Critics’ Picks: Feb 3 - Feb 9, 2017

Kenneth Turan's Top 10 films of 2016

Because so many of the year's efforts were impressive I didn't hesitate to follow my usual practice of splitting choices and singling out a lot more than 10 films. My guide in these matters is once again Greta Garbo. "Don't be stingy, baby," she famously advised, and I've taken her words to heart. Read more

Justin Chang's Top 10 movies of 2016

To interpret cinema through the lens of current events has long been the critic’s prerogative, challenge and occasional Achilles’ heel. But by the end of a year like 2016, it also felt like an obligation. When the elegant, mind-bending sci-fi thriller “Arrival” opened Nov. 11, three days after the most painfully divisive presidential election in recent memory, it was widely embraced as a movie of the moment. Read more

'Arrival'

Amy Adams stars in this elegant, involving science fiction drama that is simultaneously old and new, revisiting many alien invasion conventions but with unexpected intelligence, visual style and heart. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'The Eagle Huntress'

A portrait of a 13-year-old Kazakh girl from Mongolia who defies eons of tradition by learning to hunt with fierce golden eagles is a documentary so satisfying it makes you feel good about feeling good. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'The Edge of Seventeen'

Hailee Steinfeld gives a superb performance as a high school misfit in Kelly Fremon Craig's disarmingly smart teen dramedy, the rare coming-of-age picture that feels less like a retread than a renewal. (Justin Chang) Read more

'Elle'

Paul Verhoeven’s brilliantly booby-trapped new thriller starring Isabelle Huppert is a gripping whodunit, a tour de force of psychological suspense and a wickedly droll comedy of manners. (Justin Chang) Read more

'Toni Erdmann'

Sandra Hüller and Peter Simonischek give splendid performances as a high-strung businesswoman and her screw-loose dad in this magnificently unpredictable comedy from the German writer-director Maren Ade. (Justin Chang) Read more

'Jackie'

Star Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy and director Pablo Larraín brilliantly pull back the curtain on one of the most public of private lives. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'La La Land'

Starring a well-paired Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, writer-director Damien Chazelle's tuneful tribute to classic movie musicals is often stronger in concept than execution, but it's lovely and transporting all the same. (Justin Chang) Read more

'Loving'

Beautifully acted by Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton, this involving, socially conscious Jeff Nichols drama shows the personal lives of the interracial couple whose marriage led to the 1967 Supreme Court ruling that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'Manchester by the Sea'

Powerful, emotional filmmaking that leaves a scar, Kenneth Lonergan's drama starring Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams is both heartbreaking and heartening, a film that just wallops you with its honesty, its authenticity, and its access to despair. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'Moonlight'

Superb filmmaking and an exceptional level of emotional honesty universalize a very specific coming-of-age experience, that of a gay black man growing from child to adult starting in 1980s Miami’s crack cocaine epidemic years. Read more

'The Witness for the Prosecution'

Streaming from the Anglo-centric subscription service Acorn TV, this new BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie’s short story and play stars Toby Jones (“Detectorists”) as a subsistence-level London barrister defending a young man (Billy Howle) from a charge of murdering the rich woman who kept him (Kim Cattrall, putting on an accent). Complicating matters, emotionally and practically, is the accused’s wife (Andrea Riseborough), a destabilizing Soho showgirl. (Acorn TV) Read more

'Drive Share'

Ex-”Human Giant” collaborators Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel have created a funny sketch-comedy take on HBO’s old hidden-camera show “Taxicab Confessions,” updated for the generation that doesn’t take taxis. Though series has been made (by Complex Networks) for Verizon’s Go90 mobile platform, you do not need to be a Verizon subscriber to use the app, which is available for both Android and iOS; there is a Web version as well at www.go90.com.) As in “Taxicab,” everything takes place within the confines of a car in motion. Some rides begin very much in the former show’s spirit — a bachelorette party, a couple discussing whether to have children – if ending quite differently. The show can be a little gruesome and, like much comedy nowadays, is not for the easily embarrassed. But there is also a post-apocalyptic scenario (“I’m a slave at the refinery, I do a 72-hour shift, take a three-hour break, then 72 more hours, then the weekend of course,” fare Scheer tells driver Huebel), and an episode in which the pale rider is Death, played by Scott Aukerman. (Go90) Read more

'American Experience: The Race Underground'

