My Golden Days

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

Movies to See Right Now

by
MY GOLDEN DAYS
MY GOLDEN DAYS

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.

Max Schreck in NOSFERATU
Max Schreck in NOSFERATU

MY GOLDEN DAYS: the urgency of first love

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MY GOLDEN DAYS
MY GOLDEN DAYS

The first love depicted in Arnaud Desplechin’s coming of age film My Golden Days is completely evocative. That first love is inevitable even if the young lovers don’t know it yet, and then filled with passion, importance, obsession, angst, conflict, breakups and makeups. And then it runs its course.

The performance of Lou Roy-Lecollinet as the unpredictable object of the young protagonist’s affection really elevates My Golden Days. Roy-Lecollinet has looks which won’t attract every guy, but would be irresistible to some. She’s able to convincingly play a girl with a devastating combination of confidence, forthrightness, charm, wit, impulsivity and a wandering eye.

That story makes up the core of My Golden Days, a flashback bookended by the contemporary, middle-aged version of the protagonist (Mathieu Amalric). The story of young romance is perfect – one that we can all recognize. But, in the epilogue, the Amalric character (who has lived a full and eventful life in the 15-20 years since) is oddly still fervently bitter about what happened years before; with that distance, most of us would look back with nostalgia or, at least, a wistful acknowledgement of lessons learned. I was a bit put off.

And what’s with the lame title My Golden Days, which makes this sound like the story set in a retirement home? The original title is Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse which I think translates into Three Memories of My Youth – that would be better and there’s gotta be plenty of more appealing and descriptive titles.

My Golden Days, which I saw at Cinequest, is a movie that anyone who is decades removed from first love should see.

 

Cinequest: MY GOLDEN DAYS

by
MY GOLDEN DAYS
MY GOLDEN DAYS

The first love depicted in Arnaud Desplechin’s coming of age film My Golden Days is completely evocative.  That first love is inevitable even if the young lovers don’t know it yet, and then filled with passion, importance, obsession, angst, conflict, breakups and makeups.  And then it runs its course.

The performance of Lou Roy-Lecollinet as the unpredictable object of the young protagonist’s affection really elevates My Golden Days.  Roy-Lecollinet has looks which won’t attract every guy, but would be irresistible to some.  She’s able to convincingly play a girl with a devastating combination of confidence, forthrightness, charm, wit, impulsivity and a wandering eye.

That story makes up the core of My Golden Days, a flashback bookended by the contemporary, middle-aged version of the protagonist (Mathieu Amalric).  The story of young romance is perfect – one that we can all recognize.  But, in the epilogue, the Amalric character (who has lived a full and eventful life in the 15-20 years since) is oddly still fervently bitter about what happened years before; with that distance, most of us would look back with nostalgia or, at least, a wistful acknowledgement of lessons learned.  I was a bit put off.

And what’s with the lame title My Golden Days, which makes this sound like the story set in a retirement home?  The original title is Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse which I think translates into Three Memories of My Youth – that would be better and there’s gotta be plenty of more appealing and descriptive titles.

My Golden Days, which I saw at Cinequest, is a movie that anyone who is decades removed from first love should see.