Sundays may be a “wan, stuff shadow of a robust Saturday” or a day of “forced leisure for folks who have no aptitude for leisure,” but a weekend is still a weekend. We wait for the pleasure of a Friday night, knowing the burdens of the work week have a brief respite, and what better way to indulge than heading to the cinema. And this weekend from BAM and MoMA to The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Nitehawk Cinema, there are more than enough wonderful films showing for you to happily disappear into.
_____________________________________________________
***FRIDAY, MARCH 6***
THE STATE OF THINGS, Wim Wenders
MoMA
Wenders won the Golden Lion award in Venice for The State of Things. While making a low-budget, post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie on the wild, desolate shores of Portugal, a German director discovers that he has run out of film and money. Stranded and with nothing to do, his actors and crew at first flirt and horse around but then grow bored, restless, and uneasy. The filmmaker meanwhile sets out for Los Angeles to track down his producer, and finds him hiding out from loan sharks in an RV on Sunset Boulevard, and regretting his decision to hire a European auteur. A kind of soured romance pervades the film—and the film within the film—owing in part to Wenders and Robert Kramer’s seemingly improvisatory script, the great Henri Alekan’s poetic realist black-and-white cinematography, and Jürgen Knieper’s droning synth soundtrack.
READ MORE
THE ROLLING STONES: CHARLIE IS MY DARLING – IRELAND 1965, Peter Whitehead & Mick Gochanour
IFC Center
Famed non-fiction filmmaker Whitehead followed the Rolling Stones on their brief Ireland tour in September 1965 and filmed this first-ever documentary of the group, a vital piece of rock history virtually unavailable since 1966. Gorgeously restored from the original sound tapes and live recordings by Mick Gochanour and Robin Klein, this never-before-seen new version offers an electrifying look at a young band about to conquer the world.
READ MORE
KINGS OF THE ROAD, Wim Wenders
MoMA
Described by the critic J. Hoberman as “the tenderest and most horrific depiction I know of German postwar anomie,” Kings of the Road accompanies a movie-projector repairman and his despondent companion as they travel by truck along the East German border, wandering from town to town and cinema to cinema. The theaters they encounter are in various states of disrepair—some have even begun showing porn to make ends meet. “The way it’s going,” one theater owner avers, “it’s better to have no cinema than to have cinema as it is now.” Wenders’s film is indeed a poignant lament for the death of cinema, yet it paradoxically signaled a revitalization of the medium with its Fordian ambitions and improvisatory spirit. With black-and-white cinematography by Robby Müller that recalls both the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher and Farm Security Administration photography, and a plangent original score by Axel Linstädt, Kings of the Road—whose original German title is literally translated as “in the course of time”—is an acute study in the vagaries of male intimacy and a stirring examination of the contradictory yearning for both companionship and solitude.
READ MORE
HUD, Martin Ritt
BAM
Paul Newman stars as the titular “man with the barbed wire soul,” the rotten-through-and-through progeny of a Texas ranchman (Douglas) whose hard-drinking, womanizing, shiftless ways lead to an explosive rift within the household. This blistering anti-western—with Academy Award-winning photography by the great James Wong Howe—offers a starkly unromanticized vision of the frontier.
READ MORE
BUZZARD, Joel Potrykus
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Winner of the Locarno Film Festival’s 2012 Best Emerging Director award for his debut feature Ape, Joel Potrykus makes a brazen leap forward with his sophomore effort,Buzzard, a darkly comical look at a slacker office temp who gets by on cold SpaghettiOs while getting off on stealing refund checks from his employer. Filmed on a shoestring budget, often guerrilla-style, in the writer-director’s native Grand Rapids and Detroit, Michigan, Buzzard stars an unforgettable Joshua Burge as an angry young man who, through a series of small, increasingly unhinged mutinies, sticks it to corporate America on behalf of the great unsung 99%. Citing Alan Clarke, Jim Jarmusch, Michael Haneke, and Kelly Reichardt among his influences, Potrykus offers a barbaric yawp for truly independent regional American cinema. An Oscilloscope Laboratories release.
