Movies

Movies to See Right Now

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IDA
IDA

Let me make another pitch for my pick for the year’s best movie so far – the Polish drama Ida, about a novice nun who is stunned to learn that her biological parents were Jewish victims of the Holocaust – watching shot after shot in Ida is like walking through a museum gazing at masterpiece paintings one after the other. I took The Wife last week, and she admired Ida, too.

Get ready for funniest film of the year – the Canadian knee-slapper The Grand Seduction opens next week, and it’s a guaranteed audience pleaser.

Here are other good movie choices:

  • Words and Pictures is an unusually thoughtful romantic comedy.
  • Fading Gigolo, a wonderfully sweet romantic comedy written, directed and starring John Tuturro is a crowd-pleaser.
  • Locke is a drama with a gimmick that works.
  • In the documentary Finding Vivian Maier, we go on journey to discover why one of the great 20th Century photographers kept her own work a secret.
  • The raucous comedy Neighbors is a pleasant enough diversion.
  • Like all Wes Anderson movies, The Grand Budapest Hotel is wry and imaginative, but it’s not one of his most engaging.

My DVD/Stream of the Weeks is the highly original teen misfit movie Terri.  Terri is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

Coming up on Turner Classic Movies on June 5 is one of the very best Westerns, Winchester ’73 (1950). This was the first pairing of James Stewart with director Anthony Mann; the duo went on to create several more edgy “psychological Westerns” with atypically ambiguous heroes. Stewart’s emotionally scarred character is driven to hunt down a bad, bad guy (film noir stalwart Dan Duryea); his motivation is later revealed to be deeper than it first appears. Millard Mitchell plays Stewart’s buddy, and the two have great chemistry. Sexy Shelly Winters and sleazy John Ireland also sparkle in supporting roles. A very young Rock Hudson plays an American Indian warrior (shirtless, of course).

James Stewart and Millard Mitchell in WINCHESTER '73
James Stewart and Millard Mitchell in WINCHESTER ’73

Best Movies of 2014 – So Far

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IDA
IDA

I’ve started my running list of the Best Movies of 2014 – So Far and three of them – Ida, The Grand Seduction (I’ll write about it next Thursday) and Locke – you can see in theaters in the next two weekends.

By the end of the calendar year, I will have a Top Ten plus another 8-18 or so. I’m pretty sure that Ida will end up in my Top Ten.

I’ve also included Dear White People, which you’ll be able to see when it gets into theaters in October.  And I’m also considering including the mesmerizing Brendan Gleeson drama Calvary (saw it at San Francisco International Film Festival and it releases widely August 1). I’m also mulling over adding two films that I saw at Cinequest – the outrageously dark Hungarian comedy Heavenly Shift and the provocative Slovenian classroom drama Class Enemy; neither is currently available to US audiences.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Terri

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terriWe’ve all seen the teen misfit movie. But Terri has some originality and lots of heart. Jacob Wysocki plays an overweight teen caring for his mentally ill uncle. He doesn’t have much going for him until John C. Reilly’s school counselor intervenes, sometimes clumsily (who knows what will make a teen respond?). Soon there’s a ripple effect among other troubled teens. Screenwriter Patrick Dewitt deserves some plaudits for the authenticity of the teen characters.

Terri is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

Words and Pictures: unusually thoughtful romantic comedy

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words picturesIn the unusually thoughtful romantic comedy Words and Pictures, Clive Owen and the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche star as sparring teachers. The two play world-class artists – Owen a writer and Binoche a painter – who find themselves in teaching jobs at an elite prep school. As they spiritedly disagree over whether words or pictures are the most powerful medium of expression, they each admire and are drawn to the other’s talent and passion.

Words and Pictures contains the wittiest movie dialogue in many moons and reminds us that real wit is more than some clever put downs. Owen’s English teacher worships the use of language to evoke original imagery and also revels in pedantic wordplay – the more syllables the better. When his boss asks him, “Why are you always late?”, he retorts “Why are you always dressed monochromatically?”.

