Let me make another pitch for my pick for the year’s best movie so far – the Polish drama Ida, about a novice nun who is stunned to learn that her biological parents were Jewish victims of the Holocaust – watching shot after shot in Ida is like walking through a museum gazing at masterpiece paintings one after the other. I took The Wife last week, and she admired Ida, too.
Get ready for funniest film of the year – the Canadian knee-slapper The Grand Seduction opens next week, and it’s a guaranteed audience pleaser.
Here are other good movie choices:
- Words and Pictures is an unusually thoughtful romantic comedy.
- Fading Gigolo, a wonderfully sweet romantic comedy written, directed and starring John Tuturro is a crowd-pleaser.
- Locke is a drama with a gimmick that works.
- In the documentary Finding Vivian Maier, we go on journey to discover why one of the great 20th Century photographers kept her own work a secret.
- The raucous comedy Neighbors is a pleasant enough diversion.
- Like all Wes Anderson movies, The Grand Budapest Hotel is wry and imaginative, but it’s not one of his most engaging.
My DVD/Stream of the Weeks is the highly original teen misfit movie Terri. Terri is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
Coming up on Turner Classic Movies on June 5 is one of the very best Westerns, Winchester ’73 (1950). This was the first pairing of James Stewart with director Anthony Mann; the duo went on to create several more edgy “psychological Westerns” with atypically ambiguous heroes. Stewart’s emotionally scarred character is driven to hunt down a bad, bad guy (film noir stalwart Dan Duryea); his motivation is later revealed to be deeper than it first appears. Millard Mitchell plays Stewart’s buddy, and the two have great chemistry. Sexy Shelly Winters and sleazy John Ireland also sparkle in supporting roles. A very young Rock Hudson plays an American Indian warrior (shirtless, of course).
