A Quiet Place – The Movie Gourmet

Movies to See Right Now

June 15, 2018June 15, 2018 by movie gourmet

Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn in BEAST

It seems to be the season for psychological thrillers, and it’s hard to say which of Beast and First Reformed has the more surprising and powerful ending.

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Beast: Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in this psychological thriller.
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.
A Quiet Place is as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.

ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is a thinking person’s psychological thriller from Cinequest, Prodigy. You can now stream Prodigy on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV
On June 16, Turner Classic Movies will air Sydney Pollack’s under recognized 1972 masterpiece Jeremiah Johnson, which features a brilliantly understated but compelling performance by Robert Redford. If you want to understand why Redford is a movie star, watch this movie. Give lots of credit to Pollack – it’s only 108 minutes long, and today’s filmmakers would bloat this epic tale by 40 minutes longer.

Movies to See Right Now

June 8, 2018 by movie gourmet

This week, I’m featuring two psychological thrillers with powerful endings and a comic heist documentary.

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Beast: Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in this psychological thriller.
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.
A Quiet Place is as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.

ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the very funny and sentimental The Last Movie Star with 82-year-old Burt Reynolds and Ariel Winter (Alex Dunphy in Modern Family). You can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

Faithful readers know that I revere the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood/Ennio Morricone spaghetti westerns. On June 13, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the three great Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. All star Clint Eastwood and feature wonderfully idiosyncratic scores by Ennio Morricone.

Eastwood’s character in the trilogy is referred to in film literature as “the man with no name”. But actually, the character is named Joe, Monco and Blondie in the three movies, respectively.

Here’s Morricone’s theme for A Fistful of Dollars.

Movies to See Right Now

June 4, 2018June 1, 2018 by movie gourmet

It’s a disparate set of recommendations this week: a biodoc about an 84-year-old jurist, an indie drama about a cowboy and a family horror movie.

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The MUST SEE is The Rider. A young man’s rodeo injury threatens to keep him from his passions. Filmed in South Dakota with non-professional actors, The Rider is emotionally powerful and genuine – and not a bit corny.
RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
A Quiet Place is as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.

ON VIDEO
In my Stream of the Week, the delightfully smart and funny Israeli comedy The Women’s Balcony, a community of women in a traditional culture revolt. The longer you’ve been married, the funnier you’ll find The Women’s Balcony. The Women’s Balcony is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

On June 3, Turner Classic Movies will present an overlooked masterwork. Set in England just before the D-Day invasion, The Americanization of Emily (1964) is a biting satire and one of the great anti-war movies. James Garner plays an admiral’s staff officer charged with locating luxury goods and willing English women for the brass. Julie Andrews plays an English driver who has lost her husband and other male family members in the War. She resists emotional entanglements with other servicemen whose lives may be put at risk, but falls for Garner’s “practicing coward”, a man who is under no illusions about the glory of war and is determined to stay as far from combat as possible.

Unfortunately, Garner’s boss (Melvyn Douglas) has fits of derangement and becomes obsessed with the hope that the first American killed on the beach at D-Day be from the Navy. Accordingly, he orders Garner to lead a suicide mission to land ahead of the D-Day landing, ostensibly to film it. Fellow officer James Coburn must guarantee Garner’s martyrdom.

It’s a brilliant screenplay from Paddy Chayefsky, who won screenwriting Oscars for Marty, The Hospital and Network.

Today, Americanization holds up as least as well as its contemporary Dr. Strangelove and much better than Failsafe.

Reportedly, both Andrews and Garner have tagged this as their favorite film.

One of the “Three Nameless Broads” bedded by the Coburn character is played by Judy Carne, later of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.

Jule Andrews and James Garner in THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY

Movies to See Right Now

May 18, 2018 by movie gourmet

Two reminders: First, check out my running list of Best Moves of 2018 – So Far. You can already stream some of them.

Second, remember that tonight PBS airs Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story. Set your DVR.

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The MUST SEE is The Rider. A young man’s rodeo injury threatens to keep him from his passions. Filmed in South Dakota with non-professional actors, The Rider is emotionally powerful and genuine – and not a bit corny.
Tully, the insightful and compelling dark comedy from the brilliant and brave team of Diablo Cody, Jason Reitman and Charlize Theron.
A Quiet Place is as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.
Godard, Mon Amour is, at the same time, a tribute to the genius of Jean-Luc Godard’s early cinema and a satire on the insufferable tedium of the political dilettantism that squandered the rest of Godard’s filmmaking career. This is a very inventive film, written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist). The more Godard films that you’ve seen, the more you will enjoy the wit of Godard, Mon Amour.
Thom Zimny’s excellent HBO documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher explores Elvis’ artistic journey.
I liked Al Pacino’s portrayal of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno as his storied career was killed by scandal in HBO’s Paterno.

