We Are the Best! (Vi är bäst!) (2013)

We first meet Bobo, sitting sullenly in the corner of her mom's rambunctious 40th birthday party. Awkward and androgynous, she's appealing and out of place. This is not a a world she wants to be a part of, but you immediately want to be a part of hers.

It's 1982 in Sweden and everyone keeps telling Bobo that "punk is dead." Bobo knows different. Punk isn't a genre of music. It's a feeling you have in your heart.

Lucas Moodysson's We Are the Best!, based on his wife's, Coco Moodysson, semi-autobiographical comic, Never Goodnight, is the punk-rock movie you didn't know you wanted but absolutely needed. It's one of the few movies that gives absolutely respect to the inner life of girls. There is nothing here that makes fun of them. They are treated as the absolute forces of nature that they are.

The reserved Bobo and her more antagonistic friend, Klara, decide to form a band on whim -- mostly to show up a few jerky teenage boys that made fun of them. Despite not being able to play instruments (or know anything about music), they decide to write a song about how much they hate gym class. In the process, they befriend the talented but conservative Hedvig.

The three girls' friendship is at the core of the movie. They are all open and sweet, and the three young actresses (Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin and Liv LeMoyne) bring a natural quality to their roles. Some scenes feel improvised and the chemistry between the three is a delight. Even when they come into conflict over boys (stupid boys!), it is such a minor part of their journey. The band is the most important thing! It's so refreshing to see a movie that celebrates female friendship in such a way.

There is sweetness at the core of this movie -- all three girls come from loving families. While Bobo's parents are separated, they both still care about her. Klara's family is wild but supportive and while Hedvig's family is presented as being a bit more uptight, her mother just has her best interests at heart. The lack of conflict grounds the movie. The girls don't really have much to rebel against, no, but that makes them feel real and honest. Maybe there are bigger problems than gym teachers, but these girls are fighting against what they know to fight against. I'd be excited to catch up with them in a few years.

This is a kind-hearted movie that shows the power of girls to change their worlds. I am not 13 but I still want to go start a band now. It's never too late to be a punk.

Questioned by Strangers: An Interview w/ director Noh Young-Seok (Daytime Drinking, Intruders)

At this year’s Film Comment Select series held at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, I had the pleasure of seeing Intruders, the long awaited follow up to South Korean director Noh Young-Seok’s debut film Daytime Drinking. It occurred to me, with Unseen Films celebrating a birthday (back around the time of the screening), that Daytime Drinking was the first film I officially logged a review for on good pal Steve’s little engine that could of a site espousing the love of film. it be something of a coming around the bend to be able to interview that film’s director here in New York?

After the screening and Q & A, I humbly approached Mr. Noh after the film’s about my interest in interviewing him. All too aware of the potential to come across like one of his films’ hopelessly socially awkward characters who trap the main protagonists with their overzealousness, I said a few quick words of appreciation and left him my card before making a quick exit. To my surprised delight, I heard back and an interview was set for the following day.

Very big thanks to Stephanie Lee at the Korea Society for arranging and facilitating the interview.

Very special thanks to Rachel Jackson for a tremendous assistance with translating, wording, and editing a final draft.

Mondocurry: Can you tell a little about your background outside of making films?

Noh Young-Seok: My major in college was in Chinese ceramic design, and I really wanted to make music. I created some music but I didn’t want to do anything with it commercially.

MC: What types of music are you interested in?

Noh: I like electronic music, rock, metal, jazz, classical…a lot of different types.

MC: Both of your movies deal with awkward interactions between strangers. Is this particularly difficult in South Korean society?

Noh: In the US when people meet in elevator, they may say ‘hi’ and be friendly. In Korea people don’t act so familiar with one another.  Recently people don’t even communicate with their neighbors who live next door.

I don’t usually communicate with strangers but when I have a chance, I notice this, and maybe I observe it more carefully than other people do.

MC: It is a very interesting style of awkward comedy in your films that I haven’t noticed in other Korean films. Is this influenced by personal experiences? Other films?

Noh: I think emotions are influenced by different movies. When I watched various movies, I try to experience the situations vicariously. If it were my movie, , I consider what I would do differently. If I met someone in the movie, I might do something different. So I take notes and make it my own movie.

MC: Is there such drastic culture shock when people from Seoul encounter people from the countryside?

Noh: If you go to the countryside outside of the city, rural people will stare at you because you’re a stranger to them. I think they’ll want to talk to me.  They’d be really curious about me. But also, they are very anxious about people from the outside.

Rural people might behave with some meanness because they are a tightknit group of people and I am a stranger. They are very curious but very anxious. They try to be very friendly but they have some apprehension about talking to outsiders.

MC: You were working on something different when the idea for INTRUDERS came?

Noh: A story called INSOMNIA. It’s about a guy who has a very sad life. It wasn’t to be a comedy, but a dark drama.

MC: Did you feel an urge to make a film that went in a darker direction after Daytime Drinking?

Noh: I have a lot of bright, positive story ideas but also dark ones too. My mind didn’t consciously change about the type of movie I wanted to make. Many ideas come across my mind. So from time to time I organize them into a kind of order to put in a movie.

MC: Can you talk about the differences in casting Daytime Drinking and Intruders?

Noh: Daytime Drinking was made on a very low budget and all of the actors and actresses were my friends.

For Intruders, I was thinking about who I wanted for each part before but the film’s investors really wanted to use famous actors. But the budget was not enough so for some parts, like the police officer and Hak-su, I cast the actors I really wanted.

For the main character, I was trying to cast a really famous actor but it didn’t work out because of schedule and money issues. I thought it would be better to cast a brand new actor than a slightly famous one. So I looked around and found a perfect match for the main character who was new, and cast him.

MC: You worked with some of the same actors on both films?

Noh: There were three people in both.  The truck driver from Daytime Drinking is a store clerk in Intruders, and there two people who are eating with Hak Su in Intruders. But they were only in Intruders for a very short time.

MC: You made the music for your films. But you didn’t have any formal musical training?

Noh: No, I just taught myself how to do it at home.

MC: Was there anything that especially inspired the score to Intruders? It has the feel of a classic suspense film score.

Noh: It’s really hard to say I got inspired by any one thing. I thought about what would match well with the movie. The music came very naturally when I was making it. I had some kind of similar music in my head; it came from somewhere…

MC: One of my favorite parts of Daytime Drinking is when someone talks about dancing to “strange music.” I wondered about how that music came about…

Noh: I wanted to express something really bizzare and unexpected. Like, if a woman suggested to someone ‘you’ll really like this music’ then they might expect something really romantic or catchy, but it turns out… when you hear it you think “what is this song? Not sure if it’s good or bad, just really strange.” That’s the feeling I wanted to achieve.

