Movies

Movies to See Right Now

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Jonah Hill in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
Jonah Hill in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

Lots of choices, including some of my Best Movies of 2013.

Recommended:

  • American Hustle is the most gloriously entertaining movie of the year – with Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Jeremy Renner at their best.
  • The French drama Blue Is the Warmest Color, with its stunning performance by 19-year-old actress Adèle Exarchopoulos, currently tops my list of Best Movies of 2013 – So Far.
  • The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese’s excessive, full-throttle con artist comedy – a movie that gives hedonism a bad name.
  • The city of Rome dazzles in The Great Beauty, already a favorite for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
  • I really liked and admired the funny, poignant and thought-provoking family portrait Nebraska from Alexander Payne (Sideways, The Descendants).
  • Philomena, with Judi Dench and Steve Coogan is an emotionally satisfying gem.
  • The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is another fine thriller from that franchise, with another amazing performance by Jennifer Lawrence.
  • Go for Sisters has three more great characters in a thriller from indie guru John Sayles.
  • The spare survival tale All Is Lost has a grimly powerful performance by Robert Redford.
  • I also like the wickedly subversive Holiday comedy White Reindeer, which is available streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Sundance Now, GooglePlay and XBOX.

Not So Much

  • I found Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks to be sentimental and predictable.
  • The Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis is about an unlovable loser – and I didn’t love the movie, either.

DVD/Stream of the Week: The Angel’s Share

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THE ANGEL’S SHARE

The Angel’s Share is an endearing tale of a hard luck guy’s life changing after a visit to a Scotch whisky distillery. Released back to hardscrabble Glasgow after doing prison time, a young man becomes a father and determines to change his life. As focused as he is, that wouldn’t be possible without the encouragement of the guy who leads his community service work crew and the prodding of his girlfriend. The odds are against him, but he gathers an oddball team from the work crew and devises an ingenious (and funny) heist.

The story begins with a clever court sentencing montage that only gradually settles our attention on the protagonist. This young man (Paul Brannigan) is terse and always potentially destructive, yet we root for him because of his single-minded commitment to acting on his good intentions. His potential is not apparent to any other characters (or to the audience for a long time). His mentor (John Henshaw) has seen it all, but isn’t so jaded as to write off every unemployed and unemployable ex-con; more complex than he seems, he lives a lonely life, sparked by a single hobby.

The movie’s accessible tone surprised me because militant British director Ken Loach is known for far grimmer socialist realist films; here, Loach’s filmmaking skills and his unvarnished depiction of Glasgow slums enhance his warm story and hopeful characters.

Fortunately, because the Glaswegian accent is very difficult for we Americans to follow, The Angel’s Share is subtitled. The Angel’s Share is a fun and heartwarming movie that a wide audience will enjoy.

The Angels’ Share is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and XBOX.

Movies to See Right Now

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AMERICAN HUSTLE
AMERICAN HUSTLE

Some of this week’s recommendations are on my Best Movies of 2013. Recommended:

  • American Hustle is the most gloriously entertaining movie of the year – with Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Jeremy Renner at their best.
  • The French drama Blue Is the Warmest Color, with its stunning performance by 19-year-old actress Adèle Exarchopoulos, currently tops my list of Best Movies of 2013 – So Far.
  • The city of Rome dazzles in The Great Beauty, already a favorite for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
  • I really liked and admired the funny, poignant and thought-provoking family portrait Nebraska from Alexander Payne (Sideways, The Descendants).
  • Philomena, with Judi Dench and Steve Coogan is an emotionally satisfying gem.
  • The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is another fine thriller from that franchise, with another amazing performance by Jennifer Lawrence.
  • Go for Sisters has three more great characters in a thriller from indie guru John Sayles.
  • The spare survival tale All Is Lost has a grimly powerful performance by Robert Redford.
  • I also like the wickedly subversive Holiday comedy White Reindeer, which is available streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Sundance Now, GooglePlay and XBOX.

