May and June 2018 Repertory Calendar at Metrograph Announced [Dario Argento, Jane Fonda, Sylvia Chang, Paul Schrader, Roger Corman, and more!]

May and June 2018 Repertory Calendar Announced

Opens May 4 Paul Schrader x 4 The "Man In a Room" Quartet with Schrader Appearing In-Person!   An untamed and fiercely independent figure, unreconciled to and still undefeated by the forces of corporatized cinema, Paul Schrader has through his long career remained almost perversely loyal to his guiding preoccupation with the figure of a lonely man wrestling with his soul and with himself, driven towards a moral crucible. Branded by his early encounters with the films of Robert Bresson, about whom he wrote feelingly as a critic, Schrader has through his career as director and screenwriter returned to what he calls the “man in a room,” subject of four of the finest films to bear his imprint. In Taxi Driver(1976) it’s Robert De Niro’s brooding Travis Bickle; in American Gigolo (1980) and The Walker (2007), paid male escorts played by Richard Gere and Woody Harrelson; in Light Sleeper (1992), Willem Dafoe’s insomniac high-end drug dealer. To this body of work we can now add the searing, sublime First Reformed, an apotheosis of sorts, in which Ethan Hawke gives the performance of his life as a clergyman pursued by guilt, driven towards a startling reckoning. To mark its release, Metrograph will be welcoming back the greatest of New York cineastes, good company in which to celebrate a superlative cinema of solitude.

Opens May 11 Stanley Kubrick x 8   Actor turned ace aider-and-abettor, Leon Vitali dedicated himself to helping to realize the outsized visions of director Stanley Kubrick after appearing in his Barry Lyndon (1975)—and the new Filmworker, opening at Metrograph on May 11, pays tribute to his noble, underappreciated work. In connection toFilmworker’s first-run, Metrograph selected eight of Kubrick’s creative triumphs from before and during his connection with Vitali, movies that need no excuse to be screened, all showing the mark of the master’s inimitable steel-trap mind, as well as the collective effort of an assembled army of unsung behind-the-scenes and below-the-line heroes like Vitali who help to move cinema forward. Titles include The Killing(1956), Paths of Glory (1957), Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove (1964), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), and Full Metal Jacket (1987).

Opens May 18 Sylvia Chang 17 Film Retrospective with Chang Appearing In-Person! A groundbreaking writer-director in a male-dominated industry, improbably prolific international movie star of the first flight, Sylvia Chang is a one-woman dynamo of artistic activity whose triumphant career spans cultures East and West, genres and disciplines. Her recent output includes musical comedy Office(2015), which she wrote and starred in for Johnnie To, and a poignant turn in Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart (2015). Born in Taiwan, Chang broke through as an ingenue in pop cinema, appearing in classical adaptations, like gender-bending Qing-period love story The Dream of the Red Chamber (1977), and wuxia classics, like King Hu’s philosophical kung-fu tale Legend of the Mountain (1979). A performer of eloquent restraint and power, she won her first Taiwan Golden Horse Award as actress for My Grandfather (1981); went on to work with a pantheon of Chinese auteurs operating around the globe, including Tsui Hark, Edward Yang, Stanley Kwan, and Ang Lee; and emerged as a powerful filmmaking force in her own right, producing and starring in Ann Hui’s debut The Secret (1979), before turning director, producing such elegant, nuanced works as 20 30 40 (2004), Murmur of the Hearts (2015), andLove Education (2017). Altogether it makes for an unprecedented career. Co-presented with Taipei Cultural Center in New York, Ministry of Culture of Taiwan (R.O.C.).

Opens May 18 Birds: A Festival Inspired by Aristophanes Co-Presented by the Onassis Cultural Center New York   Aristophanes’ comic political fantasy The Birds—2,500 years old—has been freshly imagined and staged by Nikos Karathanos, whose production arrives in New York following a raved-about run at the Ancient Theater of Epidaurus and at the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens—the city whose ancient social life it so piquantly satirizes. In connection with this event, Metrograph presents a program of four films that will turn the cinema into a veritable birdhouse, including The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch, 1999), The King and the Mockingbird (Paul Grimault, 1952), andBrewster McCloud (Robert Altman, 1970).

Opens June 1 Jane Fonda in the 1970s   A Retrospective of the Actress' Prolific Decade Born in 1937, Jane Fonda, a scion of movie royalty, made her screen debut in 1960; for the next several years, she would often be called upon to play some version of the soubrette. But by the following decade, the most crucial one of Fonda's still vibrant career, she would win two Best Actress Oscars: for her performance as the boho-chic prostitute Bree Daniels in Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971) and as Sally Hyde, a dutiful military spouse liberated by an affair with a Vietnam War vet, in Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978). Her most enduring achievement from this time, though, may be what she did when she wasn’t on set. In the first half of the ’70s, Fonda was steadfastly committed to the Black Panthers, the feminist movement, and, most famously, opposition to the war in Vietnam—activism that secured her status as, in the words of J. Hoberman, “the most politically outspoken star in Hollywood history.” Metrograph’s retrospective will include nearly all of Fonda’s narrative features from this vital era, plus several documentaries in which she is a prominent participant, lucidly articulating her insurgent positions. Series conceived and program notes written by Melissa Anderson, film editor of 4Columns.