MC: There was a lot of time between Daytime Drinking and Intruders…

Noh: In between, I got married and had kids. In the meantime I was working on scripts for different movies. Some are finished and some are not. That’s why there is a gap.

MC: Did you feel any kind of pressure to keep producing movies in a certain amount of time, or were you not so worried about it?

Noh: I had some pressure before, but it was not like there was any intense deadline. But I think I need to have a little bit of pressure to make me work hard on a movie.

MC: You were both the writer and director of the two films you’ve made. Is this a situation that is important to you?

Noh: I’ve thought of writing a scenario and then someone else shooting it, but I wasn’t sure if it would work or not. Now, I would consider writing a movie for someone else to direct.

MC: Were there challenges to directing Intruders?

Noh: I felt it was a shame that I couldn’t shoot in many different locations and get acting in different atmospheres. But I didn’t have enough time and the budget was too low.

MC: Did any parts of the story change from what you had initially expected after first writing Intruders?

Noh: Not much, but I changed some parts a little bit, for the better, during the editing of the movie.

MC: Was it a challenge shooting in a location like this with lots of snow and in the mountains?

Noh: We never had to wait for snow at all. It came when we needed it. The problem was that the snow wouldn’t melt. The location had a lot of hills so cars couldn’t drive through. We really needed to get ingredients for the staff’s food but it ran out. We were somehow able to get what we needed and eat.

It was also really hard to move all the gear because it was very heavy, and we had to shoot on the hill. There were a lot of challenges like that.

MC: Did actors in the movie do their own stunts?

Noh: There was a stunt director. He was one of (the movie’s antagonists).

MC: Were there any hazardous situations for the cast?

Noh: When the main actor fell through the trap door (in the ground)… At that time we couldn’t see anything under the snow, so when we were shooting that scene he was injured by a tree trunk.

MC: Have you been influenced by any directors, new or old?

Noh: I don’t have any one specific favorite. I don’t tend to focus on a certain director. I think more about certain movies…

Rob Reiner has made movies in various genres and he expresses ideas so well in all of them. I suppose he would be one of my favorites.

Films that he made such as Stand By Me and When Harry Met Sally…I’d like to be the director of films that have the same mood and impact as those.

Me on twitter = @mondocurry

ScareBNB: INTRUDERS (South Korea, 2013)

It’s been quite some time since the rambling indie slacker road trip comedy Daytime Drinking, South Korean director Noh Yeong-Seok’s debut feature, disarmed audiences with its low key deadpan humor. So much so that many filmgoers who behold the director’s next film, INTRUDERS, may not realize a connection exists. For fans of Daytime Drinking who have been eagerly anticipating a follow up, INTRUDERS begins on a strikingly similar note as its predecessor. Once again a lone male protagonist prepares to set out by bus to a remote locale besieged by inhospitable climates. And like in Daytime Drinking, this central figure plays the straight man amidst a barrage of hilariously awkward gaffs owing to an unapologetic incompetence or blatant disregard for social boundaries of those he encounters. This time around the protagonist is a bit older (So too is the director, Noh) and is setting out with more of a purpose: to isolate himself from distractions so that he can finish an important bit of writing, rapidly approaching or perhaps past its deadline. Although this trip also starts out humorously, it isn’t long before a sudden shift in tone takes the film on a new, tightly wound and rather treacherous path.

While I’ve seen the film touted as both a humorous thriller and a suspenseful comedy, it is not so much a blending of genres. It is rather like a gently idling comedy that is suddenly rammed into by a runaway toboggan of a suspense thriller.  Once the mood changes, a few funny exchanges show up here and there, but never gain much of a footing against a jagged incline of unease. Situations are on the verge of going bad at any moment and when they do, they always stand to get worse.

Tension begins after Sang-jin arrives in the vicinity of an inn he will borrow from family friends in order to devote himself to his writing. This is after surviving the aforementioned bus ride, shared with a just-released convict who happens to be from the same area Sang-jin is heading to. While taking in the surroundings of his temporary lodgings, Sang-jin takes a misstep which leads to the discovery of an ominous underground chamber, the first sign of trouble and the first hint of a motif that there can be more to a scene than what is found on the surface. Soon after, the appearance of an intimidating pair of armed men, as well as a group of skiers looking for respite from an incoming storm disrupt his solitude. These disparate groups orbit around one another as an increasingly testy Sang-jin tries to navigate a clear path til things escalate into deadly and mystery-laden confrontation.

Noh puts some classic suspense truisms to work: The slow unfolding of situations that are seemingly one way yet shape up to become something else, the focus on an everyman thrust into a life or death situation from which he must rise to the occasion or face grave consequences, and an ending that may leave as many new questions as it does answers.

For someone directing his first suspense film, Noh is intuitive behind the camera and in the editing room. He has not just penned an exciting story, he has expressed it in a visually exciting fashion. At one moment, Sang-jin moves from a corner of the screen toward the camera, shotgun in hand, making us momentarily feel like prey. In another, he waits glued to a wall for an uncertain assailant, the only signs of approach being the slow thud of footsteps growing nearer and nearer. It’s all strung together by a fast-paced electronic beat driven original score, composed and performed by Noh himself.

While Noh humbly dismissed any deep meaning within the film, I’m a firm believer in subtext rising to the fore, even if it’s subconsciously. So when one of the skiers expresses her annoyance at radio reports of increasing tension between South and North Korean forces, preoccupied with finding a source of alcohol to wash away the persisting headache of an exhausting night, I have to wonder if something is being said about a situation at large of individuals committing themselves to blissful ignorance despite alarmingly hostile threats right outside the door.  If that is the case, it’s subtle enough to let slip by while enjoying the film’s constantly swerving path.

One thing is for certain: Noh, like his body of work thus far, is deceptively sharp. I can’t wait for the next road he leads us along.

 Intruders was shown at the 2014 Film Comments Selects series held at Lincoln Center’s film center.

Me on twitter = @mondocurry

Flesh of My Flesh (2013) Film Comment Selects 2014

Director Denis Dercourt promises to talk about the film afterward if we haven't walked out

Denis Dercourt's head trip nightmare horror film has begins towards the end with Anna, played by Anna Juliana Jaenner locked up in a mental facility. The story then drifts back in time and we see the events that put her there. It seems her daughter has an eating disorder and in order to keep her going he mother has discovered that a steady diet of human flesh and blood is required.

