Best Movies of 2010.  John Adams is on my 10 Patriotic Movies.  The Damned United is the best soccer movie on my Best Sports Movies.