Pick of the week: “Dear White People“: My full review is here. Justin Simien’s bold, funny and complex comedy looks at several African-American students trying to navigate the identity minefield of a “post-racial” campus, including a biracial activist, a gay nerd, and a dean’s son who can calibrate just how “street” he needs to be in a given situation. It’s a little flabby in spots, but I found this a bracing film that that accuses, and then flips the mirror back on the accusers.
Headshot of Irish actor Peter O’Toole (L) and Egyptian-born actor Omar Sharif in a still from the film, ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ directed by David Lean, 1962. (Photo by Columbia Pictures/Courtesy of Getty Images)
Pick of the week: “Lawrence of Arabia” (Netflix) — This must be a huge honor for “Lawrence of Arabia” to be the Instant Gratification Pick of the Week, right? I mean, I could have gone with “Byzantium,” but I thought I’d throw a little love the way of literally one of the greatest movies ever made. Anyway, David Lean’s epic starring Peter O’Toole as T.E. Lawrence, the British adventure entranced and seduced by the desert sands, is a wonderful movie, and is presented here in its diamond-sharp HD restored edition.
Pick of the week: “Timbuktu“ (Amazon Prime) — My full review is here. A small town in Mali chafes under the ironclad rule of fundamentalist Muslims in this Oscar-nominated drama which makes both oppressors and oppressed into three-dimensional human beings.
“Two Days, One Night” (Netflix) — My full review is here. Marion Cotillard plays a working-class woman who must convince her fellow employees to forego their bonuses or else she’ll be laid off. From such a small struggle, Cotillard’s unshowy performance and the Dardennes Brothers naturalistic direction make for a film that’s full of drama and suspense, as well as a resonant look at an economy that turns fearful workers on one another.
Pick of the Week: “A Most Violent Year” (Amazon Prime) — J.C. Chandor’s thriller about an ambitious heating oil salesman (Oscar Isaac) who tries to keep his hands clean (or clean enough) in a world of crime and corruption owes an obvious debt to great ’70s films by Sidney Lumet, Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin. But its exploration of the intersection between capitalism and morality seems utterly relevant in an age of “Corporations are people too, my friends.”
Pick of the week: “The Hurt Locker” — My full review is here. Kathryn Bigelow’s unrelenting tense 2009 Oscar winner follows a three-man bomb squad in Iraq, trying to stay ahead of insurgents who have made every patch of ground a potential deathtrap. Bigelow rivals Michael Mann in her staging of spectacular, nerve-shredding action sequences that illuminate the character of the people involved.
“Tig” (Netflix) — My full review is here. This documentary on comedian Tig Notaro is intimate and revealing, even for a film about a standup comedian who turned her bout with breast cancer into a legendary stand-up show. The doc looks at what comes after for Notaro, as she struggles to figure out the next chapter in her professional life, falls in love and pursues her dream of having a baby.
“Wild Canaries” (Netflix) — My full review is here. It’s like Woody Allen’s “Manhattan Murder Mystery” set among the artisanal cupcake set, as a Brooklyn couple try to figure out who killed the elderly lady in their building. It’s lightweight, fizzy fun, an homage to screwball comedies of the days of yore.
“The Terminator” — Whatever you thought of “Terminator: Genisys,” the summer blockbuster heavily references the first two films, and should have given you a taste to revisit James Cameron’s lean, mean 1984 original. It’s the best John Carpenter film John Carpenter never made.
Pick of the week: “A Most Wanted Man“ — Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last lead role (he was in “Mockingjay Part 1” after this) was in this faithfully grim adaptation of John Le Carre’s thriller, playing a German counterintelligence officer hoping to snare a terrorist financier. Director Anton Corbijn (“The American”) tamps down his usually showy visual style to match the patient, slow-winding tension of the story, and Hoffman is perfect as a no-nonsense investigator who battles with his superiors and the local CIA officer (Robin Wright), who would prefer a quick, showy resolution.
Madison Movie 