A strange off kilter film that was shot over 6 months using digital cameras with the lens held in front of the camera body and manipulated the film looks like what you think a memory might be like if committed to film. Strange bits of the image are out of focus,and what we do see clearly isn't always what we think should be. Its a weird effect that takes a little while to get used to. Once it clicks we're no longer here but inside Anna's head and things are troubling.

Anna is a strange character who mostly stares, springing to life occasionally as if someone flipped a switch. She is one of the least connected characters I've ever run across in film and her performance is both of putting and fascinating. You could almost argue it's a non-performance but at the same time you can tell that something is going on behind the eyes.

Gavin Smith and Director Dercourt intro the film

During the Q&A that followed the film Dercourt said that the film was based on an actual case that happened in Berlin. He had been talking about a pair of guys who had been eating each other, when someone mentioned the case that became the film. Dercourt got some details but not a great many, preferring to be able to fill in the way he wanted.

How is the film?

Its good, but I'm not quite sure beyond that. The film is a decidedly unique film that takes a while to click with and then once you click with it it takes a while to sort out. The film simply doesn't do what we expect it should. I was talking to a couple of people Saturday night after the film and they didn't like it. The film wasn't what they expected, it didn't do what they thought it should. In a weird way it wasn't conventional enough (Which is weird considering that one of the people I see frequently at very unconventional films). The film is very much Anna's POV and if you can't click with that you'll be in trouble.

I like it, but I don't know if I can give it a completely fair shake since as Gavin Smith feared in his intro and at least person said to me after the film, it suffers being seen after the similar Cannibal. That said definitely worth a shot if you get the chance to see it.

Post film discussion

Cannibal (2013) FIim Comment Selects 2014

A neatly dressed middle aged man named Carlos quietly goes threw his life in a small Spanish town as a tailor of great talent. He knows all the right people and is even working on making a replica of a ceremonial cloak for the church. However Carlos is what the title says and when a beautiful young woman moves into his building things get complicated.

Deeply disturbing matter of fact story produced groans through the audience of "Oh God No" at one point at the screening last night. The reaction was not because of what we saw but what we thought was going to happen. That's the power of this film, its all implied by either shot selection or by the wickedly fantastic sound design. Nothing is graphic, nothing is overt, the film shows us a few things and then lets us fill in the rest.

This is a film of silences. There isn't a lot of dialog, Carlos is a man of few words. Much of the dialog early on is simple pleasantries,later on, especially toward the end the words are carefully chosen. Because the words are so fleeting, ultimately the Carlos we see is a watcher not a doer, the performance by Antonio de la Torre had to be spot on to convey the world of emotions inside Carlos, and it is. de la Torre gives whatis probably one of the best performances you'll ever see but its so damn understated that you'll never notice just how great it is. Its Oscar worthy, but they'd never give him one because it looks like he isn't doing anything when he's doing everything.

The first ten minutes of this movie is a brilliant set piece. The opening titles play out as we watch a couple at a gas station from a distance. We think its a throw away and that we'll join the couple and go on our way, instead when the titles end as the car pulls away, things flip. A car window closes and we realize we've been watching the couple from inside a car the whole time. From there we watch as a car crash occurs, the woman is removed from the car and Carlos takes he to the cabin in the mountains. What follows is disturbing in its matter-of-factness and implication. Its also the point where we are hooked.

After the film there was a great deal of discussion by a group of film goers in the back of the theater, They loudly (and I do mean loudly I was sitting way down in front at the Walter Reade) arguing about the film and what it was about and why it didn't do certain things. They seemed not to be able to handle the fact  that this isn't a conventional horror story,but really a character study. They wanted more "drama" and less life.

In someways they may be right, but at the same time the fact that the film doesn't create complications, doesn't go through twists and turns and show gore,makes it more chilling, more frightening and infinitely more haunting. The final sequences are much more touching and much more of a gut punch in a sad way simply because Carlos is never made out to be anything more  than just a guy. The fact that he's never shown to be a classic monster, even though what he does is monstrous, is the disturbing part because this time out as we watch a horror movie, we realize, really realize that monster could be us.

One of the finds of 2014. Go see it when it plays Wednesday at Film Comment Selects.Details here

.

Fat Shaker (2013) Film Comment Selects 2014

As an experience this is a must see film. This film is so far out there that its going to divide the audience, with most people either heading to the exits or saying rude things about it. A small percentage of the audience are going to be rapturous. I have no idea what I think of the film as anything other than a head trip experience, but as that, it's the kind of film that makes drugs optional.

Ignore what the official synopsis and descriptions say. The official bits say a lot of things that aren't in the film.  The simplest way to explain the film is to say that an obese man uses his deaf and dumb son to extort money from women. All of the details aren't explained in the film. Somehow the man and the son end up some how connected to a woman who takes pictures. What anyone's relationship, as well as what is real, what is a dream or a hallucination is anyone's guess as the father drifts in and out of realities.

Arty, pretentious, experimental, trippy, a mess, a supreme definition of WTF? Fat Shaker is all of those things and more. Roughly seven people wandered out of the press screening I attended. The first one headed for the exit after the second cupping scene. We can see were lesions on the man's back and coming after a bloody sequence with leaches I'm guessing it was too much.

Personally I considered heading for the exit myself, but I decided against it. Say what you will about the films free form narrative, the film's bouncing through time and head space made for challenging viewing. This is not a film you can simply allow to wash over you, this is a film you have to attack and wrestle with. Its a film that challenges you to work out what is really going on.

To be perfectly honest, I don't have a clue what it's all about. I know I know bits of whats going on, at least I think I do. I couldn't tell you what the larger picture is or how this would play in it's native Iran.

Should you see the film? Only if you're willing to go into someone else's head space. You also have to be open to the film's way of doing things and it's way of almost coming at you with hammer and tongs in an effort to beat you into submission. If you don't want to be challenged stay away. If you want a conventional narrative, stay away. If you want a unique viewing experience by all means go see this film.

(And yes I know that's disjointed and awkward but then so is the movie-and so am I after seeing it)

Blood Glacier aka The Station (2013) Film Comment Selects 2014

Thats not a rabid fox-but something much worse

From Marvin Kren the genius who gave us Rammbock, a nifty undead film a couple years back comes Blood Glacier (aka The Station).  This poisoned little confection had me squirming in my seat and fearing what sort of hellish nightmare was coming next.

