This week’s best two movies can be found on Video on Demand (I saw them on Amazon Instant), and both feature magical realism:
- Letters from the Big Man: a beautifully looking and sounding fable about a prickly woman with a guy and a Bigfoot competing for her affections.
- Electrick Children: an entirely unique teen coming of age story with fundamentalist Mormon teens in Las Vegas.
The best bets in theaters:
- No: Gael Garcia Bernal stars as the regular guy who brainstormed the guerrilla advertising campaign that dethroned Chilean dictator Pinochet.
- The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: a pleasant comedy and a showcase for Jim Carrey.
- Side Effects: Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
- Quartet: a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances.
Music fans will enjoy the bio-documentary Beware of Mr. Baker, available on VOD.
Emperor, with Tommy Lee Jones as Gen. Douglas MacArthur leading the American occupation of Japan, is historical but plodding. On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel, with surprisingly little energy. The HBO movie Phil Spector is really just a freak show.
I haven’t yet seen the upcoming PBS documentary Philip Roth: Unmasked. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD of the week is the smart, actress-written romantic comedy Celeste and Jesse Forever.
On Easter Sunday, Turner Classic Movies offers a Jesusathon of Sword and Sandal movies: Ben-Hur, The Robe and Barabbas. Ben-Hur has the thrilling chariot race around that phenomenal set – one of the greatest sets in movie history. In Barabbas, Anthony Quinn sees Charlton Hestons’s galley slavery and raises it by a tour in the sulpher mines, a stint as a gladiator and the witnessing of the burning of Rome, all culminating in a Christian martyrdom.