movie gourmet

The Movie Gourmet hits the all-you-can-eat buffet

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It was a perfect storm.  Lots of important movies were opening where I live.  The Wife was out-of-town.  And my buddy Kiefer was game to join me.  It was time for the all-you-can-eat buffet of movie-going – five movies in 48 hours!

We started on Friday night by catching Super 8 at San Jose’s Camera 12.  We were both impressed with authenticity of the coming of age story embedded in the sci-fi thriller.  Good start!

Saturday morning, we drove to San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center Cinema for the noon show of Beginners.   Home run!  We both loved this smart and original comedy by Mike Mills.  Christopher Plummer will certainly get an Oscar nod.  I rated it as one of the year’s best.

We jumped in a cab to make the 2:30 show of Le Quattro Volte at the Lumiere.  The cabbie knows most of the San Francisco Giants – and even two of their moms; he keeps a box of baseballs in the front seat for autographs.

We settled in for Le Quattro, the Italian goatherd movie and a critical fave.  An aged goatherd moves his goats up and down a hill, coughing as he goes.  The next day, he does the same, only coughing more. Suddenly, a young goat is born, starts to grow up and gets lost.  Here’s where Kiefer fell asleep.  Then the villagers cut down a tall tree for a festival.  After the festival, it is added to a pile of wood that becomes charcoal.  I get that it is intended to comment on The Circle of Life, but I found it less a tranquil and profound reflection than an eye-glazing bore.  After the screening, other patrons were asking who voted this Best of Europe?

Okay – back to the Embarcadero for an early dinner at San Francisco’s oldest restaurant The Tadich Grill.  Cioppino still awesome!

Now we needed to drive back to San Jose for the 7:15 PM show of The Tree of Life.  We got stuck in San Francisco Giants traffic, and we’d never make it to San Jose in time.  Never fear, some Blackberry surfing in the car revealed a 7:15 show in Palo Alto that we COULD make.

So we got to the Palo Alto Square CineArts in time for The Tree of Life.  This screening was packed.  We were both stunned, and most of the crowd stumbled out mumbling something like “What the hell was THAT?”.  Kiefer and I were laughing – even after we had mentally cut out all of the Sean Penn scenes, we were still trying to figure out whether Tree of Life was worse than the Italian goatherd movie.

Sunday morning, we have breakfast and amble into my 10:30 AM Camera Cinema Club at The Camera 7 in Campbell.  This month’s Club selection was Turkey Bowl, a delightful indie comedy set in a group of friends’ annual touch football game.  It is a mere 62 minutes, but loaded with laughs.  After the screening, we heard writer-director Kyle Smith tell how he financed the film with $25,000 that he earned from a reality TV show, and shot it over ten days in an East LA city park.

So, all-in-all, we had a very rich film experience sampling indies, art films, a mini-blockbuster, foreign cinema, the most accessible movies and the most obtuse.  Doesn’t get any better.

Patriotic Movies for the 4th of July

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Contemplating the price of American freedom in The Best Years of our Lives

I haven’t found any other acceptable lists of patriotic movies.  Other lists tend to be less patriotic and more jingoistic and nationalistic, less about celebrating the essential American values and triumphs (sometimes triumphs over ourselves) than about dominating some furriners in war or sport.  That’s why Top Gun and Miracle show up on those lists, but not on mine.

Throughout our history,  American patriots have taken risks and made sacrifices for ideas and causes greater than themselves.  Here are ten movies that celebrate such authentic patriotism:  10 Patriotic Movies.

 

Movies to See Right Now

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Marion Cotillard and Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris

This week, the best choices are the sweet, funny and thoughtful Beginners and Midnight in Paris.  If you have kids, Pixar’s Cars 2 is an excellent choice (adults will especially enjoy the James Bond spoof thread).  So is Super 8, a wonderful coming of age story embedded in a sci fi action thriller.  The Trip delivers some chuckles.

In Beginners, Ewan McGregor plays a guy who tends to the depressive and sabotages his relationships.  His father (Christopher Plummer) has just died after coming out of the closet at age 75.  Can he make things work out with Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds)?

Woody Allen’s sweet and smart Midnight in Paris is his best comedy in twenty-five years. Owen Wilson accompanies fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where she is intrigued by pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, leaving Wilson to explore midnight Paris and time travel back to the Paris of the Lost Generation.

13 Assassins is brilliantly staged and photographed, and is one of the best recent action films; an honorable samurai must assemble and lead a team of thirteen to hack their way through a psychotically sadistic noble’s 200 bodyguards.

In The Trip, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon take a foodie road trip through the north of England and duel with their Michael Caine and Sean Connery impressions.

In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best.

