There are some EXCELLENT movies out now, but DO NOT MISS the brilliant comedy about personal identity, Dear White People.
Other great movie choices include:
- The cinematically important and very funny Birdman; and
- The best Hollywood movie of 2014, the thriller Gone Girl, with a career-topping performance by Rosamund Pike.
- J.K. Simmons is brilliant in the intense indie drama Whiplash, a study of motivation and abuse, ambition and obsession.
- Bill Murray’s funny and not too sentimental St. Vincent.
- The dark little French psychological drama The Blue Room packs a cleverly constructed story in its brisk 75 minutes.
- I liked the meditatively paced nature documentary Pelican Dreams.
- If you’re in the mood for a brutal, brutal World War II tank movie, there’s Fury.
I’m a fan of writer-director Greg Araki and actress Shailene Woodley, but I didn’t find enough in White Bird in a Blizzard to recommend it.
Turner Classic Movies is bringing us two very funny movies this week:
- tonight’s unintentionally funny Hot Rods to Hell (1967), a bad exploitation movie that works as a guilty pleasure.
- the intentionally funny Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), that paragon of madcap comedies; Cary Grant leads a cast that is perfect, right down to Jack Carson as Officer O’Hara, the new cop on the beat.