Category Archives: For Your Queue

Find the best new releases and pair those with something from the stacks that you might have missed.

For Your Queue

For Your Queue: Leave It to Gordon-Levitt

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By Hope and George

 

Available today on demand and in your queue is Looper, the kind of movie that nourishes any underfed love of Science Fiction.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Joe, a young hood in a dystopian future. When the mob wants someone wacked, they send him in a time machine back to Joe – no body, no messy investigation. Then one day they send even-more-future Joe (Bruce Willis, in his second great performance this year) back for Joe to wack, and all hell breaks loose. The result is the best action film, best SciFi film, and among the best films period of 2012. It’s a heady, confident, fascinating adventure that should not be missed.

If you enjoy it, you’ll definitely want to give writer/director Rian Johnson’s feature debut Brick a chance. A hardboiled film noir given a David Lynch feel and set in an LA high school, the film works a magic spell. Gordon-Levitt again stars, this time as a high school outsider turned flatfoot trying to piece together a dame’s murder. For all its familiarities, Brick is wildly unusual and absoltuely fascinating viewing.

For Your Queue

For Your Queue: Freaky Fine Friedkin!

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By Hope and George

 

They snuck a whole additional DVD release date in this week, did you notice that? Sneaky bastards!

Well, the good news is that they are unleashing one of the year’s best and weirdest with their secret-second Christmas release. Today, film fans, today director William F. Friedkin offers something bold and nasty: Killer Joe. Matthew McConaughey plays the titular killer, a predator in a cowboy hat making deals with some Texas white trash. The deal goes haywire, and some crazy, mean, vividly depicted shit befalls those unthinking trailer folk.

Subdued, charming, merciless, weird, and oh-so-Southern, Joe scares the living hell out of any thinking person. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really describe the Smiths – an exquisitely cast Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Thomas Hayden Church and a flawless Gina Gershon. This is an ugly and unsettlingly funny film about compromises, bad ideas and bruised women. And it is the best thing Friedkin has done since The Exorcist.

If you enjoy it, try Friedkin’s 2006 White Trash Weirdness, Bug. Working for the first time with Tracy Letts, the playwright/scripter who also penned Killer Joe, Friedkin invites you into a world of paranoia, poverty, regret and tinfoil. Ashley Judd has never been better, playing a desperate waitress with a tragic past living in a cheap motel. She befriends a seriously damaged drifter – the creepy and wonderful Michael Shannon – and a nightmare unspools. Bug lacks the wrong-headed humor of Killer Joe, but it is an absorbing, bizarre, and beautifully executed ride.

For Your Queue

For Your Queue: Bayous and Ozarks

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By Hope and George

 

The award-bedecked indie masterpiece Beasts of the Southern Wild is finally available on DVD today. Get it. Do it right now.

The brilliant tale spins quite a yarn, following 6-year-old Hushpuppy through tumultuous times in an area of the Louisiana Delta called The Bathtub. The wee heroine, played by Quvenzhane Wallis (a force of nature to match the hurricane that’s coming) puzzles through the upsetting events of her father’s failing health and the suddenly ferocious weather with the poetic logic of a child – gloriously nonsensical yet frighteningly reasonable. Wallis joins her director Benh Zeitlin in astonishing debuts, as does the equally fierce and amazing Dwight Henry, playing Hushpuppy’s father Wink. Full of folklore and enchantment, their collaboration amounts to one wonderfully original vision of freedom, self-determination and loss.

For another, more chilling, tale of subculture survival, try Winter’s Bone. In her breakout role, Jennifer Lawrence is riveting as Ree, a young Ozark Mountain girl in danger of crossing the wrong people as she searches for her father and uncovers some dark family secrets. John Hawkes leads a stupendous supporting cast and, along with the unflinching writing and gritty direction of Debra Granik, joins Lawerence to make Winter’s Bone a must.

For Your Queue

For Your Queue: Two from Hillcoat

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By Hope Madden

 

Out on DVD/BluRay/OnDemand/assorted other whatnot this week is the period shoot-em-up Lawless. It’s prohibition time, and the bootlegging Bondurant boys turn down the pricy “protection” offered by big city law. A showdown between official muscle and hardened backwoodsmen is inevitable.

Director John Hillcoat’s assembled an impressive cast, including the great Tom Hardy and Jessica Chastain, whose skill and onscreen chemistry command attention. It’s worth a look.

Even better, dig back in the catalogue for Hillcoat’s first film, The Proposition. A magnificent, brutal, fascinating Outback Western, it’s an underseen gem any fan of the genre is guaranteed to love.

For Your Queue

For Your Queue: Laughing and Wincing

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By Hope and George

 

An underseen film being released to DVD/BluRay today is the newest flick from Todd Solondz.

In Dark Horse, misanthrope/filmmaker Solondz turns his pitiless gaze toward the entitled underachiever. Abe (a perfect Jordan Gelber), waddling through his thirties, drives a hummer, lives at home, slacks off at his father’s office, collects action figures, and believes himself to be put-upon.