Opens June 12 Dario Argento with Argento Appearing In-Person! When it comes to Dario Argento, the stylist supreme of horror cinema, one might first think of an insidious mood, of piercingly intense colors, of a scrap of haunting music or a set piece in which the camera sets off on its own inexplicable course or an act of violence at once shocking, sensuous, and beautiful. Argento, who came to the director’s chair by way of work as a critic and screenwriter, understands cinema as, among other things, a decorative art, and the movies that he would make, eithergiallo or supernatural horror, are above all encompassing, voluptuary environments—viewers tend not to want to leave them, even as their persecuted characters struggle to find a way out of the lapidary labyrinths they’ve been trapped in. With his debut, hit thriller The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Argento began one of the most offbeat, brilliant runs of moviemaking in horror history, and almost fifty years later he carries on as a visionary force in genre cinema, an elder statesman of unparalleled influence who combines Hitchcock’s grand architectural ambitions, more than a dash of surrealism, and a hedonistic taste for beauty. Watching Argento movies en masse makes for a feast of rich, decadent filmmaking, that leaves one hungry for more.  Presented in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in New York.

ONGOING SERIES

Throughout May and June Playtime   Coming this weekend, next weekend, and ongoing every single Saturday and Sunday, Playtime is a new creatively-curated Metrograph matinee series featuring studio standbys, animations from yesterday and yesteryear, and foreign fare. The content will always be kid-appropriate, but the main criteria for selection is excellence—these are movies for film lovers of all ages, from those just learning to love the cinema to longtime fans revisiting old favorites.

Throughout May and June Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) at Metrograph  "An Evening with Roger Corman" on May 3 and A Special Screening of Sideways (2004) with Academy Award® Winning Co-Writer Jim Taylor on June 1   The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) will continue its monthly residency at Metrograph this spring with upcoming programming to include “An Evening with Roger Corman” and a Special Screening of Sideways. "An Evening with Roger Corman" will take place on Thursday May 3 and will include two features from the producer/director’s over 60-year career, The Intruder (1962) and The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), as well as excerpts from such iconic works as Death Race 2000 (1975), and Jackson County Jail (1976).  In 2009 Corman was awarded an Honorary Academy Award® for his contributions to cinema throughout his career. On Friday, June 1, a special screening of Sideways (2004) will take place, introduced by its co-writer, Jim Taylor.  Taylor and co-writer and director Alexander Payne received the Oscar® for Best Adapted Screenplay.  The film was nominated for five additional Oscars®.  This event caps the one-year residency of AMPAS at Metrograph. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began a yearlong residency at Metrograph in July 2017, bringing exciting and entertaining programs to the big screen. Programs have and continue to feature onstage conversations with filmmakers and scholars of motion pictures, tributes, newsreels, rarely seen clips from past Oscar® ceremonies, and home movies from Hollywood legends.  This monthly series highlights unique archival elements, including recent restorations and film prints from the Academy Film Archive by celebrating classic moments from the Academy’s 90-year history.

Greenwich International Film Festival To Honor Ashley Judd and Duncan Edwards as 2018 Changemakers

Judd and Edwards will be honored for their Humanitarian Work

 

NEW YORK, NY (April, 6, 2018) -  Greenwich International Film Festival announces the honorees for the 4th annual Changemaker Gala, which will take place on May 31, 2018. The Changemaker Award honors artists who have used their public platform and the power of film to further positive social change.  This year, actress and author Ashley Judd, will be honored for her work with United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Duncan Edwards, the Community Changemaker honoree at the 2018 festival, will be recognized for his work in education with the Waterside School in Stamford, CT. The school, conceived as model for future efforts, is an independent school  serving children and families regardless of limitations in income or circumstance. Past honorees include Renée Zellweger, Christy Turlington Burns, Freida Pinto, Trudie Styler, Abigail Breslin, Harry Belafonte and Mia Farrow.

Ashley Judd is a feminist social justice humanitarian. She has been working internationally, with NGO’S, grassroots organizations, governments, and supranational bodies since 2004.  Presently, she serves as Global Goodwill Ambassador for UNFPA, is the Global Ambassador for Population Services International, and also for Polaris Project. Through UNFPA she has recently traveled to Jordan, Ukraine, Turkey and India.

Waterside School is a co-educational PK-5th Grade independent school serving children and families regardless of limitations in income or circumstance. The School attracts and inspires students of academic promise and families deeply invested in their children’s success. The School works to instill in its students a belief in their own worth, to cultivate in each a commitment to academic excellence, and to ensure the fullest development of every child’s character. Through a rigorous program of study and experience, the School empowers its students with the knowledge, skills and virtues required to enable them to excel as students, to gain access to superior academic opportunities, and to go forward to become the leaders of tomorrow.

"It is an honor to have been chosen as a Changemaker Award recipient at the 2018 Greenwich International Film Festival. The festival serves as a great example of how film can be elevated to affect social change, and I'm grateful to be a part of such an extraordinary community." Ashley Judd, 2018 GIFF Changemaker.

"We are incredibly honored to have Ashley Judd as our 2018 Changemaker. She is an unapologetic voice for equality and women's rights throughout the world. Ashley serves as an incredible example of an individual who, despite the consequences, has refused to be silenced when she has been confronted by injustice and has therefore eased the path for the next generation. ” Wendy Stapleton Reyes, Chairman of the Board, GIFF.

Greenwich International Film Festival is set to run May 31-June 3, 2018. Tickets go on sale May 2, 2018 and will be available for purchase at greenwichfilm.org. The Festival’s full film slate will be announced in early May. The May 31st Changemaker event, sponsored by Betteridge, will include a cocktail reception at Betteridge followed by a black tie gala at L’Escale in Greenwich, CT. Jenna Bush Hager will serve as Master of Ceremonies.

About Greenwich International Film Festival
Greenwich International Film Festival (GIFF) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that hosts a world-class film festival in Greenwich, CT. The goal of the festival is to bridge the worlds of film, finance and philanthropy. The fourth annual festival will take place May 31-June 3, 2018, and will support important human rights initiatives, as part of its social impact focus.  The four-day event will feature a star-studded Opening Night Party, film premieres, engaging panels, an honoree gala, and more.  For additional information, please visit www.greenwichfilm.org.

