Alive Inside

2014 at the Movies: most overlooked

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Macon Blair in BLUE RUIN
Macon Blair in BLUE RUIN

Talk about “overlooked” – there were some great movies this year that didn’t even get a meaningful theatrical release. Let’s start with Blue Ruin – a completely fresh take on the revenge thriller.

Then there’s the romantic drama a la Twilight Zone, The One I Love, with brilliant performances by Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass.

The year’s best documentary – Alive Inside – didn’t even get shortlisted for the best Documentary Oscar. I dare you to watch this movie without tearing up.

I thought that the Canadian comedy The Grand Seduction would become a long running art house hit like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel or The Full Monty. But, despite being the year’s funniest and most audience-friendly comedy, it came and went quickly.

I loved the darkly droll German slacker comedy A Coffee in Berlin, but only a few other folks saw it in this country.  It was a big hit in Europe – for a reason.

Fortunately, Blue Ruin, The One I Love, The Grand Seduction and A Coffee in Berlin are all available on DVD and/or streaming. Follow the links above to find out how to watch them. But two wonderful films that I saw at Cinequest – the outrageously dark Hungarian comedy Heavenly Shift and the provocative Slovenian classroom drama Class Enemy are not currently available to US audiences. When they are, I’ll let you know.

Movies to See Right Now

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Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in THE TRIP TO ITALY
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in THE TRIP TO ITALY

In theaters:

  • The smart and hilarious The Trip to Italy showcases the improvisational wit of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, along with some serious tourism/foodie porn.
  • Alive Inside: The profoundly moving documentary showing Alzheimer patients being pulled out of isolation by music.
  • Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.
  • The mesmerizing drama Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson again teams with John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard.
  • I really liked The One I Love – a relationship romance, a dark comedy and a modern day episode of The Twilight Zone rolled into one successful movie. It’s also available streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
  • Don’t miss Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.

Boyhood tops my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far, and Alive Inside and Calvary also make the list.

Poor writing and directing sabotage the delightful performances of Alfred Molina and John Lithgow in the romantic drama Love Is Strange. I was also disappointed by the tiresome Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.  I nodded off during Woody Allen’s disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight.

Here’s my preview of the upcoming Mill Valley Film Festival.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the unusually thoughtful romantic comedy Words and Pictures.

On September 16, Turner Classic Movies plays the unforgettable Bogart and Bacall thriller Key Largo.  And the next day, TCM will air the overlooked film noir masterpiece The Narrow Margin, a taut 71 minutes of tension.  Growly cop Charles McGraw plays hide-and-seek with a team of hit men on a claustrophobic train.  Marie Windsor is unforgettable as the assassins’ target.

Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN
Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN

Movies to See Right Now

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Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass in THE ONE I LOVE
Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass in THE ONE I LOVE

Plenty of good choices in theaters:

  • The smart and hilarious The Trip to Italy showcases the improvisational wit of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, along with some serious tourism/foodie porn.
  • Alive Inside: The profoundly moving documentary showing Alzheimer patients being pulled out of isolation by music.
  • Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.
  • The mesmerizing drama Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson.  Gleeson again teams with John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard.
  • I really liked The One I Love – a relationship romance, a dark comedy and a modern day episode of The Twilight Zone rolled into one successful movie.  It’s also available streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
  • Don’t miss Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.

Boyhood tops my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far, and Alive Inside and Calvary also make the list.

Poor writing and directing sabotage the delightful performances of Alfred molina and john Lithgow in the romantic drama Love Is Strange.  I was also disappointed by the tiresome Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.  I nodded off during Woody Allen’s disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Go For Sisters , a border thriller with three more great movie characters from master indie writer-director John Sayles. Go for Sisters is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon and Vudu.

As I wrote yesterday, Turner Classic Movies is airing the prototype for Orange Is the New Black – Caged from 1950 – set your DVR tonight..

On September 7, TCM plays The Battle of Algiers (1966), the story of 1950s French colonialists struggling to suppress the guerrilla uprising of Algerian independence fighters.  Although it looks like a documentary, it is not.  Instead, filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo recreated the actual events so realistically that we believe that we are watching strategy councils of each side.  Urban insurgency and counter-insurgency are nasty, brutal and not very short – and we see some horrifically inhumane butchering by both sides. Among the great war films, it may be the best film on counter-insurgency.  In 2003, the Pentagon screened the film for its special operations commanders. Re-released to theaters in 2004, The Battle of Algiers made many critics’ top ten lists the second time around.