The film is set now. As the result of global warming the glaciers are melting with many now long gone. At a climate station in the mountains an alarm is going off. It seems that something has cause one of the sensing posts to go down. Traveling out to repair it they discover what appears to be a huge "blood glacier". Taking samples they return to their main station and find that the glacier appears to be some sort of weird organism. When they go back to get more samples the blood glacier appears to be gone, but in its wake it's left something much worse- horrible hybrid mutants.

Yes its kind of Cronenberg's The Fly meets John Carpenter's the The Thing but at the same time it manages for most of it's running time to be it's own terrifying little nightmare.  This film generates scares and thrills despite wandering around in somewhat familiar territory.

I think one of the reasons the film works is that all of the characters are adults and very intelligent. There is a reason they are where they are and they talk to each other on a higher level than you normally see in similar films. We don't get endless explanation we simply get discussions of the facts as they stand in the film, if something is explained its because it has to be explained with in the context of the film. The characters don't know much more than we do so as a result we never get talked down to.

The other reason the film works is that director Marvin Kren milks the situations for all their worth. Even if it's true that the film covers territory we've been in before, there are still hiding spots to put your monsters so they can jump out and scare the audience and Kren manages to find them so that you still jump out of your seat despite your knowing its coming.

This movie messed me several times and had me mumbling "That's just wrong" repeatedly.

While the film isn't perfect, the film's introduction of more victims is a bit too fortuitous and the last 15 or 20 minutes it kind of loses focus, this is still a damn great film. If anything any reservations I have are due to my wanting this nightmare inducing film to some how morph into one of the all time classic films. While that's not the case  (though its close), its still scary, creepy, the right sort of unpleasant and the sort of thing that's perfect for mom, assuming your mom loves icky monster movies.

This film plays Saturday night at Film Comment Selects and will be released by IFC later this year. Either way its a must see.

The festival season explodes starting now: a look at things for the next six weeks plus a birthday and links

(Video by Chocko)

As you saw from earlier today Film Comment Selects starts tomorrow. As is our norm and as is the tradition Unseen will be wading into the fray. Earlier today we ran a review of the opening night film Our Sunhi, We have reviews of the horror film Blood Glacier and the cinematic mind warp Fat Shaker coming this week.  Back during Fantasia we ran a review of the very strange Korean film The Weight. Friday and Saturday we'll be seeing another five or six films in the series.

Film Comment Selects is very important to us at Unseen since the first festival coverage we ever did was on our second day of existence when we went to see the Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Revenge Films. Every year since then We've tried to go back and cover something.(And yes the Revenge films piece is a nervy embarrassing piece but at the time I didn't know better and no one, and I mean no one, was reading the blog- I leave it because that's where we started)

For tickets on Film Comment Selects go here.

Next Saturday before the Film Comment films I'll be stopping by the BAM Kids Fest for a film. We haven't really been covering the Fest in the past couple of years, the film skew younger than The New York International Children's Film Festival. They also tend to show lots of subtitled films to the their young audience and have adults read the subtitles out loud. I understand why they do it (it allows them to show good films), but I don't like to watch films that way so I don't go regularly. Details on the fest can be found here

Speaking of BAM earlier today I was at BAM for Matthew Barney's 6 hour River of Fundament. As this posts I'll hard at work on a review. Look for it in a couple of days.

In other festival news:

Tickets for The New York International Children's Film Festival are starting to sell out. Some films are sold out, and they've added more screenings. I have tickets for 11 or 12 films plus one film, We Are`The Best, crosses over with Film Comment Selects For tickets and details go here.

Another one of my favorite festivals starts up in a couple of weeks- Rendez-vous With French Cinema. This festival plays all over Manhattan and Brooklyn and frequently sells out. I'm starting in with press screenings this week and I'm going to some of the public screenings so look for lots of reports. Details on the entirety of the festival can be found here.

And if that wasn't enough it looks like we'll be getting some form of coverage from SXSW.  We should have some reviews and if my gentle arm twisting works we may have some on the ground coverage.

Of course by the time that's all done We'll be slipping straight away into that beast known as Tribeca since if they are true to form, press screenings will start at the end of March and take us to the end of April.

Earlier I pointed out that the first film festival we ever covered was Film Comment Selects back in 2010. The date was February 21 which was the second day in existence. That means February 20th, this Thursday is our birthday. I'll have a brief piece up about it then.

I'd like to take this time out to welcome Alec Kubas-Meyer to Unseen. Alec has been a friend of Unseen for a few years now. He was introduced to me and everyone through Hubert and nothing has ever been the same. Alec is a filmmaker and writer who's regular writing gig is being the Reviews Editor over at Flixist. He also has his own website A Million Tiny Bublebees. After many arm wrestling matches I finally got him to come over to the dark side to help out with our month of Zatoichi. And should you ever get the chance I also highly recommend going to dinner with him for some great conversation. (And if you want to know how the upcoming Raid 2 is read his piece here.)

This week the month of Zatoichi continues in full force. Not only will you be getting some of the Katsu films but look for some reviews of other related films. Also coming this week will be Film Comment Selects pieces and some other reviews of more current films.

And now some of Randi's full bodied links.

Altered for international release
Coen Brothers films as gig posters
Defunct Olympic sports
Aardman Pirates designs
Silent screen
Michael Mann talks Thief and the future
Al Jaffe talks about the one thing MAD Magazine wouldn't run

Our Sunhi (2013) Film Comment Selects 2014

The opening night film of Film Comment Selects is Sang-soo Hong's latest film Our Sunhi.  Its the story of Sunhi who returns to her college in order to gt a recommendation from one of her professors so she can go to grad school in the US. As she waits for her recommendation the professor, an ex-boyfriend and a film director circle around her.

If you know Hong's work you know what to expect, long takes, lots of talk, off beat humor and an an odd sense of story telling.

How is it?

Pretty much like a good number of his other recent films only more so. The individual scenes are okay, but they never completely connect to each other. The result is that by the time you get to the end you really don't know the point or more precisely why it took so long to get there.

Seeing this on the heals of Hong's Nobody's Daughter Haewon I have to wonder why Hong is such a critical darling.  As I've said before, all of his films of late are very similar, so  similar that you could probably inter-cut his films with very little difference. I mean the same actors and actresses are in the films as are the same locations. Several of the writers at the screening I attended were disappointed in the film. They like me were becoming aware that Hong seems to be spinning his wheels creatively.

Should you see the film? Are you a fan of the director? Then by all means. If you're not you may want to skip it.

