Movies – Page 37 – The Movie Gourmet

DVD/Stream of the Week: TAKE ME TO THE RIVER – fresh, unpredictable and gripping

July 19, 2016 by movie gourmet

For the second week in a row, I’m featuring one of my Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. San Jose native Matt Sobel’s impressive directorial debut Take Me to the River is entirely fresh. Not one thing happens in Take Me to the River that you can predict, and it keeps the audience off-balance and completely engaged. Here are some notes from an interview with Sobel.

A California couple and their teenage son drive to an annual family reunion in rural Nebraska. The son is gay and out, but that’s not going to be the drama here. There’s almost immediately an unexpected development that rocks the extended family. Then we settle in for over an hour of simmering unease and tense dread until something REALLY disturbing happens.

The story may be told from the teen’s point of view, but the real story turns out to be in the highly-charged relationship between his mom (Robin Weigert) and her brother Keith (Josh Hamilton). Keith, the boy’s uncle, is not a redneck rube, but very angry and very manipulative. By the end of the movie, we understand why. It’s an excellent performance by Hamilton, and whenever he’s on-screen, we fidget and wait for him to explode.

Weigert (Calamity Jane in Deadwood, Ally in Sons of Anarchy) is also excellent – her character is a Los Angeles physician who hasn’t lost the Nebraskan gift of never referring to the elephant in the room, no matter how huge. She embraces the Nebraskan imperative of avoidance with persistent geniality, covering up any unpleasantness with with niceties. My family is from rural Nebraska, which I have visited many times, so I know of what I speak.

The child actress Ursula Parker (the youngest daughter in Louie) is also especially outstanding here. Take Me to the River contains some sexual behavior by a child which is very uncomfortable for the audience, but central to the story and non-exploitative.

Take Me to the River played at Sundance in 2015, was finally released in the Bay Area in Spring 2016. Before its release, I viewed it at the Camera Cinema Club. You can stream Take Me to the River on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play or rent the DVD from Netflix.

Movies to See Right Now

July 15, 2016July 15, 2016 by movie gourmet

Ewen McGregor and Stellan Skarsgaard in OUR KIND OF TRAITOR — Ewen McGregor and Stellan Skarsgård in OUR KIND OF TRAITOR

My running list of Best Movies of 2016 – So Far is out. For movies in theaters right now:

Our Kind of Traitor is a robust espionage thriller with a funny yet powerful performance by Stellan Skarsgård.
Free State of Jones effectively combines the elements of political drama, romance and war movies into an absorbing Civil War drama, one which connects the dots between the 19th Century and the 20th and beyond. With a sizzling Matthew McConaughey.
NUTS! is the persistently hilarious (and finally poignant) documentary about the rise and fall of a medical and radio empire – all built on goat testicle “implantation” surgery in gullible humans.
Zero Days is a documentary on a jaw-dropping hacker mystery – who and how was able to get Iranian military computers to destroy the hardware for their own nuclear weapons program.
All the Way is a thrilling political docudrama with a stellar performance. It’s the story of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, warts and all, ending official racial segregation in America with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bryan Cranston brings LBJ alive as no actor has before. All the Way is still playing on HBO.
Finding Dory doesn’t have the breakthrough animation or the depth of story that we expect from Pixar, but it won’t be painful to watch a zillion times with your kids.

Here’s my early peek at next week’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

My DVD/Stream for the next two weeks is one of my Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. San Jose native Matt Sobel’s impressive directorial debut Take Me To the River is entirely fresh. Not one thing happens in Take Me to the River that you can predict, and it keeps the audience off-balance and completely engaged. You can stream Take Me to the River on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play or rent the DVD from Netflix.

On July 16 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 times recently, and it still holds up for me.

Faithful readers know that I revere the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood/Ennio Morricone spaghetti westerns. On July 19, TCM brings us A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and, of course, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

DVD/Stream of the Week: TAKE ME TO THE RIVER – fresh, unpredictable and gripping

July 12, 2016 by movie gourmet

My DVD/Stream for the next two weeks is one of my Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. San Jose native Matt Sobel’s impressive directorial debut Take Me to the River is entirely fresh. Not one thing happens in Take Me to the River that you can predict, and it keeps the audience off-balance and completely engaged.