Not So Much

  • I found Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks to be sentimental and predictable.
  • The Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis is about an unlovable loser – and I didn’t love the movie, either.

2013 at the Movies: farewells

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Roger Ebert’s passing was a particularly somber moment for me because the Siskel & Ebert television show was one of the two essential triggers for my love of movies (along with my college History of Film class).

I first set up my massive 1982 VCR to record his and Siskel’s Sneak Previews. In the early 2000s, Ebert’s was the first blog that I checked every day. The reason that I signed up for Twitter was to follow Roger Ebert.

Roger Ebert was first a great film critic, period. He was also the most effective popularizer of movie criticism. Most importantly, especially for me starting in the late 1970s, he was the leading evangelist for independent and foreign cinema in the US. Without Siskel & Ebert, I wouldn’t have known to seek out a French film like La cage aux folles or the debut features of indie directors John Sayles (Return of the Secaucus Seven) and Spike Lee (She’s Gotta Have It).

In taking a “leave of presence” the day before his death, Roger Ebert wrote, “On this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I’ll see you at the movies.”

On the lighter side: Roger Ebert’s favorite lines from his movie reviews.

In 2013, we also lost the genius of stop-motion animation, Ray Harryhausen, groundbreaking indie filmmaker Tom Laughlin (Billy Jack), the iconic Lawrence of Arabia star Peter O’Toole and Eleanor Parker, Oscar-nominated in 1951 for Caged, perhaps the best ever women’s prison movie.

Best Movies of 2013

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BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR

Visit my Best Movies of 2013 for my list of the year’s best films, complete with images, trailers and my comments on each movies.  My top ten for 2013 is:

  1. Blue Is the Warmest Color
  2. The Hunt
  3. Before Midnight
  4. Stories We Tell
  5. The Spectacular Now
  6. Mud
  7. Short Term 12
  8. Fruitvale Station
  9. The Act of Killing
  10. Captain Phillips.

The other best films of the year are:  The Great Beauty, Nebraska, American Hustle, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Rendez-vous in Kiruna, The Gatekeepers, At Any Price, Undefeated, In a World… and Me And You.

I’m saving space for these promising films that I haven’t seen yet:  Her, The Wolf of Wall Street and The Past (Passe).

Note:  Undefeated is on this year’s list, even though it won an Oscar a year ago, because it only became available for most of us to see in 2013.

2013 at the Movies: biggest disappointments

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THE RAMBLER

I don’t have a Worst Ten Movie list because, unlike professional critics, I don’t have to see every movie. I did see over 190 first-run movies this year, but I try REALLY, REALLY HARD to avoid the bad movies. So my worst movie going experience is usually either 1) on an airline flight when I see a movie that I normally wouldn’t; 2) a hyped art film that disastrously falls on its face and/or really pisses me off (The White Ribbon); or 3) something I find on cable TV while channel surfing (Paul Blart: Mall Cop). But usually, the culprit finds its way aboard a long airline flight. Not this year.

In the purely disappointing category, I was underwhelmed by the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, Pedro Almodovar’s I’m So Excited and The World’s End with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I was expecting much more from those filmmakers.

Of course, Only God Forgives (from the director and star of Drive, which I really liked) was a red-hot mess – but I had caught wind of the buzz before I saw it, so I really wasn’t surprised.  Same with The Great Gatsby, which I could tell was a stinker from the trailer.  And I did walk out of the French film Rich Is the Wolf; it’s about a wife who watches hours of video of her husband to figure how and why he went missing  – but after 40 minutes, I realized that I didn’t care what happened to him or whether she would find out.