The press release for Film Comment Selects listing the films and schedule

THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER ANNOUNCED TODAY THE LINEUP FOR THE
14TH EDITION OF FILM COMMENT SELECTS

HONG SANG-SOO’s OUR SUNHI SELECTED FOR OPENING NIGHT AND BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI’S ME AND YOU FOR CLOSING NIGHT

Lineup includes Lukas Moodysson’s We are the Best!, Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake, Lasse Hallström’s The Hypnotist, a focus on director Christian Petzold, classic films from Raúl Ruiz and Harold Pinter, and much more


New York, NY (January 22, 2014) – The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today the lineup for the upcoming 14th edition of Film Comment magazine’s essential and eclectic feast of cinephilia, Film Comment Selects, taking place from February 17-27, 2014. The annual festival will present 22 discoveries and rediscoveries, 17 of them New York premieres, and nine without U.S. distribution, handpicked by the magazine’s editors after scouring the international festival circuit in 2013.

Film Comment magazine’s editor-in-chief, Gavin Smith said, “Every year the process of programming Film Comment Selects is an adventure, not that different in some ways from the editing of the magazine every two months. This year is particularly special for us because we’ve finally been able to bring in six films (all on 35mm!) from the early Seventies, the mid Eighties, and the early part of the last decade that we’ve dreamed of showing on the big screen for some time—and they’re every bit as thrilling as the films by new discoveries and familiar faces from all over the world that are our bread and butter—films that in eight cases will be coming back (but you want to see them before everyone else, right?) and nine others that won’t be (so this is your only chance to see them). We’re privileged to share these with our audience of art-film devotees, genre fanatics, open-minded cinephiles, and movie lovers of every stripe. And once again, we guarantee: there’s something for everyone."

This year’s mind-melting lineup covers the entire cinematic spectrum from genre movies to art-house whatsits to long-unseen revivals and new films by Hong Sang-soo, whose Opening Night selection Our Sunhi, won the director’s prize in Locarno and is the 15th feature from the South Korean master, Bernardo Bertolucci, who returns with his first Italian-language feature in 32 years, Me and You, which will screen on Closing Night, and Together and Lilya 4-ever director Lukas Moodysson, back with an energetic rough and tumble story of three rebellious teenage girls who form a punk rock band in We are the Best! Another filmmaker to premiere new work is Lasse Hallström with The Hypnotist, an engrossing, chilly Nordic noir about a psychologist who uses hypnotism to help solve a horrific crime. This also marks a return for Hallström to his native tongue for the first time in 25 years.

Another highlight from this year’s lineup is the thrilling seven-episode television series Top of the Lake, directed by Jane Campion and Garth Davis. Mad Men’s Elizabeth Moss plays a detective who has returned to the bleak rural New Zealand town where she grew up in order to spend time with her dying mother, and is recruited by the local police officer (David Wenham) to investigate what is at the least a case of statutory rape. All seven episodes will screen back to back!

The series will also offer some classics, not to be missed on the big screen, including a “Healthcare Mayhem” Film Comment Double Feature that pairs up Blake Edwards’s The Carey Treatment, starring James Coburn and The Hospital, written by Paddy Chayevsky and starring George C. Scott and Diana Rigg; the rarely screened 1983 Raúl Ruiz masterpiece City of Pirates, a two-film focus on early works by Barbara director Christian Petzold consisting of Ghost and Wolfsburg, plus Jeremy Irons and Ben Kingsley in the 1983 film version of Pinter’s Betrayal.

Tickets will be on sale both at the box office and on www.FilmLinc.com to members on Tuesday, January 28 and to the general public on Thursday, January 30. Tickets are $13 for General Public, $9 for Student/Senior and $8 for Film Society Members. Take advantage of a Three film Package! $30 for General Public, $24 for Student/Senior and $21 for Members. Film Comment magazine subscribers will also be able to take advantage of a $10 ticket! The Film Comment Double Feature, included in the lineup, offers two films for the price of one - $13 for General Public, $9 for Student/Senior and $8 for Film Society Members!

All screenings will take place at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam). Visit www.FilmLinc.com for additional information.

FILMS, DESCRIPTIONS & SCHEDULE

OPENING NIGHT
OUR SUNHI
Hong Sang-soo, South Korea, 2013, 88m; HDCam
Another dryly comic and acutely observed take on misread behavior, indecision, and awkward interchanges between the sexes from one of cinema’s undisputed masters of moral comedy, the ever-prolific Hong Sang-soo. Call this one “Who’s That Girl?” or “Identification of a Woman.” Attempting to make a new start, slightly lost former film school student Sunhi (Jung Yumi) returns to her college to get a reference letter and inadvertently awakens vague romantic longings first in her old professor, then in a graduate student ex-boyfriend, and finally in a film director and potential mentor from her class. The three men move into orbit around Sunhi, proffering career and life-choice advice while attempting to define and “understand” her, but in the end they are merely projecting their own feelings and interpretations onto their obscure and unwitting object of desire, to quietly comical effect.
Monday, February 17 at 9PM
Thursday, February 20 at 4:45PM

CLOSING NIGHT
ME AND YOU
Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy, 2012, 103m; DCP
Bertolucci returns with his first Italian-language feature in 32 years. Following on from Besieged and The Dreamers it continues a minimalist phase for the director after a series of huge international co-productions—this is his third film in a row mostly set in a claustrophobic, very bourgeois interior, and like Besieged, it concerns the solipsistic self-confinement of an obsessive narcissist who is “saved” and led out into the world by a woman who may well be nothing more than a projection of his insecurities. Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori), a 14-year-old from a well-to-do family, takes no interest whatsoever in the outside world, and withdraws into himself completely: pretending to go on a school skiing trip, he shuts himself in the basement of his mother’s apartment building for an entire week. But the basement turns out to be a regular refuge for Olivia (Tea Falco), his heroin-addicted older half-sister, and so Lorenzo doesn’t find the perfect solitude he’s looking for. An Emerging Pictures release and one of five films being released under the Cinema Made in Italy label.
Thursday, February 27 at 8:30PM

BETRAYAL
David Jones, U.K., 1983, 95m; 35mm
Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley, and Patricia Hodge star in this rarely screened adaptation of one of Harold Pinter’s greatest plays, a semi-autobiographical portrait of an adulterous affair. In a unique structural gambit, nine scenes, each marking a significant stage in the development and termination of the affair, are presented in reverse order, starting at the bitter end and working their way back to the beginning. Kingsley is the husband with an unfaithful wife (Hodge) and a bad best friend (Irons). The reverse chronology frees the viewer to concentrate on the subtext: our age has sanctioned betrayal, and as betrayers, we get caught in a web of who knows what and when, and once the rules are broken, there is no one to trust. David Jones, who had previously worked with Pinter and Irons on the 1978 TV drama Langrishe, Go Down, stepped in to direct after Mike Nichols dropped out—and 30 years on Nichols would direct the recent Broadway production.
Tuesday, February 18 at 8:45PM

