***MONDAY, JUNE 9***
SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER, Joseph L. Mankiewicz
IFC Center
“Cannibalism. Homosexuality. Lobotomy. Only Tennessee Williams could pull together this Gothic mix and write a film as moving and beautiful as this. Elizabeth Taylor stars as a young woman who, at the insistence of her wealthy aunt (Katherine Hepburn) is being evaluated to receive a lobotomy after witnessing the death of her cousin. For the legendary Latina drag queen Barbara Herr – who started out in Times Square’s Sally’s Hideaway before owning the stages of Escualita, The Monster, and Friend’s Tavern — the film’s depiction of violence against homosexuals “is still alive and well in our society today in this country and all over the world.”
READ MORE
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, Ang Lee
BAM
“Ang Lee revitalized the wuxia genre with this exhilarating, fairy tale-like epic of warriors and thieves battling for possession of Green Destiny, a mythic 400-year-old sword. Justly celebrated for its transcendent, airborne action sequences, this Academy Award-winning international mega-hit is rife with references to King Hu’s work—particularly the famous bamboo grove fight in A Touch of Zen.”
READ MORE
CHANTAL AKERMAN, FROM HERE, Gustavo Beck & Leonardo Luiz Ferreira
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
“The renowned Belgian filmmaker sits down for an hour-long conversation about her entire body of work. Throughout, the camera holds steady from outside an open door. The long, unbroken shot and the frame-within-a-frame pay homage to Akerman’s own unmistakable style (“I need a corridor. I need doors. Otherwise, I can’t work,” she says). But by shooting her in profile, the filmmakers provide a contrast to the signature frontality of her compositions (one of the many subjects covered in the wide-ranging interview)—an acknowledgement of this portrait’s contingency also underlined by the title.”
READ MORE
SOUTH IS NOTHING, Fabio Mollo
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
“Grazia was 12 years old when she was told by her widower father that her beloved older brother Pietro had died, and has never spoken a word since. Now a tomboyish 18, after one of her regular arguments with her father, Grazia flees to the seaside and into the water, where she has an otherworldly experience and thinks she sees her brother. Thus begins her quest to discover another truth, not only about her lost sibling but also about herself. This poised and striking debut by the young Mollo, who shot this film in the Reggio Calabria village where he grew up, features a remarkable central performance by the young Miriam Karlkvist.”
READ MORE
***TUESDAY, JUNE 10***
BORGMAN, Alex van Warmerdam
IFC Center
“A dark suburban fable exploring the nature of evil in unexpected places, BORGMAN follows an enigmatic vagrant who enters the lives of an upper-class family and quickly unravels their carefully curated lifestyle. Charming and mysterious, Camiel Borgman seems almost otherworldly, and it isn’t long before he has the wife, children and nanny under his spell in a calculated bid to take over their home life. However, his domestic assimilation takes a malevolent turn as his ultimate plan comes to bear, igniting a series of increasingly maddening and menacing events.”
READ MORE
PAINTED SKIN, King Hu
BAM
“Drifting away from wuxia films later in life, Hu focused instead on tales of the supernatural. His final work, based on a classic Chinese legend, is a beguiling story of a young scholar (Cheng) entangled with a beautiful ghost (the ethereal Wong) who paints her skin in order to appear human. Hu masterfully evokes an otherworldly atmosphere with his typically opulent visuals in this horror-tinged metaphysical fable, which features the great Sammo Hung as a Taoist priest.”
READ MORE
STEAK, Quentin Dupieux
FIAF
“The first film by electronic musician Quentin Dupieux, Steak is set in the near future and follows a gang of “cool” kids who are obsessed with facelifts, drinking milk, and a bizarre sport that is a violent variation of cricket.”
