Lost and Found (2018)

My discovery of LOST AND FOUND is one of the great joys of the film year. Vaulting near to the top of my best of the year list, it is a glorious exploration of love and friendship that will bring tears to your eyes (and possibly uncontrollable sobbing).

The film is the story of a stuffed dinosaur and his best buddy a stuffed fox. When the fox falls in a fountain, the dinosaur races to save his friend.

I will say no more other than if you have ever truly loved anyone, you will relate to this film. Trust me.

This film is a perfect exploration of the things we will do to keep those we love safe regardless of the cost. It both delighted me and crushed me. I was wiping my eyes as the film played out. I simply cannot recommend the film enough.

Oscar for this film? Yes please.
Oscar for this film? Yes please.

Rampage (2018)

I want to say that Rampage might be the best movie based on a video game, but doing so would imply that it isn’t that good because the video game movies for the most part have really sucked. The truth is Rampage is an incredibly good film filled with action and weepy moments.

The basic plot has an evil pair of industrialists formulating a new drug that turns animals into giant mutants with uncontrolled aggression and increased healing. It’s so dangerous that they are doing experiments in space. When their test subject wrecks the space station and the formula falls to earth it infects some animals on earth including Dwayne Johnson’s buddy, a large white gorilla. As the animals race to Chicago Johnson and his friends have to find a way to stop the destruction and get the animals back to normal.

Wickedly funny, the film knows what it is and goes with it. It doesn’t pretend to be deep and meaningful, it simply sees itself as a glorious thrill ride and as a result the enjoyment is doubled. The best thing about the film is we actually have characters, we have good guys who are rounded and we like, we have bad guys we despise and we have a giant white gorilla who gets our heart. Make no mistake the film works because we fear for the gorilla. It maybe the best wholly CGI character I’ve seen in a film. As the final battle transpires and everyone is broken and bruised I was afraid that the worst was going to happen. People were dying, blood spilled and heads ripped off so it was clear that no one was safe.

And that’s another plus for the film, it has an emotional weight. What happens costs our heroes, blood is spilled, they wear down and wounds are inflicted. It makes you wince because you know they really can get hurt because they do get hurt. Yea, its movie violence but within the world of the film they are hurt and we truly fear. More films should do this and not have heroes that stride through the action undamaged.

Frankly I love this film. It’s a blast and a half. So don’t let the source fool you this is one of the best monsters on the rampage films ever made.

Brief thoughts on BIRD BOX (2018)

Sandra Bullock and her children flee to what they hope will be a place of safety in a world over run with creatures that cause whomever sees them to commit suicide.

What is a tense film for a while kind of peters out as it slowly becomes clear that the film's basic premise really doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Why would beings want people to commit suicide? We don't really know and are left hanging. They just do but it's not enough. While there is no doubt one could work out some deeper meaning of it all if one wanted, but with out something a bit more concrete its a tad hollow. To me doing anything other than taking it all on face value and accepting the premise without question simply leads to disappointment. Yes the story as told results in tense moments and one hell of a trip, but the reasoning or lack there of, deflates it all.

Worth a look for the curious, I'd just try it on Netflix and not pay to see it in a theater.

A cranky review of AQUAMAN (2018)

Do we need another review of Aquaman? Will anything I say make any difference to anyone?

Probably not.

Right now the film is on track to make a bagillion dollars and restart the DCU. Actually its more redirect since the films are making money even as they are getting beaten up by the critics and fans.

For those who want to know before they see it the film follows Arthur aka Aquaman, as he is drawn into saving the world from his brother who is the current king of Atlantis. In the process he battles Black Manta and some other people and reunites his parents (oops sorry that’s a spoiler--- which a blind man could have seen twenty miles off)

A wonderful animated film with some live action sequences (come on that’s what these tent pole films are now) the film entertains with its endless motion and some pretty okay characters who would be pretty great characters if they had more to do. Honestly how much of the climactic battle really involved people? Very little because it it’s all huge armies and monsters and ray guns none of which are real.

I particularly liked the score which repurposes some truly great songs for optimum effect. I mean the film uses Sigur Ros, Depeche Mode, Roy Orbison and Pitbull to great effect. I found myself barking out "cool" because of the music several times.

Yes I’m being snarky. I’m sorry but I’m somehow amused that one of the least complex superhero films and the most visually bloated (come on this film exists purely to delight the eye) is being hailed as one of the best. Of course the film doesn’t screw up the plot or characters- it doesn’t have enough going on to screw anything up.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the film. I like the characters a great deal (though I would have liked more from Black Manta. I mean the fact that all we know about him is the hate does not make him a fully formed character. Frankly his dad is more a round character and he dies early on). It’s a wonderful spectacle but outside of the visuals it never surprises. It takes no chances and follows every expected path to the end (except in not killing off any major character)

Is it worth seeing? Yes. Its probably even worth seeing in 3D if you can see it in a theater with a bright enough bulb. But regardless I bet you were going to see it anyway and my snarky words made no difference.

Catchup Capsules: GOTTI, MADELINE'S MADELINE and SHIRKERS

GOTTI
John Travolta is adrift in this bio pic of crime boss John Gotti. A jumbled mess of a film that jumps through time and space the film is being hailed as one of 2018's worst film. While I would have no trouble arguing against that, I've seen some truly awful stinkers this year, it is by no stretch of the imagination a good film.  While Travolta is game, the construction of the film is not, with the result that the film has zero narrative flow and is simply a series of scenes randomly put together. Whose ever idea was to use a blender to edit the film should be double tapped to the head and left in the weeds in New Jersey. This is like the films rushes and not a finished film. The editing is so bad that everything falls flat and lines that should have impact simply sound incredibly stupid. This is one to avoid.

MADELINE'S MADELINE
An actress in a theater production takes the role a little too seriously.
Side me with the people who are scratching their heads about this subjective take on reality and exploration of self (or something). I know a lot of people who absolutely love this film a great deal but I was constantly pondering what exactly I was seeing and what I was supposed to feel. despite my best efforts to slip into the film and it's head space I never could manage to click with it. While I completely love entire sequences and all of the performances, as a whole it never came together for me and simply felt like a series of random sequences that didn't add up to much. Your mileage may vary.

SHIRKERS
Sandi Tan revisits the film is made as a teenager called Shirkers which was stolen by her film teacher. Years later the footage resurfaces, minus the soundtrack and it sparks Tan to revisit what happened and how the film shaped her life.  Solid memory piece is a one hell of a tale filled with great people, wonderful stories and is exactly the sort of thing that if it wasn't true no one would believe it actually happened. While I'm not quite as in love with the film as some others (it's won some end of the year awards and is believed to be an Oscar nominee shoe in) I enjoyed its tale.

Annihilation (2018)

Nominally based on Jeff VanderMeer’s best-selling Southern Reach Trilogy (it's named after the first book but incorporates material from all three books) the film charts the course of Lena, a biologist whose husband returns after a year on a secret mission. Something is wrong with him and when he is rushed to a hospital the ambulance is waylaid and Lena finds herself in a secret government base on the edge of "the Shimmer". Hoping to find out what happened to her husband and perhaps find a way to make him better she joins a party going into the growing zone.