Blood Glacier (formerly titled The Station)
Marvin Kren, Austria, 2013, 98m; HDCam
An over-the-top creature feature for the Global Warming age. Scientists researching climate change at a research base in the German Alps discover a mysterious substance leaking from a glacier containing micro-organisms that can infect multiple hosts—and soon do. The local wildlife begin to mutate into predatory “hybrid creatures” just as a government minister and her entourage are due to arrive for a publicity op. Panic sets in as the station is besieged by biological mutations, and the team and their visitors find themselves fighting for survival—and with each other. Director Marvin Kren builds the tension without dumbing down the characters in this alpine homage to John Carpenter’s The Thing, and delivers the requisite shocks and gore while favoring old-school special effects over CGI. AN IFC Films release.
Saturday, February 22 at 9:45PM

Cannibal
Manuel Martín Cuenca, Spain, 2013, 116m; DCP
The blunt title of this quietly disturbing, creepily atmospheric, and deeply perverse character study won’t prepare you for the slow and mesmerizingly deliberate experience in store for you. Introverted small-town tailor Carlos, hauntingly played by Antonio de la Torre, keeps to himself, but his solitary life is disturbed by the arrival of Alexandra (Olimpia Melinte), a Romanian “masseuse” who moves into an apartment upstairs. While she receives male clients, Carlos keeps his distance despite her seductive overtures until one night she comes calling on him, seeking his help after a brutal “boyfriend” pays her a visit. The tailor agrees to drive her to the police station. Cut to the arrival of Alexandra’s twin sister Nina (Melinte again), who comes looking for her sibling who owes her money… A story of loneliness and longing, Manuel Martín Cuenca’s low-key chiller of uncommon restraint and unease, Cannibal revolves around the mysteries and dark impulses of the human heart. A Film Movement release.
Saturday, February 22 at 3:20PM
Wednesday, February 26 at 3:30PM

Cherchez Hortense
Pascal Bonitzer, France, 2012, 100m; DCP
Jean-Pierre Bacri and Kristin Scott Thomas together at last—enough said? Another of the pleasing, underrated comedy-dramas of frequent Rivette and Ruiz screenplay collaborator and ex–Cahiers du cinéma critic Pascal Bonitzer. Bacri is a conflicted and ineffectual academic who reluctantly agrees to ask his father, a senior judge, to pull some strings on behalf of a Polish woman facing deportation—a task that fills him with horror since his relationship with his father is, you know, complicated. His marriage to a celebrated stage director (Scott Thomas) is on the skids, his teenage son is going through growing pains, a cranky old friend (Jackie Berroyer) is suicidal, and amidst all this he’s befriended by Aurore (Isabelle Carré), a girl half his age. Full of delightful moments and wry observations, this is an old-school relationship movie in which a self-involved member of the Parisian cultural elite comes to see how the other half lives, and it’s more than carried by Bacri, one of the best actors in contemporary French cinema.
Tuesday, February 18 at 6:30PM
Tuesday, February 25 at 4:45PM

City of Pirates
Raul Ruiz, France/Portugal, 1983, 111m; 35mm
Propelled by a ferocious creative energy and blending folk legends, surrealist poetry, children’s adventure stories, and Hollywood horror movies, this vintage film by the late Raúl Ruiz follows a decidedly nonlinear narrative about a sleep-walking virgin (Anne Alvaro), a 10-year-old boy (Melvil Poupaud) who claims to have raped and murdered his entire family, and the lone inhabitant of an island castle (Hughes Quester) who shares his body with an imaginary sister. Funny, frightening, and enigmatic, City of Pirates is like a cross between Peter Pan and Friday the 13th as told through a wildly baroque visual style that suggests a collaboration between Georges Méliès and Sergio Leone. A rare screening of one of Raúl Ruiz’s classics.
Wednesday, February 26 at 9:50PM

Enemy
Denis Villeneuve, Canada/Spain, 2013; 90m; DCP
Jake Gyllenhaal gives his best performance to date as both Adam, a reserved and humorless history professor, and Anthony, a more animated and cocksure bit-part actor who catches the academic’s eye on screen due to his alarming resemblance to him. So begins Adam’s obsessive journey to confront his doppelgänger face to face. With this provocative existential thriller, and second collaboration (following Prisoners), director Denis Villeneuve and Gyllenhaal score again, this time with a moodily absurdist adaptation of José Saramago’s The Double that if anything actually deepens the possibilities explored in the novel. An A24 release.
Thursday, February 27 at 6:30PM

Fat Shaker
Mohammad Shirvani, Iran, 2013, 85m; DCP
A singular, cryptic, and ambiguous object that surely breaks with and subverts the orthodoxies of Iranian art cinema, and may be the first hint of the emergence of a new, younger generation of filmmakers. The action centers on an obese con man who uses his deaf-mute, cute adult son as bait to extort money from predatory young women looking for a boy-toy—until the pair’s sketchy life on the social margins is inexplicably upended by the arrival of a mysterious woman who makes herself at home, with unexpected consequences. The film may be an allegorical attack on patriarchy, but its emphasis on the grotesque and the absurd, its off-kilter, unstable style, and its enigmatic refusal to define itself in narrative terms signal the emergence of a talent looking to break fresh ground.
Saturday, February 22 at 1:30PM

Felony
Matthew Saville, Australia, 2013, 105m; DCP
Moral dilemmas abound in this tense police drama, another knockout from Australia’s Blue-Tongue Films, the production company behind Animal Kingdom. A detective (Joel Edgerton, who also wrote the screenplay) wrestles with guilt after running down a nine-year-old cyclist while driving under the influence and allowing his boss (Tom Wilkinson) to cover things up. To make matters worse the squad rookie (Jai Courtney) begins to take a closer look at the facts of the supposed hit-and-run case while the comatose victim hovers between life and death… Edgerton delivers another compelling performance and Matthew Saville’s tight direction makes for gripping stuff. A Gravitas Ventures release.
Monday, February 17 at 6:30PM

