The gripping sci fi thriller Source Code is the must see in theaters right now. Potiche opens this week, and this delightful French farce of feminist self-discovery is the funniest movie in over a year, and another showcase for Catherine Deneuve (as if she needs one). The Music Never Stopped is a crowd-pleaser, especially for Baby Boomers. Certified Copy is a well-acted puzzler of an art film.
The best holdovers in theaters now are the combo thriller/love story The Adjustment Bureau and the fun and unpretentious comedy Cedar Rapids. Nora’s Will is a wry family dramedy, which is also now playing on HBO Signature as Cinco Dias Sin Nora (Five Days Without Nora).
Natalie Portman won the Best Actress Oscar for playing a ballet dancer who competes for the role of a lifetime. Her obsession with perfection is at once the key to her potential triumph and her potential ruin. Barbara Hershey brilliantly plays what we first see as another smothering stage mother, but soon learn to be something even more disturbing. Vincent Cassell (Mesrine) captures the charisma of the swaggering dance master who pushes the ballerina mercilessly. Portman’s dancer has the fragility of a porcelain teacup, and, as she slathers herself with more and more stress, we wonder just when, not if, she’ll break. The tension crescendos, and the climactic performance of Swan Lake is thrilling.
Fresh from The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is another directing triumph. In fact, parts of Black Swan are as trippy as Aronofsky’s brilliant Requiem for a Dream.
Oscar winner Natalie Portman and Natalie Portman in Black Swan
You can still see Oscar winners True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan and The Fighter and Oscar nominee Another Year. They are on my Best Movies of 2010. 127 Hours and Biutiful are also good movies out now.The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom. Cedar Rapids is a fun and unpretentious comedy. Kaboom is a trippy sex romp. Nora’s Will is a wry family dramedy.
Every year, The Movie Gourmet watches the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. You can read more at Oscar Dinner.
Planning this year’s Oscar Dinner proved challenging (despite being a great year for movie Food Porn). Fortunately I received some great suggestions from my readers.
Here is my menu for Oscar Dinner 2011.
COCKTAILS AND STARTERS
First, the pièce de résistance: Severed Hand Ice Sculpture for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone.
We will be floating the ice sculpture in an Appletini Punch for The Social Network. I read that, after seeing the film, Mark Zuckerberg made the Appletini the official cocktail of Facebook.
Pistachios from Inception. It looks like the guys are sharing a bowlful of pistachios while assembling the team in Mombasa.
Beer Nuts from The Fighter. Amy Adams’ bar looks like a beer nut kind of place. I am told by a New Englander that the Eklund-Ward clan would be drinking Narragansett, but I can’t find ‘Gansetts in California, so a MGD or PBR will have to do.
Tortilla Roll Ups from Toy Story 3. This is inspired by the all-time funniest movie scene involving a tortilla: Mr. Potato Head executes a prison escape by putting his facial features on a tortilla that can slide under a door.
DINNER
Cowboy beans from True Grit. Obvious and right out of the movie.
Steak and Organic Roast Vegetable Salad served with a Petite Syrah from The Kids Are All Right. The Mark Ruffalo character serves steak (he mists it with truffle oil) while hosting the family at his house. Earlier, he brings a bottle of Petite Syrah to dinner, which impresses the Annette Bening character (before she drinks too much of it too fast). We see organic strawberries from his restaurant’s garden, but I can see his menu featuring a nice salad of roasted veggies.
DESSERT
Coffee from Inception. From the Parisian cafe scene.
Sheet cake from Black Swan. (We will not vomit it back up.)
English toffees for The King’s Speech. They’re English and we will have difficulty speaking when we are chewing them.
(I decided not to skin my own squirrel for Winter’s Bone and not to recycle my urine for 127 Hours.)
You can still see True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan, The Fighter andAnother Year. They are on my Best Movies of 2010. 127 Hours and Biutiful are also good movies out now.The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom. Cedar Rapids is a fun and unpretentious comedy.
Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld, both Oscar-nominated, inTrue Grit
The must see films are still True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan, The Fighter and Another Year. All are on my list of Best Movies of 2010. 127 Hours and Biutiful are also good movies out now. The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom.
Colin Firth in the King's Speech, about to pick up the Oscar he earned last year in A Single Man
True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan and The Fighter are all crowd pleasers. A bit more challenging, Another Year and Rabbit Hole are also on my list of Best Movies of 2010. 127 Hours, The Way Back, Somewhere and Biutiful are also good movies out now.The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom.
Season of the Witch is a bad Nicholas Cage/Ron Perlman buddy movie set among the plague, crusades and witch hunts of the 13th century.