Fun for engineering fans and old-photo buffs, this documentary from Michael Rossi “partially adapts” Doug Most’s 2014 study, “The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America’s First Subway.” The inter-city rivalry that Most’s book details does not get traction here; Rossi, directing very much in the Ken Burns history-is-personal storytelling mode, focuses on inventor and engineer Frank J. Sprague, who developed the “self-regulated” electric motor and various mechanical felicities that made efficient subterranean rail transit possible. (PBS, Tuesday) Read more

'Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events'

Written by Daniel Handler under the pen name Lemony Snicket and appearing from 1999 to 2006, the 13 books gathered together under the title "A Series of Unfortunate Events" tell the story of the Baudelaire orphans, Violet, Klaus and Sunny, and their search for peace and security in the aftermath of their parents’ death, as the wicked Count Olaf, a self-styled “ac-tor,” attempts to steal their fortune. In 2004, the first three volumes became a feature film, “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events,” starring Jim Carrey as Count Olaf. Some fans of the books — which here means “the writer of this review, among others” – found it disappointing. Now comes “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events,” the eight-episode Netflix series, premiering Friday the 13th, with Neil Patrick Harris as Olaf and Patrick Warburton as Snicket, who narrates retrospectively from within the story. I have no complaints and only praise. The only question is whether to savor or to binge. (Professionally, I had to binge; but I would advise you to take your time.) (Netflix, Anytime) Read more

Best on TV in 2016

New series I loved in 2016, in no particular order: "Baskets" and "Atlanta"; "Insecure"; "Better Things"; "Stranger Things"; “Crash Course: Philosophy”; "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee"; "The Good Place"; "Berlin Station"; "Lady Dynamite" and “Dice"; "Easy" and "High Maintenance." Read more

‘Gulf View Drive’

Arlene Hutton’s portrait of post-WWII small town Americana stands on its own character-based merits, but its finely tuned ensemble performances and staging also make for a satisfying conclusion to the company’s three-year “Nibroc Trilogy” project. (Philip Brandes) (Ends Feb. 12) Read more

Rubicon Theatre Company, 1006 E. Main St., Ventura

'Bakersfield Mist'

Based on an actual incident, Stephen Sachs' delightful and provocative comedy pits a boozy Bakersfield trailer dweller who has supposedly discovered an authentic Jackson Pollock at a local thrift shop against the intellectually snide art expert who has been sent to evaluate her find. In this reprise of his 2011 production, Sachs, who also directs, has once again cast delightful husband-and-wife acting team Jenny O’Hara and Nick Ullett as surprisingly equal adversaries in his intellectually well-balanced dialectic. For those who missed the production the first time around, this is a welcome opportunity to redress that oversight. (F. Kathleen Foley) (Ends Sun., Feb. 26) Read more

The Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., L.A.

Album: 'Bob Dylan — The Cutting Edge'

Among the many things Thomas Edison famously said, he remarked that "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration," and he also insisted that "I have not failed once. I have simply found 10,000 ways that do not work." Both precepts are clearly evident in "1965-1966: Bootleg Series Vol. 12," the revelatory latest release of Dylan archival recordings that comes out Nov. 6. Culling a mind- and ear-boggling wealth of outtakes, alternate versions and rehearsal snippets during sessions over the 14 months of an astonishingly fertile period for Dylan, which yielded three of the most influential albums in rock history — "Bringing It All Back Home," "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde" — the new set throws open a panoramic window into the creative process of one of the 20th century's greatest artists. (Randy Lewis) Read more

Album: '25'

When Adele sings on her new album, "25," about an emotional experience so vivid that "It was just like a movie / It was just like a song," she's probably thinking of a tune by one of her idols: Roberta Flack, say, or Stevie Nicks. But for fans of this 27-year-old British singer, such a moment could only be captured by one thing: an Adele song. With her big hair and bigger voice, Adele broke out in 2008 as part of the British retro-soul craze that also included Duffy and Amy Winehouse. Her debut album, "19," spawned a hit single in "Chasing Pavements" and led to a Grammy Award for best new artist. Yet she outgrew any style or scene with the smash follow-up, "21," which presented Adele as a great crystallizer of complicated feelings, an artist writing intimately about her own life (in this case about a devastating breakup) in a way that somehow made the music feel universal. Clearly, the pressure is on to duplicate that commercial success with "25," which comes after a long period of public quiet in which Adele recovered from throat surgery and gave birth to a son (and tweeted no more than a few dozen times). "Hello," the record's brooding lead single, set a record when it was released last month, racking up 1.1 million downloads in a week. But the song's enthusiastic embrace only underscored the other, more pressing demand on the singer as she returns: that her music still provide its trademark catharsis. Put another way, Adele's fans have been waiting for years for new Adele songs to explain their experiences to them. And they get a worthy batch on "25." (Mikael Wood) Read more