A game supporting cast, including Mia Farrow and Christopher Walken as coddling parents, keeps things interesting. As usual, Solondz’s humor comes from a dark place, although Dark Horse is hardly his blackest comedy (that would be Happiness, the one about the pedophile). Nor is it his best (see also: Happiness). But a middling effort from Solondz is still too brilliantly awful to go unseen.

If you’re up for a double scoop of dark laughs, consider Carnage, Roman Polanksi’s adaptation of the hit play from Yasmina Reza (who also wrote the script).

The film is set almost entirely in one room, where two sets of parents are meeting to cordially discuss a recent altercation at school involving their respective sons.

Cordial doesn’t stand a chance.

In short order, the meeting spirals into chaos amid brilliant slices of coal black comedy and stellar performances from Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Wislet and Christoph Waltz.

Uncomfortable? Oh, yes. But its also intelligent and hilarious, and worth a look if you missed it in theaters.

For Your Queue

For Your Queue

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When is a time travel movie not really about time travel? When it’s Safety Not Guaranteed, a love letter to the geeks, nerds and outcasts who were nice and all, but just a little too weird to hang with the cool kids.

Aubrey Plaza (April on TV’s Parks and Recreation) gets a breakout film role as Darius, a bored intern for a Seattle magazine. When staff reporter Jeff (Jake M. Johnson from TV’s New Girl) sees a classified ad seeking a partner in time travel, he takes Darius and fellow intern Arnau (Karan Soni) on a journey to find the ad’s author and get his story.

The movie is based on a real classified ad, placed as a joke in 1997 (by a man who appears briefly in the film). It works best once Darius gains the trust of the curious Kenneth (Mark Duplass), who’s planning a trip back to 2001, and not for the reason you think.

Duplass, a veteran “mumblecore” filmmaker/actor, gives Kenneth a depth that resonates, and Plaza delivers a star-making performance that takes Darius from condescending hipster to caring human being with nary a false note. Their scenes together are never less than touching.

Director Colin Trevorrow and writer Derek Connolly both make stellar debuts. Their first feature is more about seizing the possibilities of the present than about erasing the mistakes of the past, and they infuse it with heart, soul and wit.  (i.e. “She needs to go back in time and kill whoever gave her that haircut.”)

Don’t expect dazzling time-travel wizardry, or you’ll be disappointed. Or maybe you won’t, as the charming Safety Not Guaranteed is bound to win you over.

If you enjoy Safety Not Guaranteed, have a look at 2007’s Spanish import Timecrimes. Like Safety, this film’s most appealing element is its deceptively un-SciFi setting. The offbeat time travel mind bender never actually leaves a single neighborhood, taking a borderline comic approach – think Groundhog Day – to pique tension and engage viewers so that, when the film turns dark, the human aspect of the story goes unforgotten.

For Your Queue

For Your Queue

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Hooray – Moonrise Kingdom is now available on DVD and BluRay and other assorted whatnot, allowing you to watch it in your own home. So, by all means, do that!

In the dreamlike world of Wes Anderson’s seventh feature, simple scenes are woven together into a funny, rich love story that captivates from start to finish.

Admittedly, director/co-writer Anderson can be an acquired taste. Deliberately quirky and full of droll humor, his films have fluctuated from deep and meaningful (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) to groundless and uneven (The Darjeeling Limited). Moonrise Kingdom is perhaps his most complete to date.

Set in an island town off the New England coast in 1965, it follows youngsters Sam and Suzy, kindred spirits who look to each other for comfort as they navigate the minefield that is puberty.

The script is an endearing and never-condescending tribute to adolescence, not only a celebration of it but also a subtle yearning for innocence lost. The direction, production design, cinematography, cast, music—you name it—are all impeccable. Together, they render Moonrise Kingdom downright poetic, and easily one of the best films of the year.

Make it a double feature with an underseen, early Anderson gem, Bottle Rocket. Anderson’s first film as director, working from a script he co-wrote with star Owen Wilson, is an endearing, off kilter heist comedy that ranks among the best films Owen Wilson, his brother Luke, or even Anderson has ever made.

For Your Queue

For Your Queue

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If , unlike us, you have room in your Netflix queue, here’s the first of some weekly suggestions for worthwhile choices you may have missed.

Last week, a fascinating but underseen indy flick about cult leaders, time travel, under cover reporting and faith was released to DVD. Sound of My Voice takes those well-worn paths of melodrama and exploitation, and bends them to its will, creating a hushed and fascinating story like little else you’ve seen.

Relying on the inventive storytelling of director Zal Batmanglij and the mesmerizing performance of his lead and co-writer, Brit Marling, the movie quietly grabs your interest and never lets go. Marling is a talent to watch, a fact established in this, only her second film.

Cleverly written to generate tensions and keep you guessing, Voice challenges your imagination as it solidifies Marling’s standing as an artist with a promising future.

For more of Marling, you may also want to check out Another Earth, her engaging sci-fi flick from last year. Also working with a screenplay she co-wrote, Marling captivates as a young woman whose life is altered in various ways by the discovery of a “duplicate” Earth.

The production values are stripped down, but the thought- provoking script and Marling’s performance make it worth a look.