CRAZY HEARTS (2009) Bridges is Bad to the bone

Jeff Bridges has played grumpy bears so well for so long that his latest, Country singer Bad Blake, wouldn’t appear to be much of a stretch. But after spending 112 minutes in the company of this down-and-almost-out, growling booze-and-cig-throated character convinced me why Bridges won Oscar for Best Actor for the role. And not just for acting – singing, too. From the start of the movie when Bad discovers his latest gig is in a beat-up Arizona bowling ally to the end when he finally realizes that songwriting is more important to him than love or even whiskey, CRAZY HEARTS is full of heart and worth your time.

VOYAGER (1991)

Sitting alone and grief-stricken in the Athens airport after suffering a heart-breaking loss, globe-hopping engineer Walter Faber (Sam Shepard) flashes back to his student days in Switzerland just before World War II, when he abandoned his pregnant lover Hannah after she announced she was getting an abortion and refused his proposal of marriage. As the film unfolds over a 20-year period, Walter recalls via flashbacks within flashbacks that Hannah subsequently married Walter’s best friend and bore a child, that she later divorced him and he committed suicide, and that recently, on a sea voyage from New York to Paris, Walter had an affair with a spectacularly sweet and pretty young student (Julie Delpy) who reminded him of Hannah. The affair ended abruptly and tragically when Walter made a startling discovery about the girl. VOYAGER is a beautifully acted fiim, and despite its sensitive theme, tastefully scripted and photographed.

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU (2004)See-worthy

LIFE AQUATIC, like director Wes Anderson’s first film, HARD EIGHT, serves up an offbeat plot, strong cast, quirky characters and clever dialogue. The inimitable Bill Murray stars as Steve Zissou, an eccentric oceanographer and film documentarian in the Jacques-Yves Cousteau mold. Steve and his eclectic crew (“Team Zissou”) – including his granite-faced wife (Angelica Huston); sharp-tongued pregnant magazine feature writer (Cate Blanchett); and a young pilot (Owen Wilson) who may or may not be Zissou’s son by a previous relationship – set out to find and take revenge on a monster shark that recently chewed up Steve’s beloved friend and partner. It’s not all smooth sailing, but along the way Zissou learns a few lessons about himself and the others. This litttle film is a gem. Every scene, whether featuring a cartoon seahorse suspended in a champagne glass, a Team Zissou military-style raid to rescue their accountain (Bud Cort) from pirates, or simply a static shot of Zissou staring across the ocan, is slightly askew and worth repeated viewings. And be sure to stick around for the end credits, an homage to BUCKAROO BANZAI. Also check out the soundtrack, a collection of familiar David Bowie songs all sung in Portuguese

YOUNG ALFRED HITCHCOCK MAKES A NAUGHTY JOKE (1928)

CHOKE (2008)

CHOKE is a grey comedy about a sex-addicted med-school dropout named Victor (the brilliant Sam Rockwell), who is the sole support of dementia-inflicted mom (Angelica Huston). Hospitalized and years of abusing drugs, abducting young Victor from a string of foster mothers and running from the authorities, she claims to no longer recognize him and thus won’t tell him the one thing he craves so desperately to know: the identity of his father. To pay for her expensive upkeep, Victor splits his time between working at a goofy Colonial American theme park and conning sympathy money out of strangers he picks randomly to rescue him from choking in restaurants. One day, while visiting his mother, Victor meets Paige (Kelly Macdonald), who proposes a most unorthodox treatment for his dying mom, and who turns out to be … well … I’ll leave it at that. There’s really nothing more I can say to make this quirky movie sound as enchanting as it is. Don’t miss it.

DECISION BEFORE DAWN (1951) In war, you have to choose a side

In 1944, Nazi Germany was on the brink of defeat but stubbornly resisting surrender, so in a daring push to gain key intelligence, the U.S. Army began recruiting German prisoners to spy behind their own lines. DECISION BEFORE DAWN is the story of the mission of three war-weary men who take on this thankless job, each for his own reasons. Director Anatole Litvak filmed in post-war Germany because of the surplus of bombed-out buildings and tanks, weapons and uniforms, and so accurate and realistic were the script, acting and setting that anyone watching the filming in Wurzberg in 1950-51 might have wondered whether the war ever ended. This not your typical war picture: no stereotypes, no action heroes, no grand and glorious finale, simply a realisatic depiction of a key period of time during the final days of World War II in all its tragedy and irony, co-starring three extraordinary actors now long departed – Gary Merrill, Richard Basehart and Oskar Werner (as a young German spy-recruit torn between his love of the Fatherland and loathing of its Nazi oppressors).