Album: 'Blackstar'

There's something delightfully perverse that David Bowie waited until he was 69 to release what's being described as his first jazz album. It was at that age too when veteran rock stars who include Rod Stewart and Paul McCartney took up with big bands or reached for the Great American Songbook to demonstrate their taste and hard-won stature. Even Bob Dylan got in on the act last year with "Shadows in the Night," his lovely (if desolate) tribute to Frank Sinatra. So when you hear that Bowie hooked up with a New York saxophonist and his crew for “Blackstar,” out Friday (just two days before his death from cancer), you think perhaps that Bowie has joined the club — that after cycling through countless styles and personas over his half-century career, he’s finally become a finger-snapping crooner with Count Basie on his mind. Ah, no. (Mikael Wood) Read more

Single: 'A Living Human Girl'

Out of the gate, teen band the Regrettes aren't holding back. The group's first major single, "A Living Human Girl," takes aim at the patriarchy in one verse and societal expectations of beauty in another, with lead singer Lydia Night rattling off perceived faults as if they're cause for celebration. Pimples? Check. Stretch marks? Bring 'em on. "I can dress how I want, not looking for a show of hands," she snarls over a snappy, '60s-inspired groove. Although the 15-year-old says the song was inspired by her first few days of high school in downtown Los Angeles, the tune's worldview transcends adolescence. (Todd Martens) Read more

Here’s Looking at You

Here’s Looking at You is a corner bistro from Jonathan Whitener and Lien Ta on the site of a former cheesesteak shop, all Edison bulbs, neo-midcentury cabinetry and a blend of post-punk and old-school hip-hop that has become to this kind of restaurant what Sade and David Byrne’s Brazilian compilations were to the last generation. Whitener comes to Here’s Looking at You from a stretch as chef de cuisine at Animal, the meaty, eclectic restaurant that redefined Los Angeles cuisine. And it is easy to see traces of Animal in Whitener’s cooking. Read more

Everson Royce Bar

Everson Royce Bar isn’t really a restaurant. To be fair, it doesn’t even try to be a restaurant – the word Bar is in its name. When you glance at the menu, the food takes up slightly less real estate than its shortlist of shots, and if you are a drinker of a certain bent, your attention is likely to linger on the sherry-cask Japanese whiskey than it is on the shrimp roll and the chicken thighs. Beard Award-winning chef Matt Molina is more or less serving regular bar snacks here, but superbly well, like the kitchen equivalent of a band like Metallica doing a covers set just because it can: steamed buns with pork belly, smoked potato taquitos, shrimp rolls and flaky, extra-rich biscuits with maple butter that happen to be about the best things it is possible to eat with bourbon. Read more

Everson Royce Bar, 1936 E. 7th St., Los Angeles

Gus’s Fried Chicken

You’re probably going to want to try Gus’s Fried Chicken. Because it’s pretty remarkable stuff, even in chicken-obsessed Los Angeles: a burnished red-gold, pieces bigger than they are small, whose peppery heat at first seems mild, even nonexistent, until it starts creeping up a few bites in, a heat that makes you glad you have a pint of sweet iced tea by your side. You may be thinking of Nashville hot chicken, the kind you can stand in line for at Howlin’ Ray’s in Chinatown, but this isn’t that — you don’t worry whether you’ve renewed your life insurance after a wing or two, and the crunch, although considerable, is of a completely different sort. Classic Nashville chicken has a complex, multilayered crunch that maintains much of its integrity even after a day or two in the fridge. Gus’s chicken is more of a batter-fried phenomenon, with a thin, fragile crust that shatters under your teeth, releasing a flood of scalding juice. Read more

Gus’s Fried Chicken, 1262 Crenshaw Blvd., Los Angeles

Favorite Asian fried chicken joints

Does Los Angeles live by Nashville hot chicken alone? No — not as long as there’s a universe of Asian fried chicken too. Read more