Good Manners (2017) NDNF 2018 (spoilers)

Art house meets grindhouse in a film that will satisfy few except those who will believe the WTF turns.

Ana is hired by an expecting single mom to be a live in helper before the baby arrive and then a nanny after.  Things go along swimmingly until Ana begins behaving badly when the moon is full. That is nothing compared to what happens when the baby arrives.

Solid first hour is a really good, if slow, domestic drama of the life and budding romance between the two women. Sure there are hints at what is to come but it's kept largely low key, even if a cat meets a bad end. The film is a compelling drama where you care about the characters and want to see where it's going.

That all changes when the baby is born and the film morphs into  a not quite a horror film crossed with a not quite a Beauty and the Beast drama. Picks up seven years later when Ana is raising the now young boy. Here the film wobbles from pillar to post as it never quite manages to get the tone right. The needing to keep an eye on the boy and his diet, especially at times of the full moon never really works and I kept wanting to ask all sorts of questions about the whys and hows. Things completely fall off the table in the closing minutes when a mob with a modern take on flaming torches appears. I damn near fell on the floor from laughing.

While I know and appreciate what the film is striving to do I don't think the film achieves it. Part of the problem is the fact that this film is 135 minutes.  Its simply way too long. Because we get so much set up the split between now and seven years on makes the film play like two different films with the same casts. The shift is so radical that the film can't really handle the tonal shift.

Then again perhaps the film doesn't know what the tone is supposed to be- Horror? Drama? Fantasy? The first hour is most certainly a thriller but I'm not sure what the second is.

While I have all sorts of plot questions regarding the second half I'm going to focus on two upfront things that don't really help the film. The first is that Miguel Lobo as Joel, the wolf boy, is very uneven in the role. Yes there are times when he nails it, but some of the monster related stuff doesn't quite work, We can see him acting. Certainly he's game but either because of his ability or the editing I never bought it.

The other problem with the second half is in the creature design which is much to cute and cartoony to ever be believable. I chuckled every time I saw it. Frankly I could have accepted it in if Joel was more human and not so wolf like, but he's a wolf with a cute kids face stuck on it its just silly. Worse it doesn't really match up with the new born version we had seen earlier which had a larger snout.

I probably should also pick on the plotting in the second half which has all sorts of problems, not to mention angry townspeople storming with torches, but somehow I find that too easy a target. There are too many points that seem like they were lifted from other films. If they can be lazy in how it cobbled together the various bits from other better films then I can decide to be lazy and not to take it apart piece by piece.

Forgive me I've seen way too many horror/fantasy/genre films. I've seen good and bad. I've forgiven a lot of bad films because they managed to provoke a reaction and set a mood. While I tend to love films that turn out to be about something other than what you think going in, I really hate it when they don't work. Great flips make sitting through questionable moments worth it. A bad story flip makes it all just a waste of time. Despite a great first half and a sputtering second GOOD MANNERS is a waste of time.

Skip it.

SFFILM ’18: No Date, No Signature

Terhan drivers might spend even more time in their cars than Angelenos. The Iranian capital might just boast the world’s most congested traffic. Reflecting that driving culture, entire Iranian films have been shot in cars, such as Jafar Panahi’s Taxi and Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten. It stands to reason there are plenty of auto accidents, but Dr. Kaveh Nariman’s incident is particularly tragic, assuming it really was the cause of a young boy’s death. The uncertainty will be agonizing in Vahid Jalilvand’s No Date, No Signature, which screens during the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival.

It really wasn’t Nariman’s fault. A reckless driver side-swiped him on the left, forcing him into the motorbike carrying Moosa, his wife, infant daughter, and young son. Nariman duly pulls over and gives everyone a cursory examination, but he dissuades Moosa from calling the cops, because his insurance has lapsed. Instead, he hands over some money for repairs and offers to admit his son into his clinic at no charge. Perhaps not so surprisingly, Moosa takes the money, but blows off the clinic.

The next night, a report on Moosa’s now deceased son crosses Dr. Nariman’s desk as the local head of legal forensic medicine. According to the autopsy performed by Dr. Sayeh Behbahani (a colleague with whom Nariman has a very complicated and ambiguous relationship), the boy died of botulism. There is no denying he had the disease, but Nariman secretly suspects complications from the accident were the direct cause of death. Nevertheless, the revelation sends the guilt-ridden Moosa off in a blind rage, spoiling for a violent confrontation with the sleazy poultry worker who sold him contaminated chicken under the table.

It is amazing how dexterously Persian cinema handles moral dilemmas. In this case, everything is more intense, because all the players are operating outside the law, or at least stretching the boundaries beyond all recognition. Yet, there is something especially perverse about Dr. Nariman’s case, because the more he damns himself, the worse the outlooks gets for Moosa’s resulting criminal case (for battering the rotten chicken seller senseless—literally). Many times, the audience echoes Dr. Behbahani (or vice versa), asking “what do you think you’re doing,” with mounting alarm, while still weirdly admiring his strange sense of integrity.

Looking a bit like a Persian Trapper John M.D., Amir Aghaee gives a wonderfully subtle and quietly conflicted performance. In contrast, Navid Mohammadzadeh rages like De Niro in his prime as Moosa. Based on his meltdown, we understand how his son’s death was just the culmination of all the emasculating humiliations society had meted out on him over his lifetime. It is a very strong cast, most definitely including Hediyeh Tehrani, who is not merely an audience surrogate as Dr. Behbahani, but also a marginalized professional woman, a concerned friend, and perhaps even a spurned lover. That is a heck of a lot of internal contradictions to balance, but she does a fine job of it.

