Friday, April 24, 2015

Flick Picks 4/24/2015: Taken 3, The Immigrant, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

This week we have the immigrant experience in a a beautifully-evoked New York of the 1920's.  A sleek crime and corruption story set in the same corroding metropolis of the early 80's.  And won't those bad guys ever learn?  Stop messing with Liam Neeson's loved ones!  One last time - if you abduct or harm anyone in the man's family...he will find you, he will kill you.  I hope we don't have to go over this again.    


THE IMMIGRANT

Another showcase for the considerable talents of Marion Cotillard,  The Immigrant is a drama that delves into the dark side of the immigrant experience.  Cotillard plays Ewa, a Polish immigrant who leaves Ellis Island without her quarantined sister and in the dubious care of Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), who has definite plans for the vulnerable woman.  Is there hope in the form of Bruno's cousin, Emil (Jeremy Renner), a dashing illusionist?  Beyond the acting of Cotillard and others, The Immigrant is a film of considerable style in its depiction of time and place, from Ellis Island to a teeming Lower East Side of Manhattan.




TAKEN 3

Sort of the Charles Bronson of his generation, Liam Neeson is back as former covert operative Bryan Mills, in the final film of the "Taken Trilogy."  This time, the tenacious Mills pursues the bad guys while being chased by the L.A.P.D. himself, as he tracks down the killer of his ex-wife.




A MOST VIOLENT YEAR


If the message was not delivered (or received) clearly enough with his performance in the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis, it now seems quite obvious -  Oscar Isaac is a star.  He carries, A Most Violent Year, the compelling story of a businessman trying to build an empire while attempting to fend off law enforcement, ruthless competitors and the mob.  Jessica Chastain, an old friend and buddy from Julliard, plays Isaaac's wife, something of a Brooklyn-bred Lady Macbeth.



CAKE


Also  new:  Jennifer Anniston received much praise (and a Golden Globe nomination) for her role as an accident survivor in Cake.







Foreign Film


A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT

This past year has proven that the vampire film is alive and well.  Or undead and well, as the case may be.  There was Jim Jarmusch's smart and stylish, Only Lovers Left Alive.  Still in the theaters (and coming to our collection in the months ahead) is the droll vampire mockumentary, What We Do in the Shadows.  Perhaps most impressive of all is Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, an assured blend of style and heart in the story of a solitary young vampire, "The Girl," who roams the lonely streets of Bad City by night (of course).  Photographed like a classic Hollywood black and white and bearing a cool, contemporary sensibility and soundtrack, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night was one of 2014's most original films.





Classics


THE PALM BEACH STORY



These days, the idea of one person serving as writer AND director of a film is hardly unusual.  Such was not the case when the great Preston Sturges began his career in Hollywood.  Sturges is considered the first person to establish himself as a screenwriter and then make the transition to directing those lively scripts.  Our new Criterion Collection edition of The Palm Beach Story is a screwball classic from Sturges' richest period in Hollwood, a very unconventional love story starring Joel McCrea and Claudette Cobert that might leave you seeing double....

The library also has a few other Sturges classics:  Sullivan's Travels, The Lady Eve and Unfaithfully Yours.  

Veronica Lake and Joel McCrea in Sullivan's Travels.  
Barbara Stanwyck and a reluctant Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve.


Also new this week, a late career (and rare English language) film from French master Jean Renoir (Rules of the Game, The Grand Illusion, etc).  Filmed in India, The River is based on a story by Rumer Godden.  Martin Scorcese, who's seen a few films in his time, lists The River among his dozen all-time favorites.



Series

THE RED TENT

Anita Diamant's enormously successful novel, The Red Tent, gets the miniseries treatment in a production that includes Debra Winger and Minnie Driver.




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Friday, April 17, 2015

Flick Picks 4/17/2015: Foyles War Set 8, Big Eyes, The Babadook

Oh, quite a grab bag this week.  In feature films, we have the slightly weird, the dark and the downright scary.  But in a world gone slightly mad, fear not.  Detective Chief Superintendant Christopher Foyle is back on the case....


