The Rover

Movies to See Right Now

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Matthew McConaughey in TRUE DETECTIVE
Matthew McConaughey in TRUE DETECTIVE

My top picks:

  • Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin hits every note perfectly. I love this little movie, and it may only be in theaters for another week, so see it while you can.
  • It’s not up to Clint Eastwood’s usual standard, but Jersey Boys, is mostly fun – and features another jaunty performance by Christopher Walken.
  • If you look for it in theaters, you can still find my top movie of the year so far, the transcendent Polish drama Ida.

Among other movies out now:

My DVD/Stream of the week – perfect for binge-viewing on the holiday weekend – is the eight one-hour episodes of HBO’s True Detective. It’s a dark tale of two mismatched detectives – each tormented by his own demons – obsessed by a whodunit in contemporary back bayou Lousiana. Wood Harrelson is very good, and Matthew McConaughey’s performance may have been the best on TV this year. True Detective is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from HBO GO.

Turner Classic Movies also offers a pretty appetizing movie smorgasbord this week, starting with The Big Steal (1949) on July 8  – Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer are chased all over Mexico by William Bendix.  Then on July 10, we have three great documentaries:

  • The 1968 Salesman – as good of a depiction of the sales life as Glengarry Glen Ross);
  • Harlan County, U.S.A, the 1979 Oscar-winner Filmmaker Barbara Kopple embedded herself among the striking coal miners and got amazing footage – including of herself threatened and shot at.  Also one of my 5 Great Hillbilly Movies.
  • The Times of Harvey Milk  – the Oscar winner from 1984.  The real story behind Milk with the original witnesses.  One of the best political movies ever.

Movies to See Right Now

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A COFFEE IN BERLIN (OH BOY)
A COFFEE IN BERLIN (OH BOY)

Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin hits every note perfectly.  I love this little movie, and it may only be in theaters for another week, so see it while you can.

It’s not up to Clint Eastwood’s usual standard, but Jersey Boys, is mostly fun – and features another jaunty performance by Christopher Walken.

Among other movies in theaters now:

  • I found the political documentary Citizen Koch to be righteous but lame.
  • I wasn’t a big fan of the bleak and hyperviolent The Rover, either;watch writer-director David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom instead.

My DVD/Stream of the week is the Backwoods thriller Joe, starring an unusually retrained Nicholas Cage and featuring two other great performances from lesser knowns. Joe is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

This week Turner Classic Movies is airing a very fun heist movie – the original 1969 The Italian Job with Michael Caine.  Another good choice is the WW II spy thriller The Fallen Sparrow with John Garfield and a 22-year-old Maureen O’Hara.

The Rover: bleakness and hyperviolence aren’t not enough

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Guy Pearce in THE ROVER
Guy Pearce in THE ROVER

Man, I was really looking forward to the violent Aussie thriller The Rover, because its co-writer/director David Michôd had written and directed one of my recent favorites: Animal Kingdom. Unfortunately, although The Rover delivers the dark violence of Animal Kingdom, it really just doesn’t have enough story.

That story is set “10 years after The Collapse”, in an Australian outback where the social order has completely broken down. No manufactured goods seem to available except for gasoline, which fuels the armed thugs who cruise through the severely bleak landscape preying on what locals remain fortified in their homes and on each other. A perpetually angry and sweaty loner (Guy Pearce) has his car stolen by a gang of robbers, and sets off after them. He soon picks up the injured, half-witted brother of one of the gang (Robert Pattinson of the Twilight movies), who had been left to die at a robbery gone bad. Driving and violence ensues.

By the end of the story co-written by Michôd and the actor Joel Edgerton, we learn why Pearce’s character is so angry and why he wants his car back. But those answers just aren’t enough of a payoff to justify the ride.

I gotta mention the eccentric performance by Pattinson, adorned with some really bad teeth and, for some reason, effecting a West Virginia hillbilly accent. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen an actor employ more tics – so many that Pattinson often looks like he is doing a Joe Cocker impression. The rest of the cast, especially Pearce and Gillian Jones, are uniformly excellent.

Skip The Rover and watch Animal Kingdom again instead.