Born to Be Blue – The Movie Gourmet

Movies to See Right Now

April 29, 2016 by movie gourmet

I’m still covering the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF); the fest runs through May 5. Throughout the fest, I’ll be linking more festival coverage to my SFFIF 2016 page, including both features and movie recommendations. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest coverage.Here’s some of my SFIFF coverage:

I’m also writing about the fine slate of documentaries at this weekend’s International Film Festival of North Hollywood (IFFNOHO).

Here’s my slate of recommended movies in theaters this week:

Critical reception has been mixed on the intricately constructed family drama Louder Than Bombs, but I strongly recommend it.
Ethan Hawke’s performance makes the Chet Baker biopic Born to Be Blue a success.
Thriller meets thinker in Eye in the Sky, a parable from modern drone warfare starring Helen Mirren and with a wonderful final performance from the late Alan Rickman.
Eccentric meets quirky in the historical comedy Elvis & Nixon, with Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey.
I enjoyed every minute of Jake Gyllenhaal’s breakdown in Demolition (but was ambivalent about why I did).
Everybody Wants Some!! is a dead-on 1980 time capsule and an amusing frolic with lots of ball busting and girl chasing – but probably more fun for a heterosexual male audience.

Tom Hiddleston makes a believable Hank Williams, but that can’t save the plodding I Saw the Light, which fails to capture any of the pathos in Hank’s life and death. The mismatched buddy movie Dough is light, fluffy and empty – just like a Twinkie.

My Stream of the Week is the offbeat documentary Meet the Hitlers, about those few people who choose NOT to change their birth name of “Hitler”. Meet the Hitlers is available for streaming rental from Amazon Video and Vudu and for streaming purchase from iTunes.

Screenwriter Anthony Veiller fleshed out a very brief Hemingway short story, resulting in Robert Siodmak’s compelling 1946 film noir The Killers, which Turner Classic Movies airs on May 4. The Killers was the screen debut of former circus acrobat Burt Lancaster and the breakthrough for the 23-year-old Ava Gardner. The toughest of noir tough guys – Charles McGraw and Broderick Crawford are hunting down Lancaster for offending their mob boss…and the clock is ticking.

Ava Gardner and Burt Lancaster in THE KILLERS

Charles McGraw (left) and Broderick Crawford (center) are the title characters in THE KILLERS

Movies to See Right Now

April 22, 2016 by movie gourmet

I’ll be at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) for much of the next two weeks; the fest runs through May 5. Throughout the fest, I’ll be linking more festival coverage to my SFFIF 2016 page, including both features and movie recommendations. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest coverage.Here’s some of my early SFIFF coverage:

Here’s my slate of recommended movies in theaters this week:

Ethan Hawke’s performance makes the Chet Baker biopic Born to Be Blue a success.
Thriller meets thinker in Eye in the Sky, a parable from modern drone warfare starring Helen Mirren and with a wonderful final performance from the late Alan Rickman.
I enjoyed every minute of Jake Gyllenhaal’s breakdown in Demolition (but was ambivalent about why I did).
Everybody Wants Some!! is a dead-on 1980 time capsule and an amusing frolic with lots of ball busting and girl chasing – but probably more fun for a heterosexual male audience.

Tom Hiddleston makes a believable Hank Williams, but that can’t save the plodding I Saw the Light, which fails to capture any of the pathos in Hank’s life and death.

This week’s Stream of the Week is Trumbo, the thought-provoking blacklist biopic with its Oscar-nominated performance by Bryan Cranston. Trumbo is now available to stream on Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and a host of PPV outlets.

This week on Turner Classic Movies, I recommending the April 25 airing of John Ford’s seminal 1939 Stagecoach. The 32-year-old John Wayne had been in 80 movies, but this one made him a star – Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy, Red River, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, True Grit and The Shootist were all yet to come. This is the prototypical Western. John Ford perfects elements that others would make into cliches (Andy Devine’s stagecoach driver, John Carradine’s shady gambler, Claire Trevor’s saloon girl with a heart of gold). The Indian attack features two great stunts on the team of horses by famous stuntman Yakima Canutt – one as an Indian and the second doubling for Wayne. And Ford shot it in spectacular Monument Valley. John Wayne’s searing performance in Ford’s The Searchers also plays on April 25 on TCM.

