Recommended This Weekend!

Clifton’s amazing cafeteria on Broadway downtown closed awhile back, and it was purchased by a happening developer in 2010.  The new incarnation isn’t open to the great unwashed as of yet, but for you…a special sneek peek!
Starting this weekend, they’ll be showing movies set in LA, followed by sets from local musicians and DJ’s. The frequency is TBD but it’s likely to be every other week.
They’ll start …

For more on “Shame,” Elvis Mitchell goes into the mind of director Steve McQueen on The Treatment and Kim Masters talks to the people who sold this risk-taking film on The Business.
“Shame” is the story of handsome, successful young man (Michael Fassbender) whose life has been emotionally eviscerated by his addiction to sex, however he can lay his hands on it (pun intended).  It is graphic …

Here are two very different movies worth seeing – both are in theaters now!
“Melancholia“ is the latest from iconoclastic, bombastic Danish director Lars von Trier.  I love this man in all his pretentious glory  - like I love the Teutonic blowhard Werner Herzog.  I’m often not totally sure what these people are trying to say, but I love the bluster with which they say it.  And “Melancholia” is a …

Here’s some of what I’ve seen lately that you should check out this weekend!
Previous blog posts about must-see movies…
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Bombay Beach
Other movies worth seeing…
Margin Call – The story of a fictional brokerage that starts the recent financial Wall Street meltdown when they decide to sell off billions of overvalued assets. Like the meltdown itself, that plot and what it means for the characters (and the country) …

It’s not that often that you can say that a movie is really trying something new, and even more rare to say it largely pulls it off.  But “Bombay Beach” is and it does.

The documentary is a impressionistic portrait of three people who live near the fetid waters of California’s Salton Sea.  Born earlier in the century by overflow from the Colorado River, the area was hailed as …

In “The Way,” Martin Sheen stars as a man who walks the historic Way of St. James through Northern Spain in honor of his adventurous son who died along the route.  A 1,000-year-old religious tradition, the path covers hundreds of miles between a small town in France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where the Cathedral, tradition says, contains the remains of the apostle James.
I’d like to say that …

Please note: there is frank language in this post.  Please do not read if you have delicate sensibilities.
“Weekend” is a romantic drama featuring a pair of actors who quietly produce enough electricity together to power the city of West Hollywood – after all, both lovers in the film are men. Russell picks up Glen in a bar one night, but over the course of single weekend, their little …

And according to a new film, she was beautiful, charming, better-behaved and just as talented as her more famous brother.
“Mozart’s Sister” is in fact the entertaining but imagined life of Maria Anna Mozart (nickname Nannerl) the prodigy’s real-life older sister.  It was true that she was a talented musician and that her sex may have been the thing that kept her from fame equal to her …

Dubbed “Iraqsploitation” and “Scarface of Arabia,” “The Devils Double” is the truly disgusting and terribly entertaining story of Latif Yahia, an Iraqi soldier drafted to become the double for Saddam Hussein’s monstrous son Uday.  In sometimes graphic detail, the movie takes you behind the walls of Uday’s compound to witness the insanity of one of this century’s favorite psychopaths.
In college, my friends and I loved …

Did you miss our Matt’s Movies screening of “Life in a Day?”  Enjoy this write-up in the New York Times…and check out this inspirational film in a theater near you!

var conf_3124 = {
APIKey: ’2_6DIhlg7l0JdQEi6cDqCe0jDWaI1K6aspEU8vaXu_fLI_w383wcczpYTt0qH6nuHG’,
lang : ‘en’,
enabledProviders: ”
};

var image3124 = {src:’http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/07/24/magazine/24lifeday_span/24lifeday_span-articleLarge-v3.jpg’,href:’http://blogs.kcrw.com/mattsmovies/life-in-a-day-in-the-ny-times/’,type:’image’};
var ua_3124 = new gigya.services.socialize.UserAction();
ua_3124.setUserMessage(”);
ua_3124.setLinkBack(‘http://blogs.kcrw.com/mattsmovies/life-in-a-day-in-the-ny-times/’);
ua_3124.setTitle(‘Life in a Day in the NY Times’);
ua_3124.addMediaItem(image3124);

var params_3124 …