ON VIDEO
Because Mackenzie Davis brings such a magical quality to her title role in Tully, my video pick is an earlier starring role in a little-known indie. That film is a fine first feature with a GREAT title for a contemporary noir thriller: Bad Turn Worse. Bad Turn Worse is available streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Charlize Theron and Mackenzie Davis star in Jason Reitman’s TULLY, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Movies to See Right Now

April 27, 2018 by movie gourmet

So there are about a hundred movie screens in Silicon Valley, and this weekend you can see Avengers: Infinity War on THIRTY of them. I have nothing against Avengers: Infinity War, which I do not plan to see even though I really like Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen, Christ Pratt, Tom Hiddleston and Robert Downey, Jr. It’s just that this latest from the Marvels franchise is taking up a third of our theater capacity. If only we could devote twenty-five screens to the Marvel movie and make room for another five movies about and for adults…I’m getting grouchy, because in the last year we’ve lost most of our art house screens with the closure of Camera 7, Camera 3 and the Bluelight, all after losing Camera 12 the year before. Still waiting for the opening of Pruneyard Dine-in Cinema…

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This week’s top picks:

A Quiet Place is as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.
Godard, Mon Amour is, at the same time, a tribute to the genius of Jean-Luc Godard’s early cinema and a satire on the insufferable tedium of the political dilettantism that squandered the rest of Godard’s filmmaking career. This is a very inventive film, written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist). The more Godard films that you’ve seen, the more you will enjoy the wit of Godard, Mon Amour.
The wonderfully dark, dark comedy The Death of Stalin is still in a few theaters, and it’s worth the drive.
Outside In: Now on Netflix (and in one Bay Area theater), this fine Lynn Shelton drama about a man returning to his community after 20 years in prison is an acting showcase for Kaitlin Dever (Justified), Jay Duplass (Transparent) and, especially, Edie Falco. Falco’s performance is stunning.
Thom Zimny’s excellent HBO documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher explores Elvis’ artistic journey.
I liked Al Pacino’s portrayal of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno as his storied career was killed by scandal in HBO’s Paterno.

ON VIDEO
My DVD/Stream of the Week is a comedy, Miloš Forman’s bitingly satire of Communism, The Firemen’s Ball (which is also sometimes listed as The Fireman’s Ball). It can be streamed from Amazon Prime and rented on DVD from Netflix.

ON TV
On April 30, Turner Classic Movies presents the Otto Preminger masterpiece Anatomy of a Murder (1959). This movie has everything: Jimmy Stewart’s portrayal of a wily lawyer, content to underachieve in the countryside, Stewart’s electrifying courtroom face-off with George C. Scott, great performances by a surly Ben Gazzara and a slutty Lee Remick, a great jazz score by Duke Ellington and a suitably cynical noir ending. That jazz score is one of the few movie soundtrack CDs that I own. The music perfectly complements the story of a murder investigation that reveals more and more ambiguity as it proceeds. Stewart’s character relaxes by dabbling in jazz piano, and Duke himself has a cameo leading a bar band in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (of all places).

James Stewart and George C. Scott tangle in ANATOMY OF A MURDER

Movies to See Right Now

April 20, 2018April 20, 2018 by movie gourmet

A new cohort of movies is out in theaters and on cable and streaming platforms.

ICYMI, here’s my tribute to the great director Miloš Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus).

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This week’s top picks:

The wonderfully dark, dark comedy The Death of Stalin.
A Quiet Place is as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.
Outside In: Now on Netflix (and in one Bay Area theater), this fine Lynn Shelton drama about a man returning to his community after 20 years in prison is an acting showcase for Kaitlin Dever (Justified), Jay Duplass (Transparent) and, especially, Edie Falco. Falco’s performance is stunning.
Thom Zimny’s excellent HBO documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher explores Elvis’ artistic journey.
I liked Al Pacino’s portrayal of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno as his storied career was killed by scandal in HBO’s Paterno.

ON VIDEO

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Art and Craft, a startling documentary about an art fraud. Of prolific scale. And which is apparently legal. By a diagnosed schizophrenic. Art and Craft is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube nd Google Play.

ON TV

Tomorrow night, Turner Classic Movies will air the enigmatic Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) by Australian filmmaker Peter Weir. An Australian girls school goes on an outing to a striking geological formation – and some of the girls and a teacher disappear. What happened to them? It’s beautiful and hypnotic and haunting. It’s a film masterpiece, but if you can’t handle ambiguous endings – this ain’t for you.

Weir has gone on to make high quality hits (The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show, Master and Commander), but Picnic at Hanging Rock – the movie that he made at age 31 – is his most original work. Besides playing periodically on TCM, Picnic at Hanging Rock is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon and Hulu Plus.

A QUIET PLACE: satisfyingly scary

April 20, 2018April 20, 2018 by movie gourmet

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a more satisfyingly scary movie than A Quiet Place. Director John Krasinski proves an economical story-teller – with essentially no dialogue, he helps us learn the set-up in few minutes. The earth has been overrun by man-eating monsters, who are blind but have a super-acute sense of hearing. Anyone who makes noise is immediately eaten by a monster. There aren’t many human survivors, but one family is holding out on their remote farm – a dad (Krasinski), a mom (Krasinski’s real life wife Emily Blunt), a daughter who is eleven or twelve and a son who is a year younger.

They walk only barefoot, speak only in sign language, and have devised ways to do every possible task silently. However, the mom is pregnant; childbirth and babies tend to be noisy, so there’s a ticking time bomb element to the story.

In fact, the characters (and we) are in a state of intensely heightened alertness during the entire movie – except for when a monster shows up and plunges us into outright terror. Mercifully, the gore and splatter happen off-screen, but the monster is plenty scary, and it hunts the family members at the closest of quarters and when they are at their most vulnerable. I saw A Quiet Place in a theater, and the audience stayed in a state of tense silence – like we were all afraid to make any noise by gasping or shrieking.

Each family member blames himself or herself for the loss of the third and youngest child, so there’s also an element of family drama in A Quiet Place. Krasinski and Blunt are excellent, and the kid actors (Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe) are, too.

I’m not a big horror movie fan, but I enjoyed and admired A Quiet Place.