Movies

Movies to See Right Now

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Victor Buono in THE STRANGLER
Victor Buono in THE STRANGLER

This week, most of your movie best bets are on TV and video.

In theaters, I liked Ethan Hawke’s gentle documentary Seymour: An Introduction. If you’re looking for a scare, try the inventive and non-gory horror gem It Follows.

Don’t bother with Clouds of Sils Maria – it’s a muddled mess.

Insurgent, from the Divergent franchise is what it is – young adult sci-fi with some cool f/x. The romance 5 to 7 did NOT work for me, but I know smart women who enjoyed it. I found Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter to be droll but tiresome. The biting Hollywood satire of Maps to the Stars wasn’t worth the disturbing story of a cursed family. I also didn’t like the Western Slow West, now out on video.

Documentarian Alex Gibney has TWO excellent films playing now on HBO:

  • Going Clear: The Prison of Belief, a devastating expose of Scientology is playing on HBO; and
  • Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, an especially well-researched and revelatory biopic of Frank Sinatra.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the hilarious Living in Oblivion, with Steve Buscemi and Peter Dinklage. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Xbox Video.

Don’t miss the 1964 serial killer movie The Strangler, playing on Turner Classic Movies on April 19. It’s the masterpiece of director Burt Topper, who specialized in low-budget exploitation movies. First, we see that lonely lab tech Otto Kroll (Victor Buono in an especially brilliant and eccentric performance) is twisted enough to murder random women and return to his lair and fondle his doll collection. Then we learn his motivation – he dutifully visits his hateful mother (Ellen Corby – later to play Grandma Walton) in her nursing room; she heaps abuse on him in every interaction. Pretty soon, even the audience wants to kill Mrs. Kroll, but Otto sneaks around taking out his hatred for his mom by strangling other women. Because Otto is outwardly genial to a fault, it takes a loooong time to fall under the suspicion of the cops. The character of Otto and Buono’s performance elevate The Strangler above its budget and launches it into the top rank of serial killer movies. (THE STRANGLER IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR RENT FROM NETFLIX OR STREAMING SERVICES. You can buy the DVD from Amazon or find a VHS tape on eBay.)

TCM will also show Murder, My Sweet (April 20), the 1944 film in which Dick Powell was able to escape his typecasting as boyish crooner in big musicals and immerse himself in a new career in grimy film noir. Powell proves himself right with the studio bosses, and Murder, My Sweet was just his first success in film noir. Powell, an actor from Hollywood’s Golden Age who would translate very well in today’s cinema, is very watchable as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, an LA private dick who is hired by three clients, each seemingly more dangerous than the last. As Marlowe follows the mystery, he is knocked out multiple times, taken hostage, drugged and temporarily blinded. Oh, and Claire Trevor tries to seduce him. Pretty good stuff.

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA: a muddled mess

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CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA
CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA

Man, what a disappointment! Somehow the Clouds of Sils Maria lets us lose interest in the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche and wastes a performance by Kristen Stewart that made her the first American actress to win a César (the French Oscar). But it’s just a muddled mess.

Binoche plays a Margot Channing-aged actress, and Stewart plays her personal assistant. The star is about to take the older woman role in a play that launched her career (in a younger role to be played by the star of a Hollywood comic book movie). As the movie begins, the play’s author dies and the Binoche character must deal with the loss of her mentor. She’s also going through a difficult divorce and fending off the advances of a onetime co-star, and generally being pretty difficult amid her midlife crisis. None of this interesting and some of the story is confusing to boot.

The only time that Clouds of Sils Maria perks up is when Chloë Grace Moretz shows up as the younger actress, a train wreck who is the epitome of paparazzi-bait . (Kudos to Kristen Stewart – the Moretz role is close enough to Stewart’s real life to demonstrate that Stewart doesn’t take herself too seriously.) It’s a funny role and Moretz nails it.

Oddly, Clouds of Sils Maria is almost entirely in English (for Kristen Stewart?), and Binoche just isn’t as enthralling as she usually is. It’s also odd that a French celebrity would hire a non-French speaking personal assistant for travel in French-speaking country – what’s up with this?

I blame director Olivier Assayas. I really liked Assayas’ miniseries Carlos , but he now has engineered three clunker features in a row (Summer Hours, Something in the Air and Clouds of Sils Maria)., so I’ll have to persuaded to see his next project.

SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION: a master class in teaching from a piano master

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Seymour bernstein and Ethan hawke in SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION
Seymour Bernstein and Ethan Hawke in SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION

As Seymour: An Introduction opens, we see an elderly man giving piano lessons to VERY talented pianists.  His gentle instructions address tiny details in the performances that we in the audience can’t notice – such as how deeply to press the piano key.  Each of his tips is constructive and easy to understand  As  exacting as his corrections are, his overall demeanor never fluctuates from entirely supportive.  This extraordinary teacher is the concert pianist Seymour Bernstein.

Bernstein long ago abandoned a career in the spotlight. We’re meeting Bernstein only because the actor Ethan Hawke met him by chance and benefited from his life advice.  Hawke directed this film.

Thank you, Ethan.  It’s a deep privilege to meet this gifted and kind man, and spend an hour-an-a-half watching him treat others as he does.  When the Wife and I caught a screening, no one left the theater until the end credits were completed.

SLOW WEST: a Western that never gets into the rhythm

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SLOW WEST
SLOW WEST

Slow West, which I saw at Cinequest, is out on VOD today, ahead of a theatrical release in mid-May. I suggest that you skip it.

I love Westerns, but Slow West just didn’t work for me. It’s a film of some ambition, and it won an award at Sundance, but the movie kept sliding in and out of self-consciousness, and I could never settle in to the story.

Kodi Smitt-McGee plays a sixteen-year-old Scot completely unsuited for survival in the Old West. Nonetheless, he is devoted to a young woman and he launches a determined quest to track her down. He soon picks up a veteran Westerner (Michael Fassbender) who can guide and guard him. The two, of course, have a series of adventures along the way.

There’s some appealingly dark and droll humor in Slow West (quite a few good laughs, actually). The problem is that Slow West can’t figure out whether it should have the tone of a straight Western (Unforgiven, The Homesman) or wink at the audience (Little Big Man). Accordingly, some of the period details are so wrong that they distracted me from the story. For example, in an otherwise very funny scene with arrows and a clothesline, the Indians look like tiny, skinny Asians. Smitt-McGee employs a Scots accent in every fifth line. And Fassbender sounds like he just stepped out of a time machine from 2015.

Slow West was filmed in New Zealand, so there are grand vistas that kind of look like the American West, but then kinda don’t. This DID work for me, because it contributed an almost subconscious edge to heighten some scenes.

Bottom line: Slow West is a mess.

DVD/Stream of the Week: LIVING IN OBLIVION

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Peter Dinklage and Steve Buscemi in LIVING IN OBLIVION
Peter Dinklage and Steve Buscemi in LIVING IN OBLIVION

The hilarious 1995 comedy Living in Oblivion follows a grossly under-resourced indie movie director (Steve Buscemi), who must  somehow finish his low-budge/no-budget art film despite being surrounded by zanies.  He’s got a neurotic female lead (Catherine Keener), a preening and slumming A-list star named Chad Palomino (James Le Gros) and an elderly actress who can’t remember her lines (Rica Martens).  His stubborn and sullen cinematographer (Dermot Mulroney) is bedding the First Assistant Director (Danielle von Zerneck), who has an agenda of her own.  With this outfit, everything that CAN go wrong…

Living in Oblivion is filled with lines like “I can’t act. I can just do shower scenes in Richard Gere movies for the rest of my life!” and “Hey! That’s my eye patch and I don’t want anyone else wearing it. It’s insanitary.”

But the pièce de résistance is the feature debut of Peter Dinklage, 8 years before his breakout role in The Station Agent and 16 years before becoming a star in Game of Thrones.   He plays an tiny actor with a gargantuan chip on his shoulder:   “Why does my character have to be a dwarf?” and “I don’t even have dreams with dwarves in them. The only place I’ve seen dwarves in dreams is in stupid movies like this!”.

Director Tom Dicillo, having been Jim Jarmusch’s cinematographer, was no stranger to indie filmmaking.  After Living in Oblivion, Danielle von Zerneck moved on to a producing career.

Living in Oblivion is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Xbox Video.