Kettle Black

Kettle Black is a new Italian restaurant from Beau Laughlin and his team, who also own Sawyer and the juice bar Clover on the block. The chef is Sydney Hunter III, who has been cooking in Los Angeles for 15 years or so, many of them at the right hand of Ludovic Lefebvre. Hunter’s Italian cooking is sure but eccentric, hewing to no particular regional cuisine and slightly edgy in its way, favoring a sweet-sour flavor palette, lots of crunch, and chiles used as much for fragrance as they are for heat: pizza, good handmade pastas, and fat purple slices of Japanese eggplant passed through the fire just long enough to add a bit of smokiness. Read more

Kettle Black, 3705 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles

Tempura Endo

There has never been a tempura restaurant in Los Angeles quite like Tempura Endo, the first American branch of a Kyoto, Japan, institution that dates to 1910. The restaurant occupies a modest storefront next door to a Japanese knife shop and right by a rental car yard. The location, although it is in the Beverly Hills triangle, has never been noted for fine dining – I remember a sushi bar that seemed really to specialize in sukiyaki. Tempura Endo is the other kind of tempura bar – an exquisitely expensive place that exists to serve intricate omakase dinners, well-calibrated multi-course meals presented with the detail and attention to seasonality of kaiseki, the lightness and purity you might not associate with two hours of deep-fried food. Read more

Tempura Endo, 9777 S. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills

Nersses Vanak

It is cold in Los Angeles. Rain is in the air. What you want to be eating is dizi, an Iranian lamb and chickpea stew, flavored with turmeric and dried lime — a popular street food dish from Tehran that seems to have a tonic effect against the chill. And for dizi, you should probably be at Nersses Vanak, a slightly faded restaurant in an industrial district of Glendale, where dizi, served with long-pickled garlic, platters of fresh herbs, and hot slabs of flatbread snatched smoking from the grill, is always the thing. Read more

Nersses Vanak, 6524 San Fernando Road, Glendale

Pok Pok

Is it possible to become converted in a single bite? Because with a single fried chicken wing at the original Portland Pok Pok in 2007, I dropped my prejudices about non-European cooking in Oregon, the crossover potential of extreme Asian funk, and the ability of a non-Thai to prepare anything like upcountry Thai food. So eight years, many affiliated restaurants, a James Beard award, a Michelin star and a Chinatown noodle stand later, here we are at Pok Pok Los Angeles, an enormous restaurant in the old Fu Ling space in the Mandarin Plaza at the relatively deserted north end of Chinatown. Chef Andy Ricker's gift is the ability to make Thai food seem new again, to take it out of that comfortable place in the suburban strip mall, where it has become the default takeout comfort food for a huge chunk of Los Angeles, and put it back into the roadside stands and rural villages of Northern Thailand. Read more

Pok Pok, 978 N. Broadway, Los Angeles

Theaster Gates: But to Be a Poor Race

Gates recycles — or transforms — just about everything he gets his hands on. And some things he doesn’t. At Regen Projects, The Chicago-based artist starts with the stuff he finds in his hometown, transforming worn-out fire hoses and the floorboards of basketball courts from shuttered public schools into large abstract paintings that seem to be haunted by ghosts — and all the more poignant for it. (David Pagel) (Through Feb. 25) Read more

Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles

Figures in Transformation: Harry Callahan and Robert Heinecken

This smartly focused show juxtaposes 12 photographs that Callahan made from 1942 to 1967 and 15 photographs that Heinecken made from 1964 to 1974. Conventional wisdom falls by the wayside as visitors see that the artists’ works have more in common than is commonly thought (David Pagel) (Eds Saturday, Feb. 18) Read more

Marc Selwyn Fine Art, 9953 S. Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles

Linda Stark: Painted Ladies

Packing loads of information into stark symbols and iconic compositions, the Los Angeles painter creates point-blank images whose elusiveness intensifies their emotional resonance. (David Pagel) (Through Feb. 25) Read more

Jenny’s, 4220 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles

'Mickalene Thomas: Do I Look Like a Lady?'