I haven’t seen Cedar Rapids (opening tomorrow), but you can its trailer and those of other upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD pick is The Social Network. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
It’s a good week for movies on TV, including Quo Vadis, The Graduate, Gone With the Wind, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Victor/Victoria, Mon Oncle, The Stunt Man, Do the Right Thing and Blow-Up on TCM.
If you want to see the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, I’d suggest catching True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan and The Fighter in a theater.Another Year and Rabbit Hole are also on my list of Best Movies of 2010. 127 Hours, The Way Back, Somewhere and Biutiful are also good movies out now.
Another Year is Mike Leigh’s brilliant observation of the human condition, and asks why some people find contentment and others just cannot; Lesley Manville has the flashiest role – and gives the most remarkable performance – as a woman whose long trail of bad choices hasn’t left her with many options for a happy life. I also strongly recommend Rabbit Hole, an exquisite exploration of the grieving process with great performances by Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhardt, Diane Wiest, Sandra Oh and Miles Tenner.
Season of the Witch is a bad Nicholas Cage/Ron Perlman buddy movie set among the plague, crusades and witch hunts of the 13th century.
Every year, The Movie Gourmet watches the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. For example, last year’s highlight was Grandma Ethel’s Brisket for A Serious Man. We also had airplane bottles of liquor for Up in the Air, fastfood chicken for Precious and Middle Eastern fare for The Hurt Locker. I particularly relished having prawns for District 9; (“prawn” is the South African slur for the aliens). You get the idea and you can read more at Oscar Dinner.
But this year, the elements of my Oscar Dinner are not so obvious (despite being a great year for movie Food Porn). Now, I do know what I’m going to serve for True Grit, Black Swan, Toy Story 3, Inception, The Social Network and The Kids Are All Right.
But I’m stumped on 127 Hours The King’s Speech and The Fighter. I need to find food and/or beverages found in these movies or inspired by the movies (typical of the movie’s setting, a pun on the movie, etc.) Any ideas? I welcome your suggestions.
Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent in Mike Leigh's Another Year
There are more excellent movies in the theaters RIGHT NOW than any other time of the year. Right now, you can see Another Year, True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan, The Way Back, Somewhere, Biutiful, The Fighter, Rabbit Hole and Fair Game. It just doesn’t get any better than this for movie fans.
True Grit is the Coen Brothers’ splendid Old West story of Mattie Ross, a girl of unrelenting resolve and moxie played by 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld in a breakthrough performance, and Jeff Bridges is perfect as the hilarious, oft-besotted and frequently lethal Rooster Cogburn. The King’s Speech is the crowd pleasing story of a good man (Colin Firth) overcoming his stammer to inspire his nation in wartime with the help of a brassy commoner (Geoffrey Rush). Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is a rip roaring thriller and a showcase for Natalie Portman and Barbara Hershey. Another Year is Mike Leigh’s brilliant observation of the human condition, and asks why some people find contentment and others just cannot; Lesley Manville has the flashiest role – and gives the most remarkable performance – as a woman whose long trail of bad choices hasn’t left her with many options for a happy life.
Biutiful is a grim, grim movie with a great performance by Javier Bardem in a compelling portrait of a desperate man in desperate circumstance, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores perros, 21 Grams, Babel).
Somewhere is Sofia Coppola’s (Lost in Translation) artsy portrait of a man so purposeless that he can find no pleasure in pleasure. An A-list movie star (Steven Dorff) is living at the Chateau Marmont with his expensive toys, booze and drugs and an inexhaustible supply of beautiful, sexually available women, but without Without any purpose or connection to others, his debauchery is completely joyless. To his surprise and discomfort, his eleven-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning) moves in for a few weeks.
The Way Back is inspired by the story of a 1940 escape from a Siberian gulag by men who walk over 4,000 miles to freedom in India – a trek of 4000 miles. It’s beautifully shot by director Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, Master and Commander) but, eleven months of trudging through dangerous, unfamiliar territory while suffering from starvation and exposure is really impressive, but not that engaging.
I strongly recommend Rabbit Hole, an exquisite exploration of the grieving process with great performances by Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhardt, Diane Wiest, Sandra Oh and Miles Tenner. The Fighter is an excellent drama, starring Mark Wahlberg as a boxer trying to succeed despite his crack addict brother (Christian Bale) and trashy mom (Melissa Leo). Fair Game, the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson story with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, is also excellent. All are on my list of Best Movies of 2010.
I Love You, Phillip Morris is an entertaining offbeat combo of the con man, prison and romantic comedy genres. Red Hill is a stylish contemporary Aussie Western. Season of the Witch is a bad Nicholas Cage/Ron Perlman buddy movie set among the plague, crusades and witch hunts of the 13th century.