New Series

FOYLES WAR, SET 8

There is a bit of wall in a staff area of the library where librarians for a time posted pictures of their favorite actors.  One by one, the handsome men were replaced by beloved dogs, past and present.  Eventually, only one man's picture remained among the pooches.  That actor?  Michael Kitchen.  Interpret this as you will, but it does seem to speak to the appeal of the distinguished Mr. Kitchen, who has played the role of Foyle since the series' inception in 2002.  The detective is back once more to solve crimes in the years immediately after World War II in England.  Apparently this truly is it for Foyle's War (much as the series has been cancelled and revived in the past), so place a hold on Foyle's War Set 8 today and savor those final episodes!




Also new: THE MISSING

When a five-year-old boy disappears while his family is on vacation in the South of France, a nearly decade-long search for him begins.  The excellent James Nesbitt (the series Cold Feet, Murphy's Law; the film Bloody Sunday) heads the cast as the father of the missing boy.



Feature Films



BIG EYES


Big Eyes is a a more personal film for director Tim Burton, as with his 1994  film about another cult artist, Ed Wood.  Big Eyes stars the versatile Amy Adams as Margaret Keane, long overshadowed by her husband, Walter (Christoph Waltz), who claimed that he produced all those paintings of saucer-eyed women, children and animals.





THE BABADOOK

The only thing scary about most so-called horror films of the last few decades has been their chainsaw attacks on intelligence, their dismemberment of imagination.  But don't get too comfortable on your sofa...here comes The Babadook.  Written and directed by Australian Jennifer Kent, the bogeyman-type story of The Babadook eschews cheap thrills for the sort of old-fashioned horror that is likely to get under your skin and stay there a while.  The Babadook has met with almost universal praise from critics and audiences alike, even if they have lost a few hours sleep.  Or take the word of director William Friedkin (The Exorcist), "I've never seen a more terrifying film. It will scare the hell out of you as it did me."  Enjoy! 






Also new...

An audience favorite, BESIDE STILL WATERS, has young friends gathering for one last time to relive their glory days at summer house soon to be sold.  Not for the faint of sensibility, David Cronenberg's MAPS TO THE STARS is a particularly barbed addition to the canon of film and literature that skewers Hollywood and the worst of California culture.  





Classics


Arriving in a spiffy new Criterion Collection edition, Odd Man Out is the first in an excellent trio of films directed by Englishman Carol Reed in the late 1940's.  In Odd Man Out, James Mason is an IRA-type leader on the run from the law.  The film takes place in one tense evening, as the injured Mason takes refuge in shadowy haunts around Belfast,while the woman he loves desperately searches for him. 



The library also has the two films directed by Carol Reed subsequent to Odd Man Out, both based on stories by Graham Greene.  The Fallen Idol is seen through the perspective of a diplomat's son in London who idolizes his father's butler.  In The Third Man, Joseph Cotton is an American writer in post-war Vienna, trying to track down his slippery pal, Harry Lime (Orson Welles, dominating the film from the shadows).  Cue that crazy zither music and enjoy this one again.      


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Thursday, April 9, 2015

Flick Picks 4/10/2015: Grantchester, The Red Road, Black Sails

Quite a mixed bag this week.  No big feature film releases, but a variety of new series, documentaries and fun classic released on DVD.


GRANTCHESTER, (Season 1)

If you didn't flip channels or turn off the t.v. after the recent fifth season of Downton Abbey, you might have seen another British production, Grantchester.  Based on the The Grantchester Mysteries, by James Runcie, Grantchester is a detective drama set in the eponymous English village during the 1950's.  Local vicar Sidney Chambers becomes a sleuth in his spare time, somewhat to the chagrin of Detective Inspector Geordie Keating, who grudgingly helps the young vicar.




Also new in series...

  The first season of both The Red Road and Black Sails.  The Red Road has police officer Harold Jensen battling trouble on both the home and crime fronts, while Black Sails transpires more fancifully among pirates on New Providence Island, serving as a kind of prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.  






New Documentaries

HERB & DOROTHY 50 X 50

Herb and Dorothy Vogel were civil servants (he a postal worker, she a librarian) who amassed an amazing collection of modern art, filling their small New York apartment to bursting.  Eventually, the extraordinary collection collection was donated to the National Gallery.  But the art-collecting couple were not done.  Herb & Dorothy 50 x 50 picks up their story as the pair launch an organization that eventually donated 2,500 works to 50 institutions in all 50 states.  



The library also has the documentary that started it all, the award-winning Herb & Dorothy.  


