Strangers on a Train

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: RIDERS OF JUSTICE, a Magnet release. © Rolf Konow. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing

For the Fourth of July weekend, I’m recommending going to theaters to see The Sparks Brothers or In the Heights, OR streaming Riders of Justice.

Last night I saw one of the year’s most eagerly-awaited films – and it;s great: Questlove’s Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revo’ution Could Not Be Televised). Now in theaters and on Hulu.

IN THEATERS

  • The Sparks Brothers: Must be seen to be believed.
  • Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation: Two giants of American literature in their own words.
  • In the Heights: Vibrant, earnest and perfect for this moment. Also streaming on HBO Max.
  • Summer of 85: Director Francois Ozon reflects on how we remember our youth in this romantic teen coming of age story.
  • The Dry: a mystery as psychological as it is procedural. In theaters and also streaming on AppleTV, YouTube and Google Play
  • Undine: slow burn, barely flickering.
  • Censor: less scary and suspenseful than it is unpleasant.

ON VIDEO

Riders of Justice: It’s the year’s best movie so far. A character-driven comedy thriller embedded with deeper stuff. Marvelous. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.

Slow Machine: An incomprehensible art film that is surprisingly engrossing. At Laemmle now and coming to the Roxie.

The Courier: Benedict Cumberbatch stars in this true story of Cold War espionage. Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE

ON TV

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

On July 3, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting the 1951 Alfred Hitchcock suspense thriller Strangers on a Train – one of his very best. A hypothetical discussion about murdering inconvenient people turns out to be not so hypothetical.

Robert Walker plays Bruno, one of the creepiest villains in movie history.  Guy (San Jose native Farley Granger) thinks that Bruno is just an oddball – until it’s too late. The tennis match and carousel finale are epic set pieces.

Movies to See Right Now

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Ray Romano and Holly Hunter in THE BIG SICK

This week’s primary recommendation is to go out and see The Big Sick, the best American movie of the year so far. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll fall in love.  Here are more choices (but see The Big Sick first!):

  • Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly time to the beat of music.
  • The Journey is a fictional imagining of a real historical event and is an acting showcase for Colm Meaney and Timothy Spall as the two longtime blood enemies who collaborated to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
  • Okja, another wholly original creation from the imagination of master filmmaker Bong Joon Ho, is streaming on Netflix and opening in theaters.
  • The amusingly naughty but forgettable comedy The Little Hours is based on the dirty fun in your Western Civ class, Boccaccio’s The Decameron.
  • The character-driven suspenser Moka is a showcase for French actresses Emmanuelle Devos and Nathalie Baye.
  • The bittersweet dramedy The Hero has one thing going for it – the wonderfully appealing Sam Elliott.

In my DVD/Stream of the Week, the thriller Locke,  Tom Hardy never leaves his car and, for the entire duration of the movie, we only see his upper body, his eyes in the rearview mirror, the dashboard and the roadway lit by his headlights. All the other characters are voiced – he talks to them on the Bluetooth device in his BMW.  Sure, that’s a gimmick – but it works because it complements the core story about the consequences of responsibility.  Locke is available on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On July 15 Turner Classic Movies reminds why Alfred Hitchcock was the master of the suspenseful psychological thriller.  To paraphrase Hitchcock, when a bomb under a table explodes, the audience is SURPRISED.  But when the audience knows that the bomb under the table is ticking away, that creates SUSPENSE.

  • One of Hitchcock’s all-time best was Strangers on a Train.   A hypothetical discussion about murdering inconvenient people turns out to be not so hypothetical.  Robert Walker plays one of the creepiest villains in movie history. The tennis match and carousel finale are unforgettable set pieces.
  • Rope is based on the notorious 1924 Leopold and Loeb thrill kill murder in 1924.   Look for John Dall playing the insufferably smug textbook narcissist while his Nervous Nellie partner (San Jose’s own Farley Granger) is about to snap. Can they outwit Jimmy Stewart?  Hitchcock employed a gimmick to make the entire movie look like it was photographed in one single shot.

ROPE
Farley Granger, James Stewart and John Dall in ROPE

Movies to See Right Now

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LA LA LAND
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in LA LA LAND

My movie recommendations for this Holiday weekend begin with these two crowd pleasers:

  • La La Land: the extraordinarily vivid romantic musical staring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
  • Lion: an emotionally affecting family drama.