Movies to See Right Now

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IT FOLLOWS
IT FOLLOWS

There’s a good movie choice for everyone:

  • If you haven’t seen it yet, run out and watch the hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales, a series of individual stories about revenge fantasies becoming actualized.
  • The harrowing thriller ’71 is exhilarating.
  • Going Clear: The Prison of Belief, documentarian Alex Gibney’s devastating expose of Scientology is playing on HBO;
  • I also really like the Belgian romance Three Hearts – the leading man has a weak heart in more ways than one.
  • If you’re looking for a scare, try the inventive and non-gory horror gem It Follows.
  • The music doc The Wrecking Crew is for those with an interest in music of the 1960s. It’s both in theaters and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Insurgent, from the Divergent franchise is what it is – young adult sci-fi with some cool f/x. The romance 5 to 7 did NOT work for me, but I know smart women who enjoyed it.  I found Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter to be droll but tiresome.  The biting Hollywood satire of Maps to the Stars wasn’t worth the disturbing story of a cursed family.

My Stream of the Week is Inherent Vice, a funny and confused amble through pot-besotted 1970 Los Angeles. It’s available on DirecTV PPV, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

On April 13, Turner Classic Movies has something for everyone:

    • The screwball comedy What’s Up Doc?, with my all-time favorite chase scene;
    • Hitchcock’s unsettling The Birds;
    • And if you like your film noir tawdry, then Gun Crazy (1950) is for you. Peggy Cummins plays a prototypical Bad Girl who takes her newlywed hubby on a crime spree.

On April 15, there is a real curiosity on TCM, the 1933 anti-war movie Men Must Fight, which predicts World War II with unsettling accuracy.

Stream of the Week: INHERENT VICE

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Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin in INHERENT VICE
Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin in INHERENT VICE

Adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson from a Thomas Pynchon novel, Inherent Vice is a funny and confused amble through pot-besotted 1970 Los Angeles.  Joaquin Phoenix plays a bottom-feeding private eye who is contacted by an old girlfriend and, of course, finds himself knocked out and implicated in a murder.  Thus begins a plot so convoluted that it makes The Big Sleep look as linear as a Bud Light commercial.

We meet a wide array of characters with names like Dr. Buddy Tubes, Japonica Fenway and Puck Beaverton.  We hear sly wit along with seeing low brow sight gags (nose-picking. etc.).  There are funny lines, as when Phoenix’s pothead detective is described as “You smell like a patchouli fart”.  Perhaps the funniest moment is when our addled hero writes himself a note in block letters: “NOT HALLUCINATING”.

Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Eric Roberts, Jeannie Berlin, Jena Malone, Maya Rudolph and Martin Short all pop up in Inherent Vice, and Joaquin Phoenix is as good as one would expect.  The most memorable performances, though are by Josh Brolin and Katharine Waterston.  Brolin is hilarious as a flat-topped hardass cop.  Waterston plays the former girlfriend, Inherent Vice’s female lead, and she pretty much captivates every scene that she’s in.  Musician Joanna Newsom, who also plays a minor character, narrates very effectively.

Paul Thomas Anderson (Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love, The Master) is a brilliant filmmaker, and Inherent Vice gets the time and place just right, with an especially evocative color palette.

It’s mildly entertaining all the way through, but never compelling.  And all the way through is two hours and twenty-eight minutes – not really a slog, but you’re never on the edge of your seat.  And you’re certainly not going to think about it tomorrow.

I finally got around to watching Inherent Vice on DirecTV PPV.  It’s also streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER: droll but tiresome

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KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER
KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER

The title character in Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter (Rinko Kikuchi – Oscar nominated for Babel)  flies from Japan to Minnesota on a quest to unearth the suitcase of loot that Steve Buscemi hid in the snow in the movie Fargo.  Because she doesn’t speak English or have any money, navigating the frigid 200+ miles from the Minneapolis Airport to Fargo, South Dakota makes for a fish-out-of-water comedy, albeit a tiresome one-joke comedy.

We meet our heroine  living a solitary life of utter dissatisfaction in Tokyo, where she spits in every cup of her boss’ tea.  At night, she watches and re-watches a scratchy VHS tape of Fargo.  As we watch her increasingly bizarre actions, it becomes clear that she is starkers.  The absurdist humor in Kumiko comes from the completely deadpan depiction of the bizarre.  It’s all very droll, with many genuinely funny moments, but it finally becomes tedious.  And I didn’t buy the glimpse of magical realism at the ending.

Here’s something I liked about Kumiko – the director and co-writer David Zellner also plays the role of the rural deputy sheriff – and he’s really great at capturing the essence of a well-meaning man driven to help, but utterly unequipped to do so.

So, how funny, really, is mental illness?  Having seen it up close in my own life, I don’t seek it as necessarily cute or quirky.  This woman is raving mad, but she’s been able to remain (barely) functional with a highly regimented life in her own culture.  When she plunges herself into an alien world, she inevitably decompensates.  I am able to enjoy mental health humor (and I aspire to be the farthest thing from a scold on the subject), but just watching someone flail around within their disability isn’t entertaining for me.

