The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

Movies to See Right Now

by
COCO
Courtesy of ©2017 Disney•Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Many of the best movies of the year are in theaters right now, and here are the very best:

  • Pixar’s Coco is a moving and authentic dive into Mexican culture, and it’s visually spectacular.
  • The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s imaginative, operatic inter-species romance may become the most-remembered film of 2017.
  • Lady Bird , an entirely fresh coming of age comedy that explores the mother-daughter relationship – an impressive debut for Greta Gerwig as a writer and director.
  • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a powerful combination of raw emotion and dark hilarity with an acting tour de force from Frances McDormand and a slew of great actors.
  • Darkest Hour, Gary Oldman brings alive Winston Churchill in an overlooked historical moment – when it looked like Hitler was going to win WW II.
THE SHAPE OF WATER

Here’s the rest of my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far. Most of the ones from earlier this year are available on video.

Other current choices:

  • The Disaster Artist, James Franco’s hilarious docucomedy about the making of one of the most unintentionally funny movies of all time.
  • The ambitious satire The Square.
  • LBJ, an effective and engrossing Cliff Notes history lesson, with another fine performance by Woody Harrelson.
  • Murder on the Orient Express is a moderately entertaining lark.
  • Novitiate, the tediously grim story of a seeker looking for spiritual love and sacrifice, with a sadistic abbess delivering too much of the latter.

My Streams of the Week are the seven best movies of the year that are already available on video: Truman, The Big Sick, Wind River, Dunkirk, Norman: The Moderate Rise and the Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, The Founder and The Sense of an Ending.

Turner Classic Movies is giving us a wonderful New Year’s Eve present – an all day Thin Man marathon. William Powell and Myrna Loy are cinema’s favorite movie couple for a reason – just settle in and watch Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man and its sequels do what they do best – banter, canoodle, solve crimes and, of course, tipple.

Myrna Loy and William Powell as Nora and Nick Charles during the Holidays

Movies to See Right Now

by
COCO

We’ve had a surge of universally acclaimed movies open in Silicon Valley, and here are the very best (some of the links will go live later in the weekend):

  • Pixar’s Coco, a moving and authentic dive into Mexican culture. It’s visually spectacular, too.
  • Lady Bird , an entirely fresh coming of age comedy that explores the mother-daughter relationship – an impressive debut for Greta Gerwig as a writer and director.
  • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a powerful combination of raw emotion and dark hilarity with an acting tour de force from Frances McDormand and a slew of great actors.
  • Darkest Hour, Gary Oldman brings alive Winston Churchill in an overlooked historical moment – when it looked like Hitler was going to win WW II.
Gary Oldman in DARKEST HOUR

Here’s the rest of my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far. Several are in theaters right now, and most of the rest are available on video.

Other current choices:

      • The Disaster Artist, James Franco’s hilarious docucomedy about the making of one of the most unintentionally funny movies of all time.
      • The ambitious satire The Square.
      • LBJ, an effective and engrossing Cliff Notes history lesson, with another fine performance by Woody Harrelson.
      • Murder on the Orient Express is a moderately entertaining lark.
      • Novitiate, the tediously grim story of a seeker looking for spiritual love and sacrifice, with a sadistic abbess delivering too much of the latter.
      • Skip the well-cast, well-acted meandering to nowhere that is Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).
      TRUMAN

      Here’s my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far. Several are in theaters right now, and most of the rest are available on video.

      My Stream of the Week is your chance to see what may be the year’s best movie – and see it at home. It’s the deeply emotionally affecting and humane Spanish film Truman. which had a very brief US theatrical run early this year. Truman is now streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

      The Movie Gourmet has no television recommendations this week. Go to a theater – this is the prime season for movie-going. The best movies of the year are in theaters right now.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf in LADY BIRD

We’ve had a surge of universally acclaimed movies open in Silicon Valley: Darkest Hour, Novitiate and The Shape of Water, along with The Disaster Artist (which looks like a hoot and a half).  The Florida Project and Pixar’s Coco have already been playing.   Of the current crop, I’ve already added two Must Sees to my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far:

  • Lady Bird , an entirely fresh coming of age comedy that explores the mother-daughter relationship – an impressive debut for Greta Gerwig as a writer and director.
  • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a powerful combination of raw emotion and dark hilarity with an acting tour de force from Frances McDormand and a slew of great actors.