Other top recommendations:

  • Manchester by the Sea: MUST SEE. Don’t miss Casey Affleck’s career-topping performance in the emotionally authentic drama .
  • Elle: MUST SEE (but increasingly hard to find in theaters). A perverse wowzer with the year’s top performance by Isabelle Huppert. Manchester by the Sea is #2 and Elle is #4 on my Best Movies of 2016.
  • Loving: The love story that spawned a historic Supreme Court decision.
  • Mascots: the latest mockumentary from Christopher Guest (Best in Show) and it’s very funny. Mascots is streaming on Netflix Instant.
  • The Eagle Huntress: This documentary is a Feel Good movie for the whole family, blending the genres of girl power, sports competition and cultural tourism.

Also in theaters or on video:

  • Despite a delicious performance by one of my faves, Michael Shannon, I’m not recommending Nocturnal Animals.
  • Arrival with Amy Adams, is real thinking person’s sci-fi. Every viewer will be transfixed by the first 80% of Arrival. How you feel about the finale depends on whether you buy into the disconnected-from-linear-time aspect or you just get confused, like I did.
  • The remarkably sensitive and realistic indie drama Moonlight is at once a coming of age tale, an exploration of addicted parenting and a story of gay awakening. It’s almost universally praised, but I thought that the last act petered out.
  • Skip the dreary and somnolent Jackie – Natalie Portman’s exceptional impersonation isn’t enough.
  • If you’re interested in the Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune or cinema in general (and can still find the movie in a theater), I recommend the documentary Mifune: The Last Samurai.

My DVD/Stream of the Week picks are, for the rest of 2016, this year’s best films that are already available on video: Hell or High Water, Eye in the Sky, Chevalier, Weiner, Take Me to the River and Green Room.

For New Year’s Week, Turner Classic Movies is bringing us some great choices:

  • December 31st – Lawrence of Arabia: it’s time to revisit a spectacle. For decades, many of us watched this epic squeezed into tinny-sounding TVs. In 1989, I was fortunate enough to see the director’s cut in an old movie palace. Now technology has caught up, and modern large screen HD televisions can do justice to this wide screen classic. Similarly, modern home sound systems can work with the great Maurice Jarre soundtrack. Nobody has ever created better epics than director David Lean (Bridge Over the River Kwai, Dr. Zhivago). Peter O’Toole stars at the moment of his greatest physical beauty. The rest of the cast is unsurpassed: Omar Sharif, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, thousands of extras and entire herds of camels. The vast and severe Arabian desert is a character unto itself. Settle in and watch the whole thing – and remember what “epic” really means.
  • December 31st – Some Like It Hot: This Billy Wilder masterpiece is my pick for the best comedy of all time. Seriously – the best comedy ever. And it still works today. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play most of the movie in drag (and Tony is kind of cute). Curtis must continue the ruse although he’s next to Marilyn Monroe at her most delectable. Curtis then dons a yachting cap and does a dead-on Cary Grant impression as the heir to an industrial fortune. Joe E. Brown gets the last word with one of cinema’s best closing lines.
  • January 3rd – Cool Hand Luke, with Paul Newman as an iconic 1960s anti-hero, a charismatic supporting performance by George Kennedy, the unforgettable boiled egg-eating contest and the great movie line “What we have here is a failure to communicate”.

And on New Years Day, all you non-football fans can tune into TCM to binge-watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, Strangers on a Train, The Birds, Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, Shadow of a Doubt, Torn Curtain, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Family Plot, Marnie and The Trouble with Harry.

How to Run a Chain Gang and Influence People in COOL HAND LUKE
How to Run a Chain Gang and Influence People in COOL HAND LUKE

Movies to See Right Now

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DEAD MAN'S BURDEN on VOD

We’re in June, which means an emphasis on “tent pole” movies – the big blockbusters aimed at attracting mobs of kids and teens.  The bottom line: there are just a few intelligent movies for adults in theaters now, but more available on Video On Demand and on broadcast TV. Here are my recommendations for this week:

  • Shadow Dancer, about a young single mom in the IRA, is showing in some theaters now, but can be hard to find. It is also available streaming from Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.
  • Much Ado About Nothing takes the homework out of Shakespeare and puts the screwball comedy back in.
  • The East is an absorbing and thought-provoking eco-terrorism thriller.
  • Before Midnight, the year’s best romance, continuing the story of Ethan Hawke’s Jesse and Julie Delpy’s Celine from Before Sunrise and Before Sunset.
  • The documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is Alex Gibney’s inside look at an improbable scandal. It’s also available streaming from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and other VOD outlets.
  • I like the unsentimental Western Dead Man’s Burden, available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, Vudu and other VOD outlets.
  • The insightful HBO documentary Love, Marilyn uses Marilyn Monroe’s recently discovered letters and journals to give us a candid yet sympathetic inside look at Marilyn.
  • Hey Bartender, the entertaining documentary about the trend toward Craft Bartending, is hard to find in theaters, but easy to find on VOD (Amazon, Vudu, iTunes).

