moviegourmet

Updated Movies to See Right Now

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Somewhere: It's Dad/Daughter Month at the Chateau Marmont

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.

Biutiful is a grim, grim movie with a great performance by Javier Bardem in a compelling portrait of a desperate man in desperate circumstance, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores perros, 21 Grams, Babel).

Somewhere is Sofia Coppola’s (Lost in Translation) artsy portrait of a man so purposeless that he can find no pleasure in pleasure.  An A-list movie star (Steven Dorff) is living at the Chateau Marmont with his expensive toys, booze and drugs and an inexhaustible supply of beautiful, sexually available women, but without Without any purpose or connection to others, his debauchery is completely joyless.  To his surprise and discomfort,  his eleven-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning) moves in for a few weeks.

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.

I have not yet seen Another Year or The Way Back , opening this weekend. You can see the trailers at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

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

Movies on TV include Jason and the Argonauts, Hannah and Her Sisters, D.O.A., The Shop Around the Corner and Night of the Lepus on TCM.

Somewhere

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This is Sofia Coppola’s (Lost in Translation) story of an A-list movie star (Steven Dorff) living at the Chateau Marmont with his expensive toys, booze and drugs and an inexhaustible supply of beautiful, sexually available women.  Without any purpose or connection to others, his debauchery is completely joyless.  To his surprise and discomfort,  his eleven-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning) moves in for a few weeks.   He slowly finds some connection to her, but then she leaves for summer camp and he is aimless, again.

Somewhere is an artsy portrait of a man so purposeless that he can find no pleasure in pleasure.

Fanning is great as the kid.  Surprisingly, Jackass‘ Chris Pontius shines as the movie star’s best bud.

Roger Ebert and At the Movies returns to TV this week

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Well, here’s some grand news – Roger Ebert is bringing back At the Movies as Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies, beginning around this Friday, January 21 on PBS. The co-hosts will be respected film critic Christy LeMire and up and coming film critic and blogger Ignatiy Vishnevetsky. Ebert himself will appear with the aid of computer-generated speech in the “Roger’s Office” segment. The show will also include movie bloggers Kim Morgan (sunsetgun.com) and Omar Moore (popcornreel.com). Ebert and his wife Chaz have gone back to the show’s roots and are producing the show for public television stations.

DVD of the Week: The Naked Kiss

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Here’s another delightfully trashy gem from Sam Fuller, my favorite tabloid reporter turned Hollywood auteur.  In The Naked Kiss, a prostitute opens the movie by beating her pimp to a pulp, and then moves to a new town, seeking a new beginning in the straight world.  She gets a job as a nurse at the clinic for disabled children, and becomes engaged to the town’s leading philanthropist.  She thinks that everything will be great unless someone reveals her tawdry past.  But, instead, she discovers that her Mr. Perfect is molesting the crippled kids!  (Only Sam Fuller could pull this off!)

Biutiful

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Biutiful is about a great performance by Javier Bardem in a grim, grim, really grim role.  (Yes, this film is grimmer than Bardem’s The Sea Inside, in which he plays a suicidal paraplegic.)  In this film, Bardem plays Uxbal, a Barcelona lowlife who lives by perpetrating various petty scams.  Low level crime does not pay well, and he lives in poverty with his kids, who he cannot trust with his bipolar, alcoholic wife (who is sleeping with his brother).  Then he receives a medical death sentence – only two months to live.  And then, things get even worse!

Can he leave his kids with a stable life?  Can he find some redemption?  It’s a compelling portrait of a desperate man in desperate circumstance, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores perros, 21 Grams, Babel).

Has anyone has five better performances in the past decade than Bardem in The Dancer Upstairs, The Sea Inside, No Country for Old Men, Vicky Christina Barcelona and Biutiful?   Bardem won Best Actor at Cannes for Biutiful.

Season of the Witch

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Okay, I’ll admit that I saw Season of the Witch because the trailer made me laugh out loud.  I thought that it might have been goofily bad enough to qualify for my list of 10 Movies So Bad They Are Fun.  Unfortunately, it’s just bad and not much fun.

Season of the Witch is a Nicholas Cage/Ron Perlman buddy movie set among the plague, crusades and witch hunts of the 13th century.  Cage and Perlman play two knights who, after slaughtering more than their share of women and children infidels, become disgusted with the Crusades.  The deserters find themselves back in plague-ridden Central Europe escorting a comely accused witch to her abbey trial.  Along the way, they encounter the cheesiest of CGI effects, the most portentous of soundtracks  and every medieval cliché.

My recommendation:  get some laughs from the trailer and skip the 95 minute version.

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.