MAPS TO THE STARS: biting Hollywood satire and Original Sin

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Mia Wasikowska and Julianne Moore in MAPS TO THE STARS
MAPS TO THE STARS

David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars is funny, dark and disturbing, but is ultimately unsatisfying.  The disturbing part shouldn’t surprise us, Cronenberg having been responsible for the exploding heads in Scanners, the auto accident sexual fetishes of Crash (1996) and the nightmarish druggy hallucinations of Naked Lunch.  But Cronenberg’s most recent A History of Violence and Eastern Promises have been very accessible, albeit with striking violence.  Maps to the Stars lures us in with a brutally witty show biz satire, and then clubs us with the most twisted family violence.

John Cusack and Olivia Williams play a rich Hollywood couple who had unknowingly committed their unique form of Original Sin, which has resulted in two damaged and dangerous kids.   Julianne Moore plays a needy and neurotic movie star grappling with middle age and her own family heritage.  These are people who take astonishing privilege for granted and treat their minions in contempt.   They react to the most even the most horrific tragedies by assessing how it will affect a book tour.  Cusack’s faux-shaman-to-the-stars ponders fixing the worst possible PR disaster by going “on Oprah and pulling a Lance Armstrong”.

What makes this such a nasty show biz satire, is that the eveil doesn’t just come from the Hollywood suits.  Here, the talent and the creatives are just as biz-oriented – always focused on box office, their fees, and cut throat competition for the next career-enhancing and remunerative gig.  There is very smart humor and lines like, “You know, for a disfigured schizophrenic, you’ve got the town pretty wired”.

Brilliant as always, Julianne Moore is a very good sport here (even with a fart gag).  The most memorable performances are by the very underutilized Olivia Williams (The Ghost Writer, Hyde Park on Hudson) – always teetering with desperation just under the surface – and Evan Bird, a monstrous teen star who isn’t to blame for how he is.  Cusack and Mia Wasikowska are also very good.  I just can’t figure out the appeal of Robert Pattinson, who is in this move to be a love interest, and doesn’t add anything special.

Although there’s a lot to enjoy about Maps to the Stars, it just doesn’t pay off. There’s very disturbing violence, some involving children, and sending up Hollywood foibles with the level of sickness in these characters, just isn’t worth it.

Maps to the Stars, after a blink-and-you-missed-it theatrical release, is available streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

IT FOLLOWS: scary…because you haven’t seen this before

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IT FOLLOWS
IT FOLLOWS

The Movie Gourmet doesn’t watch many horror movies, but I really liked the inventive, scary and non-gory It Follows.  19-year-old Jay (Maika Monroe) has sex with a guy who then tells her that he has passed on to her a kind of supernatural infection – a monster will follow her and kill her if she doesn’t pass it on to someone else.  The monster shambles along at zombie speed and takes the form of a different human being each time.   It’s terrifying – there’s a constant sense of dread and a convulsive shock every time It appears.

Writer-director David Robert Mitchell has created a very scary horror film with an excellent soundtrack and a minimum of makeup, special effects and hardly any blood.  It’s even more frightening that she’s being stalked by something that usually looks normal.

Before the screening, I had to sit through several trailers from the horror genre.  There was NOTHING in those trailers that I hadn’t seen before in The Shining, The Exorcist or a multitude of less elevated films.  I have to note the contrast with It Follows, which is definitely something that you haven’t seen before.

The very talented actress Maika Monroe is almost always on-screen and she proves that she can carry a movie.   I first noticed her in At Any Price , where she played the son ‘s girlfriend. That role was especially well-written – beginning as a simple teen from a broken family looking for some fun, her journey takes several surprising turn – and Monroe’s performance was memorable. Until fairly recently, Monroe was pursuing a professional career in freestyle kite surfing.

All the acting is good in It Follows, but Keir Gilchrist is especially good at portraying the ACHING sexual frustration of a teenage boy.

It Follows has a wonderful sense of place.  It is set and was shot in the Detroit suburbs, the rural lakefront and the decaying inner city.  The extraordinary High Lift Building in Detroit’s Water Works Park serves as the exterior for the climactic set piece.

But the key to It Follows is its originality –  without expensive f/x or disgusting gore – it’s likely the best horror movie of the year.