There is no explicit political commentary in No Date, but it is an Iranian film to its core. Everything that happens makes grim, fatalistic sense, but you could not credibly transpose it into another culture. It also proves it is possible to make a tense, suspenseful film with little or no crime genre elements, per se. Very highly recommended, No Date, No Signature screens Saturday (4/7), Tuesday (4/10), and Wednesday (4/11), as part of this year’s SFFILM.

Sweet Country (2017)

SWEET COUNTRY follows what happens when a new man arrives in remote Australia. Looking for someone to help him with some projects he asks preacher Sam Neil for aid. Neil sends Sam Kelly and his wife, Lizzie, to help him. When the man rapes Lizzie,Kelly kills him and the couple flee into to the wilderness because being Aborigine they will not get a fare shake. As expected the law pursues the pair.

De facto western has a great deal on it's mind concerning race, politics, humanity and religion. What could have been a very simple story is made larger by dealing with a good many matters straight on. It is a headier tale than one might expect from "westerns" even with the recent release of films like the cousin by blood HOSTILES. This is a film that speaks about how we treat all of humanity.

While most definitely a good film it is not going to play well with some audiences. A measured (aka slow)  tale that jumbles the time line and doesn't use music, this is not a film for those looking for an easy popcorn movie. This is a film you have be patient with and go along with on it's own course.

The cast is first rate from top to bottom and they make us care about everyone's plight regardless of who they are.

In the end I was moved, so much so I emailed friends right after finishing it to make sure they had it on their must see list, which is probably the best thing I can say about the film.

SWEET COUNTRY opens in theaters Friday.

BAR TALKS BY SCHUMANN (2018) Kino Fest 2018

Excellent portrait of, and road trip with, Charles Schumann the legendary barman, restaurateur, author and lover of cocktails. We tag along as Schumann travels around the world talking to barmen and women and samples their wares. Along the way we get a charming portrait of the man, his life and the history of drinking.

I don't drink and to say that Marieke Schroeder has made a film that makes me want to go out and drink says a great deal. This film will drawn you in and make you want to get out and go have a good time in a bar somewhere. It is a stunning call for people to do more than be on there cellphones and instead be out and interacting.

Of course when you have someone like Charles Schumann leading the way who knows what is going to happen. He seems to know the most interesting people and he knows how to get them to talk, often by not saying a damn thing. I was enraptured. I loved to listen to everything that anyone had to say. I was especially delighted in the many little stray comments that came off everyone's lips proving that in real life people really can be witty.

What an absolute delight.

Highly recommended for anyone who loves good conversation about food and drink, mostly drink. BAR TALKS is one of my great finds of 2018 and is a must if you've tired of endless action films.

BAR TALKS BY SCHUMANN plays at Kino on April 7th (with director Marieke Schroeder and the man himself doing a Q&A) and April 10th. For more information and tickets go here.

Kino! ’18: In Times of Fading Light

At one point in his career, Wilhelm Powileit thought he was being dispatched to Mexico to help assassinate Trotsky. At least that would have been an accomplishment. Instead, his masters temporarily forgot about him. It was one of many disappointments in his career, but he has lived to a ripe old age while remaining fanatically loyal to the Communist Party, so his birthday is now observed by a parade of minor Party officials. However, everyone can sense history is no longer on Powileit’s side when they gather for his 90^th celebration in Matti Geschonneck’s In Times of Fading Light, the opening night film of this year’s KINO!: Festival of German Films in New York.

Probably nobody in the Powileit family has suffered more for their Communist faith than Powileit’s stepson, Kurt Umnitzer. Now a respected history professor, Umnitzer spent five years in a Soviet labor camp because troop transport train was sent in the wrong direction. Indeed, it was a costlier interlude in his life than he lets on. However, it is most likely why is so determined to convince his rebellious son Sascha to compromise a little, in order to get along. Alas, his counsel falls on deaf ears, as becomes profoundly clear when Sascha calls his father from the safety of West Berlin on the morning of his grandfather’s milestone party.

Right, super awkward. Unmitzer will try to keep the bombshell news under wraps, but it will be even more difficult when his bitter Russian wife Irina also ditches the party (with a small “p,” not the Party, with a capitol “P’), in favor of a bottle of vodka. Yet, Sascha’s defection just personalizes what all the guests already know—East Germany’s days as Stalinist colony are numbered.

Based Eugen Ruge’s family saga novel, boiled down to one pivotal day for dramatic purposes, Fading Light is a melancholy fin de siècle elegy, but it still has plenty of bite. The Powileit patriarch might be getting slightly dotty, but he is still vain, petty, and sometimes mean-spirited. His casual cruelty really comes out when he refers to Unmitzer’s workcamp confinement as “sawing logs in the forest.”

Without question, Bruno Ganz gives a ferocious lead performance as ninety-year-old Socialist ideologue, Bernie Sanders. As a portrayal of a true believing extremist facing the end of his era, it comes from a similar place as his legendary, often memed Hitler in Downfall, but it is quieter and sadder.

Ganz gets the showy parts, but Sylvester Groth gives it a messily human soul as the conflicted Unmitzer. Groth was an East German defector, who has played his share of Stasi agents and collaborators in films and series like Deutschland ’83 and A Pact, but the world weariness and self-contempt of Unmitzer is an even more representative expression of the GDR experience. It is a restrained, but deeply felt performance, whereas Evgenia Dodina blows the doors off their hinges as Irina Unmitzer. Good golly, can she make an entrance.