Weird mystical science fiction film has been the source of much discussion as to year end best of lists, Oscar nominations and general "why aren't people talking about this film" discussions. I went into the film because several people I know have been arguing that its one of, if not the best film of 2018. While I don't think it's the best film, I did like it.

Another in a long line of films about a quest which changes are hero ANNIHILATION is kind of akin to Andre Tarkovsky's STALKER but with more danger and killer visual effects. Where in the earlier films the men are looking to get to a room in the center of a zone where they will be granted a wish. Here the party is simply looking for answers in a lighthouse.

While most certainly a trippy, often gripping thrill ride,  I'm not certain how deep and mystical the film really is. Like the end of 2001, the final half hour throws up a lot of clues and handholds that we can hang our conclusions from but I'm not sure it really amounts to anything. The trouble is that in attempting to provide some answers for those who require them, the film kind of loses steam and what it seems to be saying isn't what we had going on in our heads. Because the film has it's champions, I'm certain that some people like the solution provided, as for me I would have liked more uncertainty.

To be fair the film did have me in it's thrall for most of the running time. I was, for the first 90 minutes, willing to go with it wherever it wanted to go. Then in a scene that had one of the party somehow managing to tie up the others in chairs without waking anyone I broke with the film. It was a plot twist that didn't work for me. For me the film then became a simple march to the end at that point where the plot mechanics needed to turn in a film with an "ending"got in the way of everything that previously surprised at almost every turn.

Despite the bumpy last half hour I do like ANNIHILATION a great deal. How can you not help but like a film that attempts to be intelligent and not follow the typical paths?

Recommended.

Engagements January 2019 at the Quad

The Quad rings in the new year with revivals of Isao Takahata's wartime masterpiece Grave of the Fireflies (NY theatrical premiere engagement) and Just Jaeckin's softcore sensation Emmanuelle (U.S. premiere of 2K restoration)

Plus the gorgeously animated Tito and the Birds, two essential Holocaust documentaries The Invisibles and Who Will Write Our History, and more!
Revivals

Grave of the Fireflies

Opens Fri January 4—New York premiere theatrical engagement

30th anniversary release
Isao Takahata, 1988, Japan, 88m, DCP
One of the greatest films produced by Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli, Takahata’s heartbreaking tale follows a teenage boy left to care for his younger sister after they’re separated from their parents in the wake of a WWII bombing raid. “An emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation,” wrote Roger Ebert, and the Quad is honored to give this overwhelming and profound work of art the attention and theatrical showcase it has long deserved but seldom received. A GKIDS release

In Japanese with English subtitles

"If you thought Bambi or Up were as emotional as animation gets, you need to see this Japanese masterpiece." —The Guardian


Emmanuelle

Opens Fri January 24 — U.S. premiere of new 2K restoration

Exclusive NY engagement
Just Jaeckin, 1974, France, 95m, DCP
Thai-born Emmanuelle Arsan (who appeared in The Sand Pebbles) was identified as the writer of the scandalous 1959 novel Emmanuelle, but her husband Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane was later alleged to be the author. Carnally incarnating the character onscreen, Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel was catapulted to international fame; Emmanuelle’s marriage to diplomat Daniel Sarky is rocked by sexual explorations—some startling—with and via older man Alain Cuny. Jaeckin’s movie was a phenomenon in France, an X-rated hit in America, and banned in some countries; the “Emmanuelle” brand extended to wicker chairs after one racy scene in particular, and led to an avalanche of official and unauthorized sequels over the next several years. A Kino Lorber Repertory release

In French with English subtitles

“Like a softcore version of The Story of O commissioned by Vogue magazine.”
—Chris Petit, Time Out


A Just Jaeckin retrospective plus a sampling of films from the Emmanuelle canon screen starting February 1.
First Run

The Aspern Papers

Opens Fri January 11 — Exclusive NY engagement
Julien Landais, UK/Germany, 90m, DCP
Rife with deception, lust, and literary intrigue, this adaptation of Henry James’ 1888 novella stars a commanding Vanessa Redgrave as the ailing (but formidable) former lover of a deceased poet—and the supposed recipient of a cache of his personal letters. Posing as a prospective lodger, conniving American editor Jonathan Rhys Meyers courts Redgrave’s niece (played by her real-life daughter Joely Richardson) in the hopes of gaining access to the mysterious—and potentially scandalous—contents of the missives. But is the past best kept in the past? Executive-produced by James Ivory. A Cohen Media Group release


In anticipation of International Holocaust Remembrance Day Sunday, January 27, the Quad is honored to present weeklong engagements of two extraordinary new documentaries.

Who Will Write Our History

Opens Friday January 18 — Exclusive NY Engagement
Roberta Grossman, U.S., 96m, DCP
With a wealth of archival footage and detailed re-enactments, this film recounts the incredible story of Emanuel Ringelblum, who secretly led a team of writers and intellectuals to preserve a vibrant Jewish culture in the Warsaw Ghetto shortly after the Nazis took over. What resulted was a startlingly deep and diverse portrait of European Jewish life, as the Oyneg Shabes Archive made an invaluable contribution to the historical record. Based on the book by Samuel Kassow. An Abramorama release.

In English, Yiddish, and Polish with English subtitles

Official selection: New York Jewish Film Festival

“Arguably the most important Holocaust story never told.” —Tablet

With filmmakers in person opening weekend


The Invisibles

Opens Friday January 25
Claus Räfle, Germany, 110m, DCP
When Goebbels declared Berlin judenfrei (free of Jews) in 1943, little did the German government know that roughly 7,000 Jews were still living in the capital, hiding in plain sight. Of that group, some 1,700 lived to see the defeat of the Third Reich, and this remarkable new film tells the stories of four of these survivors. Combining documentary interviews with stunning dramatizations (photographed by Jörg Widmer, The Tree of Life’s camera operator), The Invisibles offers a riveting portrait of resourcefulness and courage in the face of horror. A Greenwich Entertainment release.