Here’s the rest of my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far.  Several are in theaters right now, and most of the rest are available on video.

Other choices:

My DVD/Stream of the Week is The Big Sick, the best American movie of the first half of 2017 and the best romantic comedy in years. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll fall in love. The Big Sick can be rented in DVD from Netflix and Redbox and can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

The Movie Gourmet has no television recommendations this week. Go to a theater – this is prime time for movie going.

Frances McDormand and Peter Dinklage in THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

Movies to See Right Now

by
Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf in LADY BIRD

The prestige movies are rolling out in theaters and I’ve already added two Must Sees to my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far:

  • Lady Bird , an entirely fresh coming of age comedy that explores the mother-daughter relationship – an impressive debut for Greta Gerwig as a writer and director.
  • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a powerful combination of raw emotion and dark hilarity with an acting tour de force from Frances McDormand and a slew of great actors.

Other choices:

  • My Stream of the Week is Louder Than Bombs, the intricately constructed family drama from writer-director Joachim Trier (his new film Thelma is rolling out). Louder Than Bombs is now available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.

    On December 3, Turner Classic Movies presents Pushover, which is highly recommended on my list of Overlooked Noir. Tracking a notorious criminal, the cop (Fred MacMurray) follows – and then dates – the gangster’s girlfriend (“Introducing Kim Novak”) as part of the job, but then falls for her himself. He decides that, if he can double cross BOTH the cops and the criminal, he can wind up with the loot AND Kim Novak. (This is a film noir, so we know he’s not destined for a tropical beach with an umbrella drink.)

    Fred MacMurray and Kim Novak in PUSHOVER
    Fred MacMurray and Kim Novak in PUSHOVER

Movies to See Right Now

by
Woody Harrelson and Frances McDormand in THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

For your Thanksgiving viewing pleasure, complete with four new movie recommendations, here are my picks for the long weekend. My top two recommendations are

  • Lady Bird , an entirely fresh coming of age comedy that explores the mother-daughter relationship – an impressive debut for Greta Gerwig as a writer and director.
  • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a powerful combination of raw emotion and dark hilarity with an acting tour de force from Frances McDormand and a slew of great actors.

Other choices:

.

Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf in LADY BIRD

My DVD/Stream of the Week is a different kind of Thanksgiving movie – a dysfunctional family thriller. Deadfall is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and can be streamed from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On November 29, Turner Classic Movies presents The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. John Ford was the greatest director of Westerns and this is his masterpiece, showcasing both James Stewart and John Wayne. It took one kind of man to explore and tame the West and another kind of man to bring peace and prosperity. Ford uses the genre of the Western to deconstruct the mythology of the West. It’s also a mature Ford’s contemplation of all those shoot ’em ups from earlier in his career. Jimmy and the Duke are joined by Andy Devine, Woody Strode, Vera Mills, Edmond O’Brien and Lee Marvin. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is on my list of A Classic American Movie Primer – 5 to start with.

Lee Marvin and Jphn Wayne in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE
John Wayne and James Stewart in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE
James Stewart in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED): who cares and why?

by
Grace Van Patten, Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler in THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED)

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), writer-director Noah Baumbach’s latest family comedy, is entirely character-driven (usually a very good thing). We really don’t see anything on screen that isn’t intended to reveal something about a character – a man’s lack of confidence, his father’s vanity, his daughter’s surprising well-groundedness. The story (not really a plot) moves from set piece to set piece, beginning with a funny (and futile) search for a Manhattan parking space, each depicting the family quirks and tensions.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) is star studded (Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Grace Van Patten, Emma Thompson, Judd Hirsch, a cameo by Sigourney Weaver) and very well-acted. The problem is that, once I was introduced to these characters, I really wasn’t interested in what would happen to them next. I only lasted 42 minutes before reaching for the remote.

Baumbach has become somewhat of a brand name for naval-gazing (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, Greenberg, Mistress America), and his work has tended toward the Woody Allen neurotic New Yorker genre, only with less depth and FAR less comedy.

You can stream The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) on Netflix Instant, but I can’t imagine why you would want to.