This week on the Movie Gourmet – a reminder that The Pact is opening in art houses this weekend and that you can catch up on streaming many of the Oscar Movies at home (The Power of the Dog, Don’t Look Up, The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Lost Daughter, Being the Ricardos (and Belfast if you’ll pay $19.99).
CURRENT FILMS
- Drive My Car: director and co-writer Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s engrossing masterpiece about dealing with loss – and it’s the best movie of 2021. Layered with character-driven stories that could each justify their own movie, this is a mesmerizing film that builds into an exhilarating catharsis. In theaters.
- Nightmare Alley: enough burning ambition for a thousand carnies. In theaters.
- Belfast: a child’s point of view is universal. If you have heartstrings, they are gonna get pulled. In theaters.
- The Power of the Dog: One man’s meanness, another man’s growth. Netflix.
- Don’t Look Up: Wickedly funny. Filmmaker Adam McKay (The Big Short) and a host of movie stars hit the bullseye as they target a corrupt political establishment, a soulless media and a gullible, lazy-minded public. Netflix.
- The Tragedy of Macbeth: No surprise here: Joel Coen, Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand deliver a crisp and imaginative version of the Bard’s Scottish Play. AppleTV.
- Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn: completely different than any movie you’ve seen. AppleTV, Drafthouse On Demand.
- Parallel Mothers: Pedro Almodovar gives us a lush melodrama, sandwiched between bookend dives into today’s unhealed wounds from the Spanish Civil War. In theaters.
- Jagged: Insightful biodoc of Alanis Morissette, who is really not that angry, after all. HBO.
- The Lost Daughter : Great, Oscar-nominated performances by Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley in this dark, unsettling exploration of the obligation of parenting. Netflix.
- House of Gucci: Lady Gaga and Adam Driver shine in this modern tale of Shakespearean family treachery. In theaters.
- Licorice Pizza: When nine years is a big age difference. In theaters.
- The Hand of God: Filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino’s own coming of age story – and a time capsule of 1986 Naples. Netflix.
- Being the Ricardos: a tepid slice of a really good story. Amazon (included with Prime).
Remember to check out all of my Best Movies of 2021.
MORE RECOMMENDATIONS ON VIDEO
- Dance of the 41: overreaching while gay. Netflix.
- Western: alienated man goes native. Criterion Channel, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube
- Styx: a confident woman with no good choices. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu.
- Light from Light: a haunted house movie that isn’t. Amazon, AppleTV.
- The Heist of the Century: improbable, ingenious and all too human. HBO Max, Amazon, Vudu, YouTube.
- The Friends of Eddie Coyle: when all the choices are bad. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
ON TV
On February 20, Turner Classic Movies airs Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, which takes us behind the scenes of the the two-day University of Alabama integration crisis of 1963. Defying a federal court order, Alabama Governor George Wallace LITERALLY stands in the schoolhouse door to bar Black students from registering at the University of Alabama; Wallace is emboldened by (and politically trapped) by howling mobs of racist constituents. The Kennedy Administration must find a way to enforce the law while minimizing violence. Documentary director Robert Drew (Primary) got unheard-of access, and Crisis traces the episode in real time with actual recordings of conversations between JFK, RFK and Wallace. JFK and Wallace engage in a remarkable verbal dance. It’s edge-of-your-seat history. Famed documentarian D.A. Pennebaker was one of the cinematographers.