The reason that he IS always late is that he’s an alcoholic hellbent on squandering his talent and alienating his friends and family. This is a realistic depiction of alcoholism and of its byproducts – unreliability, broken relationships and fundamental dishonesty. In an especially raw scene, he expresses his self-loathing by using a tennis racquet and balls to demolish his own living space. Top notch stuff.

Binoche plays a woman of great inner strength and confidence who has been shaken by the advances of a chronic illness. According to the credits, Binoche herself created her character’s paintings.

Words and Pictures sparkles until near the end. When the students make the debate over words vs pictures explicit in the school assembly, the intellectual argument loses its force and the tension peters out. So it may not be a great movie, but Words and Pictures is still plenty entertaining and a damn sight smarter than the average romantic comedy.

I saw Words and Pictures earlier this year at Cinequest.

Locke: a thriller about responsibility

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lockeThe thriller Locke is about an extremely responsible guy (Tom Hardy) who has made one mistake – and he’s trying to make it right.  But trying to do the responsible thing in one part of your life can have uncomfortable consequences in the others.  The title character drives all night trying to keep aspects of his life from crashing and burning.

In fact, he never leaves the car and, for the entire duration of the movie, we only see his upper body, his eyes in the rearview mirror, the dashboard and the roadway lit by his headlights.  All the other characters are voiced – he talks to them on the Bluetooth device in his BMW.  Sure, that’s a gimmick – but it works because it complements the core story about the consequences of responsibility.

Locke is written and directed by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises).  The story is actually a domestic drama – there are no explosions to dodge, no one in peril to rescue and no bad guys to dispatch.  But it’s definitely a thriller because we care about whether Locke meets the two deadlines he will face early the next morning.

It’s a masterful job of film editing by Justine Wright (Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland).  After all, her cuts help keep us on the edge of our seats, despite her working with a very finite variety of shots (Locke’s eyes, the dashboard, etc.).

Hardy, who’s known as an action star, is excellent at portraying this guy who must try to keep his family, biggest career project and self-respect from unraveling at the same time, only armed with his ability to persuade others.  It’s a fine film.

Movies to See Right Now

by
IDA
IDA

My pick for the best movie of the year so far is openly more widely this week – the Polish drama Ida, about a novice nun who is stunned to learn that her biological parents were Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Superbly photographed in black and white, each shot is exquisitely composed. Watching shot after shot in Ida is like walking through a museum gazing at masterpiece paintings one after the other.

IDA
IDA

Fading Gigolo, a wonderfully sweet romantic comedy written, directed and starring John Tuturro is a crowd-pleaser. The raucous comedy Neighbors is a pleasant enough diversion. Locke is a drama with a gimmick that works. In the documentary Finding Vivian Maier, we go on journey to discover why one of the great 20th Century photographers kept her own work a secret. Like all Wes Anderson movies, The Grand Budapest Hotel is wry and imaginative, but it’s not one of his most engaging.

My DVD Stream of the Week is the highly original Her, one of my Best Movies of 2013.

It’s Memorial Day Weekend, which means it’s time for Turner Classic Movies to unleash a war movie marathon.  On May 24, you can see two classic Korean War films: The Steel Helmet (1951) and The Men of the Fighting Lady (1954).

Gene Evans in The Steel Helmet

Ida: best movie of the year so far

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IdaOpening more widely tomorrow, the Polish drama Ida, which I saw at this year’s Cinequest, is the best movie I’ve seen this year.

The title character is a novice nun who has been raised in a convent orphanage. Just before she is to take her vows in the early 1960s, she is told for the first time that she has an aunt. She meets the aunt, and Ida learns that she is the survivor of a Jewish family killed in the Holocaust. The aunt takes the novice on an odd couple road trip to trace the fate of their family.

The chain-smoking aunt (Agata Kulesza) is a judge who consumes vast quantities of vodka to self-medicate her own searing memories. But the most profound difference isn’t that the aunt is a hard ass and that the nun is prim and devout. The most important contrast is between their comparative worldliness – the aunt has been around the block and the novice is utterly naive and inexperienced (both literally and figuratively virginal).  The young woman must make the choice between a future that follows her upbringing or one which her biological heritage opens to her.  As Ida unfolds, her family legacy makes her choice an informed one.

