The Big Sick – Page 2 – The Movie Gourmet

Movies to See Right Now

July 28, 2017 by movie gourmet

There are two Must See movies this summer – the historical thriller Dunkirk and the delightful romantic comedy The Big Sick.

The best of the rest:

Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly time to the beat of music.
The Journey is a fictional imagining of a real historical event with wonderful performances from Colm Meaney and Timothy Spall as the two longtime blood enemies who collaborated to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
The Midwife, with Catherine Deneuve as a woman out of control and uncontrollable, indelibly disrupting another life.
Okja, another wholly original creation from the imagination of master filmmaker Bong Joon Ho, is streaming on Netflix and also in theaters.
The amusingly naughty but forgettable comedy The Little Hours is based on the dirty fun in your Western Civ class, Boccaccio’s The Decameron.
The character-driven suspenser Moka is a showcase for French actresses Emmanuelle Devos and Nathalie Baye.

Here are my top picks for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, underway now.

You just shouldn’t miss my DVD/Stream of the Week, The Imposter. Life is at times stranger than fiction, and The Imposter is one of the most jaw-dropping documentaries I have seen. A Texas boy vanishes and, three years later, is impersonated by someone who is seven years older than the boy, is not a native English speaker and looks nothing like him. Even the con man is surprised when the family is embracing him as the lost boy – and then he begins to suspect why…The Imposter is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix, Amazon, iTunes and many other VOD providers.

On August 1, Turner Classic Movies presents the classic film noir The Asphalt Jungle. The crooks assemble a team and pull off the big heist…and then things begin to go wrong. There aren’t many noirs with better casting – the crooks include Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Sam Jaffe and James Whitmore. The 23-year-old Marilyn Monroe plays Calhern’s companion in her first real speaking part. How noir is it? Even the cop who breaks the case goes to jail. Directed by the great John Huston.

Also on August 1, TCM airs Some Like It Hot, this Billy Wilder masterpiece that is my pick for the best comedy of all time. Seriously – the best comedy ever. And it still works today. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play most of the movie in drag (and Tony is kind of cute). Curtis must continue the ruse even when he’s next to Marilyn Monroe at her most delectable. Curtis then dons a yachting cap and does a dead-on Cary Grant impression as the heir to an industrial fortune. Joe E. Brown gets the last word with one of cinema’s best closing lines.

Movies to See Right Now

July 21, 2017 by movie gourmet

Kumail Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan in THE BIG SICK

Before you see any other movie, go see The Big Sick, the best American movie of the year so far. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll fall in love. Here are more choices (but see The Big Sick first!):

Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly time to the beat of music.
The Journey is a fictional imagining of a real historical event with wonderful performances from Colm Meaney and Timothy Spall as the two longtime blood enemies who collaborated to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
Okja, another wholly original creation from the imagination of master filmmaker Bong Joon Ho, is streaming on Netflix and opening in theaters.
The amusingly naughty but forgettable comedy The Little Hours is based on the dirty fun in your Western Civ class, Boccaccio’s The Decameron.
The character-driven suspenser Moka is a showcase for French actresses Emmanuelle Devos and Nathalie Baye.

Here are my top picks for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, which just opened yesterday.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Drinking Buddies that RARE romantic comedy where the characters act and react – not in the way we’ve come to expect rom com characters to act – but as unpredictably as would real people. Drinking Buddies is available on DVD from Netlix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and GooglePlay.

On July 26, Turner Classic Movies brings us a feast of Alfred Hitchcock: Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds and North by Northwest. These are four of Hitchcock’s best, but today I’m choosing to feature The Birds, which I’ve screened recently. The Birds showcases Hitchcock’s brilliant sense of foreshadowing. Repeatedly, precursor events are unnoticed or dismissed by the characters, but seem vaguely offbeat or unsettling to the audience. And the suspense when the kids are walked out from their schoolhouse is unmatched. Plus no one could be more vulnerable to an aerial attack than when trapped in a glass phone booth.

I had forgotten about the flirtation between Melanie (Tippi Hedren) and Mitch (Rod Taylor), which certainly wouldn’t happen the same way today; Melanie is actually acting sexually aggressively for 1963. Today, we find Melanie and Mitch to be dressed with strange formality, but I can tell you that the wardrobe fits 1963 San Francisco.

Today’s audience, in our post 9/11 world, will identify with the locals in the town cafe as they assess whether the birds present a real or imagined threat. The Birds has been named to the National Film Registry.

Movies to See Right Now

July 7, 2017 by movie gourmet

After a long and boring drought, there is finally an appealing menu of movie choices in theaters:

Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly time to the beat of music.
The Journey is a fictional imagining of a real historical event and is an acting showcase for Colm Meaney and Timothy Spall as the two longtime blood enemies who collaborated to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
Okja, another wholly original creation from the imagination of master filmmaker Bong Joon Ho, is streaming on Netflix and opening in theaters.
The delightfully smart and character-driven Israeli comedy The Women’s Balcony with a community of traditional women in revolt. The longer you’ve been married, the funnier you’ll find The Women’s Balcony.
The character-driven suspenser Moka is a showcase for French actresses Emmanuelle Devos and Nathalie Baye.
The bittersweet dramedy The Hero has one thing going for it – the wonderfully appealing Sam Elliott.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the darkly realistic Western Dead Man’s Burden. Dead Man’s Burden is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Google Play.

Tonight on TV, Turner Classic Movies presents Raw Deal (1948), with some of the best dialogue in all of film noir, a love triangle and the superb cinematography of John Alton.

Later this week on July 11, TCM offers the very best Orson Welles Shakespeare movie, Chimes at Midnight.

And on July 12, TCM airs Days of Wine and Roses, Blake Edwards’ unflinching exploration of alcoholism, featuring great performances by Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick (both nominated for Oscars) and Charles Bickford.