The best movie of the year so far is in at least one Bay Area theater: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone).
OUT NOW
- First Reformed: Ethan Hawke stars in this bleak, bleak psychological thriller with an intense ending.
- American Animals is funny documentary/reenactment of a preposterous heist.
- RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
ON VIDEO
My DVD/Stream of the Week is the taut 76 minutes of Caesar Must Die, in which Italian maximum security prison convicts put on a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. It’s an excellent Shakespeare movie, and a fine prison movie, too. Caesar Must Die is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
The claustrophobic setting of a submarine movie can really propel a drama by magnifying the story’s conflict. Today, Turner Classic Movies plays Run Silent, Run Deep, in which the primary conflict is between two of the sub’s officers, played by the two charismatic stars Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster. Run Silent, Run Deep is not in the class of Das Boot or The Enemy Below, but it’s still one of the best of the genre.