In German with English subtitles

Official selection: New York Jewish Film Festival

“Fascinating… plays like a thriller but is all the more remarkable for being true.” —Jerusalem Post


Tito and the Birds

Opens Friday January 25 — Exclusive NY engagement
Gustavo Steinberg, Gabriel Bitar & André Catoto, Brazil, 71m, DCP
Reflecting the scope of political unrest in Brazil and abroad, this brisk, gorgeous, endlessly inventive hybrid of oil painting and digital animation packs thrills and heart in equal measure. In a society plagued (literally) by mass hysteria, young Tito invents a machine to help humans communicate with birds, believing he can execute a plan to save the city and his ailing mother. But first he must face up to a rich, reactionary TV personality capitalizing on the chaos. A Shout! Studios release

Official selection: Toronto International Film Festival

Matinees: English-language version | Evenings: Portuguese with English subtitles

"Constantly absorbing and picture-book vivid... an unusually candid political allegory for young audiences." —Variety

Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Future Life, Part 1 All 35mm at the Metrograph beginning January 4

Beginning Friday, January 4, Metrograph will present "Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Future Life, Part 1," all in 35mm. Filmmaker, poet, composer, public intellectual, and provocateur, Pier Paolo Pasolini was a cyclone of vitality, rebellion and, very often, contradictions: A Catholic and Communist, an urban homosexual defender of traditional agrarian culture, a modernist with an eye to ancient myths. Pasolini created a body of work distinguished by an unerring eye for composition and tone and a stylistic fluidity that allowed him to work with equal potency in a variety of approaches, from Neorealist-inflected verité to savagely surrealist. Spread across three calendars, Metrograph’s retrospective of Pasolini’s works will begin at the only logical place to start exploring the career of the brilliant filmmaker—at the end. Pasolini thought constantly of his own demise and of the earth’s imperilment, especially as, entering middle-age, he became increasingly influenced by Antonin Artaud and the Marquis de Sade. Setting out to make his film of de Sade’s Salo, Pasolini explained that it was a film that would make him “A new director. Ready for the modern.” Three weeks before its premiere, however, Pasolini was dead, murdered on the beach at Ostia, a shadowy event believed by many to be politically motivated. Decades later, Pasolini looms larger than ever in in our cultural consciousness as one of the most radical, uncompromising artists who ever lived. “Death,” he once said, “is not being unable to communicate; but no longer being able to be understood.” He is speaking to us still.

The Witches (Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, Vittorio de Sica, Franco Rossi, and Mauro Bolognini/1967/105 mins/35mm) To this Dino De Laurentiis-produced comedy anthology film, featuring episodes by Luchino Visconti, Franco Rossi, Mauro Bolognini, and Vittorio De Sica, Pasolini’s reunited with his The Hawks and the Sparrows star Totò and his beloved Ninetto Davoli, playing father and son, the patriarch hatching a harebrained scheme to net them a new house that goes horribly awry. The sections are linked by a preoccupation with witchcraft and the presence in each episode of Silvana Mangano—and you won’t want to miss Clint Eastwood as a cowboy movie fanatic trying to spice up his married life. The Decameron (1971/111 mins/35mm) Pasolini’s “Trilogy of Life” films, adapted from canonical, world-historical collections of stories, represented his break from his experimental works of the late 1960s like Porcile and Teorema, movies which he came to judge as existing too much in the realm of pure alienation and detachment. Determined to create a new popular cinema, he produced this bawdy, blissy, sunkissed adaptation of Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century classic, its various chapters linked together by a framing device featuring Pasolini himself as a Giotto-like painter. One of Pasolini’s lightest and most lovable films. The Canterbury Tales (1972/111 mins/35mm) Another great fourteenth century collection, Geoffrey Chaucer’s marvelous collection of verse, became the basis for Pasolini’s second "Trilogy of Life" film, a scatological, often grotesque wallow in the muck of medieval England which strikes a notably darker tone than its predecessor as it makes its way through a succession of episodic rounds that seem largely to revolve around sex, a growing pessimism evident in its lashings of casual cruelty and violence and the Bosch-like vision of Hell in its “Summoner’s Tale” section. Arabian Nights (1974/130 mins/35mm) The jocular, loose, slapstick-heavy final film in the "Trilogy of Life," adapted from the anthology of Middle Eastern tales of the same name, removes the figure of the storyteller Scheherazade, instead connecting the various vignettes by way of a poor boy searching for his love, an escaped slave girl. Shooting far from Europe, in a panoply of locations including Iran, Yemen, Nepal, and Ethiopia, Pasolini experienced an explosion of pleasure that vibrates through this most amiable and sensual of films, cast with a combination of Pasolini regulars and amateurs encountered on location. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975/116 mins/35mm) The final film from Pier Paolo Pasolini remains one of the most shocking movies ever made. Set during a waning fascist Italy’s dark days during World War II, Salò updates the writings of Marquis de Sade to create a repugnant tale of four wealthy libertines who kidnap a group of teenage boys and girls and enact horrific humiliations and violence upon them. A formally and conceptually brilliant, if relentlessly nauseating, portrayal of man’s most debased instincts and the capitalist systems that allow them to thrive. Per Pasolini, “The most sincere thing I could do at that moment was to make a film about a mode of sexuality whose joyousness is a compensation for repression—a phenomenon that was about to come to an end, forever.”

Catch-up Capsules BLINDSPOTTING, SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, and SUPPORT THE GIRLS

BLINDSPOTTING
Very funny and very pointed comedy about a man with three days left on his probation struggling to come to terms with his situation and his best friend after witnessing the shooting of an unarmed black man. Manages to get the balance of everything exactly right  so that we are moved to not only laugh but feel and, most importantly, think.  This is a film I want to revisit when I'm not doing so in the rush to see as much as possible for the year's end where I can properly assess just how good it is- and it is incredibly good and very very funny.

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU
In order to sell over the phone to white people, black telemarketer Cassius Green has to use a "white voice". This results in him becoming a super salesman and putting him on to a grand conspiracy to create a new genetically altered work force. Pointed  comedy gets lost in some surreal twists. I'm all for out there strangeness but this never quite worked for me and I had the feeling that this was pushing things because it could. While I like the points it makes, I'm not so sure it needs to go as far as it does in to the odd, then again keeping things closer to reality might have made its truths unpalatable for some audiences.

SUPPORT THE GIRLS
Regina Hall shines as the manager of a sports themed restaurant/bar as life happens over the course of one day.  A sweet little comedy/slice of life about the women working at the bar SUPPORT THE GIRLS is a film that worms it's way into your heart. I completely understand the love that Hall is getting in the end of year award polling since she perfectly reflects a life being lived. While I'm kind of quizzical as to why this film has appeared on so many critics' radar, I'm kind of glad it did since it put Hall into the Oscar mix. Worth a look.

STRUGGLE: THE LIFE AND LOST ART OF SZUKALSKI (2018)

STRUGGLE: THE LIFE AND LOST ART OF SZUKALSKI is a portrait of self-taught Polish artist Stanislav Szukalski who was a friend of Ben Hecht and was, for a time in the Polish nationalist movement between the World Wars.

Szukalski had been largely forgotten by the late 1960’s, due to his life's work being destroyed in Nazi bombing, when artist and collector Glenn Bray discovered a book of his art in a Hollywood book store. It was unlike anything he had ever run across. Several years later after he discovered the artist was not only still alive but living within a few miles of his home  he called him up, beginning a friendship that lasted until Szukalski died. Bray then introduced him to friends in the underground comic community and his reputation began to grow.

Making up the spine of the film are the videos Bray shot of Szukalski explaining his art and world views. It ended up being hundreds of hours and it acts an invaluable record of the man and his art. The film supplements the video with interviews with friends and critics who attempt to not only put the man in the context of 20th century art but also with in the context of history as well. As I mentioned above he was a Polish Nationalist which lead to some uncomfortable revelations about anti-Semitism in the 1930’s. It is those words which echo currently in some part of Poland today.