Notwithstanding all of the above, the clearly worst film that I saw in 2013 – and I’m talking epically, horrifically terrible – was Calvin Lee Reeder’s The Rambler. It’s a disjointed collection of shock pieces that turns from a tribute to David Lynch to an homage to Rob Zombie (if David Lynch and Rob Zombie were bad filmmakers).  In the low (I must say LOWEST) point, the Dermot Mulroney character dreams that he is strapped to a bed when a dummy dressed like an old hag plunges through the window above his head and vomits what looks like yellow paint on to his face and into his mouth. It is an extended vomit scene – 58 seconds (I timed it).

Finally, I re-watched the 1980 epic Heaven’s Gate, which had been the subject of much critical re-assessment this year – and it’s still epically bad.

2013 at the Movies: most overlooked

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Michael Polley in STORIES WE TELL

Evangelizing for wonderful movies that are overlooked is the primary mission of The Movie Gourmet.  These four movies made my Best Movies of 2013. They are brilliant and everyone should see them.

Also on my list of the year’s best, it’s easy to say that Me and You is overlooked because it hasn’t even gotten a US release in theaters , DVD or VOD.

Also flying under the radar were the fine thrillers Prisoners and Shadow Dancer, along with the year’s best comedy, In a World….

Movies to See Right Now – Holiday Movie Guide

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american hustleLook for The Movie Gourmet’s list of this year’s top movies this Tuesday.  Until then, here is my guide to the Holiday movies.

Recommended:

  • American Hustle is the most gloriously entertaining movie of the year – with Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Jeremy Renner at their best.
  • The French drama Blue Is the Warmest Color, with its stunning performance by 19-year-old actress Adèle Exarchopoulos, currently tops my list of Best Movies of 2013 – So Far.
  • The city of Rome dazzles in The Great Beauty, already a favorite for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
  • I really liked and admired the funny, poignant and thought-provoking family portrait Nebraska from Alexander Payne (Sideways, The Descendants).
  • Philomena, with Judi Dench and Steve Coogan is an emotionally satisfying gem.
  • The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is another fine thriller from that franchise, with another amazing performance by Jennifer Lawrence.
  • Go for Sisters has three more great characters in a thriller from indie guru John Sayles.
  • The spare survival tale All Is Lost has a grimly powerful performance by Robert Redford.
  • I also like the wickedly subversive Holiday comedy White Reindeer, which is available streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Sundance Now, GooglePlay and XBOX.

Not So Much

  • I found Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks to be sentimental and predictable.
  • The Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis is about an unlovable loser – and I didn’t love the movie, either.

All Is Lost: resilience meets hopelessness

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all is lostJ.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost begins with Robert Redford reading a farewell letter to an unidentified someone.  Then it flashes back to a boating mishap eight days earlier. For the rest of the film there is only one character and there are only three more lines.  Redford plays a solo yachtsman, adrift in the middle of the vast Indian Ocean, who must deal with a disabled (and then shipwrecked) boat, storms and other calamities.  All alone. With his survival at stake.

The protagonist is unusually resourceful but his resilience is tested by each catastrophe and the increasing hopelessness of his situation.  The entire time, we’re watching only Redford, and gauging his thoughts and feelings from his expression and his actions.  It’s a powerful experience.

Chandor showed a lot of promise with last year’s Wall Street thriller Margin Call, and he has another winner with All Is Lost.

White Reindeer: wickedly deadpan for the Holidays

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white reindeer“Autumn is my stripper name.  My real name is Fantasia.”

I think that’s pretty funny. If you think so, too, you should watch White Reindeer on VOD. In this dark and subversive comedy, we meet a comfortable suburbanite who enjoys going overboard at Christmastime; suddenly, her husband is killed and she plunges into shock, grief and various manifestations of depression. Believe it or not, this is a comedy, and what makes it so funny is her deadpan reaction to each of the secondary indignities she undergoes. As she tries to cope with her loss, she learns some unexpected things about her late husband and winds up partying with strippers, dabbling in shoplifting and visiting a neighbors’ creepy swingers mixer. It’s all subversively funny.

White Reindeer is available streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Sundance Now, GooglePlay and XBOX.