Barbara

Movies to See Right Now

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LETTERS FROM THE BIG MAN

This week’s best two movies can be found on Video on Demand (I saw them on Amazon Instant), and both feature magical realism:

  • Letters from the Big Man: a beautifully looking and sounding fable about a prickly woman with a guy and a Bigfoot competing for her affections.
  • Electrick Children: an entirely unique teen coming of age story with fundamentalist Mormon teens in Las Vegas.

The best bets in theaters:  

  • No: Gael Garcia Bernal stars as the regular guy who brainstormed the guerrilla advertising campaign that dethroned Chilean dictator Pinochet.
  • The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: a pleasant comedy and a showcase for Jim Carrey.
  • Side Effects: Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
  • Quartet: a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances.

Music fans will enjoy the bio-documentary Beware of Mr. Baker, available on VOD.

Emperor, with Tommy Lee Jones as Gen. Douglas MacArthur leading the American occupation of Japan, is historical but plodding.  On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel, with surprisingly little energy.  The HBO movie Phil Spector is really just a freak show.

 I haven’t yet seen the upcoming PBS documentary Philip Roth: Unmasked. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the week is the smart, actress-written romantic comedy Celeste and Jesse Forever.

On Easter Sunday, Turner Classic Movies offers a Jesusathon of Sword and Sandal movies: Ben-Hur, The Robe and Barabbas. Ben-Hur has the thrilling chariot race around that phenomenal set – one of the greatest sets in movie history. In Barabbas, Anthony Quinn sees Charlton Hestons’s galley slavery and raises it by a tour in the sulpher mines, a stint as a gladiator and the witnessing of the burning of Rome, all culminating in a Christian martyrdom.

Movies to See Right Now

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Gael Garcia Bernal in NO

This week’s best movie in theaters is the suspenseful German historical drama Barbara.  In No, Gael Garcia Bernal stars as the regular guy who brainstormed the guerrilla advertising campaign that dethroned Chilean dictator Pinochet.  The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is a pleasant comedy and a showcase for Jim Carrey. I admire Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller Side Effects, starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Emperor, with Tommy Lee Jones as Gen. Douglas MacArthur leading the American occupation of Japan, is historical but plodding.

I haven’t yet seen Walter Salles’ Jack Kerouac movie On the Road, which opens today, or Sunday’s HBO movie Phil Spector. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD/Stream of the week is the most under-appreciated Big Movie of 2012, Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathryn Bigelow’s inspired telling of the hunt for Bin Laden.

Turner Classic Movies is showing a couple of my guilty pleasures this week.  The 1958 Terror in a Texas Town is a lousy movie with an wonderfully implausible climax where the good guy (Sterling Hayden with a Swedish accent) take on a gunfighter with a harpoon.   An even worse movie, 1964’s The Outrage tried to remake Rashomon with a Mexican bandit – and landed Paul Newman the #8 spot on my list of Least Convincing Mexicans.

Movies to See Right Now

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Nina Hoss in BARBARA

This week, the theaters feature three historical dramas, the best being the suspenseful German Barbara.  In No, Gael Garcia Bernal stars as the regular guy who brainstormed the guerrilla advertising campaign that dethroned Chilean dictator Pinochet.  Emperor, with Tommy Lee Jones as Gen. Douglas MacArthur leading the American occupation of Japan, is historical but plodding.

The documentary The Gatekeepers is centered around interviews with all six surviving former chiefs of Shin Bet, Israel’s super-secret internal security force; these are hard ass guys who share a surprising perspective on the efficacy of Israel’s war on terror. The documentary
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God is now playing on HBO; it explores the Catholic Church’s decades-long cover-up of priest abuse from a Wisconsin parish to the top of the Vatican (and I mean the top). I admire Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller Side Effects, starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

San Jose’s Cinequest Film Festival is over, and for a wrap-up, see my CINEQUEST 2013 page.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD/Stream of the week is, fittingly, the Italian comedy We Have a Pope, especially in a double feature with Mea Maxima Culpa.

I usually don’t think of Dustin Hoffman as a comic actor, but some of his performances have been brilliantly funny, including Tootsie, Little Big Man and the essential The Graduate.  Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting those three films tomorrow night, March 16.

Barbara: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you

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As Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you”.   Barbara’s suspenseful story is set in Cold War East Germany, so everyone is indeed being watched by the Stasi and informed on by their closest associates.  Barbara is a doctor who has applied for an exit visa and has therefore been exiled to the hinterlands from a top Berlin hospital.   Harassed by the Stasi, she is ever aware of everyone’s motives.  She is played by Nina Hoss in a performance that is extraordinarily controlled, alert and suspicious.

Barbara herself is driven by two imperatives – to escape from East Germany and to provide expert and compassionate medical care.  The story is a series of moments, some seemingly random, which tie together as the story builds to the climax, when the doctor must bet her life on a decision.

Barbara was co-written and directed by Christian Petzold (he won the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear for his work).  Given that’s it difficult to imagine how anyone else could have improved Barbara, I’ll be looking for Petzold’s next movie.