READ MORE
THE LAST SUNSET, Robert Aldrich
Anthology Film Archives
“Although Dalton Trumbo considered THE LAST SUNSET his worst script, this fascinatingly overripe western is noteworthy for Robert Aldrich’s usual visual panache and a baroque plot that looks forward to the revisionist ‘last westerns’ of the late 1960s and early 70s. After completing the script for SPARTACUS, Trumbo, working again for Kirk Douglas’s Byrna Productions, received a post-blacklist screen credit. The convoluted plot involves the attempts of the upright sheriff Dan Stribling (Rock Hudson) to apprehend outlaw Brendan O’Malley (Kirk Douglas), responsible for the murder of Stribling’s brother-in-law. O’Malley has been lured to Mexico to reignite his romance with Belle Breckinridge under the ruse of working on the ranch of her alcoholic husband John (Joseph Cotten). Ultimately smitten with Belle’s daughter Melissa (Carol Lynley), O’Malley’s misplaced passion results in a particularly audacious plot twist. THE LAST SUNSET, even while straining credulity and reworking themes borrowed from Greek tragedy with mixed results, is a precursor of the sexual frankness that would permeate genre films of the late 60s.” –Richard Porton
READ MORE
_____________________________________________________
***SATURDAY, MARCH 7***
UNTIL THE END OF THE WORD, Wim Wenders
MoMA
The grandest entry in Wenders’s filmography and his only work of science fiction (which became something of a reality with the subsequent arrival of cellphones, Google Glass, and Skype), Until the End of the World is a globetrotting trilogy, filmed across nine countries and four continents, and presented in his rarely screened director’s cut. The year is a futuristic 1999, as a nuclear satellite hurtling toward Earth threatens annihilation, and the glamorous and self-destructive Claire Tourneur (Dommartin) is in pursuit of a mysterious hitchhiker (Hurt) who possesses a device that can allow the blind to see by recording “the biomechanical event” of perception itself. When the machine is repurposed to visualize the dreams of those who submit to having their subconscious transcribed, the movie evolves from an epic road movie—thick with romance and intrigue—to a sinister parable about falling under the sway of images. Though the film was cut significantly for its original release, this retrospective offers a unique opportunity to view Wenders’s own edit.
READ MORE
SPELLBOUND, Alfred Hitchcock
Nitehawk Cinema
The doctors who run the mental hospital are the ones questioning sanity in Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller Spellbound. When Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Gregory Peck) comes to replace the outgoing director at the Vermont mental hospital, it’s soon revealed that he is not who he says he is and, in fact, believes he is a murderer. That when psychoanalyst Dr. Constance Peterson (Ingrid Bergman) decides to assist Edwardes in seeking the truth and his innocence. They break beyond their institutional confines but what they discover is an intricate web of twisted identities and fever pitched delusions that puts them back where they started. Furthering its interest in Freudian dream analysis, artist Salvador Dali produced the film’s haunting surrealist dream sequence in which the “truth” is revealed.
READ MORE
THE CHASE, Arthur Penn
Anthology Film Archives
“Based on Horton Foote’s play, Lillian Hellman’s screenplay was reworked – at the behest of producer Sam Spiegel – by both Michael Wilson and Ivan Moffat. In a 1993 interview with CINEASTE, Arthur Penn complained that he wasn’t able to oversee the film’s editing and bemoaned the fact that Spiegel cut many of star Marlon Brando’s ingenious improvisations. Yet, despite these mishaps, THE CHASE, with its unvarnished depiction of Southern violence, paved the way for pivotal films of the 1960s – especially Penn’s own BONNIE AND CLYDE. Robert Redford, in an early major role, plays Bubber Reeves, a convict on the run after a prison break. Wrongly imprisoned for murder, Bubber’s escape exacerbates tensions in the small Texas town where he’s viewed with suspicion, and where his wife Anna (Jane Fonda) is conducting an affair with the son of the region’s wealthiest man. In an intriguing reversal of the usual stereotype, Brando plays a progressive sheriff at odds with local racist vigilantes.” –Richard Porton
READ MORE
SALT OF THE EARTH, Wim Wenders
MoMA
Wenders presents a special screening of his latest nonfiction film, The Salt of the Earth, as part of his MoMA retrospective. Winner of Un Certain Regard special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the film is an illuminating portrait of the Brazilian still photographer Sebastião Salgado, and will be released by Sony Pictures Classics in March 2015.
