Wild

Movies to See Right Now

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Gene Hackman in the 1975 NIGHT MOVES
Gene Hackman in the 1975 NIGHT MOVES

I’m at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and I haven’t caught up with the promising sci-fi Ex Machina or the rock doc Lambert & Stamp. Here are the movies that I know are good:

In theaters, I liked Ethan Hawke’s gentle documentary Seymour: An Introduction. If you’re looking for a scare, try the inventive and non-gory horror gem It Follows.

Documentarian Alex Gibney has TWO excellent films playing now on HBO:

  • Going Clear: The Prison of Belief, a devastating expose of Scientology is playing on HBO; and
  • Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, an especially well-researched and revelatory biopic of Frank Sinatra.

Don’t bother with Clouds of Sils Maria – it’s a muddled mess.  Insurgent, from the Divergent franchise is what it is – young adult sci-fi with some cool f/x. The romance 5 to 7 did NOT work for me, but I know smart women who enjoyed it.  The biting Hollywood satire of Maps to the Stars wasn’t worth the disturbing story of a cursed family. I also didn’t like the Western Slow West, now out on video.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the drama Wild, with its wonderful performances by Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixter.

On April 27, Turner Classic Movies is airing the 1975 character-driven neo-noir Night Moves, with Gene Hackman as an LA private eye who follows a trail of evidence to steamy Florida. Hackman shines in the role – the detective is deeply in love with his estranged wife, but unsuited for marriage. Night Moves also features Melanie Griffith’s breakthrough role as the highly sexualized teen daughter in the Florida family; Griffith was eighteen or nineteen when this was filmed, and had already been living with Don Johnson for three years.

And TCM is also showing one of my very favorite films, the Sam Peckinpah 1973 Western Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (April 30), featuring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson in the title roles. Peckinpah takes us into a realistically dusty world of 1880s New Mexico and makes the story operatic in its sweep. Pat Garrett is a revisionist Western, with Billy representing the have-nots and his old pal Garrett hiring out to do the bidding of the capitalist one-percenters. It’s a near-great movie; if the unfortunate “Paco” story line were excised, it would rank among the greatest three or four Westerns of all time. (Another minor flaw: Richard Jaeckel has to wear a Paul Revere wig. )

Pat Garrett also features the Peckinpah repertory company of Luke Askew, Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, Gene Evans, Dub Taylor, Emilio Fernandez and, in one his most memorable roles, R.G. Armstrong. The stellar cast also features Harry Dean Stanton, Jason Robards, Elisha Cook Jr., Chill Wills, Richard Jaeckel, Jack Elam, Barry Sullivan, Jack Dodson (Howard Sprague in The Andy Griffin Show), Richard Bright (Al Neri in The Godfather), and Charles Martin Smith (Terry the Toad in American Graffiti).

The sound track is by Bob Dylan, and Dylan has a small acting role, too; this is the origin of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, which perfectly underlines a heartbreaking scene with two greats of the Western genre, Slim Pickins and Katy Jurado.

DVD/Stream of the Week: WILD

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Reese Witherspoon in WILD
Reese Witherspoon in WILD

Based on the popular memoir by Cheryl Strayed, Wild is the story of how Strayed dealt with her own emotional collapse. Suffering  from the death of her mother, among other issues, Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) had become a red-hot mess, playing around with heroin and destructive serial sex and, in the process, dooming her marriage to a solid guy (Tomas Sadoski from The Newsroom). To cleanse herself from her demons, Strayed embarked on a solitary thousand mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail.

Hiking the Pacific Coast Trail is a mighty quest – both an ordeal and an achievement. But walking it alone as a woman – that’s a whole different deal. The camera is on Reese Witherspoon in every scene, and she carries the movie with her performance – both as Cheryl implodes in the flashbacks and as she overcomes her fears and inexperience on her hike. It’s been eight years since Witherspoon won the Oscar for Walk the Line. Recently, she’s been reinventing her career with high quality fare like Mud, Devil’s Knot, Wild and the upcoming Inherent Vice. Her work in Wild is top rate.

Laura Dern’s performance may be even better than Witherspoon’s. She plays Strayed’s mom, a woman who has been dealt a shit sandwich every day of her life, but who relentlessly insists on appreciating life’s small pleasures. It’s a compelling and heartbreaking performance.

Now I have done some back country hiking and I know what it’s like to walk for 15 miles in a day. It can be pretty damn monotonous. But not this movie. Writer Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy) and director Jean-Marc Vallée do a fine job in presenting the scope of a thousand mile journey by pulling out the most compelling components – the moments that illustrate the impressiveness of the feat and the depths of Strayed’s emotional damage and healing.

It’s pretty fine piece of filmmaking overall, and I’m going to start looking for the work of Jean-Marc Vallée. As he did in Dallas Buyers Club, here he tees up extraordinary performances while avoiding what could have become trite and sentimental audience manipulation. Watching Witherspoon and Dern in Wild is a good use of anyone’s time.

Wild is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixter.

Movies to See Right Now

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David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. (center back) in SELMA
David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. (center back) in SELMA

The best films in theaters right now are no secret – most are Oscar-nominated:

  • Clint Eastwood’s thoughtful and compelling American Sniper, with harrowing action and a career-best performance from Bradley Cooper.
  • The inspiring Selma, well-crafted and gripping throughout (but with an unfortunate historical depiction of LBJ).
  • The Belgian drama Two Days, One Night with Marion Cotillard, which explores the limits of emotional endurance.
  • The cinematically important and very funny Birdman. You can still find Birdman, but you may have to look around a bit. It has justifiably garnered several Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
  • Reese Witherspoon is superb in the Fight Your Demons drama Wild, and Laura Dern may be even better.
  • The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
  • The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.
  • I was underwhelmed by the brooding drama A Most Violent Year – well-acted and a superb sense of time and place (NYC in 1981) but not gripping enough to thrill.

My DVD/Stream of the week is last year’s best Hollywood movie, the psychological thriller Gone Girl, with a star-making performance by Rosamund Pike. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

It’s time for Turner Classic Movies’ annual 31 Days of Oscar – a glorious month of Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films on TCM. This week, I am highlighting:

  • The Great Dictator (February 7): Charlie Chaplin’s hilarious and devastating takedown of a thinly disguised Adolph Hitler – almost two years before the US entered WW II.
  • Laura (February 9): perhaps my favorite thriller from the noir era, with an unforgettable performance by Clifton Webb as a megalomaniac with one vulnerability – the dazzling beauty of Gene Tierney. The musical theme is unforgettable, too.
  • All the King’s Men (February 11): one of the best political movies of all time, from the novel based on the saga of Huey Long . Watch for the brilliant, Oscar-winning supporting performance by Mercedes McCambridge.
  • The Bad Seed (February 13): very bad things are happening – the chill comes from the revelation that the murderous fiend is a child with blonde pigtails.

Movies to See Right Now

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Bradley Cooper in AMERICAN SNIPER
Bradley Cooper in AMERICAN SNIPER

Time to start watching the Oscar nominees.  Here are the best choices now in theaters:

  • Clint Eastwood’s thoughtful and compelling American Sniper, with harrowing action and a career-best performance from Bradley Cooper.
  • The inspiring Selma, well-crafted and gripping throughout (but with an unfortunate historical depiction of LBJ).
  • The Belgian drama Two Days, One Night with Marion Cotillard, which explores the limits of emotional endurance.
  • The cinematically important and very funny Birdman. You can still find Birdman, but you may have to look around a bit. It has justifiably garnered several Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
  • Reese Witherspoon is superb in the Fight Your Demons drama Wild, and Laura Dern may be even better.
  • The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
  • The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.

My DVD/Stream of the week is the wry German comedy A Coffee in Berlin. A Coffee in Berlin is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On January 27, Turner Classic Movies is airing my favorite movie on American politics, The Candidate – I’ve worked in several dozen political campaigns and this movie still resonates with my experiences.

And on January 26, TCM will broadcast The Earrings of Madame de… (1953). This is one of the great movies that you have NOT seen, having just been released on DVD in 2009. Max Ophuls directed what is perhaps the most visually evocative romance ever in black and white. It’s worth seeing for the ballroom scene alone. The shallow and privileged wife of a stick-in-the-mud general takes a lover, but the earrings she pawned reveal the affair and consequences ensue. Great Italian director Vittorio De Sica plays the impossibly handsome lover.

Movies to See Right Now

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Laura Dern in WILD
Laura Dern in WILD

After today, all of the prestige movies of 2014 will be in wide release except for A Most Violent Year and Two Days, One Night, which open more widely next weekend. Of the ones that I’ve seen, here are your best bets:

    • The cinematically important and very funny Birdman. You can still find Birdman, but you may have to look around a bit. It has justifiably garnered several Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
    • Reese Witherspoon is superb in the Fight Your Demons drama Wild, and Laura Dern may be even better.
    • The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
    • The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.
    • Big Eyes is a lite audience pleaser.
    • Set in the macho world of Olympic wrestling, Foxcatcher is really a relationship movie with a stunning dramatic performance by Steve Carell.
    • Mr. Turner is visually remarkable and features a stuning performance by Timothy Spall, but it’s toooo loooong.