Also out right now:

  • Fast & Furious 6 has exciting chases, a silly story, a smoldering Michelle Rodriguez and a hard ass Gina Carano.
  • There’s cleverness in the psychological thriller Berberian Sound Studio, but just not enough thrills for a thriller.
  • Also out on VOD, Nancy, Please is a dark comedy about neurotic obsession among the over-educated.  Not that funny.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the Oscar-nominated Chilean historical drama No, with Gael Garcia Bernal.  No is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Vudu.

Turner Classic Movies wraps up its June film noir festival tonight with Czar of Noir Eddie Muller presenting films from the novels of Cornell Woolrich (The Leopard Man, Deadline at Dawn) and Raymond Chandler (Murder My Sweet, The Big Sleep, Lady in the Lake, Strangers on a Train).

 

TCM’s June feast of noir

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Humphrey Bogart in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)

It’s more than a film fest, it’s a feast of film noir.

This June, Turner Classic Movies’ Friday Night Spotlight will focus on Noir Writers.  The guest programmer and host will be San Francisco’s Eddie Muller, founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation.  The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost.  It also sponsors Noir City, an annual festival of film noir in San Francisco, which often plays newly restored films and movies not available on DVD.  (My favorite part is Noir City’s Thursday evening Bad Girl Night featuring its most memorable femmes fatale.)

Muller (the Czar of Noir) has selected films from the work of noir novelists.  Friday night, he kicks off with films from the novels of Dashiell Hammett: the 1931 and more famous 1941 versions of The Maltese Falcon, plus the 1936 version (Satan Met a Lady) and After the Thin Man and The Glass Key.  (Muller informs us that Hammett pronounced his first name da-SHEEL.)

On June 14, Muller continues with the work of David Goodis, The Burglar, The Burglars, The Unfaithful, Shoot the Piano Player and Nightfall.  (You may have seen Goodis’ Dark Passage with Bogie and Bacall.)

On June 21, we’ll see films from the novels of Jonathan Latimer (Nocturne, They Won’t Believe Me) and James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice).

TCM and the Czar of Noir wrap up on June 28 with movies from the novels of Cornell Woolrich (The Leopard Man, Deadline at Dawn) and Raymond Chandler (Murder My Sweet, The Big Sleep, Lady in the Lake, Strangers on a Train).

These two movies aren’t part of the Friday night series, but on June 11, TCM features two of the nastiest noirs:  Detour and The Hitchhiker.

Set your DVR and settle in for dramatic shadows, sarcastic banter and guys in fedoras making big mistakes for love, lust and avarice.

Anne Bancroft and Aldo Ray in NIGHTFALL

Coming up on TV: Strangers on a Train

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On June 24, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting this 1951 Alfred Hitchcock suspense thriller – one of his very best. A hypothetical discussion about murdering inconvenient people turns out to be not so hypothetical.

Robert Walker plays one of the creepiest villains in movie history.  The tennis match and carousel finale are great set pieces.

All new – Movies to See Right Now

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Christopher Lee and Ewan McGregor in Beginners

This week, the best choices are the sweet, funny and thoughtful Beginners and Midnight in Paris.  If you have kids, Pixar’s Cars 2 is an excellent choice (adults will especially enjoy the James Bond spoof thread).  So is Super 8, a wonderful coming of age story embedded in a sci fi action thriller.

In Beginners, Ewan McGregor plays a guy who tends to the depressive and sabotages his relationships.  His father (Christopher Plummer) has just died after coming out of the closet at age 75.  Can he make things work out with Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds)?

Woody Allen’s sweet and smart Midnight in Paris is his best comedy in twenty-five years. Owen Wilson accompanies fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where she is intrigued by pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, leaving Wilson to explore midnight Paris and time travel back to the Paris of the Lost Generation.

13 Assassins is brilliantly staged and photographed, and is one of the best recent action films; an honorable samurai must assemble and lead a team of thirteen to hack their way through a psychotically sadistic noble’s 200 bodyguards.

In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best.

The Hangover Part 2 is just not original enough, and, consequently, not funny enough.

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life contains a good 90-minute family drama that is completely derailed by an additional hour of mind-numbingly self-important claptrap.

For trailers and other choices,see Movies to See Right Now.

