This week’s best picks are the flawless true story thriller Captain Phillips and the space thriller Gravity – an amazing achievement by filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón with what may be Sandra Bullock’s finest performance. 12 Years a Slave is an unsparingly realistic depiction of the horrors of American slavery.
I haven’t yet seen the French film that won the top prize at Cannes – Blue is the Warmest Color, which opens today. Actresses Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux (Farewell My Queen, Midnight in Paris) are reportedly spectacular in this three-hour love story. One of the explicit sex scenes takes over twenty minutes.
The Motel Life, which also opens today, is solid character-driven drama. Joseph Gordon Levitt’s offbeat comedy Don Jon offers both guffaws and an unexpected moment of self-discovery.
My Stream of the Week is the entirely fresh and riveting Parkland, which sharply dramatizes the events of November 22-25 in Dallas from the viewpoints of the secondary participants. Parkland is available streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and XBOX Live.
Check out my new feature VOD Roundup, where you can find my comments on over twenty current movies available on Video on Demand. There are some good ones, some bad ones and some really, really good ones (including How to Make Money Selling Drugs).
On November 11, Turner Classic Movies is playing the underrated 1949 noir The Set-up. This is one of the great film noirs and one of my 10 Best Boxing Movies . Robert Ryan plays a washed-up boxer that nobody believes can win again, not even his long-suffering wife. His manager doesn’t bother to tell him that he is committed to taking a dive in his next fight. But what if he wins? Director Robert Wise makes use of then innovative real time narrative. In this clip, watch for the verisimilitude of the bar where the deal goes down.