moviegourmet

It's a great August for movies – ON TV

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This is the time of year where you can still see the best movies – by avoiding the theaters. Fortunately, there are some great movies on TV during late August – and here are six of them.  Thank God (and Ted Turner) for Turner Classic Movies.

Cool Hand Luke (1967): Paul Newman plays a free-spirited character that refuses to bend to The System – even in a Southern chain gang.   Many memorable scenes include the fight with George Kennedy’s Dragline, the wager on eating a massive amount of hardboiled eggs, getting sent to the hole, the scariest aviator sunglasses ever and the unforgettable: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate”. One of my 10 Best Prison Movies and 10 Most Memorable Food Scenes.  TCM 8/21

A Place in the Sun: One of the great films of the 1950s.  Montgomery Clift is a poor kid who is satisfied to have a job and a trashy girlfriend (Shelly Winters in a brilliant portrayal).  Then, he learns that he could have it all – the CEO’s daughter Elizabeth Taylor, lifelong comfort, status and career.  Did I mention Elizabeth Taylor?  The now pregnant girlfriend is the only obstacle to more than he could have ever dreamed for – can he get rid of her without getting caught?  TCM 8/23

Andy Griffith as the charming, phony and venal Lonesome Rhodes

A Face in the Crowd (1957):  This is a brilliant political classic by Elia Kazan. Lonesome Rhodes (Andy Griffith) is a failed country guitar picker who is hauled out of an Arkansas drunk tank by talent scout Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal).  It turns out that he has a folksy charm that is dynamite in the new medium of television.  He quickly rises in the infotainment universe until he is an A List celeb and a political power broker. To Jeffries’ horror, Rhodes reveals himself to be an evil, power hungry megalomaniac. Jeffries made him – can she break him?  The seduction of a gullible public by a good timin’ charmer predicts the careers of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, although Lonesome Rhodes is meaner than Reagan and less ideological than Bush.  One of my 10 Best Political Movies. TCM 8/26

James Stewart and George C. Scott tangle in Anatomy of a Murder

Anatomy of a Murder (1959): Otto Preminger delivers a classic courtroom drama that frankly addresses sexual mores.  James Stewart is a folksy but very canny lawyer defending a cynical soldier (Ben Gazzara) on a murder charge; did he discover his wife straying or is he avenging her rape?  Lee Remick portrays the wife with a penchant for partying and uncertain fidelity. The Duke Ellington score could be the very best jazz score in the movies. Joseph Welch, the real-life lawyer who stood up to Sen. Joe McCarthy in a televised red scare hearing, plays the judge. TCM 8/26 score

The Stunt Man (1980):  Steve Railback plays a young fugitive chased on to a movie location shoot.  The director (Peter O’Toole) hides him out on the set as long as he works as a stunt double in increasingly hazardous stunts. He is attracted to the leading lady (Barbara Hershey).  It doesn’t take long for him to doubt the director’s good will and to learn that not everything is as it seems.  Shot on location at San Diego’s famed Hotel Del Coronado.  One of my Overlooked Masterworks.  Listen to Director Robert Rush describe his movie in this clip. TCM 8/28


The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976):  This is one of my very favorite Westerns.  Clint Eastwood directs the movie and plays a Civil War vet on the run, who unwillingly picks up a set of misfits and strays on his journey.  TCM 8/31

DVD of the Week: Fish Tank

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A damaged and angry young woman from the British lower class has the second-worst mother in recent films (after Mo’Nique’s role in Precious).  She dreams of dancing her way out of the neighborhood in a talent contest.  Then her mother brings home a new boyfriend who kindles new feelings in the teen.  This development culminates in a scene where she dances to the Bobby Womack version of California Dreamin‘ while the audience holds its breath.

In her first film role, Katie Jarvis plays the girl; Jarvis was discovered by the filmmakers during a sidewalk argument with her boyfriend that convinced them that she could muster the sustained rage (and foul mouth) required by the role.  Michael Fassbender is excellent as the mother’s new boyfriend.

It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far.

Hollywood's Lisbeth Salander

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Rooney Mara

Well, here’s a surprise.  In David Fincher’s upcoming film versions of the Stieg Larsson novels, Lisbeth Salander will be played by…Rooney Mara.   25-year-old Rooney Mara, sister of Kate, will play in Fincher’s The Social Network this October, so he must know something.  She also has a few credits in TV guest slots, plus a Nightmare on Elm Street movie.  She was also in Youth in Revolt, a nice little movie that I saw in January, but I have no memory of Rooney in it.

The entire success of the film trilogy depends on the portrayal of Lisbeth Salander. Is Rooney Mara a good choice?  Right now, I’ll withhold judgement.  It’s important to realize that Noomi Rapace, the actress who has so convincingly played Lisbeth in the Swedish versions, is not naturally a psycho hard ass – she undertook lots of preparation for the role, including six months of kick boxing AND a special diet AND the body piercings to harden herself for the role.