To be honest I really don’t know what I think of the film. Part of the problem is that Szukalski is really strange man. An autodidact who never really learned to play well with others- he insisted we must all make our own way and not be steered by academics. This result in his walking out of colleges and smashing up museums. It appears he was incapable of taking any opinion other than his own (his friends recount cutting remarks he made about their art). It’s easy to like his art and admire his uniqueness of character but at the same time he can be a twit, if not loopy nut. And the fact that he wrote an anti-Semitic book, despite later repudiating it is somehow hard to reconcile with his views of how we are all unique.

The other problem is that the film is long and rambling. Running an overlong 105 minutes the film is like listening to one of Szukalski monologues, interesting but all over the place and not always seeming at aiming at a definite end place. I was fascinated for a while but the bouncing through time and space without a seeming road map wore me out s,o after while I kind of tuned out. I got the feeling that the filmmakers didn’t really have a point they wanted to make other than to say Szulakski was cool guy we should know about. That’s all well and good, but throwing everything at us without some sort of point doesn’t make for a great documentary. Yes, you can do that with an observational film, but one that is connected by talking heads and documents needs better organizing than we get here.

There is no doubt I love Szulaski’s art and am fascinated by the stories about him, but I ultimately only kind of like the film about him. To me it’s kind of like picking over the corpse of a great man and having to piece together who he was without guidance.

Worth a look for art fans, all others less so.

STRUGGLE: THE LIFE AND LOST ART OF SZUKALSKI premieres on Netflix December 21st

Tomb Raider (2018)

Restart of the Tomb Raider franchise is also an origin story that shows us where Lara Croft came from. ts a grand mess of a film.

Lara Croft refuses to believe her father is dead and as such will not sign the papers to inherit his fortune. She is living on her own, acting as a fighter and a bicycle messenger. When a chase lands her in jail, she is bailed out and decides to sign the papers at last. However before she can she discovers a possible clue and goes to find her dad. Ending up shipwrecked she ends up having to battle minions of an evil group hellbent on controlling all supernatural artifacts.

Stupid as a stick Hollywood production has little internal sense and less logic.  Very little in this film makes sense. The entire island sequence that makes up the second half of the film had me wanting to ask question after question. If nothing else start with all the questions about the villains being stuck there for years and work your way out to everything else and you'll have a film laying in pieces around your feet. Most of the action sequences, while good looking are too much like something you'd see in a video game.

Oscar winner Alicia Vikander takes on the role of Lara Croft. Vikander is fine as Croft and she makes a fine action hero.  She almost single handedly makes the film work. I completely understand why she took the role. (Though what Kristin Scott Thomas and Derek Jacobi are doing here other than collecting a pay check is beyond me)

Frankly while I was entertained I really wonder if I will bother with any sequel because this one is just so damn messy.

FIAF Announces 2019 Animation First Festival January 25-27

The Only US Festival Dedicated to French Animation January 25 through 27

Highlights include: • Michel Ocelot, trailblazing filmmaker, to be Guest of Honor • 20th Anniversary Screening of Ocelot’s landmark film, Kirikou and the Sorceress, opens festival • More than 17 US and NY Premieres, including Funan by Denis Do • Works by 16 emerging and established female filmmakers • Focus on 85 years of Pinscreen Animation through screenings and workshops • This year’s César-nominated films and the Best of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival anchor shorts programs • Extraordinary shorts spanning sci-fi, suspense, documentary, erotic, humor, and more genres • Isao Takahata of Japan’s Studio Ghibli honored • Special work-in-progress presentation of The Swallows of Kabul • Interactive exhibits illuminate worlds of virtual and augmented reality, video games, and the history of French animation • Times Square Arts Midnight Moment features rising French filmmaker Vergine Keaton • Partnership with City of Bordeaux shines light on its animation industry • Panels, discussions, workshops, and much more

New York, NY (December 17, 2018)—Celebrating France’s rich tradition as a pioneer of animation, the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) announces the 2019 Animation First festival. Building on its wildly successful inaugural year, the second edition of Animation First showcases the vast history, enduring ingenuity, and diversity of France’s renowned animation studios and schools. This year’s schedule includes 17 premieres, provoking feature-length films, exciting shorts, immersive exhibits, video game demonstrations, panels with filmmakers, a special spotlight on the City of Bordeaux's animation industry, and much more. It will take place from Friday, January 25 through Sunday, January 27, 2019, at FIAF. Tickets are available at fiaf.org/animation. Legendary director Michel Ocelot is this year’s guest of honor, and the festival will open with his groundbreaking feature, Kirikou and the Sorceress, celebrating its 20th anniversary. When it was first released in 1998, this enchanting film fusing African myth, stunning imagery, and a sophisticated sensibility that attracted both adults and children, broadened the scope of what animation could accomplish on screen. Ocelot’s work will be surveyed through screenings of two other feature films: Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest (2006) and Ivan Tsarevitch and the Changing Princess (2016). In addition, Ocelot will pay homage to the filmmaker Isao Takahata, a co-founder of Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli who passed away earlier this year. He will introduce a screening of Takahata’s feature film Only Yesterday(1992). Ocelot will also curate a program of influential shorts and participate in a discussion about his body of work. This year’s Animation First festival will present no fewer than eight US and nine New York premieres, from feature-length films to award-winning shorts. Denis Do’s Funan, which won the Cristal Award for best feature at the 2018 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, will receive its anticipated New York premiere. This harrowing and semi-autobiographical film, set during the Khmer Rouge uprising in Cambodia, follows a young mother whose 4-year-old son was taken away from her. Animation First will also present a selection of notable and award-winning shorts from Annecy, the most prestigious animation film festival in the world, as well as a program featuring all of the animated shorts nominated for the 2019 César Award in that category. Continuing on last year’s successes, several programs will showcase the breadth of French animation, including provocative works geared toward more mature audiences. Erotic shorts return after a sold-out screening in 2018. In addition, the Late Night Chills program looks at the wealth of science-fiction and suspense shorts currently being produced. Other screenings will bring together noteworthy short films in documentary and humor genres. Animation First will also look back to France’s historic contributions to the form with a special focus on the pinscreen instrument. Developed by the husband-wife team of Alexandre Alexeïeff and Claire Parker starting in the 1930s, the pinscreen is a device composed of thousands of holes in which pins slide back and forth. As they slide in and out of their holes, the pins cast shadows of varying length on the screen, which create unique and exquisite textural effects that cannot be reproduced digitally. Traditional stop-motion techniques are then employed to animate the images. A screening of short films, from 1933’s Une Nuit sur le mont chauve to 2018’s Etreintes, demonstrate the striking effects produced by this painstaking method. Further exploring this medium, Animation First will present a panel discussion with pinscreen artists as well as two workshops demonstrating how the device works. In conjunction with Animation First, Times Square Arts will present the short film I was crying out at life (2009) by artist Vergine Keaton as its nightly Midnight Moment throughout January. Keaton is one of at least 16 female filmmakers whose work will be screened throughout the festival. In addition to the film screenings, FIAF will explore myriad facets of France’s prolific animation industry through exhibits, panels, discussions, and hands-on workshops. Visitors will be able to play a selection of French video games, including a demonstration of Assassin’s Creed organized in partnership with the City of Bordeaux, and experience an augmented reality exhibit through a special app in FIAF’s first-floor gallery. In a special program, co-directors Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec will present an exclusive look at the work-in-progress The Swallows of Kabul, based on Yasmina Khadra’s novel about life under Taliban rule, and discuss their collaboration on this upcoming feature. “It is thrilling to bring Michel Ocelot to New York audiences. The release of Kirikou and the Sorceress is among the most transformative moments in French animation from the past several decades,” said festival co-curators Delphine Selles-Alvarez, FIAF’s Film Curator, and Catherine Lamairesse, Director of Special Projects at FIAF. “But Kirikou is only one example of artistic innovation in French animation that Animation First will explore, from the invention of the legendary pinscreen instrument to contemporary works in augmented reality and video games.” This year’s festival was conceived in partnership with the City of Bordeaux. In recent years, the region has become a burgeoning market for animation, gaming, and virtual reality, attracting the Cartoon Movie and new Ubisoft studio. Seven films and two video games from Bordeaux Games were produced in the city and will be featured in this year’s edition. “It’s an honor to be able to showcase Bordeaux’s talented artists and filmmakers on this side of the Atlantic,” said Alain Juppé, the mayor of Bordeaux. “It has been a priority of mine to support the creative industries within our region, so I am delighted that they will be presented as part of FIAF’s Animation First festival.” About Animation First Animation First is the only film festival in the United States dedicated to French animation. Today, France is Europe’s largest producer and the world’s third largest exporter of animated film. Since its early beginnings in the late 19th century when Émile Reynaud projected his Pantomimes Lumineuses at the Musée Grevin in Paris, the French animation industry has inspired filmmakers and artists. Their resulting experiments with puppets, cutouts, and stop motion, have been instrumental in inventing important techniques in cinema. Renowned for its stylistic innovation and an approach that integrates artisanal methods with technological ingenuity, French animation continues to garner awards worldwide and spans a diversity of genres. It is responsible for a variety of films from independent art-house successes such as Sylvain Chomet’s The Triplets of Belleville and Michael Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle to those for mature audiences like Renaissance to big-budget blockbusters Ballerina to the Franco-American Despicable Me franchise. Beyond films, France has carved out an important space in animated TV programs, web series, video games, and the rapidly developing fields of virtual reality and new technologies. Animation First is presented by FIAF whose mission is to create and offer New Yorkers innovative and unique programs in education and the arts that explore the evolving diversity and richness of French cultures. FIAF seeks to generate new ideas and promote cross cultural dialogue through partnerships and new platforms of expression. Merci! The Presenting Sponsor of Animation First is Ville de Bordeaux. Lead sponsors are Atari, Le Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC), and Pôle Image Magelis (Angoulême). Supporting sponsors are Cultural Services of the French Embassy, JCDecaux, the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Office national du film du Canada (ONC), the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques (SACD), Ubisoft, and UniFrance.