I haven’t yet seen the horse whisperer documentary Buck or the comic road tripper The Trip, which open this weekend. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is the nastily hard-bitten noir Kiss Me Deadly.

Movies on TV this week include the Hitchcock thriller Strangers on a Train and Kiss Me Deadly on TCM.

Updated Movies to See Right Now

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Pedro Almodovar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

The Must See films in theaters this week remain Inside Job and The Social Network. Hereafter and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest are also good choices.  Morning Glory (more tomorrow) is a passable comedy.

Charles Ferguson’s brilliant documentary Inside Job may be the most important movie of the year. It is a harsh but fair explanation of the misdeeds that led to the recent near-collapse of the global financial system. Unexpectedly, the film begins in Iceland, setting the stage for the collapse and kicking off the easily understandable explanations of the various tricks and bamboozles that have hidden behind their own complexity.

Hereafter: For the first time, Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon, The Damned United) venture into the supernatural with the story of three people and their individual experiences with death. The most skeptical, nonspiritual viewer (me) finds this to be a compelling film.

The question of What Comes Next is unanswered, and less interesting than the film’s observations of what happens on this Earth to living humans. Eastwood’s genius is in delivering moments of complete truthfulness, one after the other, across a wide range of settings, from intimate human encounters to the big CGI-enhanced action sequence at the beginning of the film. Eastwood is an actor’s director, and star Matt Damon leads a set of excellent performances, especially by Bryce Dallas Howard, Frankie McLaren, Cecile de France and Richard Kind.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is an acceptable final chapter in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy and best as the showcase for Noomi Rapace’s final performance as Lisbeth Salander. If you’ve seen the first two movies, you should complete the trilogy by seeing this somewhat plodding film. As with the first two films, Hornet’s Nest centers on Rapace’s Lisbeth, a tiny fury of a Goth hacker, damaged and driven. Lisbeth is always mad AND always gets even.

The Social Network: The birth story of Facebook is a riveting tale of college sophomores that are brilliant, ambitious, immature, self-absorbed and disloyal – and about to become zillionaires. It’s a triumph for actor Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland, Zombieland and Solitary Man), director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War). It’s already on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far.

Leaving (Partir) is a romantic tragedy with another powerful performance by Kristin Scott Thomas and not much else. Howl has a fine performance by James Franco, but is marred by an unsuccessful animation. The Town is hanging around theaters and, without strongly recommending it, I can say that it is a satisfying Hollywood thriller.

For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.

I have not yet seen Welcome to the Rileys. This Sundance hit features James Gandolfini as a Midwestern plumbing contractor who visits New Orleans for a conference, meets teen runaway Kristin Stewart, and decides to stay. I also haven’t seen Fair Game, the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson story. You can see the trailers at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the Week is Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. My top two American films of the year are now available on DVD – the indie Winter’s Bone and Pixar’s Toy Story 3. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.

Movies on TV include Leave Her to Heaven, Seven Days in May and Strangers on a Train on TCM.

Updated Movies to See Right Now

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Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network

Make sure that you see The Social Network.   The birth story of Facebook is a riveting tale of college sophomores that are brilliant, ambitious, immature, self-absorbed and disloyal – and about to become zillionaires.  It’s a triumph for actor Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland, Zombieland and Solitary Man), director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War).  It’s already on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far.

I’m still pushing the hardhitting documentary The Tillman Story. Without strongly recommending it, I can say that The Town is a satisfying Hollywood thriller.  You can skip Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger.

For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.

My DVD of the Week, like The Social Network, is a classic send up of contemporary business history:  Barbarians at the Gate.     For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.

I’m featuring Hail! The Conquering Hero on TV this week.  Other Movies on TV include  Strangers on a Train, The Big Sleep and The Best Years of Our Lives, all coming up on TCM.  Baseball fans might still be able to find Ken Burns’ The Tenth Inning on PBS.

5 Classic American Movies to Start With

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All About Eve: "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!"

My sister-in-law just asked me a great question:  name five movies that will introduce a high school student to classic American films.  (Even more interesting, the student is here on an exchange program from Europe.)   So I came up with a list in just a few minutes: a drama, a comedy, a Western, a suspense thriller and a film noir:

All About Eve

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Strangers on a Train

Double Indemnity

Sullivan’s Travels

If you see these five movies, you will be introduced to directors John Ford, Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Preston Sturges, plus movie stars John Wayne, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe, Edward G. Robinson, Lee Marvin, George Sanders, Joel McRae and Veronica Lake – not a bad intro.

To see descriptions along with trailers or clips, go to A Classic American Movie Primer – 5 to Start With.