Noomi Rapace not playing Lisbeth Salander
Noomi and son

Police, Adjective

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This Rumanian film played in US theaters briefly earlier this year and is showing on The Sundance Channel in August.  It’s a cop story about a cop who is trying NOT to catch someone.  The cop is a young guy who doesn’t want to ruin a teenager’s life by jailing him for a little hash smoking, especially when the kid has been fingered by another kid with designs on his girlfriend.  As far as the cop’s superiors are concerned, the informer has handed them some low hanging fruit, and they insist that the cop bring in the kid.  Here’s a first for cop movies – in the climax, a dictionary is brought into an office to facilitate a debate over definitions.

Long segments of the film are taken up by real-time trods through a grim industrial city for  surveillance and by the filling of reports with minute details.

I appreciated seeing a police procedural without chases and fire fights, but wasn’t sure that the payoff was worth watching so much tedious surveillance.

Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune pretty well nailed it in his review: “It’s not for all tastes; it requires some patience. The more your own job involves absurd, time-consuming bits of minutiae, the more familiar (and amusing) it’ll seem.”

Police, Adjective won a jury prize and the Critic’s Prize at Cannes and has a very high Metacritic rating of 81.

Don't wait for me to comment on Eat Pray Love

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Don’t wait for me to comment on Eat Pray Love because I absolutely no interest in seeing it.  I am just not in the target audience for this film:  I haven’t read the book, I am not a woman and I don’t care for Julia Roberts.

I don’t hesitate to watch a movie in a genre that I generally don’t like if it seems like one of the year’s best or really good for the genre:  Inception (summer blockbuster), Zombieland (zombies), The Dark Knight and Iron Man (comic book). District 9 (sci fi) and (500) Days of Summer and Away We Go (rom com).

In this case, I have seen the trailer and read the reviews of Eat Pray Love.  Yesterday it had a Metacritic score of 50.  My guess is that the millions of people who enjoyed the book will also enjoy the movie.  God bless.

Speaking of chick flicks, Metacritic has a great new list up:  20 Worst Chick Flicks Since 1990.  (Amazingly, Kate Hudson stars only in one of these 20.)  I’ve already included it on my Other People’s Great Movie Lists.

More At the Movies

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As I said yesterday, the thing that Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert did better than anyone was to evangelize good films with their series At the Movies (which ends this weekend).  They helped create audiences for indie and foreign films that were ignored by the Hollywood promotion machine.  They even had the guts to rate documentaries like Hoop Dreams and Crumb as their picks for the year’s best film.  Without Siskel and Ebert, I would never seen some of the greatest films of the 80s and 90s.

Here are Siskel and Ebert introducing a great indie film, David Mamet’s House of Games.

And a great foreign film (that launched a great film trilogy), Blue.

And the revival of a restored classic film noir, Touch of Evil.

Siskel & Ebert's At the Movies

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At the Movies ends its long run on television this weekend.  The show went through different versions in the last few years, but its greatness was in the two decades of Gene Siskel and Robert Ebert – their concept, their standards and their passion.

On a personal note, I would say that, along with an excellent local art house theater, Siskel & Ebert’s At the Movies helped me develop my passion for film more than any other factor.  In fact, At the Movies’ Sunday evening broadcast was the reason that I got my very first VCR.

The thing that Siskel and Ebert did better than anyone was to evangelize good films that were out of the Hollywood mainstream, bringing attention to and creating audiences for independent film, foreign films, documentaries and to new and indie film makers.  Here’s a great example – Siskel and Ebert’s review of Mike Leigh’s great Secrets and Lies.

New Movies to See This Week

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Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek in Get Low

Inception and Toy Story 3 are two of the year’s best. If you want a thriller, go with The Girl Who Played With Fire.  Robert Duvall gives another masterful performance in Get Low.  For an indie dramedy, try The Kids Are All Right.   For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.

My DVD of the week is the great 1995 documentary, Crumb.  For the trailers and other DVD choices, see DVDs of the Week.

Movies on TV include The Set-Up, Leave Her to Heaven and The Fallen Sparrow, all coming up on TCM.

Taking Stock – The Best of 2010 So Far

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Well, we’re at the halfway point of the movie year – the summer movies are winding down, and the Oscar bait is still ahead of us in the autumn and holidays.  So it’s time to take stock of the year’s movies to date.  I now have ten movies on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far. You can read my comments and watch the trailers on the Best Movies of 2010 – So Far page.

Better yet, you can see Toy Story 3 and Inception in the theater this week.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, A Prophet, The Girl on the Train, Fish Tank, The Ghost Writer and Sweetgrass are all available on DVD right now.  Sweetgrass is also available on Netflix streaming video.

The Secrets of Their Eyes will be available on DVD on September 21. The DVD release of my top film of the year so far, Winter’s Bone, is October 26.

Sweetgrass

DVD of the Week: Crumb

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Crumb (1995):  The Criterion Collection has released a great documentary, Terry Zwigoff’s profile of the counterculture cartoonist R. Crumb, the creator of Keep On Truckin’, Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat and  influential rock album covers.  By exploring Crumb’s troubled family, Zwigoff reveals the origins of Crumb’s art.  When we meet Crumb’s shattered brothers, it’s clear that Crumb’s artistic expression preserved his very sanity.

In honor of At The Movies, which ends its long run on television, let’s hear Siskel & Ebert assess Crumb.  Siskel placed it #1 on his Top 10 list for 1995 and Ebert had it at  #2.

Check out my other recent DVD recommendations at DVDs of the Week.