Movies to See Right Now

This week’s MUST SEE is still the powerfully authentic coming of age film The Spectacular Now – don’t miss it. Better yet, take your teens!

Along with The Spectacular Now, the emotionally powerful Fruitvale Station is also on my list of Best Movies of 2013 – So Far.

I haven’t yet seen the British farce The World’s End or the indie criminal-on-the-run story Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, which open today. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My other top recommendations:

• The jaw-dropping documentary The Act of Killing, an exploration of Indonesian genocide from the perpetrators’ point of view, is the most uniquely original film of the year.
  
• Woody Allen’s very funny Blue Jasmine centers on an Oscar-worthy performance by Cate Blanchett.
• The very well-acted civil rights epic Lee Daniels’ The Butler.

My other recommendations:

• The droll indie comedy Prince Avalanche.
• The rock documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, essential for music fans.
• Another rock doc, A Band Called Death with the story of three African-American brothers in Detroit inventing punk rock before The Ramones and The Sex Pistols – and then dropping out of sight for decades.
• the satisfying shocker The Conjuring.
• The HBO documentary Casting By, which reveals an essential ingredient in filmmaking.

Also out right now:

• I Give It a Year – a British rom com with a twist.
• The American porn star biopic Lovelace, more of a soap opera.
• The British porn kingpin biopic The Look of Love.
• The Irish horror comedy Grabbers, which fails to deliver on a great premise.
• The astonishingly bad shocker The Rambler, with its 58 second vomit scene.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the funny and sentimental Canadian indie Cloudburst, with Oscar-winning actresses Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker.  Cloudburst is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and other VOD providers.