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.
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.
The brilliant indie comedy about personal identity, Dear White People; and
The best Hollywood movie of 2014, the thriller Gone Girl, with a career-topping performance by Rosamund Pike.
I saw Dear White People at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and have been telling folks about it for months – it’s on my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far. I’m gonna add Gone Girl to the list as well.
I haven’t seen it, but the universally praised Birdman, with Michael Keaton and Edward Norton, opens more widely today.
Other recommendations:
J.K. Simmons is brilliant in the intense indie drama Whiplash, a study of motivation and abuse, ambition and obsession.
The dark little French psychological drama The Blue Room packs a cleverly constructed story in its brisk 75 minutes.
The successful period thriller The Two Faces of January sets a dark-hearted and shadowy story in sunny Greece. The Two Faces of January is in theaters and is also available streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
The exceptionally well-acted dramedy The Skeleton Twinscontains several inspired moments.
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 ONCE AGAIN the exquisite Polish drama Ida – the best foreign film of 2014. Ida is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
Don’t miss the campy Vincent Price horror classic The Tingler; it’s on Turner Classic Movies tonight, and it’s perfect for Halloween.
Next week, TCM is bringing us some of my faves:
Brute Force(1947): This Jules Dassin noir is by far the best of the Hollywood prison dramas of the 30s and 40s. A convict (Burt Lancaster) is taunted by a sadistic guard (Hume Cronyn) and plans an escape. It’s a pretty violent film for the 1940s, and was inspired by the 1946 Battle of Alcatraz in which three cons and two guards were killed. Charles Bickford, Whit Bissell and Sam Levene are excellent as fellow cons. On my list of Best Prison Movies.
The Third Man (1949): Shot amid the ruins of post-war Vienna, this film noir classic sets an American pulp novelist (Joseph Cotten) to find out what happened to his pre-ward buddy, who turns out to have become a notorious black marketeer (Orson Welles) with a set of associates each shadier than the last. This has it all, a fated relationship with a European beauty (Alida Valli), stunningly effective black-and-white photography, an enchanting musical theme and one of cinema’s most sharply surprising reveals of a new character. There are two unforgettable set pieces – a nervous interview in a Ferris Wheel and a climactic chase through the sewers.
Bullitt (1968) features Steve McQueen and one of cinema’s most iconic and influential chase scenes. McQueen’s 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback and the bad guy’s 1968 Dodge Charger careen through San Francisco, taking almost 11 minutes to race from Fisherman’s Wharf to Brisbane. Classic.
Hot Rods to Hell(1967): Not a good movie, but amusing as an unintentionally funny guilty pleasure.
Orson Welles in THE THIRD MAN – the most iconic smirk in cinema
As the French psychological drama The Blue Room opens, a couple is having sex. We quickly learn that they are both married, but not to each other. And next, we see the man being interviewed in a police station. But The Blue Room is not a conventional police procedural, because the audience doesn’t know what crime he is suspected of committing. He knows what the crime is, but he doesn’t know how it happened. In The Blue Room‘s brisk 75 minutes, more and more is revealed to the audience and to our protagonist. He finally understands it all, but it’s too late.
The structure of the story is very inventive, co-written by the movie’s stars, Mathieu Amalric and Stéphanie Cléau, and directed by Amalric. Amalric is very good as a guy who spends the movie wondering “how did I get here, and how bad can this get?” It’s a dark little story that requires the audience to keep pace – and it’s pretty successful.