Film Comment Double Feature: Healthcare Mayhem
The Carey Treatment
Blake Edwards, 1972, 101m, 35mm
In this elaborately plotted mystery thriller, hospital pathologist James Coburn slowly uncovers the truth behind the death of a teenager after a botched illegal abortion. Co-starring Jennifer O’Neill, Pat Hingle, and Dan O’Herlihy and based on a novel pseudonymously written by Michael Crichton and pseudonymously adapted by husband and wife screenwriting team Harriet Frank and Irving Ravetch!
The Hospital
Arthur Hiller, 1971, 101m, 35mm
George C. Scott is the head of a hospital beset by crisis and suspicious medical mishaps in a blackly comic drama by Network writer Paddy Chayevsky, who won an Academy Award for his screenplay. Co-starring Diana Rigg, Barnard Hughes, Richard Dysart, and Nancy Marchand. (Plus: blink or you’ll miss them uncredited walk-ons by Stockard Channing and Christopher Guest!)
Tuesday, February 25 at 7PM

Flesh of My Flesh
Denis Dercourt, France, 2013, 76m; DCP
An unsettling and strikingly oblique psychological horror film that gives new meaning to the term “mother love,” Flesh of My Flesh takes us into the schizoid reality of Anna (Anna Juliana Jaenner), a woman whose young child has a rare medical condition that requires a highly unusual diet. Writer-director Denis Dercourt, best known for 2006’s The Page Turner, uses an unconventional bare-bones approach, evoking his estranged protagonist’s subjectivity with a cold, distorted visual style that blends sharp clarity and hazy shallow-focus while maintaining a distinctly clinical distance. Inspired by a real-life case in Germany and taking inspiration from George’s Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, Dercourt made the film almost single-handedly (he also did the camerawork, sound recording, and editing), while Austrian actress Jaenner, onscreen from start to finish in her screen debut, gives a truly memorable performance.
Saturday, February 22 at 5:45PM

Ghosts
Christian Petzold, Germany, 2005, 85m; 35mm
Unreleased in the U.S., the third film by one of the most exciting directors from Germany’s Berlin School interweaves two intersecting storylines to explore the spectral existences of three female outsiders—a pair of late adolescent girls and an unstable middle-aged woman—who struggle to reconnect with “normal” society and find a place to belong. The action unfolds in Berlin’s redeveloped Potsdamer Platz, symbol of the post-reunification German social and economic order, but nonethless haunted by three “ghosts”: lonely, unworldly Nina (Julia Hummer), who lives in a youth home, manipulative homeless delinquent Toni (Sabine Timoteo), with whom Nina becomes infatuated, and Francoise (Marianne Basler), who is searching for her long-ago kidnapped and still missing child and comes to believe that Nina may be her grown up daughter. Petzold’s film forms the middle section of his “Ghosts Trilogy” (initiated by The State I Am In in 2000 and concluded in 2007 with Yella). Here the ghosts are not just his three main characters—one lost in a traumatic past, one trapped in an empty present, and one grasping at an imagined but hollow future—but the collective and historical ghosts of Germany’s unconscious.
Wednesday, February 26 at 8PM

The Hypnotist
Lasse Hallström, Sweden, 2012; 122m; DCP
Lasse Hallström returns to his native tongue for the first time in 25 years for this twisty, visually striking Nordic noir about a psychologist (the great Mikael Persbrandt) who’s lured back into hypnotism—a practice he’d sworn off—to help solve a horrific crime. A brutal family slaying has left only one survivor: a badly injured, shell-shocked teenage boy, whose memory the doctor sets out to penetrate. It turns out to be a dangerous undertaking, and what surfaces places the detective on the case and the doctor and his wife (Lena Olin) and young son in harm’s way. An engrossing, chilly nail-biter based on the international best-seller by Lars Kepler.
Friday, February 21 at 3:30PM
Sunday, February 23 at 7:30PM

Intruders
Noh Young-seok, South Korea, 2013, 99m; DCP
A twisty blackly comic suspense thriller from South Korea, where sometimes it seems like they do this sort of thing better than anyone else. Looking for peace and quiet, a screenwriter rents a winter cabin in a remote country backwater to concentrate on his latest project. On the bus he does his best to rebuff a talkative character fresh out of prison, who unfortunately gets off at the same destination. Throw in a group of obnoxious kids on a ski vacation in the cabin next door, a pair of menacing game hunters who turn out to be related to the ex-con, and a shifty cop and you can see where things are headed, right? Maybe, maybe not. In his second effort, indie director Noh Young-seok shows he’s a talent to watch out for. Co-presented with the Korea Society and Subway Cinema.
Thursday, February 20 at 6:45PM
Thursday, February 27 at 4:15PM
*Director Noh Young-seok in person

Metro Manila
Sean Ellis, U.K./Philippines, 2013; 115m
Poor rice-farmers Oscar (Jake Macapagal) and Mai (Althea Vega) travel from the desolate mountains to bustling Manila with their two young children in the hopes of making some money, only to discover that the exploitation they faced at home is nothing compared to what greets them in the big city. From the moment they arrive they fall into a downward spiral: Oscar takes a hazardous job as an armored truck driver, while Mai is forced to dance at a sleazy strip joint, not an ideal line of work for any woman, much less an expectant mother. This harrowing domestic/crime drama was the much-deserved winner of a 2013 Sundance Audience Award. A Paladin/108 Media release.
Friday, February 21 at 6PM

The Sacrament
Ti West, U.S., 2013, 95m; DCP
Indie horror specialist Ti West’s story of a Jim Jones–type religious cult will stick in your mind long after the credits roll. Continuing to go from strength to strength, with support from producer Eli Roth, West adopts a first-person found-footage approach with his usual flair and assurance. A VICE magazine photojournalist (Kentucker Audley) arrives at “Eden Parish,” a self-sustaining utopian commune established at a remote undisclosed jungle location outside the U.S. He’s there at the invitation of his estranged sister (Amy Seimetz), and brings along a cameraman (Joe Swanberg) and sound recordist (AJ Bowen), ready to make an exposé documentary. While the trio find no signs of trouble at first—although what’s with the compound’s armed guards?—before long they their doubts prove more than justified as the commune’s mysterious leader, Father (Gene Jones), finally reveals his plans for his followers. A Magnolia release.
Friday, February 21 at 8:30PM
Director Ti West in person