READ MORE
FAIL-SAFE, Sidney Lumet
Anthology Film Archives
“Bernstein got to know Lumet, formerly a child actor with the Yiddish Art Theatre, when Lumet was an assistant director to Martin Ritt on CHARLIE WILD, PRIVATE EYE, a half-hour TV show Bernstein wrote under ‘fronts’ in 1950-51. Bernstein would do some of his finest work with these simpatico friends, Ritt and Lumet. A writer’s writer, Bernstein boasts one of the richest of resumés, and seems as comfortable with tense uncompromising subjects, sweeping recreations of history, and, especially in the 1970s, philandering romantic comedies. All his films are social critiques, and his lifelong attention to the military-industrial complex is followed through in DOOMSDAY GUN, his 1994 HBO film with Frank Langella as a supergun genius caught between Israel, Iraq, and the CIA, and something of a bookend to FAIL-SAFE. FAIL-SAFE is one of the tensest of his 1960s credits, a disarmament parable that is splendidly entertaining and disturbing in equal parts. ‘DR. STRANGELOVE without the humor,’ in Danny Peary’s apt phrase.” –Patrick McGilligan
READ MORE
CROATIAN AVANT-GARDE FILMMAKERS OF THE 1960s
Anthology Film Archives
Vladimir Petek ENCOUNTER / SRETANJE (1963, 5 min, 35mm, b&w)
Tomislav Gotovac THE FORENOON OF A FAUN / PRIJE PODNE JEDNOG FAUNA (1963, 8 min, 16mm, b&w)
Tomislav Gotovac STRAIGHT LINE (STEVENS-DUKE) / PRAVAC (STEVENS-DUKE) (1964, 10 min, 16mm, b&w)
Tomislav Gotovac CIRCLE (JUTKEVICH-COUNT) / KRUŽNICA (JUTKEVIČ-COUNT) (1964, 12 min, 16mm, b&w)
Ivan Martinac I’M MAD (1967, 5 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm)
Ivan Martinac FOCUS (1967, 7 min, 35mm, b&w)
Lordan Zafranović PEOPLE (IN PASSING) II / LJUDI (U PROLAZU) II (1967, 11 min, 35mm, b&w)
Lordan Zafranović AFTERNOON (THE GUN) / POSLIJE PODNE (PUŠKA) (1968, 15 min, 35mm, b&w)
READ MORE
SEMI-TOUGH, Michael Ritchie
Anthology Film Archives
“SEMI-TOUGH is the better known of Walter Bernstein’s two neo-screwball comedies for Michael Ritchie, ‘one of those rare directors,’ as Vincent Canby wrote, ‘who is able to look at Middle America critically without being especially outraged or even surprised.’ (The other Bernstein-Ritchie collaboration, AN ALMOST PERFECT AFFAIR from 1979, a film-biz satire set in Cannes, is also worthy of revival.) A dream cast romps through this free-wheeling send-up of professional sports, celebrity, and monogamy. SEMI-TOUGH would make the perfect double bill with M*A*S*H (written by blacklistee Ring Lardner Jr.) with its anarchic football climax. ‘Things like THE MOLLY MAGUIRES and THE FRONT, which came from scratch, are very important to me and mean a lot to me,’ Walter Bernstein said in ‘Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s.’ ‘But so does SEMI-TOUGH, although it came from a book. Michael and I threw out the story and wrote one of our own. Michael and I did our own movie, just like Marty [Ritt] and I did our own movies.’” –Patrick McGilligan
READ MORE
_____________________________________________________
***SUNDAY, MARCH 8***
THE LEFT-HANDED WOMAN, Peter Handke
MoMA
Writer-director Handke and producer Wenders present a new digital restoration of this exquisite—and little seen—film of the 1970s. A married woman living in the suburbs of Paris separates from her husband and begins adjusting to a life alone. She translates Flaubert, putters around the kitchen, picks up her father from the train station, and hikes with her son. As the banal particulars of her daily routine proceed in a rigorously poetic fashion, every spoken word and gesture feels deliberate and momentous. With its austere compositions, minimal camera movement, and delicately restrained performances by Edith Clever and Bruno Ganz, The Left-Handed Woman is a powerful meditation on autonomy, self-preservation, and liberation. Handke cited Chantal Akerman as a key influence when the film premiered at Cannes, though the family dramas of Yasujiro Ozu seem equally apt.
