Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Flick Picks January 20, 2016: The Martian, The Intern, Learning to Drive


This January roundup of Flick Picks offers you the world.  Multiple worlds in fact.  We have any Oscar favorite and at least a couple of Oscar snubs.  Patricia Clarkson wants to learn to drive.  Matt Damon just wants to get home.  Martin Freeman sports a funny mustache, while Mark Ruffalo really needs to stay on his meds.  Read on.


Feature Films





78-year-old Ridley Scott show no signs of slowing down.  The veteran director brings us another big story with The Martian.  Matt Damon plays an astronaut assumed dead on Mars and left behind by his crew.  And yet, emerging from the red dust is none other than botanist Mark Watney (Damon).  How can he survive until help arrives?  Watch and find out.  We have The Martian in regular DVD and Blu-ray.






Amid a number of Hollywood studio pictures comes this excellent independent film from 2015, starring John Ashton (best known as the gruff partner of Judge Reinhold in the Beverly Hills Cop films).  Ashton plays a well-respected carpenter in a small Wisconsin town who kills a local bully, covers up the crime and then tries to live with what he's done.  The latter is made more difficult by the menacing brother of the deceased, who suspects him.  Meanwhile, Ben, the nephew he raised, goes about his life in Chicago.  When Ben makes an unexpected visit with a female friend, all the the lives intersect in difficult to anticipate ways.  Uncle John is an example of smart, subtle and tense (and not without its moments of comedy) storytelling.  In a better world, the veteran Ashton might be up for Beast Actor at the upcoming Academy Awards.


Also new:  Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway star in THE INTERN.  Patricia Clarkson is a recent divorcee trying to become more self-sufficient.  Ben Kingsley plays the Sikh driving instructor who gives her road and life lessons in LEARNING TO DRIVE.  Joaquin Phoenix is the latest stand-in for director Wood Allen in IRRATIONAL MAN.  Lastly, Mark Ruffalo plays a father trying to cope with his mental illness and raise two daughters in Boston while their mother works in New York.   INFINITELY POLAR BEAR is rather quirkier, even funnier at times than it sounds.




                                                           




Series






This special episode of the popular BBC/PBS series has Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in Victorian London for the first time.  Hence, the funny hats and the veritable rodent of a mustache atop Watson's upper lip.  





The excellent Idris Elba (some would say overlooked by Oscar for his work in the film Beasts of No Nation) stars in the fourth season of this British crime series. 


BROAD CITY, SEASONS ONE AND  TWO


This charming Comedy Central series stars Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson as two twenty-somethings making their way in New York.  Look for lots of cameos from the likes of Amy Poehler, Amy Sedaris and Fred Armisen.







Classics





Loosely based on the novel Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith (who initially rejected the film but was won over on second viewing), The American Friend finds director Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) in noir mode.  Dennis Hopper plays career criminal Tom Ripley, who convinces terminally ill picture framer Bruno Ganz (later the star of Wings of Desire) to join him in his illegal enterprises.  A great mood film.  



Foreign




This critically-acclaimed Brazilian drama concerns a maid for an affluent Sao Paulo family who had left her daughter behind years earlier to be raised by relatives.  When the daughter arrives to stay with her mother to take college entrance exams, thorny issues emerge.  The Second Mother mixes comedy and drama while addressing economic disparities between its rural and urban regions.


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Friday, January 8, 2016

Flick Picks January 7, 2015: Sicario, The Walk, True Detective

The first wave of new releases for 2016 is highlighted by two excellent dramas from 2015 and the second season of HBO's True Detective.

Feature Films



Sadly, the canon of films on drug trafficking and its attendant (if ineffectual) law enforcement grows as the problem stretches across decades.  The good news is that Sicario is a good addition to this genre and a good film period.  The versatile Emily Blunt plays a tough but somewhat idealistic FBI agent, assigned to a mysterious task force headed by Josh Brolin.  As with Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, the always excellent Benicio Del Toro is also present.  




Robert Zemeckis' film about the amazing high wire demonstration of Phillippe Petit between the newly-completed towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 has received good reviews, especially for its dizzying special effects.  You might grab your armrest as the film gains momentum and Petit ventures forth on that wire.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as the French aerialist.  

If you're interested in the story of Philippe Petit and have not yet seen James Marsh's documentary on the subject, you simply must do so.  MAN ON WIRE was a very justifiable winner of Best Documentary Feature at the 2009 Academy Awards. 







Experimenter is the second film of 2015, along with THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT, to deal with notorious experiments that involved supervised mistreatment of people.  Michael Almereyda's Experimenter, which takes a slightly more whimsical approach than its predecessor, deals with the 1961 Milgram experiment, in which electric shocks of increasing strength were delivered to helpless subjects by normal people, who virtually always, if reluctantly, inflicted the jolts of electricity when instructed to do so.  Fascinating as ever, Peter Sarsgaard stars as Yale social psychologist Stanley Milgram.  


Also new:  Alison Brie (Community, Mad Men) and Jason Sudeikis star in the sex comedy,  SLEEPING WITH OTHER PEOPLE.  Keanu Reeves portrays as a man whose decision to open his door to two strange women backfires in a major way in KNOCK KNOCK.  There's more dystopian fun to be had in MAZE RUNNER SCORCH TRIALS, the second installment of films based on the popular young adult books by James Dashner.  Lastly, THE VISIT takes us to a place of nearly unimaginable horror:  the grandparents' house.    

 
   







Series




The popular HBO series True Detective continues into its second season.  Rachel McAdams, Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn star.  

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