Carol

Movies to See Right Now

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Charlotte Rampling in 45 YEARS
Charlotte Rampling in 45 YEARS

This weekend  45 Years becomes the final film on my Best Movies of 2015 to have been released in the Bay Area. Don’t miss Charlotte Rampling’s enthralling Oscar-nominated performance.  And five more from my 2015 list:

  • The Revenant, an awesome and authentic survival tale that must be seen on the BIG SCREEN.
  • Creed, the newest and entirely fresh chapter in the Rocky franchise; it’s about the internal struggle of three people, not just The Big Fight.
  • The Irish romantic drama Brooklyn is an audience-pleaser with a superb performance by Saoirse Ronan.
  • Spotlight – a riveting, edge-of-your-seat drama with some especially compelling performances.
  • The Big Short – a supremely entertaining thriller – both funny and anger-provoking.

Plus two more good choices:

  • The Hateful Eight, a Quentin Tarantino showcase for Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins and Jennifer Jason Leigh, but a movie that’s not for everyone.
  • Carol – a vividly told tale of forbidden love.

I’m not a fan of Joy or The Danish Girl.

My Stream of the Week is the riveting German psychodrama Phoenix with its WOWZER ending. Phoenix is one of my Best Movies of 2015. It is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Video, YouTube and Google Play.

This Sunday, January 31, Turner Classic Movies presents the ultra-suspenseful Diabolique from “the French Hitchcock” Henri-Georges Clouzot and the American film noir Phantom Lady, with Elisha Cook, Jr.’s orgasmic drumming scene – how did they get THAT by the censors?

Also this week on TCM: Lawrence of Arabia, The Sting, The Third Man, Cool Hand Luke, East of Eden, The Dirty Dozen.

Elisha Cook, Jr. and a nice of gams in PHANTOM LADY
Elisha Cook, Jr. and some nice gams in PHANTOM LADY

Movies to See Right Now

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Walton Goggins in THE HATEFUL EIGHT
Walton Goggins in THE HATEFUL EIGHT

You can see five movies from my final list of Best Movies of 2015 in theaters this week.  This is a list of the very best 21 of the 155 2015 movies that I’ve seen.

  • The Revenant, an awesome and authentic survival tale that must be seen on the BIG SCREEN.
  • Creed, the newest and entirely fresh chapter in the Rocky franchise; it’s about the internal struggle of three people, not just The Big Fight.
  • The Irish romantic drama Brooklyn is an audience-pleaser with a superb performance by Saoirse Ronan.
  • Spotlight – a riveting, edge-of-your-seat drama with some especially compelling performances.
  • The Big Short – a supremely entertaining thriller – both funny and anger-provoking.
  • (a sixth top film, 45 Years, will be released in the Bay Area next week.)

Two more choices:

  • The Hateful Eight, a Quentin Tarantino showcase for Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins and Jennifer Jason Leigh, but a movie that’s not for everyone.
  • Carol – a vividly told tale of forbidden love.

I’m not a fan of Joy or The Danish Girl.

My DVD/Stream of the week is the space adventure The Martian – with all the best that a Hollywood movie can offer.  You can rent The Martian on DVD from Netflix now and from Redbox on February 9.  You can stream it on Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On January 26, Turner Classic Movies screens Spike Lee’s debut feature She’s Gotta Have It. Watch for Spike himself supplying the comic relief as the unforgettable Mars Blackmon. I still remember going to the theater in 1986 on the recommendation of Siskel & Ebert and feeling so excited about discovering a talented new auteur.

Tracy Camilla Johns and Spike Lee in SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT
Tracy Camilla Johns and Spike Lee in SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT

2015 at the Movies: a glimmer of feminism

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MUSTANG
MUSTANG

There’s been a glimmer of feminism in many of the year’s best films. The most overtly feminist is Mustang, a fierce assault on the patriarchy of a traditional culture. But Brooklyn and Carol share a feminist point of view. It’s no coincidence that the character that revolts in Ex Machina has a female form.  Ex Machina, Mustang and Brooklyn are are on my Best Movies of 2015.

Mad Max: Fury Road, a movie loved by critics (especially the female ones), is a rock ’em, sock’em action movie where women characters flee for their safety from male atrocities and then exact their revenge.

Testament of Youth is a biopic of the pioneering woman who leads a social movement. And from the 19th Century, there was the proto-feminist bodice ripper Far from the Madding Crowd.  Chi-raq, Spike Lee’s modern inner city version of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, also has women taking charge of their society.

All of these movies are primarily about women and have female leads.

Even the protagonist’s love interest (usually a thankless and peripheral role) in Creed is accomplished and only interested in embracing the title character on her own terms.

What does this mean? Not that Hollywood is now the paradigm of gender equity.  Just that there were some high quality movies this year, some women-centered, with a welcome perspective.

Charlize Theron in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
Charlize Theron in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

CAROL: a tale of forbidden love

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Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett in CAROL
Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett in CAROL

Carol is a beautiful and superbly acted romance of forbidden love. It is the Holiday season of 1952-53 and Therese (Rooney Mara) is a Manhattan department store clerk in her early twenties. She is smart and attractive and has come to New York to make her way in the post-war culture. She has male suitors, but it’s a middle-aged, affluent woman from suburbs that stops her in her tracks. Therese has no experience in same-sex relationships, but the older woman Carol (Cate Blanchett) has. But Carol is a wife and mother, and the risks are greater for her.

Filmmaker Todd Haynes loves Douglas Sirk’s women’s melodramas of the 1950s, and he has earned the ability to play in that sandbox with Far from Heaven, the Mildred Pierce miniseries and now Carol. Haynes evokes the period perfectly. Just like Far from Heaven, Carol is beautifully photographed by Edward Lachman. Carol uses music composed by the great Elmer Bernstein, who scored Haynes’ Far from Heaven and who died in 2004.

Both lead actresses have justifiably garnered nominations for acting awards. Rooney brilliantly embodies Therese’s confusion, yearning and excitement, her immaturity and her resolve. Blanchett, of course, nails the role of Carol, with her impulsive wilfulness, masterful charm and then panicked desperation.

Carol’s husband is played by Kyle Chandler, who after Friday Night Lights, just keeps showing up in wonderful movies: Super 8, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, The Wolf of Wall Street, and in a dazzling performance as the alcoholic dad in The Spectacular Now. Initially, I thought that the role of Carol’s husband was pretty one-dimensional. But, upon reflection, I realized that Chandler is so good that I hadn’t recognized how complex the husband’s character is – so afraid of his mother and of social convention, yet so hopelessly drawn to Carol.

Sarah Paulson, so unforgettable as Mistress Epps in 12 Years a Slave, the mom in Mud and Miss Isringhausen in Deadwood, is striking once again as Carol’s lesbian childhood friend.

Carol may be the most well-acted film of the year. It’s a satisfying romance that most audiences will enjoy.