Cold War (2018)

Winner of numerous awards as Best Film and the first film to generate intense positive talk at the New York Film Festival press screenings, COLD WAR is a very good film. It is a film that is going to click with many people and leave other people cold with its distance but regardless it is a film you can’t help but walk out of without feeling you’ve seen something.

An episodic tale of love and longing the film follows as musician sent across Eastern Europe to record ethnic music in the days just after the Second World War. He and his group are going to take the music and create a traveling show with it. One of the performers is a pretty blonde with whom he falls in love. Their on again off again affair lasts the better part of 20 years, crossing the iron curtain several times.

The war of the title is the war of the heart. This is, ultimately a grand love story and if you’re looking for anything other than that you will probably be disappointed. I was half way into the film before it clicked for me when I realized what the film was. Once that happened I really enjoyed it since I stopped looking for something greater.

Driven by a seemingly endless stream of music the never ending songs don’t just punctuate the action but act as a kind of musical Greek Chorus which add information for everything we are seeing. Things may remain unsaid between the characters but the songs they perform do all the talking. Its marvelous.

I really like the film a great deal.

I like it enough that I wish I hadn’t heard all the talk about how good the film was so I could have discovered it on my own. The word from several of my friends was so impossibly positive it could never have lived up to their promise.

Definitely recommended.

The film hits Theaters Friday and Amazon somewhere along he road.

Brief thoughts on Take Light (2018)

A look at the situation in Nigeria where the electrical power system was privatized because the  state run power company couldn't deliver power 24/7 and most people had to rely on generators. Focusing on Martins, an electrical engineer trying to get the power on,  Deborah a bill collector trying to navigate the system which used to be rife with corruption and Godwin who illegally hooks up people in the night.

Thought provoking film that has larger implications as we see a nominally rich country struggle to meet it's basic needs. Can Nigeria  move away from the past and actually provide the basic service that everyone needs? Its a struggle considering that despite the prosperity of the countries material wealth many people are still unemployed and the country is saddle with generations of  a corrupt system where you could pay a little money, or a goat, to circumvent the authorities. 

The film also highlights the battle that is going on in the country, and one can assume other countries, where the old way and old systems are facing a shock to the system and being dragged into a more modern world. Can and should  the old way of doing things survive?  How do you change the thinking of generations of ingrained thoughts?

Director Shasha Nakhai has made a  wonderful film. Its one of those films that takes it's time to get under your skin but once it does you find yourself hooked.By the end you find your brain full of lots of questions you find yourself pondering.

Currently available On Demand, TAKE LIGHT hits Bluray and DVD on December 18th

Gone With the Bullets (2014)

Jiang Wen's epic follow up to LET THE BULLETS FLY is a huge sprawling film spanning years that begins with a riff on the GODFATHER  then speeds through huge MGM musical numbers before heading off into all sorts of other directions that stylistically echo the history of film and China.

A really big "what in the holy hell was anyone thinking" sort of a film, GONE kind of bludgeons you with its everything except the kitchen sink approach. (Frankly the sink could be there but may have been cut with the 20 or 25 minutes that went to make the international cut). So much is going on, and so much visually and stylistically is being thrown at us that I honestly haven't parsed it all out yet. I still haven't deduced all that happens in it.

The film has a small time gangster being asked by the seventh son of a general to help make his new money old. His solution is to hold a pageant/beauty contest for escorts around the world. The contestants are to compete in Shanghai.  This sets in motion the events that will shape everyone's life for better and worse. So much happens that I can't really try to explain it simply. Frankly I'm not sure Wen ever really had total control of the story which bumps here and there like a bull in a china shop (no pun intended)

Ultimately GONE is a mess. It has way too much going on and way too many characters and is hard at times to follow (though it could be because I saw the shorter International version). At the same time it is an epic unlike anything you've ever seen and as such is required viewing. You may not like it but by god you will know you've seen something by one of the most interesting filmmakers working today.

Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1974/1983)

The making of this film was documented by director Peter Medak in THE GHOST OF PETER SELLERS. In the doc Medak documents how star Sellers went about seeking to destroy the project because after getting the film set in motion he decided he didn't want to do it any more. The result is a legendary bad film that wrecked Medak's career. After seeing the documentary I searched out the "finished" feature to see if it was as bad as the documentary makes it out to be.

