My top movie recommendation is Isabelle Huppert in the perverse wowzer Elle. Other top choices:
- The Korean period con artist movie The Handmaiden is gorgeous, erotic and extraordinarily entertaining.
- Sonia Braga is still luminous in the character-driven Brazilian drama Aquarius.
- Mascots is the latest mockumentary from Christopher Guest (Best in Show) and it’s very funny. Mascots is streaming on Netflix Instant.
Also in theaters or on video:
- Despite a delicious performance by one of may faves, Michael Shannon, I’m not recommending Nocturnal Animals; I’m writing about it tomorrow.
- Arrival with Amy Adams, is real thinking person’s sci-fi. Every viewer will be transfixed by the first 80% of Arrival. How you feel about the finale depends on whether you buy into the disconnected-from-linear-time aspect or you just get confused, like I did.
- The remarkably sensitive and realistic indie drama Moonlight is at once a coming of age tale, an exploration of addicted parenting and a story of gay awakening. It’s almost universally praised, but I thought that the last act petered out.
- The end of the thriller The Girl on the Train (starring Emily Blunt) is indeed thrilling. But the 82 minutes before the Big Plot Twist is murky, confusing and boring.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is one of the year’s very, very best films, the character-driven crime drama Hell or High Water. It’s now available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
On November 28, Turner Classic Movies will present two excellent (and totally different) films:
- Chandler is the 1971 neo-noir starring Warren Oates as a seedy private detective who gets in over his head. I mention, but don’t dwell on Chandler in my essay Warren Oates: a gift for desperation.
- Crumb is the award-winning 1994 documentary, Terry Zwigoff’s profile of the counterculture cartoonist R. Crumb, the creator of Keep On Truckin’, Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat and influential rock album covers. By exploring Crumb’s troubled family, Zwigoff reveals the origins of Crumb’s art. When we meet Crumb’s shattered brothers, it’s clear that Crumb’s artistic expression preserved his very sanity. I thought that Crumb was the very best movie of the year – and so did Gene Siskel; Roger Ebert pegged it at #2.