Fading Light shares a kinship with classic dinner party disaster movies like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Vinterberg’s The Celebration, but it has a Teutonic soul. It is a wryly sardonic, archly observed summation of all the denial and double-think required of GDR’s Powileit’s that is more bitter than sweet. Highly recommended, In Times of Fading Light screens this Friday and Saturday (4/6 & 4/7), as part of KINO! 2018 in New York City.

Kino! ’18: Bad Banks (series)

Jana Liekam’s new employer is too big to like. Deutsche Global is one of Germany’s largest investment banks, but they have recently been thrown off-stride by scandals and bad investments. It represents a second chance for Liekam, who might just save the bank, so she can help destroy it later in the German limited series Bad Banks, directed by Christian Schwochow, the first two episodes of which screen during this year’s KINO!: Festival of German Films in New York.

Liekam has just been fired from Luxembourg-based Credit International for making her boss, Luc Jacoby, the chairman’s coked-up, entitled son look bad. Christelle Leblanc, the firm’s director agrees this is unfair, but cautions Liekam she must learn to play the game better. Thanks to her secret string-pulling, she gets Liekam a tryout at Deutsche Global working for their hotshot investment manager Gabriel Fenger. From time to time, Lebanc will supply Liekam with timely “insider” information, but she makes it clear she wants highly compromising information on Credit International in return.

Judging from the in media res opening, the junk bonds will eventually hit the fan in a big, panic-inducing way. Presumably, Liekam will play a major role in the meltdown. Obviously, there is a lot of intrigue building behind the scenes, but the first two episodes are relatively self-contained, thereby making a good festival showcase.

Paula Beer (so terrific in Ozon’s Frantz) is well cast as Liekam. She can be quite forceful and even cynical, but it is clear from her early breakdown, she probably has issues that will later come to the fore. Barry Atsma is also wonderfully flamboyant as Fenger, a true child of Gordon Gekko. May Duong Kieu also makes quite an impression as Thao Hoang, Liekam’s new team-member, who will either be her uneasy ally or a femme fatale rival, or something in between (just how their relationship shakes out will be one of the series’ intriguing uncertainties). Marc Limpach is a clammy mess as Jacoby the younger, but Jean Marc Barr promises plenty of steely skullduggery as Deutsche Global’s chairman, Robert Khano.

Schwochow, a veteran of both film and television, helms with style, hooking viewers right from the start. He lays a good deal of groundwork in the first two episodes, yet still manages to end each one in quite a satisfying manner. Hopefully, MHz or someone will pick up Bad Banks, because it is really smart and addictive television. Until then, the first two episodes are highly recommended when they screen this Saturday (4/7) and next Thursday (4/12), as part of KINO! 2018 in New York City.

Djon Africa (2018) NDNF 2018

A fiction film based on directors João Miller Guerra and Filipa Reis previous film, a documentary about a young man returning to Cape Verde to reconnect with his long lost father. The trip does not go as planned as the the man, sometimes called Djon Africa gets side tracked by the things he finds along the way.

Solid character study picks you up and carries you along with it's story of a drifter trying to find his lost past and forge a new future of maturity. To be certain it rambles about but it never really loses focus or interest. This isn't so much about really finding a lost father but a lost searcher.

Possibly the least arty of the films I've seen at New Directors this year this is the one film that I would most likely return to  for no real reason other than I had a good time watching it. Say what you will about NDNF, the films can some times work to hard to make you feel and think but DJON AFRICA makes it look so easy and simple that you really can't believe that there is anything more going on than a good time with interesting people.

One of the best films at NDNF it is heartily recommended.

Big Fish and Begonia opens Friday

If you are going to see BIG FISH & BEGONIA and can see it on a big screen, do so. There are images that will not be appreciated on anything other than a full size movie screen. The images in this film are such that they overcome any short comings the film may have to make it something worth seeing.

The plot of the film has Chun coming to earth from a realm under the sea to see the world of humans. She comes in the form of a red dolphin and she has 7 days to see the world. Unfortunately as she is heading home she is trapped in a fishing net and runs the risk of being trapped on earth forever. A young man frees her but at the cost of his own life. Feeling the need to repay her debt to him she sells half her life in order revive him as a rapidly growing fish. Complications arise that threaten her world.

Gorgeous to look at but incredibly messy in the telling this film never quite feels like it's it's own thing. Feeling at times like a riff on Ghibli's SPIRITED AWAY not to mention several other films this film plays at times like a greatest hits filtered through a Chinese lens. The result is a film you never stop wanting to compare it to other films. It never fully stands on it's own feet story-wise even as the visuals delight.

What is worse the film kind of demands that you go with it and feel as it wants you to because it says so. Chun falls for the Kun (the fish) because he saved her when he was human. I never explains anything more than than. It never really is said as such until toward the end. Frankly I never bought it, especially since during the early part of the film it seemed Chun is constantly saying she was paying a debt and nothing more. The "feel what we tell you" drive of the film largely kills all emotion in the film, other than anything having to do with Qiu, the boy who loves Chun. Qiu's arc is soul crushing as he literally gives up everything for the girl he loves. It is one of the most heartbreaking things I've seen in a film in the few years. It broke the hearts of a couple of people who were sitting behind me at the NYICFF screening since they remarked it was the saddest thing they had ever seen. This film should have kicked ass and taken names instead of giving us a hearty handshake.

The visuals rescue the film. From giant whales flying in the sky, to huge action set pieces and images of stunning beauty BIG FISH & BEGONIA is a film you'll want to put on and just oogle. The images frequently take your breath away. Married to the frequently soaring score the film on a non-story level delights.

While I don't hate the film, I'm not in love with it. Mostly I think I'm disappointed that a film that can get so much right can blow the central "love" story so badly when it nails the side one so perfectly.

Reservations aside - worth a look especially on the big screen.