Based on a novel and filtered through the brain of Spike Milligan, GHOST tells the story of Dick Scratcher (Sellers) a cook on a pirate ship who kills the Captain after he buries the treasure and becomes captain because he has the map to the treasure. The trouble is the captain's ghost wipes the map clean and the pirates end up wandering for years trying to find it again. They are eventually helped by a boy who can see ghosts.

Messy beyond belief, the film was never completely shot because of Sellers' games, GHOST IN THE NOONDAY SUN isn't bad so much as incredibly dull. Basically everyone runs in circles for 90 minutes as things happen. Decidedly very Milligan -esque it helps if you are a fan of the legendary Goon Show or Milligan's own brand of bent humor. It is an acquired taste and even by his standards this film is a bit loopy. (Milligan who wrote the film was brought to the location to help rewrite the script but he simply wrote himself into the film, directed a few scenes and made it even more surreal and nonsensical.) Because sections were not shot there are narrative jumps, some of which are covered by title cards and some are just left hanging.

Not really bad, it's not really good either. The pacing is off, I'm guessing the result of problems in shooting and director Medak being limited in his editing choices. The humor is incredibly broad and often still manages to miss the target. yes it has some laughs but mostly we watch as people are silly.

While all of the cast other than Sellers comes off pretty good (Anthony Franciosa is incredibly good), its clear Sellers wasn't happy. He is mugging terribly and what could have worked in a five minute sketch crashes and burns in a 90 minute film.

Watching the film I kept waiting for something good or bad to happen. Nothing really did. Its clear there is, or was, or could have been something here but that  Peter Sellers happened and wrecked it...

...actually that's not fair, I think that on some level I think the film was kind of doomed from the script stage. Milligan, as funny and insane as he was also simply never had a tight enough grasp on reality to make a straight narrative work. Comedy or no he was the wrong person to write it.

In the end GHOST IN THE NOONDAY SUN is not much of anything. A grand footnote in the careers of most of the cast, it derailed Peter Medak's career for a while simply because he took the blame for the failure and was skittish about doing another big film. Is it worth seeing? If you are a fan of the stars and want to see everything they have done it is. Mostly though it's of interest linked to Medak's excellent documentary about the making of the film and as a warning of what happens when egos go unchecked.

Inoue at the Japan Society: The Stormy Man

It is hard to imagine a jazz critic appearing on American television to discuss rival drummers in a national jazz poll, but it certainly is fun to imagine. On the other hand, Jazz has had considerably more mainstream commercial acceptance in Japan during the immediate post-war years. It is still a bit of a stretch, but we can suspend our disbelief as bad boy drummer Shoichi Kokubu becomes a media sensation in Umetsugu Inoue’s The Stormy Man, which screens as part of Japan’s Music Man, the Japan Society’s weekend retrospective of Inoue’s musicals.

“Charlie,” the current #1 drummer, just broke up with his manager, Miyako Fukushima, both professionally and romantically. That leaves a vacant chair her band, the Six Jokers that needs to be filled pronto. Taking a chance, Fukushima bails out disorderly Kokubu, taking him directly from the overnight lock-up to the bandstand.

Of course, Kokubu rises to the occasion, really surprising everyone with his teen heartthrob vocals. He also makes quite the impression on Mary Oka, a nightclub dancer, who happens to be Charlie’s girlfriend. Inevitably, they become bitter rivals. Kokubu has all the initial advantages, including greater energy and talent. He also strikes a Faustian bargain with slimy jazz critic Toru Sakyo, who will champion his career in exchange for help wooing Fukushima. However, Sakyo will turn on the drummer when he starts his own relationship with Fukushima, threatening to sabotage the premiere of his virtuous little brother Eiji’s symphonic jazz tone poem (clearly based on Rhapsody in Blue). Yet, if you think Sakyo is mean-spirited, wait till you meet Kokubu’s ultra-judgmental mother, who thinks very little of his career choices.

Stormy is a delightfully lurid melodrama filled with music, gangsters, and angry young man angst. In many ways, it is an ode to the sights and sounds of Tokyo’s Ginza district, which looks like a total blast, but also more than a little dangerous, in an old school kind of way. This is definitely a jazz film, even though Shoichi’s vocals venture into the realm of jump-blues and Eiji’s composition approaching the sounds and textures of Stan Kenton’s progressive third-stream explorations.

This is also the film that launched Yûjirô Ishihara as a James Dean-esque teen idol, who relentlessly rages and seethes as the resentful drummer with mother issues. Ironically, he looks much younger than Kyoji Aoyama, portraying the unshakably sensible Eiji. Mie Kitahara is terrific bringing the sly attitude and show-stopping glamor as Fukushima, like a femme fatale, without the fatalness. In contrast, Nobuo Kaneko makes quite a slimy, clammy, forked-tongue impression as the manipulative Sakyo. You can think of him as a combination of the absolute worst traits of Tony Curtis’s Sidney Falco and Burt Lancaster’s J.J. Hunsecker in The Sweet Smell of Success.

There is a lot of violent gangster business going on in Stormy Man, but somehow Inoue still manages to keep it bopping along quite buoyantly. It looks colorful and splashy, whole sounding swinging and modern. The Ginza jazz life was probably never really like this, but it is fun to think that it was. Enthusiastically recommended for hip audiences, The Stormy Man screens this Saturday and Sunday (12/15 & 12/16), as part of the Japan Society’s Inoue musical series.

Santa Claus (2014) hits VOD Monday

SANTA CLAUS aka Le Père Noël shouldn’t have put a big ass smile on my face but it did. Let’s face it, it hits every single solitary cliché…and for some reason I really don’t care because I was utterly charmed.

The plot of the film has a little boy (Victor Cabal) who still believes in Santa, opening his bedroom widow and finding him (Tahar Rahim) standing there. The thing is that it isn’t Santa but a small time crook with larceny on his mind. The plan is to use the Santa get up to break into apartments and steal the valuables as everyone is out celebrating. Of course the pair end up falling in together and changing for the better.

Yes, it’s exactly what you think it is but it’s still utterly charming. Blame it on the season or whatever you like but I think it’s due entirely to Rahim and Cabal who are so damn charming together that you can’t help but falling in love with their adventures. You genuinely like the teaming that you’ll happily go with it where ever it goes…which is pretty much exactly where you think it will.

Does that make it a bad film? Oh hell no. Its entertaining as all get out though to be honest I know that if I saw this in the middle of summer instead of two weeks before Christmas I would have been less likely to fall under its spell.

That said- if you want something charming for the holiday season I recommend SANTA CLAUS which hits VOD on Monday.

KING ARTHUR LEGEND OF THE SWORD (2017)

Rethink in fantasy terms of the Legend of King Arthur. Intended to be the first of five films in a series it wobbled enough at the box office to doom any follow ups.

After escaping from a battle between his father and uncle as an young child Arthur drifts in a boat to London. There he grows up in a brothel where he has his own band of men. While in the midst of battle he pulls a sword from a stone and collapses from the swords power. Filled in on who he is by is evil Uncle, Arthur is then set for execution. He is rescued and then begins to lean of the power of the sword and to get revenge on his uncle.

Playing like a four hour film with half of it cut out KING ARTHUR has some great characters, some fantastic set pieces (the battles are great) but little in the way of sense. Way too much of the plot is missing that the film is almost impossible to truly comprehend. Who are these people? We really don't know. The result is that past a certain point we really don't care. Yes we love the action but we don't care about the people.

Personally I would love to know if there is some sort of longer cut of the film. While messy in the extreme,  there is enough of a frame work to make me think that this might have been something before someone took scissors to it.(It is light years ahead of the recent Robin Hood retread which had no workable script)

While not the complete write off that some have claimed, this is far from perfect but it is an acceptable popcorn film especially for a rainy day.

January and February 2019 Repertory Film Calendar at Metrograph Announced [Pasolini, Kay Francis, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Teshigahara, and more!

January and February 2019 Repertory and Special Events Calendar Announced

Opens January 4 Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Future Life, Part 1 All 35mm! A retrospective of the cinematic works of Pier Paolo Pasolini, poet, composer, public intellectual, and provocateur, will stretch across three calendars at Metrograph, but when thinking of where to start with this singularly brilliant filmmaker, there was only one logical place—at the end. Pasolini thought constantly of his own demise, and that of the earth, especially as, entering middle-age, he became increasingly influenced by Antonin Artaud and the Marquis de Sade. Setting out to make his film of de Sade’s Salò, Pasolini explained “The most sincere thing I could do at that moment was to make a film about a mode of sexuality whose joyousness is a compensation for repression—a phenomenon that was about to come to an end, forever.” It was, he said, a film that was to make him “A new director. Ready for the modern.” Three weeks before its premiere, however, Pasolini was dead, murdered on the beach at Ostia, a shadowy event believed by many to be politically motivated. Decades later, Pasolini looms larger than ever in in our cultural consciousness as one of the most radical, uncompromising artists who ever lived. “Death,” he once said, “is not being unable to communicate; but no longer being able to be understood.” He is speaking to us still. Titles include La terra vista dalla luna, part of the omnibus film The Witches (1967), Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life": The Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972), and Arabian Nights (1974), as well as Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975).

Opens January 11 Kay Francis: The Queen of Pleasure  First-Ever Retrospective Celebrating Ms. Francis' Legacy A top box-office attraction in the 1930s and an idiosyncratic and can’t-take-your-eyes-off-her screen presence, Kay Francis was undisputed royalty on the Warner Bros. lot. The Oklahoma-born Francis was a tall, striking, raven-tressed beauty, the first infamous onscreen clotheshorse, a verifiable superstar whose face decorated scores of gushing fan magazines, though privately her life was far more risqué than the Pre-Code vehicles that established her fame, including comedies like Trouble in Paradise and Jewel Robbery(opposite frequent partner William Powell) or melodramas like One Way Passage, a doomed romance set on a champagne and martini-soaked trip set aloft an ocean liner, in which she was equally effective. Even at the height of her fame, Francis’ magnetism was never without a melancholy lining; she was oft-quoted to say that she couldn’t wait to be forgotten—and indeed her stardom would dim by the end of the ‘30s—but no performer so magnetic, in love, laughter, and tears, could ever really disappear, and so Metrograph is pleased to reintroduce a new generation to the woman who, in imitation of her charming speech impediment, was sometimes called “Wavishing Kay Fwancis.” Titles include Trouble In Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932), Jewel Robbery (William Dieterle, 1932), Wife Wanted (Phil Karlson, 1946), British Agent(Michael Curtiz, 1934), Cynara (King Vidor, 1932), Transgression (Herbert Brenon, 1931), One Way Passage (Tay Garnett, 1932), Stolen Holiday (Michael Curtiz, 1937), The Cocoanuts (Robert Florey & Joseph Santley, 1929), Let's Go Native (Leo McCarey, 1930), The Virtuous Sin (George Cukor & Louis J. Gasnier, 1930), and Girls About Town (George Cukor, 1931).

Opens January 18 Hiroshi Teshigahara  8-Film Retrospective and Shorts Program  A towering crest of the Japanese New Wave, Hiroshi Teshigahara crashed down on the world of art house cinema in the 1960s. He is best known today for his films of this fecund period, particularly the four atmospheric, endlessly beguiling, avant garde-adjacent movies that he made working with novelist and screenwriter Kōbō Abe, unclassifiable works that explore the mysteries and vagaries of identity: Pitfall,Woman of the Dunes, The Face of Another, and The Man Without a Map. Undeniably major as these awesome accomplishments are, however, they reveal only a portion of the creative genius of this multihyphenate artist, who worked as a painter, sculptor, designer, and Noh theater director in addition to his cinematic pursuits, and whose cinema exists at an intersection between the high international modernism of Antonioni, Bergman, and Resnais, and the traditional Japanese fine arts (his father was founder and master of the world-famous Sogetsu School of Ikebana now run by his daughter.) At Metrograph, you can discover the full measure of Teshigahara’s restless genius, including early shorts and extraordinary features about AWOL American GIs (Summer Soldier), a brilliant Catalan architect (Antonio Gaudi), and the famed face-off between a Zen monk and a warlord (Rikyu). The sum total shows a cineaste who is much more than his brilliant ‘60s run, and nothing less than a titan of Japanese cinema. Titles include Pitfall (1962), Woman in the Dunes (1964), The Face of Another (1966), Antonio Gaudi(1984), Rikyu (1989), Basara (1992), The Man Without a Map (1968), Summer Soldiers (1972), and a shorts program.  Presented with Teshigahara’s grandson, New York composer and artist Tristan Teshigahara Pollock, in-person.

Opens January 25      Hou Hsiao-hsien In the 21st Century 4-Film Retrospective Includes Imported 35mm Print of Café Lumière   Spending his formative years in Taipei, a distinctly modern city that had swiftly grown into a metropolis in the years following the Chinese Civil War, Hou Hsiao-Hsien has always been principally an urban filmmaker, his view of the life in the concrete jungle perhaps summed up in the title of one of his breakthrough movies: City of Sadness. As the city has changed, Hou the artist has changed with it, producing at the turn of the century one of his most radical departures, Millennium Mambo (2001), a film that found the director searching for the digital pulse of a new era with a new freewheeling style. This daring and still-misunderstood work will play with a trio of 21st century Hou films, movies in which the alienation and exhilaration of life in the anonymous contemporary cityscape is distilled into unforgettable images as only this poet of urban anomie can. Titles also include an imported 35mm print of Café Lumière(2003),  Three Times (2005) and Flight of the Red Balloon (2007)

