Pelican Dreams – The Movie Gourmet

Movies to See Right Now

November 28, 2014November 28, 2014 by movie gourmet

Michael Keaton and Edward Norton in BIRDMAN

The recent release The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. And Mrs. Genius. If you want a stark and grim look at the Old West, there’s Tommy Lee Jones’ feminist Western The Homesman.

I really don’t want anyone to miss the brilliant comedy about personal identity, Dear White People.
Plus:

The cinematically important and very funny Birdman; and
The best Hollywood movie of 2014, the thriller Gone Girl, with a career-topping performance by Rosamund Pike.
I liked the droll Swedish dramedy Force Majeure, which won an award at Cannes and is Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
J.K. Simmons is brilliant in the intense indie drama Whiplash, a study of motivation and abuse, ambition and obsession.
Bill Murray’s funny and not too sentimental St. Vincent.
I liked the meditatively paced nature documentary Pelican Dreams.
If you’re in the mood for a brutal, brutal World War II tank movie, there’s Fury.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the Dutch thriller Borgman, technically a horror film, but it’s horror for adults, without the gore and with lots of wit. I don’t often recommend a horror movie, but I’m all in on Borgman. Take it from me – you haven’t seen this movie before, and it’s endlessly entertaining. Borgman is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

You really haven’t sampled film noir if you haven’t seen Out of the Past (1947), and it’s coming up on Turner Classic Movies on December 2. Perhaps the model of a film noir hero, Robert Mitchum plays a guy who is cynical, strong, smart and resourceful – but still a sap for the femme fatale…played by the irresistible Jane Greer.

And on December 3, TCM brings us another delightfully trashy gem from Sam Fuller, my favorite tabloid reporter turned Hollywood auteur, The Naked Kiss.

Movies to See Right Now

November 21, 2014 by movie gourmet

Another weekend with something for every discerning cinephile:

I liked the droll Swedish dramedy Force Majeure, which won an award at Cannes and is Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
The brilliant comedy about personal identity, Dear White People.
The cinematically important and very funny Birdman; and
The best Hollywood movie of 2014, the thriller Gone Girl, with a career-topping performance by Rosamund Pike.
J.K. Simmons is brilliant in the intense indie drama Whiplash, a study of motivation and abuse, ambition and obsession.
Bill Murray’s funny and not too sentimental St. Vincent.
I liked the meditatively paced nature documentary Pelican Dreams.
If you’re in the mood for a brutal, brutal World War II tank movie, there’s Fury.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man, with its final, heartbreaking performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman. A Most Wanted Man is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Tonight Turner Classic Movies is airing Steven Spielberg’s brilliant debut feature Duel, a suspense thriller that is as entertaining now as in 1971. And on Sunday, TCM presents the film noir classic The Big Sleep, with Bogart and Bacall; The Wife and I just watched this again together a couple of weeks ago and were delighted.

Movies to See Right Now

November 14, 2014 by movie gourmet

There’s an outstanding movie that’s right for everyone this weekend:

The brilliant comedy about personal identity, Dear White People.
The cinematically important and very funny Birdman; and
The best Hollywood movie of 2014, the thriller Gone Girl, with a career-topping performance by Rosamund Pike.
J.K. Simmons is brilliant in the intense indie drama Whiplash, a study of motivation and abuse, ambition and obsession.
Bill Murray’s funny and not too sentimental St. Vincent.
I liked the meditatively paced nature documentary Pelican Dreams.
If you’re in the mood for a brutal, brutal World War II tank movie, there’s Fury.

I’m a fan of writer-director Greg Araki and actress Shailene Woodley, but I didn’t find enough in White Bird in a Blizzard to recommend it.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the delightfully rowdy geezer road trip comedy Land Ho!. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Tonight, Turner Classic Movies will show the 1970s Jack Nicholson drama Five Easy Pieces, which is on my list of Best Movies of All Time AND Wild Strawberries (scroll down) – if you’re going to watch one Ingmar Bergman movie, pick this one.

Movies to See Right Now

November 7, 2014 by movie gourmet

There are some EXCELLENT movies out now, but DO NOT MISS the brilliant comedy about personal identity, Dear White People.

Other great movie choices include:

The cinematically important and very funny Birdman; and
The best Hollywood movie of 2014, the thriller Gone Girl, with a career-topping performance by Rosamund Pike.
J.K. Simmons is brilliant in the intense indie drama Whiplash, a study of motivation and abuse, ambition and obsession.
Bill Murray’s funny and not too sentimental St. Vincent.
The dark little French psychological drama The Blue Room packs a cleverly constructed story in its brisk 75 minutes.
I liked the meditatively paced nature documentary Pelican Dreams.
If you’re in the mood for a brutal, brutal World War II tank movie, there’s Fury.

I’m a fan of writer-director Greg Araki and actress Shailene Woodley, but I didn’t find enough in White Bird in a Blizzard to recommend it.

Turner Classic Movies is bringing us two very funny movies this week:

tonight’s unintentionally funny Hot Rods to Hell (1967), a bad exploitation movie that works as a guilty pleasure.
the intentionally funny Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), that paragon of madcap comedies; Cary Grant leads a cast that is perfect, right down to Jack Carson as Officer O’Hara, the new cop on the beat.

PELICAN DREAMS: real pelicans, dreamy pace

October 31, 2014 by movie gourmet

Because I often fish along the Central California coast, I enjoy watching pelicans cruise majestically along the top of the bluffs and dive for fish in surgical strikes. The California Brown Pelican is the subject of Judy Irving’s meditative documentary Pelican Dreams. You may remember Irving’s surprise 2004 hit The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, a documentary so captivating that it played 28 weeks in San Jose.

Wild Parrots had two things going for it – the oddity of birds from tropical rainforests living wild in a cold and grimy city, along with a compellingly unusual human star. Pelican Dreams doesn’t have those OMG features, but it has the very interesting stories of two individual birds, along with the riches to rags to kinda riches story of the species. The California Brown Pelican was named as an endangered species in 1970, but the ban of DDT has allowed the population to rebound, so they are no longer listed as endangered, but still face threats from oil spills, fishing tackle and climate change.

Irving had been looking to do a pelican documentary and met with the director of a pelican rescue facility, but she didn’t know how to begin the movie. Then, two weeks later, a pelican landed in the middle of traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. Irving takes us through the life of that pelican, known to biologists as Pink 193 and named Gigi by Irving (for Golden Gate). Irving has a decidedly non-clinical view of the birds: “I would like a pelican in MY back yard”.

Pelican Dreams has a dreamy and meandering pace; like listening to Wyndham Hill New Age music for 80 minutes, it’s not a bad thing, you just need to be ready to settle in.

One more thing – the movie’s final shot (through a Panorama camera) is spectacular and unforgettable – a pelican diving at sunset – against a pink sky and purple coastline.

Here’s the trailer.