The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Movies to See Right Now

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MUD

Now you must catch up on these excellent movie choices before lesser summer movies clog the screens at the multi-plex: 

  • Mud, the gripping and thoughtful story of two Arkansas boys embarking on a secret adventure with a man hiding from the authorities – learning more than they expected about love and loyalty. Mud is also one of the best movies of 2013.
  • At Any Price is a thought-provoking psychological drama and a rare glimpse into modern corporate agriculture.
  • Another thought-provoking father-son drama is The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper.
  • The surefire crowd pleaser The Sapphires is a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.
  • The French In the House is clever, darkly funny and slightly creepy.

Other films out right now: 

  • The Reluctant Fundamentalist offers a compelling performance by Riz Ahmed and a thriller ending, but holes in the story and the miscasting of Kate Hudson dim the effect.
  • Kon-Tiki is a faithful, but underwhelming account of a true life 5,000 mile raft trip across the Pacific.

The compelling documentary The Central Park Five from Ken Burns, et al, is available streaming from Amazon Instant and other VOD providers. Football fans should tune into ESPN’s 30 for 30 for Elway to Marino, an inside look at several astonishing stories from the 1983 NFL draft.  Available on VOD, Greetings from Tim Buckley is a film for those who want to see an actor depict interior conflict with very little external action.

The Iceman, starring Michael Shannon as perhaps the most prolific real-life hit man, is opening this weekend. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

You’ve got to get ready for the May 31 release of the year’s best romance, Before Midnight.  Therefore my DVD/Stream of the Week are its prequels, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset – director Richard Linklater’s two uncommonly authentic and intelligent romances with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.  Both Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on VOD from Amazon , iTunes, Vudu and other VOD outlets.  Before Sunrise is free with Amazon Prime.

Tomorrow night, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting Billy Wilder’s deliciously cynical Ace in the Hole, starring Kirk Douglas as a reporter exploiting and then manipulating a cave rescue.  Released in 1951, it’s as timely a comment on tabloid journalism and infotainment as if it had been made last week.  (Some folks may have seen it under the alternative title The Big Carnival.)

Movies to See Right Now

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Maika Monroe and Zac Efron in AT ANY PRICE

At Any Price is a thought-provoking psychological drama and a rare glimpse into modern corporate agriculture.   The Reluctant Fundamentalist offers a compelling performance by Riz Ahmed and a thriller ending, but holes in the story and the miscasting of Kate Hudson dim the effect.  Kon-Tiki is a faithful, but underwhelming account of a true life 5,000 mile raft trip across the Pacific.  The French In the House is clever, darkly funny and slightly creepy.

The best film in theaters now is the gripping and thoughtful Mud. Two Arkansas boys embark on a secret adventure with a man hiding from the authorities, and they learn more than they expected about love and loyalty. Mud is one of the best movies of 2013.

If you see the thought-provoking drama The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, you’ll still be mulling it over days later.  I guarantee that you will enjoy the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.  Don’t overlook the heartwarming British indie The Angel’s Share about a hard luck guy’s struggle to turn his life around with unexpected help from some ultra-rare Scotch whisky.

The compelling documentary The Central Park Five from Ken Burns, et al, is available streaming from Amazon Instant and other VOD providers. Football fans should tune into ESPN’s 30 for 30 for Elway to Marino, an inside look at several astonishing stories from the 1983 NFL draft.

The dreadful-looking The Great Gatsby is opening this weekend.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Shotgun Stories, the first triumph by Mud writer-director Jeff Nichols and the breakthrough film for actor Michael Shannon.  Shotgun Stories is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix and iTunes.

On May 14, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the 1947 film noir Kiss of Death, which introduced Richard Widmark as one of the most unforgettable screen villains – a nutty thug named Tommy Udo who chortles maniacally as he pushes an old lady in a wheelchair down the stairs to her demise.

The Movie Gourmet’s Four-Day Film Rampage

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Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller in THE SPECTACULAR NOW

Some promising movies opened this weekend while I was sampling the San Francisco International Film Festival.  The result: ten movies for me in seven theaters in three cities over four days.

I started on Friday at the SFIFF with Prince Avalanche and Rent a Family Inc. at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.   Prince Avalanche, a droll comedy with Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch that will open in theaters later his summer, is very funny.  Writer-director David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls, Pineapple Express) introduced his film and took questions.  Rent a Family Inc., a documentary about an odd Japanese practice of renting fake family members, was less successful.  (Note:  I missed my monthly poker game for these two flicks.)

On Saturday, I caught up with the new releases:  The Reluctant Fundamentalist at Camera 7 in Campbell (okay), At Any Price at San Jose’s Camera 12 (liked it a lot) and the French thriller In the House at San Jose’s Camera 3 (surprisingly clever).

