J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost begins with Robert Redford reading a farewell letter to an unidentified someone. Then it flashes back to a boating mishap eight days earlier. For the rest of the film there is only one character and there are only three more lines. Redford plays a solo yachtsman, adrift in the middle of the vast Indian Ocean, who must deal with a disabled (and then shipwrecked) boat, storms and other calamities. All alone. With his survival at stake.
The protagonist is unusually resourceful but his resilience is tested by each catastrophe and the increasing hopelessness of his situation. The entire time, we’re watching only Redford, and gauging his thoughts and feelings from his expression and his actions. It’s a powerful experience.
Chandor showed a lot of promise with last year’s Wall Street thriller Margin Call, and he has another winner with All Is Lost.
This week’s best picks are the flawless true story thrillerCaptain Phillips and the space thriller Gravity – an amazing achievement by filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón with what may be Sandra Bullock’s finest performance. I’m also featuring two cinematic masterpieces on TCM – The Conversation and Blow-up (see below).
I also like the intricately plotted and unrelentingly tense suspense thriller Prisoners (with Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman). Joseph Gordon Levitt’s offbeat comedy Don Jon offers both guffaws and an unexpected moment of self-discovery. In addition, the rock music documentary Muscle Shoals, the based-on-fact French foodie saga Haute Cuisine and the witty French rom com Populaire each has something to offer.
Check out my new feature VOD Roundup, where you can find my comments on over twenty current movies available on Video on Demand. There are some good ones, some bad ones and some really, really good ones (including How to Make Money Selling Drugs).
I haven’t yet seen the Robert Redford survival drama All Is Lost, opening this weekend. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films atMovies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD/Stream of the week is the cop buddy comedy The Heat, with Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock. The Heat is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu and other VOD outlets.The Heat is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu and other VOD outlets.
On October 30, Turner Classic Movies is presenting back-to-back two murder mysteries that are among the greatest movies ever – The Conversation (1974) and Blow-up (1966). At the height of his powers, Francis Ford Coppola directed The Conversation between The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II, and The Conversation is every bit the masterwork as the others. In a role just as iconic as in The French Connection, Gene Hackman plays an audio surveillance expert entangled in a morally troubling assignment – and then obsessed. Veteran character actor Allen Garfield is just as good and the irreplaceable John Cazale makes us cringe and ache as always. Look for a very young Harrison Ford and for a glimpse of an uncredited Robert Duvall as a corpse. The most significant achievement in The Conversation, however, is the groundbreaking sound editing by Walter Murch. After experiencing The Conversation, you’ll never again overlook movie sound editing.
There’s yet more obsession in Blow-up. Set in the Mod London of the mid-60s, a fashion photographer (David Hemmings) is living a fun but shallow life filled with sportscars, discos and and scoring with supermodels (think Jane Birkin, Sarah Miles and Verushka). Then he finds that a landscape that he randomly photographed may contain a clue in a murder, and meets a mystery woman (Vanessa Redgrave). After taking us into a vivid depiction of the Mod world, director Michelangelo Antonioni brilliantly turns the story into a suspenseful story of spiraling obsession. His L’Avventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse made Antonioni an icon of cinema, but Blow-up is his most accessible and enjoyable masterwork. There’s also a cameo performance by the Jeff Beck/Jimmy Page version of the Yardbirds and a quick sighting of Michael Palin in a club.
Here’s a heads up for San Francisco Bay Area (and especially Marin) movie fans. The Mill Valley Film Festival usually offers an early peek at some prestige fall releases, and that is definitely the case this October.
I think the three most promising films are:
The Past: The Artist’s Berenice Bejo won Best Actress at Cannes as a Parisian woman divorcing her Iranian husband in Paris amid an increasingly messy family life. By the director of Oscar-winning A Separation.
All Is Lost with Robert Redford as a man battling impossible odds when something goes horribly wrong on his trans-ocean solo voyage.
the historical slavery epic 12 Years a Slave (but the only screening, with director and star, is already sold out).
Other films with lots of buzz include:
Nebraska: Director Alexander Payne follows his Sideways and The Descendants with a black and white indie. Bruce Dern won Best Actor at Cannes for portraying an addled Montana grump who thinks he’s won a junk mail sweepstakes. His son drives him to Omaha to claim the nonexistent prize, stopping to see some relatives and have some road trip adventures along the way. There’s also some buzz about the performance of June Squibb (who acted in Payne’s About Schmidt) as the old man’s wife.
Philomena: Judi Dench stars as an Irish woman seeking the son she was forced to give up for adoption. Co-stars Steve Coogan in a non-ironic role.
Blue is the Warmest Color: This film, which many critics thought was way too long, nevertheless won the top prize at Cannes. Actresses Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux (Farewell My Queen, Midnight in Paris) are reportedly spectacular in this three-hour love story. One of the explicit sex scenes takes over twenty minutes (TWENTY MINUTES!).
The Rocket: A boy takes his family across war-scarred Laos to enter a rocket contest. It looks like the kind of movie that I usually don’t like, but it won major awards at the Berlin and Tribeca film fests.
Eventually, I’ll have descriptions and trailers for all these films on my Movies I’m Looking Forward To. Scroll down to “Later Fall – Prestige Season”. The Mill Valley Film Festival will run October 3-13 at the Rafael in San Rafael, the Sequoia in Mill Valley and three other Marin venues.
J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost begins with Robert Redford reading a farewell letter to an unidentified someone. Then it flashes back to a boating mishap eight days earlier. For the rest of the film there is only one character and there are only three more lines. Redford plays a solo yachtsman, adrift in the middle of the vast Indian Ocean, who must deal with a disabled (and then shipwrecked) boat, storms and other calamities. All alone. With his survival at stake.
