As the year nears its end, a 10 Best Movies list seems almost mandatory. What’s interesting is how once the virtually nonstop barrage of ‘awards season’ advertising unloads – awards season being from the beginning of September until Oscar night, Sunday Feb. 9 – it can be tough to recall what came earlier.
As to the most frequent question: What was your favorite film this year? When I say, It’s a toss-up between Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ and Bong Joon-Ho’s ‘Parasite,’ I am surprised because I get
puzzled looks. Although the Tarantino grossed $141 million domestically (global total: $372 million), apparently the summer release didn’t have the cultural impact of the year’s many Marvel movies. As for the South Korean ‘Parasite,’ which won the Palme d’Or – Cannes’ top prize – last May, it has grossed just $21 million domestic box-office, very good for a subtitled import but hardly a blockbuster. It’s expected that both Tarantino and Bong will be among the five Best Director Oscar nominees and both films will compete as Best Picture nominees.
Are my other eight equally great? In no particular order, they are:
· James Mangold’s ‘Ford v Ferrari,’ which like the Tarantino is specifically and wonderfully rooted in the Sixties and boasts terrific work from its two stars, Matt Damon and Christian Bale. Like the cars onscreen, this is classic Americana.
· Noah Baumbach’s ‘Marriage Story’ A penetrating look at the unexpected consequences of divorce. It’s a movie that has lots of heart, angst and surprise. Somehow, a feel-good movie about a depressing subject. Towering performances all ‘round, with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson as the uncoupling couple, Laura Dern, Ray Liotta and Alan Alda as the lawyers.
· Pedro Almodovar’s ‘Pain and Glory’ subtly reflects on aging, memory and desire in a semi-autobiographical film where a weary, pain-addled filmmaker examines his life, a work that evokes Ingmar Bergman’s 1958 template ‘Wild Strawberries.’
· Clint Eastwood’s ‘Richard Jewell’ is yet another pointed examination of a real-life incident. Like the heroic pilot in Eastwood’s ‘Sully’ who saved every passenger on a doomed plane and was then charged with negligence, the security guard Jewell’s life-saving moves at Atlanta’s 1996 Olympics were celebrated then questioned, his reputation destroyed by an FBI and a media smear. An ugly story, a cautionary tale, economically scripted (Billy Ray) with unforgettably heartbreaking performances by Kathy Bates as Jewell’s protective mother and Paul Walter Hauser as Jewell.
· Three extraordinary documentaries: Penny Lane’s ‘Hail Satan?’ Matt Tyrnauer’s ‘Where Is My Roy Cohn?’ which tells us pretty much all we need to know about the current president and Alex Holmes’ ‘Maiden,’ an unexpectedly surprising rallying cry for women’s rights and equality during the 1989 Whitbread Round the World race when, for the first time ever, an all-female crew competed.
· And finally a movie that should have played the New York Film Festival last September (if they’d had the guts to battle political correctness and screen it). I’m talking about Roman Polanski’s sensational ‘J’Accuse’ (also known as ‘An Officer and a Spy’), easily the best film at the Venice Film Festival where it world premiered minus the auteur who must remain in France or face arrest. A masterful recounting of the notorious, anti-Semitic Dreyfuss Affair, Polanski’s film presents a master at the height of his considerable powers, giving the complicated, years-spanning story a sense of menace, paranoia and fate. A success in Europe, there are currently no plans for an American release.
Honorable mention: The melodramatic ‘Greta’ with Chloë Grace Moretz and Isabelle Huppert, the horrifying ‘Hotel Mumbai’ about the terrorist siege in India, the inspiring ‘Fighting with My Family’ with Dwayne Johnson a real-life angel in helping a British woman (Florence Pugh) realize her pro wrestling dreams, Ralph Fiennes’ stirring biopic ‘The White Crow’ of the young Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev’s defection to the West, Julianne Moore as ‘Gloria Bell,’ a thrilling study of a middle-aged woman who insists on finding joy in her life, Danny Boyle’s ridiculously entertaining Beatles’ riff ‘Yesterday,’ Jay Roach’s ‘Bombshell,’ also ridiculously entertaining despite its truly grim and very real subject of sexual harassment and rape.
