The Trip to Spain

Movies to See Right Now

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Graham Greene and Elizabeth Olsen in WIND RIVER

Do your self a favor and make sure that you see the best of this summer:

  • The contemporary Western thriller Wind River, which has mystery, explosive action, wild scenery and some great acting, especially by Jeremy Renner and Gil Birmingham.
  • The delightful romantic comedy The Big Sick.
  • The historical thriller Dunkirk.

The best of the rest:

  • Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly timed to the beat of music.
  • I enjoyed Charlize Theron’s rock ’em, sock ’em, espionage thriller Atomic Blonde.
  • The Trip to Spain, another gourmet romp from Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan is funny for the first 90 minutes or so – just leave when the characters part company in Malaga.

My Stream of the Week is the surprisingly engaging documentary about New York Times obituaries Obit, a superb study writing – we sit on the writers’ shoulders and observe their process in real-time.  Obit is now available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On September 9, Turner Classic Movies airs Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece of voyeurism, Rear Window.   Here we have James Stewart playing a guy frustrated because he is trapped at home by a disability. When he observes some activity by neighbors that he interprets as a possible murder, he becomes more and more obsessed and voyeuristic. When it looks like he has been correct instead of paranoid, that business about being trapped by a disability takes on a whole new meaning.  With the cool beauty Grace Kelly and the glowering and menacing Raymond Burr.

REAR WINDOW
REAR WINDOW

Movies to See Right Now

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Jeremy Renner and Gil Birmingham in WIND RIVER

With the contemporary Western thriller Wind River, screenwriter Taylor Sheridan has delivered another masterpiece, this time in his first effort as director. It’s got mystery, explosive action, wild scenery and some great acting, especially by Jeremy Renner and Gil Birmingham.

Other movies that are among the best of the year are the historical thriller Dunkirk and the delightful romantic comedy The Big Sick.

The best of the rest:

  • Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly timed to the beat of music.
  • I enjoyed Charlize Theron’s rock ’em, sock ’em, espionage thriller Atomic Blonde.
  • The Trip to Spain, another gourmet romp from Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan is funny for the first 90 minutes or so – just leave when the characters part company in Malaga.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is an Oscar-winner that you haven’t seen: the Feel Good documentary Undefeated. You can find it on DVD and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On August 30, Turner Classic Movies presents the second and the funniest of Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther movies, 1964’s A Shot in the Dark, in which Peter Sellers really comes into his own as Inspector Clouseau. A Shot in the Dark also introduces Herbert Lom, the king ofte slow burn, as Clouseau’s perpetually infuriated boss.

On September 1, TCM airs the 1933 submarine movie Hell Below. It’s a pretty contrived Robert Montgomery vehicle, but there are some elements worth fast-forwarding to. The comic relief is provided by Jimmy Durante, who plays the cook Ptomaine; Baby Boomers tend to remember Durante for his shtick on variety shows of the 1950s and 1960s – here’s the unadulterated Durante. Durante even boxes with a kangeroo! Hell Below also features Walter Huston, who was a major star at the time and who I think would be very successful today.

Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in A SHOT IN THE DARK
Herbert Lom in A SHOT IN THE DARK

THE TRIP TO SPAIN: 100 minutes of laughs, travel, food in a 115-minute movie

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Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan in THE TRIP TO SPAIN
In The Trip to Spain, comics Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan play caricatures of themselves assigned to a gourmet road trip, just as in The Trip and The Trip to Italy.  Both masters of impressions and improvisation, the amiable Brydon and the snootily competitive (but needy) Coogan banter their way through delectable Spanish cuisine.  One of the franchise’s running gags is Coogan’s constant name-dropping and one-upmanship, which begs Brydon to deflate him.

Brydon’s wonderful impressions of Sean Connery and Michael Caine are legendary, and Coogan is no slouch.  They do impressions of Marlon Brando and Robert Deniro, and mimic across the British acting greats John Hurt, Ian McKellen, Anthony Hopkins and Michael Holdern.  Brydon even “does” Mick Jagger doing Michael Caine and Jagger playing Shakespeare’s Shylock.

In one of the funniest bits, a lunchtime reference to the “Moors in Spain” sparks a Rob Brydon marathon of ROGER Moore riffs; as Coogan and their companions try in vain to change the subject, Brydon is hilariously unstoppable.

There are plenty of other laughs, too, as  Coogan tries to pronounces the French name “Aurore” and Brydon quips that the Spanish Inquisition was launched by a “Catalytic Converter”.  They even refuse to pass up the obvious joke about Herb Alpert’s Spanish Flea.

As in the other Trip movies, the travel and food porn is exquisite.  They cross Spain from the Basque country, through the dinosaur sites of Rioja, the Don Quixote heritage of  La Mancha, the streets of Cuenca and the marvels of Granada, ending in Malaga.   I didn’t notice any green vegetables until their fifth day of eating (always fine by me).  (However, Spain’s ubiquitous jamón doesn’t show up until their final day.)

Frankly, Brydon’s and Coogan’s improvisations are reason enough to make (and see) one of these movies.  Unfortunately,  someone felt the need to focus the final 15 minutes of The Trip to Spain on the contrast between Brydon’s happly family life and Coogan’s disconnected loneliness and his career and personal insecurities.  Blaaaaaaaaaah.  Snooooooze.

So it’s simple:  go see The Trip to Spain and, when the characters say goodbye to each other in Malaga – leave the theater.

Movies to See Right Now

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ATOMIC BLONDE

This hasn’t been a first-rate summer for movies, but you MUST SEE the historical thriller Dunkirk and the delightful romantic comedy The Big Sick.

The best of the rest:

  • Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly timed to the beat of music.
  • The Midwife, with Catherine Deneuve as a woman out of control and uncontrollable, indelibly disrupting another life.
  • I enjoyed Charlize Theron’s rock ’em, sock ’em, espionage thriller Atomic Blonde.
  • The Trip to Spain, another gourmet romp from Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan is funny for the first 90 minutes or so – just leave when the characters part company in Malaga.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, perhaps Richard Gere’s best movie performance ever, and strongly recommended. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

For a ticking bomb thriller, you really can’t top John Frankenhimer’s The Manchurian Candidate, which Turner Classic Movies airs on August 19. Laurence Harvey plays a victim of Commie brainwashing who has become a robotic, remote-controlled assassin. Can he be stopped in time?

The Manchurian Candidate tops off a set of brilliant Frank Sinatra performances (before his directors couldn’t restrain him from mugging): From Here to Eternity, Suddenly!, The Man with a Golden Arm.

Harvey, Sinatra and Janet Leigh are all good, but this is really Angela Lansbury’s movie. Not only is her character promoting the political career of her bombastic Joe McCarthy-like husband, but she is a Communist agent intent on the Communist takeover of the US government. And she is pulling the strings to direct the assassin – her own son! Lansbury’s character makes my list of Worst Movie Mothers.

Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE