Thursday, June 25, 2015

Flick Picks 6/26/2015: Run All Night, Zero Motivation, The Duff

Poor Liam Neeson  Always having to exact revenge on one villain or another.  Never a moment's rest.  And now he's made to run all night.  The poor man could use a vacation.  In addition to Mr. Neeson's latest travails, we have dispatches from that even more daunting battlefield - high school. This in the form of the likable teen comedy, The Duff.  If this classic summer fare offers less substance than you're looking for, consider a couple of excellent foreign films, Timbuktu and Zero Motivation.     




Feature Films


RUN ALL NIGHT

So, yes.  The big guy is running away this time instead of pursuing the bad guys.  In a plot reminiscent of Road to Perdition, Liam Neeson plays Jimmy Conlong, a.k.a, The Gravedigger, a mob hit-man on the run with his estranged son, trying to outwit an assassin hired by his former boss and friend.  




THE DUFF

Bianca is trying to navigate her senior year of high school.  She reluctantly attends a party only to find out that's she been invited as a "DUFF" - Designated, Ugly Fat Friend.  Never mind that Bianca is really neither of these things  Will Bianca find happiness and acceptance?  Aren't we really all "DUFF's" in our way?  Watch, find out and ponder.  We have The Duff in both Blu-ray and regular DVD.    





Foreign Film




The most successful Israeli film of 2014, Zero Motivation follows the lives of a group of young women performing their required military service at a remote base.  The dreariness of their administrative work is alleviated by extended sessions of Minesweeper, dreaming of transfer to Tel Aviv and occasionally brandishing staple guns like automatic weapons.  A black comedy that deftly balances its lighter and more serious moments, Zero Motivation is the impressive first feature by Talya Lavie (Best Director winner at the Ophir Awards, the Israeli Oscars).  




TIMBUKTU

Almost universally praised and nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the 2015 Academy Awards, Timbuktu is based on the 2012 occupation of the Malian city (Timbuktu) by Islamists. Despite the weighty subject matter, this protest film has been described by critics as graceful, poetic, even witty.  




Series


RIPPER STREET, SEASON THREE

It's now 1894 in the season three of the British series which began six months after the Jack the Ripper murders in London's Whitechapel neighborhood.  Many of the series principal characters are reunited by a train accident in the beleaguered district of the city as the third season begins.   




Flick Picks will be on hiatus next week, but will return with lots of new DVD news on July 10.



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Saturday, June 20, 2015

Flick Picks 6/19/2015: The Newsroom, Wild Tales, Chappie


Conflict, conflict and more conflict this week.  Some dark, some light.  Some funny, other instances...not so much.  If you get a little too worked up, we also have a good bit of music to calm the savage breast.  


Foreign Film


Revenge is a dish best served cold?  If the film Wild Tales is any indication, the preferred manner of serving in Argentina is piping hot.  Wild Tales was a box office sensation in its home country.  Not so surprising, given the difficult decades that have beset the once great nation.  There's all sorts of instant karma to be had for the outraged in this black comedy, even as the tone of the six vignettes ranges from serious to the outlandishly comic, culminating with a wronged bride running absolutely amok at her own wedding.  If your sensibilities aren't too delicate, this is great, smart fun.   

Series


THE NEWSROOM, COMPLETE THIRD SEASON

Jeff Daniels has become the grouch laureate of American film and television in the past decade or so.  This applies to any number of film roles in which Daniels plays smart, wisecracking types that do not suffer fools gladly, if at all.  Such is also the case in Aaron Sorkin's HBO series, The Newsroom.  Here Daniels is Will McAvoy, controversial anchor for the fictional Atlantis Cable News.  Like any Aaron Sorkin series, the verbiage comes fast and in great abundance as behind-the-scenes intrigues play out for the McAvoy, his colleagues and the fictional network itself. Featuring an excellent ensemble cast, The Newsroom by most accounts was at its best in season three.  




Feature Films


CHAPPIE

With District 9 and the subsequent Elysium, South African Neil Blommkamp became the preeminent purveyor of science fiction at the movies, with big ideas to match all the big action on screen.  His latest, Chappie, is about a population fighting back against a mechanized police force, aided by Chappie, a police droid stolen and reprogrammed to think and feel for itself.  We have Chappie in Blu-ray, with a couple of copies in regular DVD on the way.   



Also new:  Johnny Depp adds to his collection of accents, playing an unscrupulous art dealer and swindler working on the right side of the law in the comedy MORTDECAI.


Documentary

THE WRECKING CREW



Here, another documentary spotlighting little-known contributors to some of the biggest hits in rock and roll and American popular music.  In this case, the Wrecking Crew was a name given to Los Angeles studio musicians who played on everything from  t.v. theme songs to film scores to advertising jingles.  And of course, almost every genre of music, backing up artists as diverse as The Beach Boys, Nancy Sinatra and Bing Crosby.  


We also have several of those aforementioned documentaries about other not-so-famous contributors to songs we all know so well.  Even music afficiandos will pick up lots of rich nuggets of American musical history by watching these absorbing films.  


20 FEET FROM STARDOM

This Oscar-winning documentary focuses on the backup singers whose importance to countless rock and pop classics can hardly be overestimated.  Darlene Love, Merry Clayton and others are featured, singers who never quite became stars themselves or quite consciously avoided the spotlight.   




"Now muscle shoals has got the Swampers/And they've been known to pick a song or two."  So goes the bit of homage in Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" to the ace musicians in a sleepy town on the Tennessee River.  The Swampers were the studio musicians at FAME Studios in the unlikely musical Mecca of Muscle Shoals, Alabama.  FAME and the eventually competing Muscle Shoals Sound Studio (run by those same Swampers) were a font of hits for artists from Aretha Franklin to The Rolling Stones.  Every bit (and usually more) charismatic than any of the musical luminaries in Muscle Shoals, FAME Studios co-founder Rick Hall presides, one of those grand southern characters like Sun Studios founder Sam Phillips.  



There was a little more to the Motown magic than the star power of The Supremes, Smoky Robinson, The Temptations and Marvin Gaye.  Standing in the Shadows of Motown shines a light on the studio musicians hand picked by Motown founder Barry Gordy, affectionately known as The Funk Brothers.  



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Friday, June 12, 2015

Flick Picks 6/12/2015: Kingsman; The Secret Service, Focus, Justified Final Season


A very quiet week for DVD releases is highlighted by Kingsman:  The Secret Service.



Feature Films

KINGSMAN:  THE SECRET SERVICE

You've seen Colin Firth play the proud Darcy.  Battle for Bridget Jones Love.  Portray the stammering George VI of England.  Even dance and sing in Mamma Mia.  But have you seen him decimate a gang of toughs in an English pub using only his fists and a very special umbrella?  Well, here's your chance.  In "Kingsman," Firth plays veteran Agent Galahad, battling evil-doers and shepherding budding agent Gary "Eggsy" Unwin.  Like Firth, Samuel Jackson plays amusingly against type in "Kingsman," as lisping billionaire philanthropist Richmond Valentine, who has no stomach for blood or violence, despite the fact that he's intent on liquidating a good portion of the Earth's population.  The violence is hard to avoid in "Kingsman."  But much as the body count is very steep, the mayhem grows increasingly cartoonish as the film approaches its mad crescendo.  There's some fun to be had here if you don't think too much.




FOCUS

There's more light, summer fun to be had with Focus.  Will Smith plays an experienced con-man whose relationship with a young female grifter extends rather beyond that of  mentor and student.



Also new...

SERENA

 Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper combine their talents for a third time (after Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle) in SERENA, as a couple running a timber business in Depression-era North Carolina.




JUPITER ASCENDING

The Wachowskis (of Matrix fame) lose themselves in space with JUPITER ASCENDING.



PROJECT ALMANAC

A precocious high school student his friends discover the blueprints for a device with almost unlimited powers.  What could possibly go wrong?  Find out in PROJECT ALMANAC










Series

JUSTIFIED, FINAL SEASON



The story of a tough U.S. Marshal keeping the peace in and around his hometown of Harlan, Kentucky concludes with its sixth season.   Timothy Olyphant is Marshal Raylan Givens in the FX series set in eastern Kentucky, which has been nominated for eight Primetime Emmy Awards.




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Sunday, June 7, 2015

Flick Picks 6/5/2015: Black Sea, McFarland, USA, The Last Five Years

This week we take you beneath the Black Sea in a submarine.  Running with a high school cross-country team in arid California.  Singing through the ups and downs of a young couple's relationship.  We hang out a last time with the gang from Parks and Recreation.  And then delve into some very serious and a decidedly lighthearted foreign film.  Around the world.  You'll laugh. You might sing.  Hopefully you won't cry.  But we should have more than enough to keep you entertained.




Feature Films

BLACK SEA

Jude Law continues an interesting transition from leading man roles to somewhat more character-driven work.  In Black Sea, Law plays an out of work submarine captain, convinced to take on a mission to salvage a Nazi U-boat, thought to be full of gold.  His patchwork crew is half British and half Russian, the tension between the two groups being just one of the problems facing the mission and Captain Robinson (Law).  A well made undersea thriller from director Kevin Macdonald.  We have copies of Black Sea in regular DVD and Blu-ray.




MCFARLAND, USA

Very much an audience favorite, McFarland, USA is based on the the true story of the McFarland High School cross-country team that won the California state championship in 1987.  Kevin Costner plays the coach who starts a cross-country team at the predominately Mexican-American high school.




THE LAST FIVE YEARS

While we won't have Pitch Perfect 2 on DVD for a while, fans of the delightful Anna Kendrick can enjoy her acting and singing in The Last Five Years.  Based on the Broadway musical of the same name (which actually premiered at Chicago's Northlight Theater in 2001), The Last Five Years tells its story almost entirely in song.  A young couple's five-year relationship plays out in songs sung in reverse chronological order by Cathy (Kendrick) and forward from their first meeting by Jamie (Jeremy Jordan).



SPRING

Looking for something a little different?  A period of intelligent horror films (e.g., The Babadook, the upcoming DVD release of It Follows) continues with Spring, the story of a young American back-packing along the Italian Coast who meets an enchanting native.  What could possibly go wrong? Check out Spring and find out.




Also new this week - Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore star in the fantasy film,  SEVENTH SON.



Series

PARKS AND RECREATION, THE FAREWELL SEASON

Yes, one last go round with the large and talented cast of the NBC series, Parks and Recreation.




Also new:  MAJOR CRIMES, THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON
                  RAY DONOVAN, SEASON TWO
                  RIZZOLI AND ISLES, THE COMPLETE FIFTH SEASON





Foreign Film


Konstantinos Gavras, commonly known as Costa-Gavras, has been making intelligent political thrillers for more than 40 years.  Recently, the Criterion College added two of Costa-Gavras' early 1970's films to their redoubtable library.  Both films star French actor and singer Yves Montand.      


In the riveting Confession, Montand plays a Czech dignitary abducted and imprisoned by the country's ruling Communist party.




Yet again, Montand plays a man kidnapped in State of Siege.  This time he's an American official, abducted by a South American guerilla group, outraged at U.S. involvement  in their country's politics.  



The library also has what many consider to be Costa-Gavras' finest film, Z.


MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS

No lightweight himself, German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder was the enfant terrible of New German Cinema.  The filmmaker managed to create as much provocative work as controversy in a career cut short by death at the age of 37.  Another recent release from the Criterion Collection, Merchant of Four Seasons deals with the plight of a fruit peddler living in 1950's West Germany who is driven to madness by what he sees as an uncaring society.





THAT MAN FROM RIO

Too much seriousness, you say?  As if there's not enough disturbing things going on in the real world?  Fair enough.  So...Adrien Dufourquet to the rescue!  And who, one might reasonably ask, is Adrien Dufourquet?  As it turns out, there have been James Bond spoofs about as long as the character of the British secret agent has been in the popular consciousness.  This early French spoof (as opposed to the later OSS 117 films) from 1964 stars the handsome and cheeky Jean-Paul Belmondo as airman Dufourquet, drawn into international intrigue.  As with the Bond films, the pace is quick and the photography in several locations around the world striking.


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