NDNF 2018 Capsules: MILLA and DRIFT

MILLA (2017)
Two part mirrored film concerning the life of a young runaway and the choices she makes.

Slices from Milla's life are arranged so that the second half of the film acts as a mirror to the first. It's an interesting try but the forced nature of the mirroring kind of works against the notion that this real life since everything is a little too neat.

What does work about the film is that things are not judgmental, things just are. We see enough of Milla's life that we come to understand the whys and hows of the choices she has made.

An interesting film thats best for those who like artier takes in their films.

DRIFT (2017)
Experimental or avant garde film is going to be a long haul for anyone who doesn't like long takes of rooms and nature.

The film begins with two women at a resort and never really moves from there as we get fleeting dialog from the middle of conversations and lots of meaningful shots of the ocean and environments around it.

Whether it it means something will depend upon if you stay awake and if you have anything to read into the images. Its clear the director knows what she wants to say but is holding all of her cards close to her chest and not letting us really know what is happening.

That's not correct I have read some article on the film, however any clues or meanings contained are on the page and not on the screen.

Only recommended if you like beautiful images of the ocean

May/June 2018 Week-Long Engagements Calendar Announced at the Metrograph

May 4-10 Exclusive One-Week NY Engagement ANGELS WEAR WHITE A Harrowing and Uncompromised Film by Vivian Wu A bold and, in Mainland China, unprecedented use of genre film means to shine a light on a culture of bureaucratic corruption and conspiratorial silence which puts vulnerable young women at particular risk. Two schoolgirls are assaulted in a motel; Mia, a teenager on-duty at the desk who is the lone witness, says nothing to the authorities for fear of reprisal, but she begins to buckle upon meeting one of the victims, 12-year-old Wen, and finds herself sucked into an intrigue involving media, local government, and more. A harrowing and uncompromised sophomore feature from Vivian Qu, resonant with the global reckoning of the #MeToo moment. A KimStim release.

May 11-17 Exclusive One-Week NY Engagement FILMWORKER A Candid and Moving Portrait of Stanley Kubrick's Longtime Assistant After a long struggle to make it as an actor, Leon Vitali seemed to have arrived when he played Lord Bullingdon in Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 Barry Lyndon. After appearing in the film, prestigious job offers poured in from film, television and stage, but Vitali turned them all down to take on the role of assistant to Kubrick, which he held for more than two decades, on The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987), andEyes Wide Shut (1999). In Filmworker, Vitali’s candid and often funny experiences in the company of Kubrick are woven together with the notoriously private director's previously unseen artifacts, including photos, videos, letters, notebooks, and memos. Concurrent with the run of Filmworker, Metrograph will present Kubrick x8, retrospective including such masterpieces as Dr. Strangelove (1964),Paths of Glory (1957), Lolita (1962), and A Clockwork Orange (1971). A Kino Lorber release.

May 25-31 Exclusive One-Week Revival Run THE CHANGELING New 4K Restoration of the Psychological Horror Cult Classic Mad with grief over the deaths of his wife and daughter, composer George C. Scott decides to retire from the world into an ominous, remote mansion—but he’s got company, in the form of a murdered child’s restless spirit. Based on recorded supernatural incidents at the Harry Treat Rogers Mansion in Denver, Peter Medak’s gracefully shot, relentlessly atmospheric film is one of the most spine-tinglingly effective haunted house movies ever made, one sure to instill in new viewers a lifelong fear of self-propelling wheelchairs and rubber balls. New 4K restoration from film's internegative. A Severin Films release.

May 25-31 Exclusive One-Week Revival Run A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS New 4K Restoration of Sergio Leone's Masterpiece With this blackly comic, cynical, dust-choked movie, Leone revolutionized the quintessentially American western genre from his native Italy, established “Man with No Name” star Clint Eastwood as a taciturn, sculptural screen icon, and launched a thousand knockoff spaghetti westerns. Inspired by Dashiell Hammett’s hard-boiled novel Red Harvest, Sergio Leone’s pitiless, operatic work has Eastwood arriving in the crime-ridden ‘burg of San Miguel, where he sets out to get rich setting two feuding gangs at each other’s throats. A work of bleak, brutal beauty, and a stern reminder to never, ever, under any circumstances, talk shit about Clint Eastwood’s mule. Restoration carried out by Cineteca di Bologna and Unidis Jolly Film at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with MGM. Restoration funding provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation. A Park Circus release.

May 30-June 5 Exclusive One-Week Revival Run GANJA & HESS New Restoration of Bill Gunn's Cult Classic Cut by timid distributors and inappropriately marketed as grindhouse blaxploitation, this eerie, sui generis work by utterly iconoclastic director Bill Gunn (Personal Problems) is, in its original form, nothing short of a masterpiece of ‘70s American cinema. Night of the Living Dead’s Duane Jones is an anthropologist living in aristocratic splendor in the Hudson Valley who finds himself lusting for blood after being stabbed by his unstable assistant (Gunn). What proceeds from this is a baroque, atmospheric rumination on the clash between African-American and Euro-American culture, animist and Christian influences, and homo–and hetero–desire. This version of Ganja & Hess represents the director’s cut of the film, restored by the Museum of Modern Art from a 35mm negative, with support from the Film Foundation. A Kino Lorber release.

June 8-14 Exclusive One-Week Revival Run DEMENTIA 13 and LICK THE STAR New 4K Restorations of Francis Ford and Sofia Coppola's Career-Launching Films   A duo of distinguished father-daughter debuts. After dabbling in nudies, Francis Ford Coppola officially began his brilliant career under the tutelage of Roger Corman with this shot-in-Ireland, Psycho-inspired exploitation number, which finds the young director’s genius for gothic filigree already in full flowering. Thirty-five year later, Sofia Coppola showed her sensuous storytelling sensibility entirely developed in short Lick the Star, a languorous, punk-inflected tale of high school skullduggery featuring family friend Peter Bogdanovich as the principal. New 4K restorations by American Zoetrope.