The Hangover Part 2 is just not original enough, and, consequently, not funny enough.

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life contains a good 90-minute family drama that is completely derailed by an additional hour of mind-numbingly self-important claptrap.

 

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

 

You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is the British terrorist farce Four Lions.

The Trip: duelling Michael Caines

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Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon take a foodie road trip through the north of England.  Brydon is a compulsive impressionist, and he speaks more often in the voices of Woody Allen, Al Pacino, Anthony Hopkins, Richard Burton, et al than in his own.  That’s entertaining, but when Coogan provokes a duel with their Michael Caine and Sean Connery impressions, it gets even more funny.

Along the way, they dine at some pretty tasty looking restaurants, but always with an edge:  “It has the consistency of snot, but it tastes great”.  There is definitely some food porn, but not quite enough to make my list of 10 Food Porn Movies.

Super 8: coming of age story embedded in a sci fi thriller

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Super 8 is a wonderful coming of age story embedded in a sci fi action thriller.  A group of small town kids in the 1970s are making their own horror movie when a spectacular train crash unleashes a space alien threat government disinformation.  The real achievement in this film is the story of the kids – their speech, actions, fears and hopes are written to be utterly authentic.  I can’t think of a movie that does a better job of depicting American 11 to 13-year-olds.

The special effects are top-rate, especially the train wreck and the alien creature.  But the adult characters who propel the sci fi story are shallow and two-dimensional.

Nevertheless, director J.J. Abrams (Lost, Cloverfield) has created a very special coming of age film.  I liked it.

Coming up on TV: Strangers on a Train

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On June 24, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting this 1951 Alfred Hitchcock suspense thriller – one of his very best. A hypothetical discussion about murdering inconvenient people turns out to be not so hypothetical.

Robert Walker plays one of the creepiest villains in movie history.  The tennis match and carousel finale are great set pieces.

Cars 2: an inspired Bond send up

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In Cars 2, Pixar reprises the cast of Cars.  But the champion racer Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) steps aside so the story can focus on his dimbulb tow truck buddy Mater (Larry the Cable Guy).  The inspired plot sends up the James Bond genre with wonderfully Bondish British spies voiced by Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer.

I am a huge fan of Pixar.  Pixar understands that the best animation in human history is not enough by itself, and also makes the effort to tell great, great stories.  Pixar screenwriting is incredibly superior to that of other animation studios.  Despite that, I wasn’t a big fan of Cars.  In fact, Cars and Ratatouille have been the only Pixar films that haven’t made my Best of the Year lists.

I liked Cars 2 much better than Cars because of the Bond spoof. If you have kids, don’t miss it.

All new – Movies to See Right Now

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Christopher Lee and Ewan McGregor in Beginners

This week, the best choices are the sweet, funny and thoughtful Beginners and Midnight in Paris.  If you have kids, Pixar’s Cars 2 is an excellent choice (adults will especially enjoy the James Bond spoof thread).  So is Super 8, a wonderful coming of age story embedded in a sci fi action thriller.

In Beginners, Ewan McGregor plays a guy who tends to the depressive and sabotages his relationships.  His father (Christopher Plummer) has just died after coming out of the closet at age 75.  Can he make things work out with Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds)?

Woody Allen’s sweet and smart Midnight in Paris is his best comedy in twenty-five years. Owen Wilson accompanies fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where she is intrigued by pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, leaving Wilson to explore midnight Paris and time travel back to the Paris of the Lost Generation.

13 Assassins is brilliantly staged and photographed, and is one of the best recent action films; an honorable samurai must assemble and lead a team of thirteen to hack their way through a psychotically sadistic noble’s 200 bodyguards.

In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best.

The Hangover Part 2 is just not original enough, and, consequently, not funny enough.

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life contains a good 90-minute family drama that is completely derailed by an additional hour of mind-numbingly self-important claptrap.

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

I haven’t yet seen the horse whisperer documentary Buck or the comic road tripper The Trip, which open this weekend. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is the nastily hard-bitten noir Kiss Me Deadly.

Movies on TV this week include the Hitchcock thriller Strangers on a Train and Kiss Me Deadly on TCM.

Beginners: smart, sweet and original

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Ewan McGregor’s dad (Christopher Plummer) has just died, shortly after coming out of the closet.  As if this weren’t enough to deal with, McGregor is a depressive anyway, with a rich history of sabotaging his relationships.  But then he meets Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds) (and they meet cute).

This is a winning comedy – one of the year’s best movies.  It’s smart, sweet and original.  All of the performances are excellent, especially Plummer’s, which should garner him an Oscar nomination.  All in all, Beginners is a notable achievement by director Mike Mills (Thumbsucker).