Pick of the week: “Uncle John“ — My full review is here. This 2015 Wisconsin Film Festival hit, filmed in Lodi and Chicago, is part rural noir, as a farmer (John Ashton) wrestles with the consequences of a deadly deed. But it’s also an urban romance, as the farmer’s nephew deals with love and career issues in the Chicago advertising. How director Steven Piet and co-writer Erik Crary bring the two genres in an effective way helps make for an assured debut.
Pick of the week: “Selma” (Amazon Prime) — My full review is here. Instead of a tidy history-class lesson on the civil rights movement, Ava Duvernay presents the messiness of history in all its forms, focusing in on the three-month period where Martin Luther King, Jr. (a masterful David Oyelowo) leads a savvy protest movement to sway public opinion behind his cause. The images of violence against the protesters are immediate and horrible, and one comes away with a profound sense that history does not just have to happen, but has to be worked for, step by step.
Pick of the week: “Interstellar” (Amazon Prime) — My full review is here. Christopher Nolan’s latest film comes so close to greatness and just can’t quite grab it. The first third of the film is a plausibly realized version of a dystopian Earth, with humans just getting by as the planet seems to be shutting down all around us. It’s when a mission to save the planet takes flight that the film finds its most breathtaking outer-space visuals, but also its most misbegotten ideas, and the attempt to build an emotional father-daughter through line never quite materializes. Still, it’s a terrific attempt.
Pick of the week: “A Very Murray Christmas” — Wes Anderson movies excepted, can Bill Murray just play Bill Murray from now on? While his last couple of movies (“Rock the Casbah,” “St. Vincent”) were underwhelming, Murray is his charming, funny self in this affectionate goof on old celebrity Christmas specials, playing himself snowbound in New York’s Carlyle Hotel and putting on an ad hoc holiday special with the help of Jenny Lewis, Jason Schwartzman, Maya Rudolph — and, oh yeah, Miley Cyrus and George Clooney. It’s a smooth, silly, after-the-kids-are-tucked-in-their-beds kind of holiday special.
“Tangerine” (Netflix) — My full review is here. You might think a film about two transgender prostitutes working the streets of Los Angeles on Christmas Eve might be a bit of a downer, but Sean Baker’s film is bright, kinetic and awfully funny, even as it poignantly shows the power of friendship among those living on the margins of society.
Pick of the week: “Ex Machina“ (Amazon Prime) — My full review is here. In Alex Garland’s sleek sci-fi thriller, a young programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) is tasked with evaluating the humanity of an android (Alicia Vikander) built by his boss (a great Oscar Isaac). Naturally, complications ensue. Garland largely dodges deeper questions about humanity and identify, instead making a beautiful and tense movie that’s something special.
Pick of the week: “Anna Karenina“: Director Joe Wright and actress Kiera Knightley reunite from “Atonement” in this bracing adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel, written by playwright Tom Stoppard, in which sets blur into each other, and country houses become stages, the better to heighten the artificiality of Anna’s life. At the center of this maelstrom, Knightley holds her own with a finely-tuned performance as the tragic heroine.
“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part I” (Amazon Prime/Hulu) — My full review is here. It’s all setup for “Mockingjay — Part 2,” coming Nov. 20, but it’s effective setup, with Katniss Everdeen and the rebels on the run, planning, waiting, hoping. Those hoping for action in this film will be disappointed — Katniss fires exactly one arrow in the film — but those looking for mood will be swayed, especially as Jennifer Lawrence sings the haunting “The Hanging Tree.” Part 2 better pay off, though.
Pick of the week: “Beasts of No Nation” (Netflix) — My full review is here. This brutal and beautiful film follows a West African boy who gets conscripted as a rebel child soldier under the tutelage of a charismatic Commandant (Idris Elba). Sections of the film are hard to watch, as the boy witnesses (and takes part in) unspeakable acts of cruelty, but we somehow hang onto a thread of empathy for him, especially as the war ends and he struggles with his guilt and grief.
Pick of the Week: “Back of the Future“ (Amazon Prime) — For the month of October, and apparently only the month of October, Amazon Prime is exclusively streaming Robert Zemeckis’ time-travel comedy-adventure plus its lesser two sequels. Watching the 1985 movie 30 years later really is like traveling back to the future.
Madison Movie 