Best Movies of 2016 – So Far

July 10, 2016 by movie gourmet

Instead of waiting for my year-end Top Ten list, I keep a running list throughout the year: Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. At year’s end, my list usually is comprised of 20-25 films with an Official Top Ten. I’ll also be updating my list throughout the year as films become available to stream or to rent on DVD. Right now, my list includes:

The Memory of Water
Eye in the Sky
Magallanes
Chevalier
Weiner
Frank & Lola
Take Me to the River
Lost Solace
Green Room

I usually start my list in April or May, and I don’t think that I’ve ever waited until July before. I guess that’s because none of these early-in-the-year releases have popped out at me like Ex Machina from last year, Boyhood or Ida from 2014, Blue Is the Warmest Color or The Hunt (2013), Winter’s Bone (2010) and the like. But these are all really, really excellent films.

Eye in the Sky and Take Me to the River are available streaming or on DVD right now, (see Best Movies of 2016 – So Far for details) and Frank & Lola will be in theaters later this year.

I’m self-conscious about how many of these films can’t be seen right now (or maybe ever) because they don’t have US distribution. I really try NOT to be precious and list a bunch of super obscure films. I’m particularly wringing my hands over three gems from Cinequest – The Memory of Water from Chile, Magallanes from Peru and the Canadian indie Lost Solace. But I’m pretty sure that you’ll be able to find the rest of the movies on my list by year’s end.

I’m still waiting to see many, many contenders for my year-end list, including film festival favorites Loving, Manchester By the Sea, The Birth of a Nation and Toni Erdmann. I also reserve the right to reshuffle the list.

Movies to See Right Now

July 8, 2016 by movie gourmet

Here are my (almost) ALL NEW movie recommendations.

Our Kind of Traitor is a robust espionage thriller with a funny yet powerful performance by Stellan Skarsgård.
Free State of Jones effectively combines the elements of political drama, romance and war movies into an absorbing Civil War drama, one which connects the dots between the 19th Century and the 20th and beyond. With a sizzling Matthew McConaughey.
NUTS! is the persistently hilarious (and finally poignant) documentary about the rise and fall of a medical and radio empire – all built on goat testicle “implantation” surgery in gullible humans.
Zero Days is a documentary on a jaw-dropping hacker mystery – who and how was able to get Iranian military computers to destroy the hardware for their own nuclear weapons program.
All the Way is a thrilling political docudrama with a stellar performance. It’s the story of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, warts and all, ending official racial segregation in America with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bryan Cranston brings LBJ alive as no actor has before. All the Way is still playing on HBO.
Finding Dory doesn’t have the breakthrough animation or the depth of story that we expect from Pixar, but it won’t be painful to watch a zillion times with your kids.

My Stream of the Week is the perfect companion film to Weiner – it’s the inside story of ANOTHER campaign – one of Anthony Weiner’s opponents in the same 2013 mayoral election. Hers to Lose: Inside Christine Quinn’s Bid for Mayor is an extraordinarily evocative political film, it’s only 30 minutes long and you can watch it for free here at the NYT.

Tonight Turner Classic Movies explores “America in the 70s” with four of the best films EVER – All the President’s Men, The Candidate, Network and The Conversation – along with the time capsule thriller Klute.

And on July 13, TCM presents the John Sturges masterpiece Bad Day at Black Rock with Spencer Tracy investigating a disappearance in an especially hostile, racist and sinister town. Besides having Tracy at his best and being a great looking movie, Bad Day at Black Rock is notable for its menacing crew of Bad Guys – Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin.

Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan in BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK

NUTS!: the rise and fall of a testicular empire

July 8, 2016 by movie gourmet

NUTS! is the persistently hilarious (and finally poignant) documentary about the rise and fall of a medical and radio empire – all built on goat testicle “implantation” surgery in gullible humans. Yes, a huckster named J.R. Brinkley really did surgically place goat testicles inside human scrota – and, more astonishingly, this actually became a craze in the 1920s. Now that’s enough of a forehead slapper, but there’s more, much more and that’s what makes NUTS! so fun.

