Demolition

Movies to See Right Now

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Devin Druid in LOUDER THAN BOMBS
Devin Druid in LOUDER THAN BOMBS

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

Movies to See Right Now

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DEMOLITION
DEMOLITION

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

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Ethan Hawke in BORN TO BE BLUE
Ethan Hawke in BORN TO BE BLUE

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
Kirk Douglas and Woody Strode in SPARTACUS

DEMOLITION: a most entertaining nervous breakdown

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DEMOLITION
DEMOLITION

I was thoroughly entertained during Demolition, but I’m very ambivalent about just why that was.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a corporate striver who suddenly loses his wife in a car accident and then, well, he loses it. He has what we used to call a Nervous Breakdown (I don’t what the current euphemism is), and it’s a doozy. His behavior becomes strange and then bizarre – and we can’t keep our eyes off him.

And that’s what causes my ambivalence. In real life, nervous breakdowns aren’t very entertaining. The folks who suffer may pull the covers up over their heads, lapse into sobbing or catatonia or panic attacks – it’s just not fun to watch. But Gyllenhaal gets to do a goofy dance through crowded Manhattan streets, demolish stuff without committing vandalism, and it’s all great fun.

Demolition poses the question of whether this guy was a wackadoodle all along whose marital routine was keeping him functional –  or whether he really loved his wife and the sheer grief from her loss knocked him for a loop. We find out at the end, but it’s really not that important.

Our hero encounters a woman who’s a bit of an oddball (Naomi Watts) and her kid, a smart and creative boy who is heading into adolescence with a major identity issue.

Chris Cooper and Polly Draper are superb as Gyllenhaal’s grieving in-laws. Cooper is also Gyllenhaal’s boss and brilliantly modulates his responses as he tries to be appropriately sympathetic and supportive – until Gyllenhall’s behavior becomes just too bizarre and offensive. Draper has a smaller role, but gets to deliver a stunning monologue near the end. Judah Davis is exceptional as the kid.

If you look at Gyllenhaal’s body of work (Donnie Darko, The Good Girl, Brokeback Mountain, Zodiac, End of Watch, Prisoners, Nightcrawler), you first note that he’s in some very good movies, movies that are that good because of his performances. And you see that his characters range from the tightly wound to the maladjusted to the way-out-there cra-cra. If you need an actor from the post-Nicholas Cage generation to play “tortured”, Jake’s your guy.

Gyllenhaal is so charismatic that Demolition is entertaining (unless you overthink it, as I did).