My DVD/Stream of the week is Boyhood, an important film – a milestone in the history of cinema. It may turn out to be the best film of the decade. It’s a Must See. Boyhood is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

On January 20, Turner Classic Movies is airing A Face in the Crowd. During every year of the 1960s, Andy Griffith entered the living rooms of most Baby Boomers as Sheriff Andy Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show and in guest appearances on Mayberry R.F.D. Younger folks knew him from another ten seasons on television starring as Matlock.

But, in his very first feature film, Griffith shed the likeability and decency that made him a TV megastar and became a searingly unforgettable villain. In the 1957 Elia Kazan classic A Face in the Crowd, Griffith plays Lonesome Rhodes, a failed country guitar picker who is hauled out of an Arkansas drunk tank by talent scout Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal). It turns out that he has a folksy charm that is dynamite in the new medium of television. He quickly rises in the infotainment universe until he is an A List celeb and a political power broker. To Jeffries’ horror, Rhodes reveals himself to be an evil, power hungry megalomaniac. Jeffries made him – can she break him? The seduction of a gullible public by a good timin’ charmer predicts the careers of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, although Lonesome Rhodes is meaner than Reagan and less ideological than Bush.

Amazingly, A Face in the Crowd did not garner even a nomination for an Academy Award for Griffith – or for any of its other filmmakers. Today, it is well-regarded, having been added to the library of Congress’ preservation list in the US National Film Registry and rating 91% in the critical reviews tallied by Rotten Tomatoes. It is one of the greatest political films.

Movies to See Right Now

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Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne in THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING
Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne in THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

It’s the Holidays, and theaters are featuring movies from my Best Movies of 2014 list:

  • The cinematically important and very funny Birdman.
  • The best Hollywood movie of 2014, the thriller Gone Girl, with a career-topping performance by Rosamund Pike.
  • I liked the droll Swedish dramedy Force Majeure, which won an award at Cannes and is Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

And here are some other hearty recommendations:

  • Reese Witherspoon is superb in the Fight Your Demons drama Wild, and Laura Dern may be even better.
  • The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
  • The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.
  • Set in the macho world of Olympic wrestling, Foxcatcher is really a relationship movie with a stunning dramatic performance by Steve Carell.
  • Big Eyes is a lite audience pleaser.
  • J.K. Simmons is brilliant in the intense indie drama Whiplash, a study of motivation and abuse, ambition and obsession.

My DVD/Stream of the week is the smart and hilarious The Trip to Italy, which showcases the improvisational wit of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, along with some serious tourism/foodie porn. The Trip to Italy is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

On January 6, Turner Classic Movies brings us War Hunt, a 1962 film about Robert Redford joining a Korean War unit as a new replacement, with John Saxon as the platoon’s psycho killer. Along with Redford, Sidney Pollack and Francis Ford Coppola are in the cast, making War Hunt the only film with three Oscar-winning directors as actors. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss for Coppola as an uncredited convoy truck driver.

Tomorrow night, TCM is airing Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). Anthony Quinn is Mountain Rivera, a fighter whose career is ended by a ring injury by Cassius Clay (played by the real Muhammed Ali). His manager, Jackie Gleason, continues to exploit him in this heartbreaking drama. There’s no boxing in this clip, but it illustrates the quality of the writing and the acting.

Movies to See Right Now

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Michael Keaton and Edward Norton in BIRDMAN
Michael Keaton and Edward Norton in BIRDMAN

It’s that Prestige Movie time of year, and theaters are featuring movies from my Best Movies of 2014- So Far list:

  • The cinematically important and very funny Birdman.
  • The best Hollywood movie of 2014, the thriller Gone Girl, with a career-topping performance by Rosamund Pike.
  • I liked the droll Swedish dramedy Force Majeure, which won an award at Cannes and is Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

And here are some other hearty recommendations:

  • Reese Witherspoon is superb in the Fight Your Demons drama Wild, and Laura Dern may be even better.
  • The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
  • The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.
  • Set in the macho world of Olympic wrestling, Foxcatcher is really a relationship movie with a stunning dramatic performance by Steve Carell.
  • J.K. Simmons is brilliant in the intense indie drama Whiplash, a study of motivation and abuse, ambition and obsession.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the thoughtful dramedy The Skeleton Twins – a mostly hilarious movie that seriously explores the subject of depression. The Skeleton Twins is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On New Year’s Eve, set your DVR for one of my FAVORITE movies, The Paper Chase, which traces a young man’s (Timothy Bottoms) first year at Harvard Law School and is based on the memoir of a recent  grad.    Although IMDb labels The Paper Chase as 1973 movie, I saw it in the summer of 1975, just as I was about to enter law school myself.   It’s such a personal favorite because  just about EVERYTHING in the movie is something that I experienced myself at in my first year at Georgetown Law – everything, that is, EXCEPT dating Lindsay Wagner.  It’s a compelling story and the great producer John Houseman won an acting Oscar for his performance as the mentor/nemesis law professor; Houseman immediately cashed in with his “”They make money the old fashioned way… they EARN it” commercials for Smith Barney.

