Pick of the week: “Crystal Fairy”: My full review is here. Michael Cera is very un-Bluth-like as a drug tourist in Chile, obsessed with finding a rare cactus that can be turned into a powerful hallucinogenic. Dragging his Chilean friends along the way, he runs into a hippie girl (Gaby Hoffmann) who upends his quest. It’s a very dry, very strange comedy, and something more besides.
Pick of the week: “Frances Ha” — My full review is here. Noah Baumbach’s beautifully ode to aimless twentysomethings and female friendship has all the zingy dialogue and sharp characterizations we’ve come to expect from the creator of “Greenberg,” and “The Squid and the Whale.” But perhaps because of star, co-writer and partner Greta Gerwig, the film has a generosity of spirit we haven’t seen before from Baumbach.
Pick of the week: “Skyfall”: My full review is here. I know I usually make the pick of the week some kind of semi-obscure indie gem, but good gravy do I love the last James Bond movie. It has all the classic elements of a great Bond movie — great villain, exotic locations, killer pre-credits sequence, but those all feel put in service to a real movie.
I’m kind of a wuss when it comes to horror movies, which makes me that much more susceptible and appreciative when a good one comes along. In honor of Halloween, here are five recent horror films that did the trick for me.
Pick of the week: “Dirty Wars”: My full review is here, and my interview with Jeremy Scahill is here. Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill (a Wauwatosa native) looks into America’s secret war on terror, including targeted assassinations and drone strikes, and ponders the blowback that we may be unleashing.
Classic of the week: “Wake in Fright”: My full review is here. A cultured schoolteacher is waylaid in a rough Australian town in this 1971 film, and a dark night of drinking, carousing and kangaroo slaughter unleashes his inner beast.
Documentary of the week: “Ai Weiwei Never Sorry”: My full review is here. The combative Chinese artist Ai Weiwei mixes art and activism to crusade against his government’s abuses.
Thriller of the week: “In Bruges”: My full review is here. Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell are hitmen on furlough in a picturesque Belgian town in this very funny and very violent film.
Western of the week: “Two Mules for Sister Sara“: Not my favorite Clint Eastwood Western, as Clint reluctantly takes on a prostitute masquerading as a nun (Shirley MacLaine). But still, a Clint Eastwood Western.
Aside from the top pick, it’s a classic movie bonanza at Instant Gratification this week.
Pick of the week: “Room 237“: My full review is here. Rodney Ascher’s playful and engrossing documentary is a love letter and a warning to film obsessives, as we watch “The Shining” through the eyes of five cinephiles with increasingly bizarre theories on the film’s “true” meaning. (Unfortunately, “The Shining” is not on Netflix.)
Crime film of the week: “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels“: Ah, I miss the days when Guy “Sherlock Holmes” Ritchie used to make movies like this, profane, twisty, fun crime films, in this case following several roughneck parties who collide over a pair of antique shotguns.
Action film of the week: “The Italian Job”: Not the Michael Caine original, but the American remake starring Mark Wahlberg, which is a pretty good heist film in its own right that makes good use of those Mini Coopers.
Comedy of the week: “The Last Days of Disco”: Whit Stillman’s 1998 film is a sly comedy of manners in the age of the Bee Gees, starring Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny.
Foreign film of the week: “Starbuck”: My full review is here. This French-Canadian film (which will be remade as “The Delivery Man” with Vince Vaughn in November) follows a middle-aged screw-up who finds that his sperm donations have resulted in him fathering over 500 children.
Pick of the week: “Shadow Dancer”: My full review is here. In this downbeat, unsentimental film that’s like a British miserablist version of a John Le Carre novel, an IRA terrorist (Andrea Riseborough) turns informant for an MI5 agent (Clive Owen). The film, made by “Wisconsin Death Trip” and “Man on Wire” director James Marsh, is short on thrills but long on mood, building an atmosphere of increasing paranoia around Riseborough’s beautifully controlled lead performance.
Documentary of the week: “21 Up”: Actually, every one of Michael Apted’s landmark series, following a group of British folks every seven years of their lives, is up on Netflix from “21” to this year’s “56 Up.”
Pick of the week: “To The Wonder“: Terrence Malick’s latest film (which UW-Cinematheque premiered in Madison) is an ethereal and elliptical take on lost love and found faith that turned off some of Malick’s usual supporters. For me, it is a little overwrought in places, but the visuals and the rapturous tone swept me up.
Woody of the week: “The Purple Rose of Cairo”: A movie hero walks off the screen and into the life of a lonely housewife in Woody Allen’s wistful fantasy, whose last shot is the most devastating take on cinephilia I can remember.
Indie of the week: “The New Year“: Filmmaker Brett Haley brought his lovely slice-of-life indie to the Wisconsin Film Festival a couple of years ago, an insightful tale of recent college graduate slumming it at her family’s bowling alley, waiting for life to begin.
Sci-fi movie of the week: “The Core”: Heaven help me, I really enjoy this 2003 riff on ’50s sci-fi films, in which a team of scientists head down to the center of the earth to jumpstart the earth’s core. Ridiculous, but pretty fun, with a great cast (Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, and a hilarious Stanley Tucci) selling it far more than they needed to.
Comedy of the week: “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka”: I almost hate to recommmend this, since it begat “Scary Movie,” “A Haunted House” and all the other lame movie parodies from the Wayans clan. But Keenan Ivory Wayans loving spoof of blaxploitation movies is a genuine hoot.
Pick of the week: “FIlly Brown” — It’s the eternal showbiz cautionary tale, as a female Latino rapper must choose between her art and selling out to be successful. But the music is great, the perspective of a female in hip-hop is fresh, and Gina Rodriguez shines in the title role.
Drama of the week: “There Will Be Blood” — My full review is here. Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic deconstruction of the American myth — the self-made man — is like “Citizen Kane” drenched in blood and oil and left to bake in the California sun. Daniel Day Lewis is mesmerizing as the self-made man who chases financial success and moral ruin.
Documentary of the week: “A Place at the Table” — My full review is here. This thoughtful documentary looks at the state of hunger in America, where 51 people don’t get enough to eat, from the inner city to bucolic small towns and everywhere in between. It could be the start, finally, of an honest conversation of what poverty really looks like.
Comedy of the week: “Zoolander” — Incredibly, Ben Stiller hasn’t directed a film since this 2001 comedy, and his upcoming “Walter Mitty” doesn’t look nearly as funny as this bizarre and riotous send-up of the fashion world. Blue Steel lives.
Sci-fi of the week: “WarGames” — Young hacker Matthew Broderick accidentally tricks a supercomputer into thinking World War III is coming, and must undo the damage in this fun and thoughtful 1983 film.
Madison Movie 