There’s more: Awkwafina rises from comic shtick to seriously reflective work in the engaging ‘The Farewell,’ Renee Zellweger ascends to the stratosphere resurrecting Judy Garland in the sweetly sentimental ‘Judy,’ Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen show how a couple of pros hit the bullseye, again, in Bill Condon’s who’s conning whom ‘The Good Liar.’ Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins make similar magic in ‘The Two Popes’ with an ingenious screenplay, perhaps the year’s best, by Anthony McCarten. Australia’s Jennifer Kent roused audiences with a harsh look at the real-life horror that was a 19th century life of indentured servitude in ‘The Nightingale,’ and Francois Ozon explicitly and exquisitely recreates how sexual victims of a predatory pedophile priest bonded together and forcibly prompted change in ‘By the Grace of God.’
For sheer escapism: the animated ‘Abominable’ enchanted, the James Cameron-produced reboot of ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ offered a fitting finale to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s war weary android and Roland Emmerich presents history amid mighty spectacle as America’s fate in WWII is determined by a Pacific naval battle in the rousing ‘Midway.’
MURDOCH ISN’T SO MYSTERIOUS
What would ‘Law & Order: SVU’ be like without Mariska Hargitay! What would ‘Murdoch Mysteries, Season 13’ (premieres Dec. 25, 18 episodes, AcornTV) be minus Yannick Bisson, it’s heart and soul as Detective William Murdoch? The premise is familiar: As the 20th century approaches in Toronto’s crime-solving police department, Murdoch happily explores new ways of catching bad men (and women!) with then innovative forensic techniques like fingerprinting, using ultraviolet light and trace evidence. Diversity is embraced by the series with the arrival of the force’s African American Special Constable Robert Parker (Marc Senior), a former Pinkerton operative. Also prominent is Helene Joy’s dependable Doctor Julie Ogden, now a surgeon at Toronto Mercy Hospital who becomes aware of the attentions of a fellow doctor (Sebastian Pigott).
NEW DVDs:
RIAN BEFORE ‘KNIVES’ Writer-director Rian Johnson took a hit for the 2017 ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ but quickly bounced back — in a big way! — with the current ‘Knives Out,’ a twist on an Agatha Christie-like murder mystery that both delights in genre traditions while simultaneously mocking them. It was in 2005 that Johnson took a risk and won plaudits reviving another genre, the gumshoe detective in ‘Brick’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, R). Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Brendan Frye is a high school loner – yes, Johnson has revived his noir-ish detective story with teenagers! – on the hunt for the killer of his girlfriend. Many suspects with Richard Roundtree (‘Shaft’) and Lukas Haas (‘Witness’) making cameos. Johnson personally supervised this new 4K restoration and does the audio commentary alongside two of his cast. Additionally there are eight extended scenes with Johnson doing the intro. There’s also a short on casting two key high school roles.
ONE IRISHMAN’S HOLIDAY CHEER An intentional throwback to holiday films bulging with sentiment and song, ‘Santa Fake’ (DVD, Indion Entertainment, Not Rated) finds Pat Keely (Damian McGinty, ‘Glee’), an undocumented Northern Irish immigrant hiding in New York. Because he’s naïve, Pat accepts a gangster’s offer of a job delivering two briefcases filled with he knows not what. Clueless Pat somehow ends up in the completely wrong place – Santa Fe, NM – where he becomes a shopping mall Santa. It may not qualify as a miracle on 34th Street but it’s in the Santa Fe mall in his red suit that Pat finds his destiny. The cast includes familiar if bygone names: Judd Nelson (‘The Breakfast Club’), Jeff Fahey (‘Lost’) and John Rhys-Davies (‘The Lord of the Rings’).
IS THAT REALLY MS COLLINS? Joan Collins’ remarkable career began nearly 70 years ago and continues. Take a look back at the glam, talented, tireless Collins in 1953’s low-budget controversial English thriller ‘The Slasher’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, Not Rated). In the early ‘50s Marlon Brando and James Dean won raves as, respectively, ‘The Wild One’ and ‘Rebel Without a Cause.’ ‘The Blackboard Jungle’ had juvenile delinquents and was the first film with a rock score. ‘The Slasher’ follows teen delinquents who rob women on the street, get sent to a youth program to be reformed, only to see them scheme and take control. Collins’ image was set early. She became a notorious, sexy star — ‘Britain’s Bad Girl’ — for playing a juvenile delinquent in the 1952 ‘I Believe in You.’ In the UK ‘Slasher’ was called ‘The Cosh Boy’ and was immediately notorious as the first-ever X rated movie – meaning Adults Only. It was banned in Sweden. The plot has Collins pursued by Roy, the gang’s leader. She rejects him – she has a boyfriend – so Roy beats up the boyfriend and intimidates her into a relationship. When she becomes pregnant, he drops her. The special feature here is the alternate US opening sequence.
