Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story is the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch.
These Oscar winners are still in theaters:
- The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s imaginative, operatic inter-species romance may become the most-remembered film of 2017.
- Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a powerful combination of raw emotion and dark hilarity with an acting tour de force from Frances McDormand and a slew of great actors.
- Pixar’s Coco is a moving and authentic dive into Mexican culture, and it’s visually spectacular.
- I, Tonya is a marvelously entertaining movie, filled with wicked wit and sympathetic social comment.
Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland are excellent in the otherwise underwhelming The Leisure Seeker, an Alzheimer’s road trip dramedy.
Speaking of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, you can see the Oscar-winner Frances McDormand‘s 1984 screen debut in Blood Simple tomorrow on TCM.
On March 18, Turner Classic Movies presents the grievously underrated Don Siegel thriller Charley Varrick. Siegel was a master of crime movies (and was the primary filmmaking mentor to Clint Eastwood). I particularly love Siegel’s San Francisco noir The Lineup, the guilty pleasure Two Mules for Sister Sara and John Wayne’s goodbye, The Shootist. The 1973 neo-noir Charley Varrick is right up there with Siegel’s best. Walter Matthau stars as the title character, an expert heist man who sets up a “perfect crime” bank robbery which, of course, goes awry. Worst of all, it turns out that Varrick has stolen a secret Mob fortune being laundered by the bank, and now the underworld organization is after him. Only his wits can save him. I’ve rewatched Charley Varrick a couple of times recently, and it still holds up for me.