The artist’s installation is an unabashed love letter to African American women. A two-channel video projection plays in a dim space furnished in the style of a 1970s living room and lined with large, silk-screened portraits of prominent entertainment figures: Diahann Carroll, Diana Ross, Pam Grier, Naomi Sims. It is a celebration of black women asserting and defining themselves through media; it is also a powerful statement about the intersection of gender and race. (Sharon Mizota) (Ends Feb. 6) Read more

Toba Khedoori

Nothing rests easily in Khedoori's work, its drama typically tamped down — even in a romantic, wall-size painting of billowing black clouds. They hang in the air, a pregnant pause, quietly setting a stage for something momentous to happen. Khedoori starts with a primary paradox of art, in which an image is also an object. Playing with contradictions intrinsic to Modernist painting, she comes up with enchanting, unexpected hybrids. (Christopher Knight) (Through March 19) Read more

LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles

John McLaughlin Paintings: Total Abstraction

McLaughlin’s painting retrospective is the most moving and viscerally beautiful exhibition to be installed in BCAM since the building opened eight years ago. This is the first time a major institution has mounted a proper, full-scale retrospective. That such an indispensable painter didn’t merit one until 40 years after his death tells you all you need to know about how passed over this brilliant artist has been. In fact, I’ve been waiting those same 40 years for it. Ends Sunday, April 16. (Christopher Knight) Read more

LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles

Non-fiction

The small exhibition is an elegiac tone poem, spoken in visual shades of black. With just 10 works by eight artists, it presents no defined thesis but resonates beyond its modest scale. (Christopher Knight) (Through March 31, 2017) Read more

The Underground Museum, 3508 W. Washington Blvd., Los Angeles

Nintendo Switch

The Wii U era is over. On Thursday morning, Nintendo unveiled its new console, the Nintendo Switch. Long code-named the Nintendo NX, the Nintendo Switch is a hybrid of sorts. The system, which will use cartridges rather than discs, will work with television sets. But it also will allow for portable use — a home gaming system that will work in the family room and on the go. Read more

'No Man's Sky'

Fourteen minutes and 54 seconds. I'm on a distant planet, and I need to get to my spaceship. Yet "No Man's Sky" is telling me that the vessel is a 14-minute, 54-second hike away. So I settle into the couch. But after three minutes of strolling through a salmon-colored rocky surface — and admiring some lavender plant life — I need a break, perhaps for good. This was the second time in one week I had quit "No Man's Sky." That's because there's another, more important number to mention when it comes to discussing "No Man's Sky": 18.4 quintillion. That is, there are more than 18.4 quintillion planets to discover in "No Man's Sky." You will not live long enough — here on Earth, that is — to collect them all. Read more

'Abzu'

There are peculiar stone structures in the shape of sharks throughout the game "Abzu." They exist not to be investigated or warn of foreboding territory ahead. Instead, these objects are built for meditating. Have a seat, they beckon, and take in marine life. Play voyeur to a whale, a jellyfish, a shark or any number of undersea inhabitants. While "Abzu" is far from a documentary or a simulation, perhaps no other video game has ever been so singularly focused on re-creating the vast, majestic and mysterious nature of an aquatic universe. It does this with no voice, no text and no conflict. Your character in "Abzu" cannot "die" in the traditional video-game sense. Instead, the game centers on postcard-worthy imagery — swarming, silver schools of fish or sparkling green leaves or warm, orange coral — and Austin Wintory's thoughtful, patient score. Read more

'Mirror's Edge Catalyst'

Imagine if the world were filtered through the home screen of a smartphone. Picture opening your eyes to an image overloaded with headlines and messages. Notifications no longer buzz, they flash before you. "Warning," the display blinks in the lower right, "your bank balance is low." This is the view of Faith, early in "Mirror's Edge Catalyst." Having just been released from prison, Faith may not be happy with her financial prospects, but she definitely isn't too keen with the sensory overload of this futuristic, uncomfortably modern society. "Is this what the employees see all the time?" she wonders. In the world of "Mirror's Edge Catalyst," there aren't citizens so much as employees — workers for one of a handful of conglomerates that controls the world. You are identified not by your ethnicity or your interests but your job. Read more

'The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds'

Another long-standing Nintendo franchise gets spruced up. Like "Mario 3D," the look and controls are familiar, the tone is entirely new, as this action-adventure emphasizes smarts and exploration over tedious dungeon crawling. Read more

'Severed'

Early in the game "Severed," one of the more striking images you'll see this year in a video game appears. A woman of mixed-race descent stands before a mirror, her yellow dress bloody, her arm a stub and her eyes wide in shock. The world is bright and blocky — a handcrafted-looking universe that seems constructed of paper, but immediately the tone drifts toward melancholic. The art almost appears lifted from a Día de los Muertos display, and though this is the beginning of the journey for young Sasha, it also feels like the beginning of an end. Read more