There You Were. A nice lesbian love story.
Good one! And it could be paired with The Fog of War for a nice documentary double feature on the risks of militaristic foreign policy.
I proffer Auto Focus. Greg Kinnear always delivers, and who doesn’t like Willem Dafoe? The cinematograpy and scoring follow the plot of the film nicely.
And everyone should see Bubba Ho Tep.
Add The Ground Truth and you have a nifty triple feature!
Heckleris a really great documentary that I just saw an hour or so ago, and it’s quite interesting- basically about Hecklers at comedy shows, movie show critics, and the advent of the internet and blogging on how it affects criticism today, as told by the artists who deal with them and interviews w/ the critics, hecklers, and such as well.
I unreservedly recommend Swing Girls (2004). I am one of those sticks-in-the-mud who worship classic cinema and can count on his digits the movies I like that were made since 1960. But I just love Swing Girls!
It is a Japanese comedy directed by Shinobu Yaguchi, starring Juri Ueno and several lesser-known (but equally good) young actress/musicians. It’s a simple story of how a group of high school goof-offs get motivated to start their own jazz band. It’s probably based (loosely) on a real life jazz band (the BFJO) in Takasago, Japan but the story in the movie takes place in northern Honshu where it snows in the winter. If you like swing and jazz music, this movie is a no-fooling must-see. Even if you’re not a fan of the music, you’ll probably like the movie. Yaguchi has the classic-cinema style down pat. Cinematography is low-key but highly competent. Story is straightforward with no unnecessary side issues. Characters are likeable. Editing is absolutely superb (and after watching some movies of the last 30 years I’d been thinking good editing was a lost art).
So why isn’t this movie better known in the USA? Well, for one thing it was never released here. I don’t know why but I can speculate that maybe Yaguchi never bothered to get the U.S. rights to the music, then regretted it when it was too late. It was a box-office success in Japan. The only available DVD is Region 2 only, so to play it you’d need a region-free player or a converter. There are a couple of places where a rather poor pirated copy can be streamed online. The English subtitles are very legible and reasonably intelligent, though with a few typos. See it if you can!
The Matador. Pierce Brosnan sheds his James Bond image once and for all.
The Cooler, a little seen movie a with a good cast (William H Macy, Maria Bello, Alec Baldwin) and an interesting premise. Macy’s character is a loser, so much so that Baldwin’s old-school Vegas casino manager employs him to stand near people wining at the casino to cool them down, which seems to work. Until he meets cocktail waitress Bello, and his luck begins to turn. This, of course, doesn’t sit well with the casino manager, as his “cooling” skills seem to fade.
Some great performances, an unusual (if far-fetched) plot, and Maria Bello sans clothing. That’s 3 for 3.