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:
- San Francisco International Film Festival: fest preview;
- SFIFF: previewing the documentaries;
- Women directors at SFIFF;
- SFIFF: under the radar this weekend.
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.
