My movie recommendations for this Holiday weekend begin with these two crowd pleasers:
- La La Land: the extraordinarily vivid romantic musical staring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
- Lion: an emotionally affecting family drama.
Other top recommendations:
- Manchester by the Sea: MUST SEE. Don’t miss Casey Affleck’s career-topping performance in the emotionally authentic drama .
- Elle: MUST SEE (but increasingly hard to find in theaters). A perverse wowzer with the year’s top performance by Isabelle Huppert. Manchester by the Sea is #2 and Elle is #4 on my Best Movies of 2016.
- Loving: The love story that spawned a historic Supreme Court decision.
- Mascots: the latest mockumentary from Christopher Guest (Best in Show) and it’s very funny. Mascots is streaming on Netflix Instant.
- The Eagle Huntress: This documentary is a Feel Good movie for the whole family, blending the genres of girl power, sports competition and cultural tourism.
Also in theaters or on video:
- Despite a delicious performance by one of my faves, Michael Shannon, I’m not recommending Nocturnal Animals.
- Arrival with Amy Adams, is real thinking person’s sci-fi. Every viewer will be transfixed by the first 80% of Arrival. How you feel about the finale depends on whether you buy into the disconnected-from-linear-time aspect or you just get confused, like I did.
- The remarkably sensitive and realistic indie drama Moonlight is at once a coming of age tale, an exploration of addicted parenting and a story of gay awakening. It’s almost universally praised, but I thought that the last act petered out.
- Skip the dreary and somnolent Jackie – Natalie Portman’s exceptional impersonation isn’t enough.
- If you’re interested in the Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune or cinema in general (and can still find the movie in a theater), I recommend the documentary Mifune: The Last Samurai.
My DVD/Stream of the Week picks are, for the rest of 2016, this year’s best films that are already available on video: Hell or High Water, Eye in the Sky, Chevalier, Weiner, Take Me to the River, OJ: Made in America and Green Room.
On Christmas Day, Turner Classic Movies presents the brilliantly funny Hail the Conquering Hero, one of writer-director Preston Sturges’ less well-known great comedies. Eddie Bracken plays a would-be soldier discharged for hay fever – but his hometown mistakenly thinks that he is sent home a war hero. Hilarity ensues. All the funnier when you realize that this film was made in 1944 amid our nation’s most culturally patriotic period.