Brinkley’s story is one that leads to celebrity mega wealth and a colossal miscalculation. Improbably, Brinkley’s wild ride touched Huey Long,William Jennings Bryan, Rudolph Valentino, Buster Keaton, June Carter Cash and Wolfman Jack. There’s a radio empire, a Gubernatorial election and a dramatic, climactic trial.

Director Penny Lane tells the story with animation (different animators for each chapter, but you can’t tell) seamlessly braided together with historical still photos, movies and a final heartbreaking recording. NUTS! tells a story that is too bizarre to be true – but really happened. It makes for a most entertaining movie.

I saw NUTS! earlier this year at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF). It opens in Bay Area theaters today.

ZERO DAYS: cyberwar triumph? maybe not

July 7, 2016 by movie gourmet

The important and absorbing documentary Zero Days traces the story of an incredibly successful cyber attack by two nation states upon another – and its implications. In Iran’s nuclear weapons development program, the centrifuges used to enrich uranium began destroying themselves in 2010. It turned out that these machines were instructed to self-destruct by a computer worm devised by American and Israeli intelligence.

No doubt – this was an amazing technological triumph. Zero Days takes us through a thrilling whodunit non-geek audience. We learn how a network that is completely disconnected from the Internet can still be infected. And how cybersecurity experts track down viruses. It’s all accessible and fascinating.

But, strategically, was this really a cyberwarfare victory? We learn just what parts of our lives can be attacked and frozen by computer attacks (Spoiler: pretty much everything). And we learn that this attack has greenlighted cyberwarfare by other nations – including hostile and potentially hostile ones. Zero Days makes a persuasive case that we need to have a public debate – as we have had on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons – on the use of this new kind of weaponry.

Director Alex Gibney is one our very, very best documentarians. He won an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side, and he made the superb Casino Jack: The United States of Money, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, Going Clear: The Prison of Belief and Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine.

Gibney’s specialty is getting sources on-camera that have the most intimate knowledge of his topic. In Zero Days, he pulls out a crew of cybersecurity experts, the top journalist covering cyberwarfare, leaders of both Israeli and American intelligence and even someone who can explain the Iranian perspective. Most impressively, Gibney has found insiders from the NSA who actually worked on this cyber attack (and prepared others).

Zero Days opens tomorrow in theaters and will also be available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vusu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox and various PPV platforms, including DirecTV.

Stream of the Week: HERS TO LOSE – an inside look at ANOTHER campaign spiraling into defeat

July 5, 2016 by movie gourmet

Here is the perfect companion film to Weiner – it’s the inside story of ANOTHER campaign – one of Anthony Weiner’s opponents in the same 2013 mayoral election.

Hers to Lose: Inside Christine Quinn’s Bid for Mayor is an extraordinarily evocative political film, it’s only 30 minutes long and you can watch it for free. It’s the story of Christine C. Quinn’s bid for New York City mayor in 2013. At the start of the race, Quinn was the heavy favorite. She was the City Council President and a dominant force in Manhattan’s Democratic establishment. She would have been the first woman and the first openly gay Mayor of New York City.

Then, as happens in politics, two things went wrong. First, she had positioned herself as the Democratic partner and heir to Republican Mayor Bloomberg, which helped her immensely in the years of Bloomberg’s popularity in New York; but by the time of the 2013 primary, Bloomberg had become very UNPOPULAR among Democratic primary voters. Then, as voters looked to an anti-Bloomberg alternative, one of Quinn’s opponents, Bill de Blasio unleashed a killer campaign commercial, featuring his teenage son Dante, that crystallized the aspirations of the electorate. Quinn sank like a rock in the polls, and de Blasio shot upward. This was one of those moments in a political campaign when there is just nothing a candidate can do to stop a popular tsunami.

As Hers to Lose opens, we see Quinn – just after her defeat – explaining that she granted access to the New York Times documentarians so they could record her victory. She is composed, but her eyes are filled with pain. Quinn had dedicated years of her life to running in this race, suffering political and personal attacks, enduring long hours and living in a fish bowl; to see this film is to appreciate how much she put into the contest and how helplessly she watched her lead slip away. At its most searing, Her to Lose chronicles the never-ending torrent of abuse hurled at Quinn by haters – especially the single issue opponents of horse-drawn carriages, who hang around her building so they can revile her as she begins each day; as one might assume, this vitriol takes its toll.