John Ford's Stagecoach — John Ford’s STAGECOACH

Movies to See Right Now

April 15, 2016April 15, 2016 by movie gourmet

Here’s my slate of recommended movies in theaters this week:

I liked the evocative French drama My Golden Days, the beautiful tale of first love, with all its passion, importance, obsession, angst, conflict, breakups and makeups.
Ethan Hawke’s performance makes the Chet Baker biopic Born to Be Blue a success.
I enjoyed every minute of Jake Gyllenhaal’s breakdown in Demolition (but was ambivalent about why I did).
Everybody Wants Some!! is a dead-on 1980 time capsule and an amusing frolic with lots of ball busting and girl chasing – but probably more fun for a heterosexual male audience.

Tom Hiddleston makes a believable Hank Williams, but that can’t save the plodding I Saw the Light, which fails to capture any of the pathos in Hank’s life and death.

Because Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! is now in theaters, my DVD/Stream of the Week is its “spiritual prequel” – the coming of age Dazed and Confused is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon Video (free with Amazon Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.masterpiece Dazed and Confused.

The best night on TV this week is April 16, when Turner Classic Movies airs both the glorious sand-and-sandal epic Spartacus and Mel Brooks’ guffaw-fest Young Frankenstein.

If you haven’t watched Spartacus in a while, you probably remember it for Kirk Douglas’ macho tour de force, the ever stunning Jean Simmons and the sexual cat-and-mouse between Laurence Olivier and the Bronx-accented slaveboy Tony Curtis. But you might have forgotten the strength of the supporting performances by Peter Ustinov, Charles Laughton and – my favorite – Woody Strode. And watching last year’s Trumbo, I was reminded that indie producer Kirk Douglas awarded the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo the screenwriting credit that others had denied him.

Kirk Douglas and Woody Strode in SPARTACUS

Movies to See Right Now

April 9, 2016April 8, 2016 by movie gourmet

I liked the evocative French drama My Golden Days, the beautiful tale of first love, with all its passion, importance, obsession, angst, conflict, breakups and makeups. My Golden Days opens widely in the Bay Area today.

Try to find the entirely fresh and unpredictably contemporary drama Take Me to the River, an impressive directorial debut by San Jose native Matt Sobel.

Ethan Hawke’s performance makes the Chet Baker biopic Born to Be Blue a success.

Tom Hiddleston makes a believable Hank Williams, but that can’t save the plodding I Saw the Light, which fails to capture any of the pathos in Hank’s life and death.

Because Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! open today, my DVD/Stream of the Week is its “spiritual prequel” – the coming of age Dazed and Confused is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon Video (free with Amazon Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.masterpiece Dazed and Confused.

OK, serious movie buffs – on April 13, Turner Classic Movies presents an evening of early German cinema to frame the documentary From Caligari to Hitler. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) is generally recognized as the first horror film in the history of cinema; it features Conrad Veidt (23 years later, Major Strausser in Casablanca). The Blue Angel (1930) is the classic old-fool-falls-for-a-girl story. I’ve only seen clips from Faust (1926), and I haven’t seen The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1927). If you’re going to watch just one, I recommend the 1922 Nosferatu, the Dracula tale with a hideously monstrous vampire played by Max Schreck.

BORN TO BE BLUE: aching to get clean

April 8, 2016 by movie gourmet

In Born to Be Blue, Ethan Hawke plays jazzman Chet Baker as he seeks to overcome his heroin addiction and mount an artistic comeback.

Writer-director Robert Budreau made the successful choice to start the story when Baker had hit bottom in the mid-1960s. Baker is relearning how to play the trumpet after his teeth were smashed by an angry creditor. Now he’s living in his girlfriend’s VW van and playing for free in a pizza joint, trying to work his way back up to a marquee venue and a recording deal. We see his 1950s glory days in flashback.

In a typically outstanding performance, Ethan Hawke makes us root for this guy, even as we cringe at the likelihood that his disease is going to find a way to destroy him. If you’ve seen Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, you know that Hawke is a master at playing unreliable characters – which makes him a perfect choice for a junkie like Chet Baker. Still, in a bowling alley scene, we glimpse the Chet Baker charm that could attract a woman who certainly knew better. Hawke convincingly fingers the horn as we hear the real Chet Baker play; Hawke himself sings on Baker’s signature vocal numbers Over the Rainbow and My Funny Valentine.

Carmen Ejogo (Coretta Scott King in Selma) is also excellent as two of the women in Baker’s life.

This movie’s elephant in the room is Baker’s addiction to heroin, about which he says, “It makes me happy”. Some very incisive scenes with his father hint at the roots of Baker’s disquiet. The people closest to Baker want him to kick the habit, but, unfortunately, more than he wants to himself. As he clings on with his fingerprints, Born to Be Blue is achingly effective.