June 22-28 Exclusive One-Week Revival Run LES CARABINIERS Imported 35mm Print of Jean-Luc Godard's Antiwar Classic   In an invented country that’s everywhere and nowhere, in a time out of time, two poor schlemiels, the imposingly-named Ulysses and Michelangelo, receive a missive from their king that promises untold riches in exchange for their service in battle, in which they are encouraged to pillage, rape, and plunder at will. Co-written by Roberto Rossellini, this grim, grotty, grotesque, and audience-assaultive anti-imperialist fable, disdained by critics, inaugurated Jean-Luc Godard’s golden era, a harrowing journey leading to a sour punchline that, per admirer Susan Sontag “vividly parodies the equivocal magic of the photographic image.”A Rialto Pictures release.

June 29-July 5 Exclusive One-Week NY Engagement ROCK RUBBER 45s Bobbito Garcia's Thrilling and Fresh Auto-Portrait    DJ, author, filmmaker, TV/radio personality, B-ball player, card-carrying Rock Steady Crew member, and all-around apostle for NYC street culture, Bobbito Garcia a/k/a Kool Bob Love draws in this film on the whole of his life experience, from a rough and unpromising youth to an influential, entrepreneurial, and determinedly-independent adulthood, combining autobiography with recent-past art history as he traces the global transmission of hip-hop, basketball, and sneaker culture. Featuring Garcia, who was there at the beginning, and a whole host of friends, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Chuck D, Questlove, and too many more to name. A Saboteur Media release.

Quadrophilia: First Anniversary 21-Film Salute April 13-23 at the Quad

In celebration of our first year back in action, the Quad presents a selection of greatest hits as we look forward to year two. Titles include Swept Away, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Friday the 13th Part III 3-D, the director's cut of Margaret, and more!

They grow up so fast! We can hardly believe it’s been a year since our grand reopening in April 2017. Over the past 12 months, we’ve screened over four hundred 35mm prints and dozens of pristine restorations, and welcomed countless guests for introductions, Q&As, and our signature First Encounters; for discerning New Yorkers, that’s a lot of new moviegoing memories. For our first anniversary, we’re pleased to revisit the wide range of offerings from our first year back in action, from 35mm 3-D to NYC Erotica to international musicals to directors’ cuts. Whether you saw these great films with us the first time or are playing catch-up, we’re pleased to inaugurate this new collection of Quad classics.

Airplane! Jim Abrahams, David Zucker & Jerry Zucker, 1980, U.S., 88m, 35mm
(Disasterpieces)
Black Orpheus Marcel Camus, 1959, Brazil/France/Italy, 107m, 35mm
(The Whole World Sings: International Musicals)
Black Sunday Mario Bava, 1960, Italy, 87m, DCP
(Mondo Bava)
Close-Up Abbas Kiarostami, 1990, Iran, 98m, 35mm
(That’s Me Up There: The Singular Art of Playing Yourself)
The Conformist Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970, It/Fr/West Germany, 114m, DCP
(Pictures from the Revolution: Bertolucci’s Italian Period)
Coup de Torchon Bertrand Tavernier, 1981, France, 128m, 35mm
(Film & Nothing But: Bertrand Tavernier)
Diary of a Mad Housewife Frank Perry, 1970, U.S., 104m, 35mm
(Desperate Characters: The Cinema of Frank & Eleanor Perry)
Don't Look Now Nicolas Roeg, 1973, UK/Italy, 110m, 35mm
(Look Now: The Universe According to Nicolas Roeg)
Friday The 13th Part III 3-D Steve Miner, 1982, U.S., 96m, 35mm
(Comin' At Ya! 35mm 3-D)
Full Metal Jacket Stanley Kubrick, U.S., 1987, 114m, 35mm
(Further Research: Harold & Lillian)
The Heiress William Wyler, 1949, U.S., 115m, DCP
(More Than Meets the Eye: William Wyler)
Margaret Kenneth Lonergan, 2011, U.S., 186m, DCP
(The Way I See It: Directors’ Cuts)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller Robert Altman, 1971, U.S., 121m, 35mm
(Cool Movies)
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence Nagisa Oshima, 1983, UK/Japan/New Zealand, 123m, 35mm
(Forbidden Colours: Ryuichi Sakamoto at the Movies)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters Paul Schrader, 1985, U.S./Japan, 121m, DCP
(Four Play)
The Opening of Misty Beethoven Henry Paris (Radley Metzger), 1976, U.S., 86m, 35mm
(Erotic City)
Original Cast Album: Company D.A. Pennebaker, 1970, U.S., 58m, 35mm
(Origin Stories: Greta Gerwig’s Footnotes to Lady Bird)
Paris, Texas Wim Wenders, 1984, West Germany/France/UK, 142m, DCP
(Also Starring Harry Dean Stanton)
Swept Away Lina Wertmüller, 1974, Italy, 116m, DCP
(Female Trouble: Lina Wertmüller)
Tristana Luis Buñuel, 1970, Spain/Italy/France, 105m, DCP
(A Journey Through Cinema: Ten Years of Cohen Media Group)
Yentl Barbra Streisand, 1983, U.S., 133m, 35mm
(Simply Streisand)

Seven Years of Night

You could say Jung Yoo-jung is like the Korean J.K. Rowling, except her books are psychologically complex and intended for mature grown-ups. She was first published at the age of forty-one, while she worked as a nurse, providing her family’s sole support. Instead of ripping off age-old fantasy tropes, she drew from her real-world experience. Out of four adult novels, this is the second to be adapted for film, with a third already under development. If you thought your parents were bad, wait till you see the impact two badly flawed fathers have on their children in Choo Chang-min’s adaptation of Seven Years of Night, which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Seo-won has been somewhat disappointed in his father Choi Hyun-soo ever since he was convicted of murdering a twelve-year-old girl and subsequently causing the deaths of several local townspeople by sabotaging the dam. Of course, it is not as simple as that. Through agonizing flashbacks, we learn the truth. Tragically, Choi really did kill young Se-ryung when she dashed in front of his car, fleeing her abusive father, the well-heeled Dr. Oh. Drunk and panicked, Choi opted to cover up her death, inevitably bringing about his own downfall.