You can view Hers to Lose: Inside Christine Quinn’s Bid for Mayor here at the NYT.

Stellan Skarsgård – at last, we see his funny side

July 3, 2016 by movie gourmet

Stellan Skarsgård in OUR KIND OF TRAITOR

Stellan Skarsgård stars as the chief money-launderer for the Russia Mob in Our Kind of Traitor, and Skarsgård completely dominates the movie with his always robust and often hilarious performance. Who knew that the familiar Skarsgård could be so funny? After all, he usually plays a character that is brooding or menacing.

Skarsgård had already amassed over 50 screen credits at age 35 when the American art house audience really noticed him in Breaking the Waves (1996), He played an amiable and lusty seafarer who transforms the mousy Emily Watson with his joie de vivre, before he becomes a heartbreakingly suicidal paraplegic.

Emily Watson and Skarsgård in BREAKING THE WAVES

Although I hadn’t remembered him, earlier, Skarsgård appeared in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), where he played The Engineer who had a one-night stand with Juliette Binoche’s Tereza. Then, in 1990, he played the Russian sub captain in The Hunt for Red October.

After Breaking the Waves came Insomnia, Good Will Hunting, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and lots of really bad Hollywood movies where he’s the best thing in them – primarily dramas, thrillers and action films where he’s the intensely stolid or sinister presence.

Now, everybody’s got to start somewhere, and in 1973, Stellan Skarsgård’s second year making feature films, he starred in a cult Guilty Pleasure – Anita: Swedish Nymphet. As the title suggests, the story is about a 16-year-old girl (played by a 23-year-old actress) with psychological issues which compel her to have sex in random and unhealthy encounters. It’s completely trashy, but, of course, the appeal of Anita: Swedish Nymphet to US (male) audiences was lots of nudity and sex – still uncommon in American movies.
Skarsgård plays Anita’s counselor, who eventually cures her by making her his girlfriend.

But now’s the time to enjoy Skarsgård in Our Kind of Traitor, It’s not a great movie, but Skarsgård makes it damn entertaining. By himself, he’s worth the price of a ticket.

Skarsgård in ANITA: SWEDISH NYMPHET — Skarsgård counseling a troubled girl in ANITA: SWEDISH NYMPHET

FREE STATE OF JONES: sound and compelling history, with a sizzling McConaughey

July 2, 2016 by movie gourmet

Mahershala Ali and Matthew McConaughey star in FREE STATE OF JONES — Mahershala Ali and Matthew McConaughey in FREE STATE OF JONES

Free State of Jones is the compelling story of resistance to the Confederacy and to white supremacy by Southerners during and after the Civil War. Matthew McConaughey stars as Newton Knight, an overlooked but quite singular figure in American history. It is little-known, but the Confederacy actually lost control of some Mississippi counties to poor white farmers who tired of fighting a war to benefit the rich slave-holders.

I am a pretty serious Civil War history buff, and I was planning to skip Free State of Jones entirely until I found out about writer-director Gary Ross’ commitment to taking the history seriously. In fact, Ross has posted a very impressive website which outlines the historical events and figures depicted in the movie and even links the primary historical source material. I’ve never seen such a credible effort by a filmmaker to explain how he got the history right. Here’s a New York Tines article about the movie, Ross and his website.

In the second act of his career, McConaughey has delivered brilliant performances in excellent movies (Mud, Bernie, The Paperboy, Killer Joe, The Wolf of Wall Street, Dallas Buyers Club, True Detective). Here, he positively sizzles as the intensely principled and determined Newt Knight. The rest of the cast is excellent, too, especially Mahershala Ali (House of Cards) as an escaped slave turned Reconstruction political organizer.

Free State of Jones effectively combines the elements of political drama, romance and war movies into an absorbing drama, one which connects the dots between the 19th Century and the 20th and beyond.