Top of the Lake
Jane Campion & Garth Davis, New Zealand, 2013, 350m; DCP
Twin Peaks crossed with The Killing—and that isn’t the half of it. Mad Men’s Elizabeth Moss stars in this thrilling seven-episode television series, the toughest, wildest picture Jane Campion has ever made. With the emotional intensity of the performances and the urgency of the drama scaled to match the vast, primal setting and the six-hour time frame, Top of the Lake is episodic television as epic poem, the Trojan wars recast as the gender war. Moss plays a detective who has returned to the bleak rural town where she grew up in order to spend time with her dying mother, and is recruited by the sole local police officer (David Wenham) to investigate a case of statutory rape. The 12-year-old victim refuses to disclose who got her pregnant, but there are no lack of suspects, starting with her father Mitcham (Peter Mullan), who runs a meth and ecstasy factory in his tumbled-down fortress of a home and seems to have fathered near a half-dozen children with several mothers, making incest as well as violence the subtext of desire, past and present. There are also Mitcham’s sullen, gun-toting sons, and a “foreign” teacher with a pedophile past. A stellar embodiment of “the law of the father,” Mitcham goes on the offensive when women challenge his rule. Enter GJ (Holly Hunter), who buys the lakefront property that Mitcham presumes is his by right and establishes a community of women attempting to recover from abuse through anarchic hijinks—damaged goods empowered by their own sense of comedy. A perfect example of auteurist television, made in collaboration with writer Gerald Lee (who co-wrote Campion’s Sweetie) and co-director Garth Davis.—from Amy Taubin’s article on Top of the Lake in the March/April 2013 issue of Film Comment. A See-Saw Films production in association with Sundance Channel.
Sunday, February 23 at 1PM
*Includes a 15m intermission

We Are the Best!
Lukas Moodysson, Sweden, 2013, 102m; DCP
The director of Together and Lilya 4-ever is back on form with an energetic rough-and-tumble story of three rebellious teenage girls who form a punk rock band to defy the stifling conformity of early 1980s Stockholm. Adapting his wife Coco’s graphic novel, Moodysson affirms that an adolescent girl’s bedroom is as good a place as anywhere to find the ingredients for personal development and political foment as he sketches the friendship between Klara and Bobo, who use punk ideals and music to process the narrow thinking, variable parenting, inconsistent authority, and sexism they encounter in their lives. The action unfolds in a loose series of episodes during which the girls define and give voice to their untested feminist, spiritual, and political ideas, although they can be just as intolerant and conformist as their peers and parents—they recruit classmate and gifted guitar player Hedvig, ostracized for being a devout Christian, but insist that she renounce her religion! Returning to his roots, Moodysson depicts the exploits and follies of his unruly trio with warmth and affection, while cheerfully celebrating the DIY ethos and the urge to revolt. A Magnolia release.
Saturday, February 22 at 7:30PM

The Weight
Jeon Kyu-hwan, South Korea, 2012; 107m, DCP
Jung (Jo Jae-hyeon) is a sickly hunchbacked mortician who takes pride and pleasure in cleaning and dressing the dead. Gong-bae (Zia) is his burdensome younger stepbrother, who wants nothing more than to be a woman. Their story, fraught with human misery and cruelty—and yes, be warned, some necrophilia and graphic gore—is by no means to all tastes. But looking past the film’s bleak exterior there’s actually much beauty to be found within the grotesquerie. The Weight is exquisitely shot and directed and Jo and Zia deliver staggering performances as two catastrophically confused souls. Unsettling, heartbreaking, and altogether bizarre, The Weight is truly one of a kind.
Thursday, February 20 at 9PM

Wolfsburg
Christian Petzold, Germany, 2003, 90m
Unavailable in the U.S., the second film by the Berlin School’s leading light and his first collaboration with actress Nina Hoss, star of his art-house hit Barbara, is a slow-burning thriller that uses the relationship between a hit-and-run driver and the victim’s mother to examine the role of chance in people’s lives and the existential malaise of modern Germany. Upwardly mobile car salesman Philipp (Benno Fürmann) seems to have it made—high-pressure job,perfect house and beautiful fiancée, Katja (Antje Westermann), who happens to be his boss’s sister. But Katja has her doubts about Philipp, and when he runs down a boy on a bicycle and drives on, his life begins to unravel. After the boy’s death, his struggling single mother Laura (Hoss), who works in a retail warehouse, sets out to track down his killer, but after a chance meeting between hunter and hunted, a cautious romantic relationship develops, with the guilty Philipp setting out to find a better job for the unknowing Laura. Petzold’s exploration of the nature of work and economics in today’s Germany is echoed in the film’s title, which invokes the factory town where Volkswagen is based.
Wednesday, February 26 at 6PM


PUBLIC SCREENING SCHEDULE

Monday, February 17
6:30pm: Felony (105m)
9:00pm: Our Sunhi (88m)

Tuesday, February 18
6:30 Cherchez Hortense (100m)
8.45: Betrayal (95m)

Wednesday, February 19
NO SCREENING

Thursday, February 20
4:45pm: Our Sunhi (88m)
6:45pm Intruders (99m) + Q&A
9:00 The Weight (107m)

Friday, February 21
3:30pm: The Hypnotist (122m)
6:00pm: Metro Manila (115m)
8:30: The Sacrament (95m) + Q&A

Saturday, February 22
1:30pm Fat Shaker (85m)
3:20pm: Cannibal (116)
5:45pm: Flesh of My Flesh (76m)
7:30pm We Are the Best (102m)
9:45pm Blood Glacier (98m)

Sunday, February 23
1pm: Top of the Lake (350m)
7:30pm: The Hypnotist (122m)

Tuesday, February 25
4:45 Cherchez Hortense (100m)
7:00 Film Comment Double Feature: The Carey Treatment (101m)
w/ The Hospital (101m)

Wednesday, February 26
3:30 Cannibal (116)
6:00 Wolfsburg (90m)
8:00 Ghosts (85m)
9:50: City of Pirates (111m)

Thursday, February 27
4:15: Intruders (99m)
6:30 Enemy (90m)
8:30 Me and You (103m)


Film Society of Lincoln Center
Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center works to recognize established and emerging filmmakers, support important new work, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility and understanding of the moving image. Film Society produces the renowned New York Film Festival, a curated selection of the year's most significant new film work, and presents or collaborates on other annual New York City festivals including Dance on Camera, Film Comment Selects, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, LatinBeat, New Directors/New Films, NewFest, New York African Film Festival, New York Asian Film Festival, New York Jewish Film Festival, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema and Rendez-vous With French Cinema. In addition to publishing the award-winning Film Comment Magazine, Film Society recognizes an artist's unique achievement in film with the prestigious "Chaplin Award." The Film Society's state-of-the-art Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, located at Lincoln Center, provide a home for year round programs and the New York City film community.

The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, Jaeger-LeCoultre, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stonehenge Partners, Stella Artois, the Kobal Collection, Trump International Hotel and Tower, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com and follow @filmlinc on Twitter.