The Paper Chase is also notable as the first feature film credit for actors Craig Richard Nelson, Graham Beckel (Brokeback Mountain, L.A. Confidential)  and Edward Herrmann (known for many portrayals of FDR).  All three are stellar as members of the law school study group, and these guys have now combined for over 300 screen acting credits.  The Paper Chase is also available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant Video, Vudu and Xbox Video.

THE PAPER CHASE
THE PAPER CHASE

WILD: a quest against her own demons

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Reese Witherspoon in WILD
Reese Witherspoon in WILD

Based on the popular memoir by Cheryl Strayed, Wild is the story of how Strayed dealt with her own emotional collapse.   Suffering emotionally from the death of her mother, among other issues, Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) had become a red-hot mess, playing around with heroin and destructive serial sex and, in the process, dooming her marriage to a solid guy (Tomas Sadoski from The Newsroom).   To cleanse herself from her demons, Strayed embarked on a solitary thousand mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail.

Hiking the Pacific Coast Trail is a mighty quest – both an ordeal and an achievement. But walking it alone as a woman – that’s a whole different deal. The camera is on Reese Witherspoon in every scene, and she carries the movie with her performance – both as Cheryl implodes in the flashbacks and as she overcomes her fears and inexperience on her hike. It’s been eight years since Witherspoon won the Oscar for Walk the Line.  Recently, she’s been reinventing her career with high quality fare like Mud, Devil’s Knot, Wild and the upcoming Inherent Vice.  Her work in Wild is top rate.

Laura Dern’s performance may be even better than Witherspoon’s. She plays Strayed’s mom, a woman who has been dealt a shit sandwich every day of her life, but who relentlessly insists on appreciating life’s small pleasures. It’s a compelling and heartbreaking performance.

Now I have done some back country hiking and I know what it’s like to walk for 15 miles in a day.  It can be pretty damn monotonous.  But not this movie.  Writer Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy) and director Jean-Marc Vallée do a fine job in presenting the scope of a thousand mile journey by pulling out the most compelling components – the moments that illustrate the impressiveness of the feat and the depths of Strayed’s emotional damage and healing.

It’s pretty fine piece of filmmaking overall, and I’m going to start looking for the work of Jean-Marc Vallée.  As he did in Dallas Buyers Club, here he tees up extraordinary performances while avoiding what could have become trite and sentimental audience manipulation.  Watching Witherspoon and Dern in Wild is a good use of anyone’s time.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Laura Dern in WILD
Laura Dern in WILD

I really liked Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern in WILD.  Just saw THE IMITATION GAME and liked it too.  I’ll be writing about both of them this weekend.  The Theory of Everything, Foxcatcher and Whiplash are really good, too. And Birdman, Force Majeure and Gone Girl are three of the VERY BEST OF THE YEAR.   Here are the links to my recommendations:

  • The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
  • Set in the macho world of Olympic wrestling, Foxcatcher is really a relationship movie with a stunning dramatic performance by Steve Carell.
  • The cinematically important and very funny Birdman.
  • The best Hollywood movie of 2014, the thriller Gone Girl, with a career-topping performance by Rosamund Pike.
  • I liked the droll Swedish dramedy Force Majeure, which won an award at Cannes and is Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
  • If you want a stark and grim look at the Old West, there’s Tommy Lee Jones’ feminist Western The Homesman.
  • 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.
  • If you’re in the mood for a brutal, brutal World War II tank movie, there’s Fury.

I very rarely recommend a sci-fi movie, but I really liked the thought-provoking romance I Origins that explores the tension between science and spirituality.  I Origins is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Instant Video.

Tomorrow, Turner Classic Movies airs John Huston’s 1949 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It’s still a gripping yarn – three down-and-outers improbably (and literally) strike gold. But can they trust each other enough to realize their gains once envy and greed appear? The Treasure of the Sierra Madre features one of Humphrey Bogart’s most colorful and compelling performances, which is reason enough to watch this classic.

But I also love watching director Huston’s real life father Walter Huston, who is cast as another of the trio. Most of us know Walter Huston, with his Gabby Hayes visage, from this movie, but Walter Huston was a major movie star as cinema moved to the talkies. Just between 1929 and 1939, he starred in thirty films. I love Huston’s work in this era, and I think that, with his very modern sensibility, he would be successful if he were working in today’s cinema. This is a good introduction to his work. (He also appeared very briefly in John Huston’s directorial debut The Maltese Falcon – as Captain Jacoby, the guy who staggers into Sam Spade’s office with the titular black bird and expires.)

Michael Pitt and Brit Marling in I ORIGINS
Michael Pitt and Brit Marling in I ORIGINS