READ MORE
THE VICTORS, Carl Foreman
BAM
This titanic all-star war saga follows a squad of American GIs as they trudge through the horrors of World War II—from Britain to Italy to France to Berlin. Featuring appearances from a host of European superstars—including Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, and Melina Mercouri—The Victors trades flag-waving heroics for a blistering, war-is-hell message. One hair-raising scene: an execution set to Sinatra’s “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.”
READ MORE
WRONG MOVE, Wim Wenders
MoMA
In this stylish and unsparing adaptation of Goethe’s classic bildungsroman, an aspiring writer leaves the comforts of his hometown for the capital in Bonn. Along the way, he encounters a motley crew of fellow travelers—a beguiling actress, a hack poet, an ex-Nazi, a mute teenage juggler (Kinski, in her screen debut)—who together journey across West Germany, from the Caspar David Friedrich landscapes of its countryside to the cold topographies of its rebuilt cities. Yet as the title implies, every move is a false one: by film’s end the young protagonist, no closer to self-discovery, instead must grapple with the horrors of the recent past and contend with the impossibility of reconciling artistic imperatives with larger responsibilities. “If only politics and poetry could be united,” Wilhelm wonders. “That,” one of his companions replies, “would mean the end of longing, and the end of the world.”
READ MORE
GREY GARDENS, David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer & Susan Froemke
Film Forum
Mrs. Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, live in a world of their own behind the brambles that surround their decaying 28- room East Hampton mansion known as “Grey Gardens,” where raccoons and cats prowl about and handymen drop by to cadge odd jobs. Mrs. Beale, aka “Big Edie,” was a born aristocrat, sister of “Black Jack” Bouvier, Jackie O’s father. “Little Edie” was a model and aspiring actress of striking beauty who put her New York career on hold to care for her aging mother — and never went back. Together they descended into a strange life of recrimination and companionship. Little Edie — a still-attractive woman at 56 – parades about coquettishly in fishnet stockings, bathing suit and improvised turban, feeds the raccoons in the attic, and breaks out into impromptu song-and-dance routines, never losing hope that her Big Chance and Big Romance are still just around the corner. While semi-invalid Big Edie, a trained soprano in bohemian days, trills romantic songs of yesteryear in a slightly wobbly, but still rich voice, as she cooks corn on the cob perched up in bed. The women bicker like characters out of Tennessee Williams or Eugene O’Neill — with a nod to Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? In the wake of eviction threat headlines, Albert and David Maysles (Salesman, Gimme Shelter) brought their Direct Cinema approach to Grey Gardens for a five-week shoot, with the resulting 50 hours of footage edited by co-filmmakers Hovde, Meyer and Froemke into a cinéma verité epic.
READ MORE
The post 17 Films to See This Weekend: Wenders, Aldrich, Hitchcock + More appeared first on BlackBook.