TWO FOR THE AGES For sheer star power and simply stunning, awe-inspiring intensity, two of France’s greatest international stars, Simone Signoret and Isabelle Adjani, deliver the goods with these must-see performances that truly stand the test of time. You won’t find a better case of romantic resignation and heartbreaking existential acceptance than in Signoret’s Oscar-winning Best Actress turn in Jack Clayton’s 1959 ‘Room at the Top’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, Not Rated). ‘Room’ is part of the then-new classic ‘angry young man’ dramas as British films offered a newly conscious societal perspective on class and opportunity (‘Look Back in Anger,’ ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’). In ‘Top’ Laurence Harvey is the poor kid determined to claw, steal, charm and, yes, marry his way to the ‘top.’ Signoret, who had been working in films for a decade, became an international ‘overnight’ star as Harvey’s married mistress who is dumped when he weds the boss’s daughter. Film historian Kat Ellinger does the audio commentary.
Isabelle Adjani had become an overnight star in Francois Truffaut’s biographical ‘The Story of Adele H.’ about the world-famous novelist Victor Hugo’s daughter who became a stalker and then went mad, literally, with unrequited loved for an army lieutenant. That was 1975; Adjani was 20 when she received her first Best Actress Oscar nomination. In 1988 she was nominated again for another real-life story of a woman’s nearly insane sorrow, playing the titular character in Bruno Nuytten’s biopic ‘Camille Claudel’ (Blu-ray, Kino Classics, Not Rated), which was also nominated as Best Foreign Language Film. Camille, an aspiring sculptor, was initially enthralled by Auguste Rodin (Gerard Depardieu) – who wouldn’t be? He was the most famous and celebrated sculptor in the world. Of course the two artists become lovers, of course it’s an impossible relationship and of course it is Camille who suffers – nearly losing her mind. Cinematographer-turned-director Nuytten fathered a child with Adjani but the two never married. Special features: Audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan and a booklet essay by film critic Abbey Bender.
NOT A HOLIDAY DINNER Bertrand Tavernier was a French film publicist turned film critic turned distinguished filmmaker whose films offer more than box-office cachet. They’re smart, sexually frank, incisive portraits and heart-rending character studies. His films range from his breakthrough, ‘The Clockmaker of St. Paul,’ where a father discovers his son is a killer, to the moody, atmospheric ‘Around Midnight’ with Dexter Gordon as an American jazz exile in ‘50s Paris’ and the odd, steamy African-set ‘Coup de Torchon’ with Isabelle Huppert. Tavernier’s 1984 ‘A Sunday in the Country’ (Blu-ray, Kino Classics, Not Rated) presents an upper middle class French family gathered for a family dinner as World War I looms on the horizon. The aged artist father is near the end of his life. His children arrive with their families. Despite being beautifully photographed and costumed, this ‘Sunday’ dinner knows that familial warfare is never far away. Tavernier offers the audio commentary!
TARANTINO’S SECOND GREATEST Sergio Corbucci gets a shout-out in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.’ Corbucci is, in Tarantino’s estimation, after Sergio Leoni (‘A Fistful of Dollars’), the Spaghetti Western’s greatest director. Two of Corbucci’s influential ‘60s hits can now be watched in brand new 4K restorations. The 1967 ‘The Hellbenders’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, Not Rated) stars Joseph Cotton (Hitchcock’s ‘Shadow of a Doubt,’ ‘Citizen Kane’). The 1969 ‘The Specialists’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, Not Rated) boasts one of France’s greatest stars Johnny Hallyday, always referred to as France’s Elvis, and elegant Francoise Fabian (‘Call My Agent!’ Eric Rohmer’s classic ‘My Night at Maud’s’). Both Corbuccis offer filmmaker Alex Cox’s audio commentary.
On ‘Hellbenders’ the score is by another Tarantino fave, Ennio Morricone and there are English subtitles. On ‘Specialists’ the English subtitles are an option with French or Italian versions.
"Hollywood" - Google News
December 24, 2019 at 09:46AM
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Stephen Schaefer’s Hollywood & Mine - Boston Herald
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