Almost immediately thereafter, Choi is consumed by guilt. Mostly it is his subconscious tormenting him, but there might also be mild supernatural elements at play. Unfortunately, there is also a very real human element working against him. Refusing to accept any responsibility, Oh looks for a scapegoat—and his investigators quickly place Choi’s car near the scene. Years later, as Choi’s execution approaches, he finally reaches out to the teenage son he had refused to see, out of shame.

Although the perpetrators and their respective degrees of culpability are always clearly identified, Seven Years shares a real kinship with the first season of Broadchurch. It is suspenseful and absorbing but is it ever dark and pessimistic with respect to human nature. Initially, the timeline shifts are a bit confusing, but Choo manages to maintain a great deal of uncertainty and tension regarding the final outcome.

Ryu Seung-ryong is equally comfortable playing villains and everymen, so he is a logical choice to do both as the brutish yet sympathetic Choi. Jang Dong-gun is unsettling cold and vicious as Dr. Oh, the dentist from Hell. Twelve-year-old Lee Re, best known as the star of Hope continues to utterly devastate viewers as the desperate Oh Se-ryung. Go Kyung-pyo somewhat underwhelms as the understandably resentful Seo-won, but Song Sae-byeok really gives the film heart and heft as Ahn Seung-hwan, Choi’s co-worker, who becomes Seo-won’s guardian.

Choo’s previous film, Masquerade, was surprisingly dark and morally ambiguous for a costume drama that could have been elevator-pitched as Dave in the Joseon era, but Seven Years is an even tougher and more accomplished film. Highly recommended for fans of angsty thrillers like Mystic River, Seven Years of Night opens this Friday (4/6) at the LA and Buena Park CGV Cinemas, as well as the Edgewater Multiplex in New Jersey.

(Art: CJ Entertainment)

Great Buddha + (2017) NDNF 2018

This review originally ran when THE GREAT BUDDHA + played theaters everywhere around the country except New York. However with the film playing this week as part of New Directors New Films I'm re running it.

Black comedy of sorts has two guys on the fringes of society getting in over their heads after they see something they really shouldn't. Its a jet black film that will make you laugh and make you feel really uneasy for a long time after the credits roll.

Pickle works as a night security guard at a factory where Buddhas are manufactured. Belly Bottom is an unemployed scrounger who is his friend. They spend many nights hanging out and watching TV. When the TV breaks they begin watching the dash cam videos from Pickle's boss Kevin's car so they can hear/see his many conquests. One night they stumble on something in the videos that they can never unsee.

Shot in a black in white with only the dash cam videos in color (only rich people have colorful lives or Western style names) this is a film about down and out people who can't even get along. Everything these guy touch goes wrong- Belly Bottom can't even make money recycling because he is so small fry that his friend who runs the recycling plant doesn't see it as worth it to pay him for what he brings in. Its a horrible life and it just gets worse and worse.

Expanding his short director Hsin-yao Huang has made one hell of a film. Familiar in some ways to other moody independent Asian films, THE GREAT BUDDHA+ only seems it. Huang's spin on the nihilism (or at least "shit happens") existence is purely is own. The mixture of dry humor, laugh out loud jokes and black outlook at life isn't something that we've seen before, at least not this deliciously blended. I felt really uncomfortable about the lives of the characters and their misfortunes, but at the same time I couldn't look away since I felt too connected to them to leave.

Gorgeously shot in black and white each frame is something you'd want to hang on the wall. The images are true works of art and suck us in to the story.

One of the things that makes the film work is that director Huang is part of the story. Speaking to us in voice over at almost the first frame, he appears now and again to fill in details or to give us his commentary on what is happening. Its a brilliant move especially in a film where the gods are invoked and wander about.

This is a great film and it's completely understandable why this film has won so many awards including 5 of the 10 Golden Horse Awards (the Taiwanese Oscars) it was nominated for, plus awards at the Toronto and Taipei Film Festivals.

If you are in the NYC metro area go see this film at New Directors New Films this week otherwise track this film down at theaters near you.

For tickets and more information on the new Directors screening go here.
Tuesday, April 3 8:45 PM MoMA Titus 2
Wednesday, April 4 6:30 PM Walter Reade Theater
Film website: TheGreatBuddhaPlus.com

Bad Bunny (2017) NDNF 2018

Love it or loath it over long short has a teenager who always wears a helmet with bunny ears punishing his mother's lover.

Arty, mannered and artificial this tale of erotic madness would have been better in the hands of one of the Jodorowskys who could made this actually seem like something.

Actually I suspect this might have worked better had the lead not had the ridiculous bunny ears on though the whole film. Early on I just lost any respect for the film when the ears stayed on no matter what was happening.

Clearly I'm the wrong audience for this film, which is the usual feeling I get watching most films at New Directors New Films which more often than not seemed to be programmed for a very specific audience of which I am not part of.

If you're curious the film plays in Shorts Block 2 with the much better MOBIUS