Movies to See Right Now

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Dan Cohen (RightI in ALIVE INSIDE
ALIVE INSIDE

Last night I saw Alive Inside for the second time, this time with The Wife, and it was as profoundly moving as the first screening.  This documentary showing Alzheimer patients being pulled out of isolation by music is on my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far (along with three other movies in this post – Boyhood, Calvary and Locke).

Other top picks:

  • Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.
  • The mesmerizing drama Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson again teams with John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard.
  • Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.

The sci fi thriller Snowpiercer is both thoughtful and exciting, plus it features amazing production design; you can also stream Snowpiercer on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and DirecTV.   Lucy is a Scarlet Johansson action vehicle that rocks.  I nodded off during Woody Allen’s disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight.

There’s also an assortment of recent releases to Video on Demand:

  • I loved the rockin’ Spanish Witching and Bitching – a witty comment on misogyny inside a madcap horror spoof, which you can stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.
  • The oddly undisturbing documentary A Brony Tale, about grown men with very unusual taste in television shows. Brony Tale is available streaming on iTunes.
  • The Congress: a thoughtful live action fable followed by a less compelling an animated sci fi story. The Congress is available streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Robert Duvall’s geezer-gone-wild roadtrip in A Night in Old Mexico. A Night in Old Mexico is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

My DVD/Stream of the week is Locke, a thriller about responsibility – and it’s also on my list of the year’s best so far.  Locke is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

It’s another good week for film noir coming up on Turner Classic Movies.

  • On August 25, TCM will air the 1944 Murder, My Sweet. Rebelling against being typecast in the sappy musical roles that he knew he was aging out of, Dick Powell took on the role of hardboiled detective Philip Marlowe and knocked it out of the park. He rejuvenated his own career in a similar arc to what we’ve recently seen from Alec Baldwin and Matthew McConaughey.
  • The Hitch-hiker (August 27 on TCM) is notable for being the first film noir directed by a woman (the veteran noir actress Ida Lupino). The ruthless bad guy is played by William Talman, who Baby Boomers will remember as the luckless District Attorney Hamilton Burger on TV’s Perry Mason – kind of a proto-Wiley Coyote.
  • I’m going to be featuring the noir thriller D.O.A. in a post on Monday.

Don’t miss special showings of ALIVE INSIDE at Campbell’s Camera 7

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Dan Cohen (RightI in ALIVE INSIDE
Dan Cohen (Right) in ALIVE INSIDE

Bay Area readers: If you’re going to take my advice and see the emotionally powerful and Oscar-worthy Alive Inside this weekend, try to attend one of the special screenings at Camera 7 Pruneyard in Campbell. Dan Cohen, the founder of Music & Memory, the non-profit that  pulls Alzheimer’s patients out of their isolation with gifts of iPods, will take Q&As after the 2:30 and 4:45 shows on Saturday, August 9.  Director Michael Rossato-Bennett will be present after the 2:30 and 4:45 shows on Sunday, August 10.  And Camera 7 is collecting any music players that you may wish to donate to Music & Memory.

Movies to See Right Now – more than one MUST SEE

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Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD
Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD

Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.  But two other movies that are ALSO on my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far open this weekend:

  • The emotionally gripping documentary Alive Inside, showing Alzheimer patients being pulled out of isolation by music.  This will be one of the two favorites for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
  • The mesmerizing drama Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson again teams with John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard.

Boyhood and Alive Inside, in particular, are MUST SEEs.  Don’t miss them.

Also in theaters:

  • Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.
  • The smart and entertaining I Origins, which works both as a scientific detective story and as a meditation on romance.
  • The quirky comedy Land Ho!, with an uproarious and yet genuine geezer road trip to Iceland.
  • The sci fi thriller Snowpiercer is both thoughtful and exciting, plus it features amazing production design. You can also stream Snowpiercer on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and DirecTV.
  • Lucy – a Scarlet Johansson action vehicle that rocks.
  • The credible and politically important HBO documentary The Newburgh Sting, which exposes the FBI’s manufacture of a fake terrorist attack to arrest some New York dumbasses. It’s playing on HBO.

I nodded off during Woody Allen’s disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight.