Opens January 26 Produced by David O. Selznick 8-Film Overview of the Legendary Hollywood Producer More than any single figure, David O. Selznick codified prestige-with-a-capital-P filmmaking during the Golden Age of the Hollywood studios, a creative producer in the truest sense who was renowned for his attention to detail, as exemplified by his novel-length memos. Selznick began his life in movies working for father Lewis J. Selznick’s production companies before moving to MGM, where he filled the enormous shoes of the studio’s legendary second-in-command, Irving Thalberg, and eventually became the son-in-law of studio head Louis B. Mayer. Selznick had the keys to the kingdom at MGM, but soon he was bucking for independence, and in 1935 went his own way with Selznick International Pictures, throwing himself into worrying and willing a string of enduring classics into being, including Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940), and the highest grossing American film ever, Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939). Overseeing every aspect of the filmmaking process on his movies, from writing to casting to editing to directing, Selznick in his brilliant career garnered ten Academy awards nominations. He also brought Hitchcock to America; gave his second wife, Jennifer Jones, her greatest roles; and, in the words of biographer David Thomson, “cared for every facet of making a film and had a greater sense of how to photograph individuals, how to use sets and music, and how to construct picture than many directors.” Let this retro stand as incontrovertible evidence that the “Selznick touch,” though hard to classify, was nevertheless very real—and close to a guarantee of movie magic. Titles include What Price Hollywood?(George Cukor, 1932), Dinner at Eight (Cukor, 1933), Spellbound (Hitchcock, 1945), Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946), The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949), and Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle, 1948).

Opens February 8 Valentine's Day at Metrograph   Colliding cars, cannibalism, and a sentimental song at Rick’s Café—these are just a few of the ways that lovers have of expressing their emotions in our wild ride of a Valentine’s Day series, which finds space for loves queer and straight, spiritual and carnal, and everything in-between. A great date for a special someone, someones, or just yourself—and don’t forget, The Commissary will be serving an especially romantic prix fixe menu. Reserve in advance. Titles include Heaven Can Wait (Ernst Lubitsch, 1943),Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016), Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942), Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis, 2001), Crash (David Cronenberg, 1997), and Querelle (R.W. Fassbinder, 1982).

ONGOING SERIES

Throughout January and February Playtime Playtime is Metrograph’s regularly-recurring weekend matinee series of studio standards, animated adventures, and foreign-language frolics, kid-friendly in content but selected because their quality has been proven plain to moviegoers of all ages. This time around we’ve got adventures galore on the agenda, so come on down with Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (Charles Lamont, 1955), munch some marmalade with Paddington (Paul King, 2014) and Paddington 2 (King, 2018), and take a few hacks at the plate with Wonderboy (The Natural, Barry Levinson, 1984). Revisit the movies you know by heart, take a chance on something you’ve never heard of—and be sure to hang around to talk about your favorite scenes over brunch in the upstairs Commissary. Titles also include Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946), Shaun the Sheep Movie (Mark Burton & Richard Starzak, 2015), Song of the Sea (Tomm Moore, 2014), and Inside Out (Pete Docter & Ronnie Del Carmen, 2015).

Throughout January and February Late Nights at Metrograph   Introducing Late Nights at Metrograph, new to this calendar and a staple to every calendar going forward. A combination of established favorites, movies we’ve been dying to find an excuse to book, and cult curios playing every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, it’s a new way to end your day on a voluptuous cinematic experience—and don’t worry, the Commissary will still be serving food and lots of drinks from a special late night menu when you get out, so no need to go to bed hungry. Titles include Mind Game (Masaaki Yuasa, 2004), Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995), News from Home (Chantal Akerman, 1977),Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967), Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis, 2001), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1972), Branded to Kill (Seijun Suzuki, 1967), and Kaili Blues (Bi Gan, 2015).

Throughout January and February   Academy at Metrograph The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Continues its Residency  at Metrograph with Upcoming Winter 2019 Programming Stephen Bogart Presents The African Queen on January 12 and Eve's Bayou with Director Kasi Lemmons on February 9   ACADEMY AT METROGRAPH continues in January and February of 2019, with upcoming programming that includes The African Queen presented by Stephen Bogart on January 12, and Eve's Bayou, with director Kasi Lemmons on February 9. The African Queen will be presented by Stephen Bogart, son of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, on January 12. One of  John Huston’s best-loved films and one of the most entertaining odd-couple pictures ever made, this action-comedy-romance, shot in Uganda and the Congo, teams Humphrey Bogart as a crass Canadian supply boat skipper and Katharine Hepburn as his bluestocking cargo, a prudish missionary who he’s transporting through c. 1914 German East Africa when war breaks out and all hell breaks loose.  On February 9, Eve's Bayou will be presented by director Kasi Lemmons. One of the essential works of African-American cinema of the 1990s, and just selected for the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, Eve's Bayou is a film of rich, steamy sexuality and an incredible sense of place, that follows the loss of innocence that occurs when the daughter of a well-to-do Louisiana family (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) catches her father (Samuel L. Jackson) in a moment of infidelity. Boasting an impressive line-up of actresses, including living legends Lynne Whitfield and Diahann Carroll, Debbi Morgan, and Meagan Good, it’s a seductive tour de force in an atmosphere thick with voodoo, other Creole legends, and household magic. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) began a yearlong residency at Metrograph in July 2017, bringing exciting and entertaining programs to the big screen. Programs in ACADEMY AT METROGRAPH 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.

SPECIAL EVENTS

January 5 Nico Baumbach Presents Jean-Luc Godard's Film Socialisme Godard: “This movie was titled Socialism, at first, but it seemed to have too many connotations. Film Socialism is different: a philosopher wrote me 12 pages saying how wonderful it is to see ‘film’ alongside ‘socialism,’ since that has another meaning altogether, even hope.” "His twin obsessions: film in its relation to the history of twentieth century politics, but also the possibility of an equality of images or images of equality, a film manifesto in the tradition of Vertov, “a smile that dismisses the universe.” Godard’s first feature shot entirely on video is about the death of both film and socialism and the signs of their persistence and potential. It features Patti Smith and Alain Badiou on a cruise ship, an intrigue about gold Stalin stole from Spain, a llama, a YouTube cat video, and ends with an attack on the idea of intellectual property. Required viewing for everyone living in the 21st century, whether or not you wish to participate in the promotion of my book, Cinema/Politics/Philosophy published by Columbia University Press." —Nico Baumbach, who will be on hand to present the film and sign copies of Cinema/Politics/Philosophy after the screening.

January 11  The Unholy Three with Live Store by Gary Lucas Maestro of the macabre Tod Browning (Freaks, Dracula) directs frequent collaborator Lon Chaney to a masterfully sinister—and occasionally quite moving—performance as a warped ventriloquist masterminding an underhanded Christmas Eve crime along with dastardly dwarf Harry Eales and strongman Victor McLaglen. This sinful syndicate will stop at nothing, including a cross-dressing turn by Chaney, to get what they want in this sleeper sickie, remade five years later as Chaney’s first talkie but never surpassed in this visually ingenious sideshow thriller, which has the added inducements of Mae Busch as a pulchritudinous pickpocket and a maniacal chimpanzee. Featuring live performance by Gary Lucas accompanying the film.

February 2  Hilton Als on James Baldwin   In conjunction with God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin at David Zwirner in January in February, the curator of that exhibition, author and scholar Hilton Als will present a selection of films and visual excerpts of Baldwin on screen.