Parasite is the best movie in theaters right now, and I’ve got twelve, count ’em TWELVE, more recommendations this week. Tonight, The Wife and I have a date: The Irishman and dinner.
OUT NOW
- The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
- Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter.
- In his Pain and Glory, master filmmaker Pedro Almodovar invites us into the most personal aspects of his own life, illuminated by Antonio Banderas’ career-topping performance.
- The indie gem Light from Light ingeniously embeds three portraits of personal awakening into what looks like a familiar haunted house movie. It’s playing in Silicon Valley for only one more week.
- Harriet is excellent history (and Harriet Tubman belongs on the twenty dollar bill), but it’s not great cinema.
- The atmospheric slow burn neo-noir Motherless Brooklyn gets postwar New York City right, but it’s too long.
- The raucous romp Zombieland Double Tap is a fun change of pace to the serious fare in theaters.
- I liked the Isabelle Huppert drama Frankie, but the Mill Valley Film Festival audience was very indifferent at the screening; I’m guessing that folks failed to warm to an ambiguous ending that leaves some plot threads unresolved.
- Where’s My Roy Cohn? is Matt Tyrnauer’s superb biodoc of Roy Cohn – and was there a more despicable public figure in America’s 20th Century than Cohn?
- Loro, Paolo Sorrentino’s send-up of Silvio Berlusconi is much more interesting visually than it is thematically.
- It’s tough to imagine anyone who wouldn’t enjoy the biodoc Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, about the first female mega rock star.
- Watching The Lighthouse is such an ordeal it could drive you crazy before Robert Pattinson goes mad on screen.
- Skip Netflix’s The Laundromat and watch The Big Short again instead.
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me , the portrait of a needy talent through complicated times. This fine and insightful film can streamed on Amazon (included with Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
Turner Classic Movies is airing the Peter Bogdanovich classic The Last Picture Show on November 20. I’ll be writing about it on November 19.
Turner Classic Movies is devoting Monday evening, November 18, to swashbucklers, and my favorite is Richard Lester’s boisterous The Three Musketeers from 1973. Watch Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Michael York and Frank Finlay swashbuckle away against Bad Guys Christopher Lee, Faye Dunaway and Charlton Heston. Geraldine Chaplin and Raquel Welch adorn the action. [If you like it, you can stream the second volume, The Four Musketeers, from Criterion Collection, Amazon, YouTube and Google Play; it was filmed in the same shoot and released the next year.]