There’s also an assortment of recent releases to Video on Demand:

        • I loved the rockin’ Spanish Witching and Bitching – a witty comment on misogyny inside a madcap horror spoof, which you can stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.
        • Life Itself, the affectionate but not worshipful documentary on movie critic Ebert’s groundbreaking career, courageous battle against disease and uncommonly graceful death Life Itself is streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
        • The oddly undisturbing documentary A Brony Tale, about grown men with very unusual taste in television shows. Brony Tale is available streaming on iTunes.
        • The Congress: a thoughtful live action fable followed by a less compelling an animated sci fi story. The Congress is available streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
        • Robert Duvall’s geezer-gone-wild roadtrip in A Night in Old Mexico. A Night in Old Mexico is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
        • The art vs. technology documentary Tim’s Vermeer is a yawner.

One of my all-time favorite comedies, Twentieth Century, shows up on Turner Classic Movies on August 10. The next day, TCM will air The Wild One and The Gold Rush. The Wild One has the iconic 1953 Marlon Brando performance as the leader of bikers that terrorize a small town (based on a real incident in Hollister, California). Brando is asked “What are you rebelling against?” and replies “Whadda you got?”. Charlie Chaplin’s comic masterpiece The Gold Rush includes the wonderful scene where hulking Mack Swain, crazed by winter starvation, imagines Charlie to be a succulent chicken and chases him around their Alaskan cabin.

Charlie Chaplin and Mack Swain in THE GOLD RUSH
Charlie Chaplin and Mack Swain in THE GOLD RUSH

ALIVE INSIDE: people astonishingly transformed by music

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Alive InsideAlive Inside is one of the most emotionally powerful documentaries that I’ve EVER seen.  Seemingly miraculously, Alzheimer’s patients are transformed by music.  The music doesn’t cure Alzheimer’s, but it pulls the patients out of isolation, helps them relate to other people and brings them joy.

Alive Inside tells the story of a solitary guy, Dan Cohen, and his tiny non-profit Music & Memory, which distributes iPods to Alzheimer’s patients.  Michael Rossato-Bennett filmed Cohen’s work to prepare a video for Music & Memory.  That original six-and-a-half minute video went viral.  Rossato-Bennett realized that he had the beginnings of a movie, and, several years later, Alive Inside is the result.

Alive Inside won an  Audience Award at Sundance, and I think that Alive Inside will be one of the two favorites for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.  It’s already on my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far.

All that aside, it’s a riveting film – and an example of the power of cinema.   It’s impossible not to be moved when people essentially recover their humanity.  And when you leave the theater, you’ll likely be thinking about making sure that your kids have your playlist.

Movies to See Right Now

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Eller Coltrane in BOYHOOD
Eller Coltrane in BOYHOOD

First things first –  Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood tops my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far and it may turn out to be the best film of the decade. It’s a Must See.

And there are plenty of other good movie choices.  Here are some more recommendations:

  • Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.
  • The smart and entertaining I Origins, which works both as a scientific detective story and as a meditation on romance.
  • The quirky comedy Land Ho!, with an uproarious and yet genuine geezer road trip to Iceland.
  • The sci fi thriller Snowpiercer is both thoughtful and exciting, plus it features amazing production design. You can also stream Snowpiercer on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and DirecTV.
  • Lucy – a Scarlet Johansson action vehicle that rocks.
  • The credible and politically important HBO documentary The Newburgh Sting, which exposes the FBI’s manufacture of a fake terrorist attack to arrest some New York dumbasses. It’s playing on HBO.

There’s also an assortment of recent releases to Video on Demand:

      • I loved the rockin’ Spanish Witching and Bitching – a witty comment on misogyny inside a madcap horror spoof, which you can stream on Amazon instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.
      • Life Itself, the affectionate but not worshipful documentary on movie critic Ebert’s groundbreaking career, courageous battle against disease and uncommonly graceful death Life Itself is streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
      • The oddly undisturbing documentary A Brony Tale, about grown men with very unusual taste in television shows. Brony Tale is available streaming on iTunes.
      • The Congress: a thoughtful live action fable followed by a less compelling an animated sci fi story. The Congress is available streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
      • Robert Duvall’s geezer-gone-wild roadtrip in A Night in Old Mexico. A Night in Old Mexico is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
      • The art vs. technology documentary Tim’s Vermeer is a yawner.

My Stream of the Week is the satisfying French drama On My Way, with the extraordinary Catherine Deneuve on an escapist road trip. On My Way is available streaming on Amazon Instant and iTunes.

On August 7, Turner Classic Movies will air the classic 1940 romance The Shop Around the Corner with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. It was remade a half-century later as You’ve Got Mail. The Wife and I watched it recently – I thought it was sweet, but she thought it a little dated and draggy in places. On a different note, TCM will show Juarez and Bordertown on August 6 – two Paul Muni movies that show up on my list of Least Convincing Mexicans.