We’re in Movie Prime Time – with fine Holiday movies big and small. Here are the best:
- The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. And Mrs. Genius.
- Set in the macho world of Olympic wrestling, Foxcatcher is really a relationship movie with a stunning dramatic performance by Steve Carell.
- I really don’t want anyone to miss the brilliant comedy about personal identity, Dear White People.
- 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.
- I liked the droll Swedish dramedy Force Majeure, which won an award at Cannes and is Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
- If you want a stark and grim look at the Old West, there’s Tommy Lee Jones’ feminist Western The Homesman.
- 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.
- 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.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is still the singular Dutch thriller Borgman – a smart and relatively non-gory horror film for adults.
Yesterday I wrote about the late filmmaker Mike Nichols, and his films The Graduate and Primary Colors. Turner Classic Movies is airing The Graduate and two mother Nichols classics tomorrow, December 6. Primary Colors is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, Vudu and Xbox Video.