On Sunday, I caught Kon-Tiki at San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center Cinema; (I’m writing about Kon-Tiki tomorrow).  Then it was over to SFIFF for Me and You at the Kabuki.  Me and You is the latest from Italian cinema legend Bernardo Bertolucci, and I LOVED it.  (I had to miss the great director William Friedkin’s appearance at a rare screening of his 1977 Sorcerer at Camera 3; I would have loved it, but I just saw Friedkin last summer at a Killer Joe screening and I already had my SFIFF tickets; to make up for it, I am gonna buy Friedkin’s new book and Netflix his Sorcerer.)

Then I rendezvoused with my nephew Danny and his friend Zeke for a special showing of the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers at the Castro Theatre, preceded by a Q&A with director Philip Kaufman.  It was the first time that the guys experienced both a grand movie palace and an appearance by a filmmaker – and they enjoyed the movie, too.  Body Snatchers, which I saw in its theatrical release, held up very well – and still has one of the all-time great closing shockers in cinema.

I returned to the SFIFF on Monday with The Wife.  First, we saw The Spectacular Now at the Kabuki, a coming of age indie focused on teen alcoholism; one of the best films of the year, it will open widely on August 2.  Then we saw Deceptive Practices, the fine documentary about my favorite magician/card shark Ricky Jay, at the New People Cinema.

Whew!  That was a whirlwind!  It’s lots of fun to go to the movies, but trying to write about so many in a compressed period is tough for me.  The highlight was sharing the movie experience with The Wife and the guys.  But I also saw some movies that will be on my Best Movies of 2013 – The Spectacular Now, Me and You and (probably) At Any Price – all in one glorious weekend.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist: a thriller with an intense star (but with Kate Hudson, too)

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THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST

Director Mira Nair (Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake) brings the novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist to the screen.  A young Pakistani man flourishes at Princeton and on Wall Street, and he becomes an American Master of the Universe.  But then September 11 changes his world, as Americans reacting and overreacting to terror start treating him badly.  Suddenly, he no longer sees a fit with his American girlfriend, a flighty, overprivileged artist.  He returns to Pakistan to teach in a university, and becomes an intellectual leader for Pakistanis seeking to resist the West.  The movie becomes a thriller when the question arises, has he become a terrorist? 

The thriller works – if you haven’t read the novel, you don’t know whether the guy we’ve been rooting for is or is not a terrorist until the final minutes.  The best thing about the movie is the remarkably intense performance of British actor Riz Ahmed as the protagonist.  Ahmed is a compelling screen presence, and he clearly has impressive acting range when you contrast his hyper-alert role here with the dim terrorist he played in the hilarious terrorist parody Four Lions.  As one would expect, Liev Schreiber is also excellent as the guy who must determine whether Ahmed has become a terrorist. 

What didn’t work for me?  First there was the odd choice of Kate Hudson as the girlfriend.  The character is just too vapid to captivate a Wall Street whiz kid, and Hudson just doesn’t project the sensuality to make up the difference for a guy in his early 20s. 

The story also suggests that non-violent, democratic nationalism can have widespread appeal in Pakistan, and, while I would hope that Pakistanis embrace that path, I’m not sure that it’s a likely outcome. 

If you need a sermon on the blowback from our War on Terror,  then you can sit in the pew for The Reluctant Fundamentalist.  But, for an ambiguous thriller, Homeland is a better choice.

Movies to See Right Now

by

 

MUD

Go see the gripping and thoughtful Mud.  Two Arkansas boys embark on a secret adventure with a man hiding from the authorities, and they learn more than they expected about love and loyalty.   Mud is one of the best movies of 2013.

Best bets in theaters this week:

      • If you see the thought-provoking drama The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, you’ll still be mulling it over days later;
      • I guarantee that you will enjoy the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.
      • Don’t overlook the heartwarming British indie The Angel’s Share about a hard luck guy’s struggle to turn his life around with unexpected help from some ultra-rare Scotch whisky.  

The compelling documentary The Central Park Five from Ken Burns, et al, is available streaming from Amazon Instant and other VOD providers. Football fans should tune into ESPN’s 30 for 30 for Elway to Marino, an inside look at several astonishing stories from the 1983 NFL draft.

There are two big releases this weekend:  The Reluctant Fundamentalist and At Any Price.   You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Flight, starring Denzel Washington as an airline pilot who becomes a hero after saving his passengers in a miraculous crash landing, but then risks legal jeopardy unless he can get his drinking under control. Flight is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from many VOD outlets.

On May 7, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the three film noir classics: Out of the Past, The Asphalt Jungle and The Naked City.