I Want to Live

My recommendation this week – don’t go see Fifty Shades of Grey; instead see a good movie and then have real sex.

• Clint Eastwood’s thoughtful and compelling American Sniper, with harrowing action and a career-best performance from Bradley Cooper.
• The inspiring Selma, well-crafted and gripping throughout (but with an unfortunate historical depiction of LBJ).
• The Belgian drama Two Days, One Night with Marion Cotillard, which explores the limits of emotional endurance.
• The cinematically important and very funny Birdman. You can still find Birdman, but you may have to look around a bit. It has justifiably garnered several Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
• Reese Witherspoon is superb in the Fight Your Demons drama Wild, and Laura Dern may be even better.
• The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
• Julianne Moore’s superb performance is the only reason to see Still Alice;
• The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.
• I was underwhelmed by the brooding drama A Most Violent Year – well-acted and a superb sense of time and place (NYC in 1981) but not gripping enough to thrill.

My DVD/Stream of the week is the period thriller The Two Faces of January, available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

We’re enjoying Turner Classic Movies’ annual 31 Days of Oscar – a glorious month of Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films on TCM. This week, I am highlighting:

• I Want to Live! (February 15): Susan Hayward’s performance as a good hearted but very unlucky floozy won her an Oscar. It’s about a party girl who takes up with a couple of lowlifes. The lowlifes commit a murder and pin it on her. There is a great jazz soundtrack and a dramatic walk to The Chair.
• Inherit the Wind (February 19): Watch Spencer Tracy and Frederic March recreate the Scopes Monkey Trial in this character-driven courtroom drama.
• Caged (February 20): Want to see the prototype for Orange Is the New Black? Eleanor Parker (who died last year) played the naive young woman plunged into a harsh women’s prison filled with hard-bitten fellow prisoners and compassion-free guards. Parker was nominated for an acting Oscar, but her performance pales next to that of Hope Emerson, whose electric portrayal of a hulking guard also got an Oscar nod. Caged also features the fine character actresses Thelma Moorhead, Jane Darwell (Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath) and Ellen Corby (Grandma Walton here as a young woman). Sixty-four years later, Caged might still be the best women’s prison movie ever. Here’s my post on Caged for the 31 Days of Oscar blogathon.

Easter always triggers television networks to pull out their Biblical epics. If you’re going to watch just one Sword-and-Sandal classic, I recommend going full tilt with Barrabas, broadcast by Turner Classic Movies on April 16. This 1961 cornball stars Anthony Quinn as the Zelig-like title character. The story begins with the thief Barabbas avoiding crucifixion when Pontius Pilate swaps him out for Jesus (this part is actually in the Bible). Because the Crucifixion isn’t enough action for a two hour 17 minute movie, Barabbas is soon sent off as a slave to the salt mines, where he is rescued by a miraculously timely earthquake. He then joins the Roman gladiators, complete with a javelin-firing squad, gets lost in the catacombs and emerges to the Burning of Rome. He has encounters with the Emperor Nero and the Apostle Peter before he converts to Christianity – just in time for the mass crucifixion. Watch for an uncredited Sharon Tate as a patrician in the arena.