HAPPY VALLEY

We all know the story in its broad and tragic outline.  Former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky was reported to be, ultimately convicted as a serial child molester.  The scandal at Penn State expanded, bringing down the university's president and its beloved head football coach, Joe Paterno.  Writer and director Amir Bar-Lev was there from the time the story broke.  He chronicles not only the major events, but the reaction of a community distraught at the downfall of its football program which it had followed with something approaching religious devotion.  


FINDING FELA and ALGORITHMS:  BLIND CHESS PLAYERS OF INDIA

If you need something bit more inspiring, two other recent documentaries should do the trick.  The accomplished and very busy Alex Gibney (Enron:  The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side, and a series of recent documentaries for HBO) gives us Finding Fela, about the extremely influential Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti.  "Algorithms," meanwhile, tells the story of young chess players in India who dream of becoming grandmasters, undeterred by their lack of sight.


Classics

THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF UNCLE HARRY


During his time in America, Robert Siodmak was an accomplished director of film noir and horror.  The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry is more a case of the former.  George Sanders (perhaps best remembered as the mordant drama critic Addison DeWitt in All About Eve) stars as a bachelor living with his two sisters, all members of a formerly elite family reduced to more modest circumstances by The Great Depression.  But into Harry's dreary life comes desirable New Yorker Deborah Brown.  Will Harry marry Deborah and escape his sad bachelor's life at last?  Will manipulative sister Lettie allow such a thing?  Will the meek Harry finally snap?  There's a pretty good twist at the end of The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, so much so that the film's makers found it necessary to offer the following warning prior to the closing credits:  "In order that your friends may enjoy this picture, please do not disclose the ending."  Find out for yourself, but please don't be a blabbermouth!


In addition to The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, the library has good examples of both Robert Siodmak's work in film noir and horror.  The latter is represented by The Spiral Staircase (1946). A serial killer is on the loose in early 20th century New England. Who is the killer?  And will his next victim be the sweet girl working for the bedridden Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore)?  Not for the last time in film history, a young woman is admonished, GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!  As for Siodmak's considerable body of work in noir, we have a good example in The Killers (also 1946).  Based on a short story by Ernest Hemmingway, The Killers has a young Burt Lancaster playing a character known as "The Swede," hiding out in a small town, waiting for two hit men and his past to catch up with him.  The femme fatale who got him into trouble in the first place.  None other than Ava Gardner.



















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Saturday, April 4, 2015

Flick Picks 4/3/2015: The Imitation Game, Interstellar, Wild

Some major DVD releases this week, highlighted by three very different stories.  


THE IMITATION GAME

Based on the life and World War II work of Alan Turing, The Imitation Game is the story of the English contribution to the breaking of the seemingly unbreakable Nazi Enigma Code.  This period drama is highlighted by the performance of Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing, a hero of the English war effort who was unjustly persecuted in the decade following his life-saving work.  We have several copies of the regular DVD version of the film, as well as one on Blu-ray.     



The Imitation Game is hardly the first film or series that deals with the English attempt to break the Enigma Code and its aftermath.  Another interesting take on the story was provided by the 2013 British series, The Bletchley Circle.  The Bletchley Circle focuses on a group of female code breakers relegated to more traditional female roles after the war, who reunite to catch a serial killer in the 1950's.  The Bletchley Circle is available in our series collection.




INTERSTELLAR

Director Christopher Nolan does not lack for ambition.  After his sprawling Batman trilogy (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises), not to mention the mind-bending Inception, Nolan has gone, well...interstellar with his latest sci-fi extravaganza.  Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain and Michael Caine star in the film about a crew of astronauts who travel through a wormhole in search of a new home for humanity.  Interstellar is available in regular DVD and Blu-ray



WILD

Based on Cheryl Strayed's memoir, Wild Stars Reese Witherspoon as woman who decides to hike entirety of the Pacific Crest Trail to turn her life around after divorce, the death of her mother and years of self-destructive behavior. 




Also new this week:  Hugh Grant heads an appealing cast, starring as a struggling screenwriter in The Rewrite. 




SERIES NEWS

 The ever-delightful Julis Louis-Dreyfus stars in the third season of  Veep,  



Nerd alert!  Season one of the HBO series Silicon Valley has arrived.  




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