The novice Ida, played by newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska, is very quiet – but hardly fragile. Saying little, she takes in the world with a penetrating gaze and a just-under-the-surface magnetic strength.

Superbly photographed in black and white, each shot is exquisitely composed. Watching shot after shot in Ida is like walking through a museum gazing at masterpiece paintings one after the other.  Ida was directed and co-written by Pawel Pawlikowski, who also recently directed the British coming of age story My Summer of Love (with Emily Blunt) and the French thriller The Woman in the Fifth (with Kristin Scott Thomas and Ethan Hawke).  He is an effective and economic story-teller, packing textured characters and a compelling story into an 80 minute film.

Ida is also successful in avoiding grimness. Pawlikowski has crafted a story which addresses the pain of the characters without being painful to watch. There’s some pretty fun music from a touring pop/jazz combo and plenty of wicked sarcasm from the aunt.

Ida won the International Critics’ Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.  Ida was my pick as the best film at Cinequest, where it won the Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature.

Gordon Willis: the Prince of Darkness

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Gordon Willis
Gordon Willis

The cinematographer Gordon Willis has died at age 82. Willis was a particularly singular filmmaker who often broke new ground and often made movies that looked much different from movies made before.  Although three of the films he shot won the Best Picture Oscar, he was unrecognized by the Academy Awards until he received an honorary Oscar in 2009.

To understand the impact a cinematographer can have on a movie, just check out these examples from among Willis’ 34 feature films.  The first is The Godfather, for which he received the nickname “The Prince of Darkness”.  (Willis shot all three Godfather films).  The convention of the time held that a filmmaker always had to show the eyes of the movie star.  Willis argued that, by not showing Marlon Brando’s eyes, you could actually see into his character’s soul.

Willis Godfather

The second example is All the President’s Men, a paranoid thriller enhanced by the contrast between the stark brightness of the Washington Post newsroom and the menacing darkness of the parking garage where Bob Woodward met his secret source Deep Throat.

Willis Presidents4

Willis Presidents men2

And, finally, there’s Woody Allen’s 1979 masterpiece Manhattan.  Why make a black and white movie in 1979?  New York City was never a more stirring backdrop.Willis Manhatan

 

DVD/Stream of the Week: Her

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her1Her, the latest from writer-director Spike Jonze is about as inventive at his Being John Malkovitch – and that’s really saying something. Joaquin Phoenix stars as a lonely guy fascinated by his breathtakingly intuitive new computer operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johannson). This new operating system is SO intuitive that it molds itself to please him, constantly fine tuning itself into the image of his ideal companion – and he falls in love.

It’s set in a technologically not-so-distant future (but far enough in the future that everyone in LA lives and works in highrises and takes transit, even to the beach). Along with the absurd premise, Jonze sprinkles in some brilliantly funny touches. There’s a blind date with a knockout (Olivia Wilde) that spirals out of control with stunning suddenness. There’s an inspired bit with a waitperson interrupting the diners with “How’s everything?” (one of my personal pet peeves) at precisely the most awkward moment possible. A video game figure is cuddly looking but shockingly abusive. Here’s one more sly touch – a future male fashion of awkwardly high-waisted pants. Lots of smart laughs.

Her is one of the more thought-provoking films of the year – why did the main character’s most recent relationship fail? Does he really know what he wants and needs? Can he give enough to make a reciprocal relationship work?

Joaquin Phoenix is very good, as are Wilde, Kirsten Wiig, Chris Pratt, Rooney Mara and Amy Adams. Scarlett Johannson, however, is a revelation; equipped only with her husky voice, she dominates the film. It’s an extraordinary performance.

All this being said, Her is not a perfect film – it drags in places. But between Johannson’s performance and Jonze’s wacky but thought-provoking story, Her is a winner – and on my Best Movies of 2013.  Her is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Least Convincing Movie Monsters

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Killer Shrews

In honor of Godzilla, here’s my list of Least Convincing Movie Monsters.  Note that Godzilla himself (even in the original 1954 Gojira) is too realistic to make my top ten. Enjoy.