READ MORE
HAPPY TO BE DIFFERENT, Gianni Amelio
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
“A moving and enlightening work of oral history, Gianni Amelio’s new documentary is a chronicle of gay life in Italy from the fall of Fascism through the early 1980s. Amelio combines interviews with a wide range of older gay Italian men (including Pasolini muse Ninetto Davoli), newsreel footage, and clips from “educational” films warning against homosexuality, and in the process reveals a profound gap between the subjects’ firsthand experiences and the Italian media’s representations of them. The resulting film is a deeply personal account of the advent of gay culture amid the ruins of Mussolini’s Italy and the eternally poignant story of how persecuted individuals developed pragmatic ways to attain everyday happiness.”
READ MORE
***WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11***
MÉLO, Alain Resnais
MoMA
Resnais’ fascination with the interpenetration of film and theater reaches its expressive height with this very close adaptation of a 1929 play by the boulevard dramatist Henry Bernstein. The plot, dense and improbable, is centered on two old friends (and fellow violinists) played by Pierre Arditi and André Dussollier; when Dussollier falls in love with Arditi’s wife (Sabine Azéma), melodramatic complications ensue. Resnais’ symmetrical compositions and extended long takes emphasize the artificiality of the proceedings while liberating their emotional truth.
READ MORE
BURNING BUSH, Agnieszka Holland
Film Forum
“Prague, January 1969: Czech student Jan Palach sets himself on fire to protest the brutal Soviet military occupation of his country following the period of political openness known as Prague Spring. Polish filmmaking great Agnieszka Holland (EUROPA EUROPA), who was herself a student in Prague during this tumultuous period, recreates the political and cultural zeitgeist in this epic tale. What could have been a standard docu-drama, in the hands of this superb filmmaker, becomes a stirring, complex recreation of the tension that swirled around these events in late ‘60s Eastern Europe, and ultimately set the stage for the defeat of Communism 20 years later. As a period thriller of Cold War intrigue, BURNING BUSH has been likened to THE LIVES OF OTHERS.”
READ MORE
YVES SAINT LAURENT, Jalil Lespert
FIAF
“In January 1958, a 21-year-old Yves Saint Laurent (Pierre Niney) was unexpectedly called upon to run Christian Dior’s legendary Paris fashion house. All eyes turned to this young assistant as he presented his first collection for Dior and instantly ascended to the heights of haute couture’s elite class. At this groundbreaking show, Saint Laurent would also be introduced to Pierre Bergé (Guillaume Gallienne), patron of the arts, future love of his life, and lifelong business partner. Just three years after this fated encounter the pair would found the Yves Saint Laurent Company, now one of the biggest luxury powerhouses around the world.”
READ MORE
THE CASE OF THE THREE SIDED DREAM, Adam Kahan
IFC Center
“The story of multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk, who went from blind infant, to child prodigy, to adult visionary, political activist, and finally to paralyzed showman who toured and played music literally until the day he died.”
READ MORE
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, John Carpenter
Nitehawk Cinema
“Call him “Snake.” The future is 1997 and the island of Manhattan is now a maximum security prison. Unfortunately it’s also the location where convicts took down the President of the United States’ plane. So the government sends in the “not dead” eye-patch wearing bank-robbing Snake Plissken to go in to retrieve the president and his cargo. But this mission isn’t exactly on Snake’s terms and, given the violent nature of how things run now in New York, it certainly isn’t going to be easy. Escape from New York is the quintessential dystopic view of American society’s future mixed in with that Kurt Russell charm and John Carpenter score.”
READ MORE
THE FIFTH WHEEL, Giovanni Veronesi
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
“Veronesi’s irresistible romantic comedy takes a journey through pivotal events in four decades of recent Italian history, as seen through the lens of Ernesto Fioretti’s unexceptional life. Played with charm and a disarming sense of humor by Elio Germano, Ernesto is a good-hearted, honest middle-class guy who struggles to keep up with changes and is always a step behind. His father disparaged Ernesto by likening him to the “fifth wheel of the wagon,” and his aspirations and involvement through the rise and fall of Socialism and the Berlusconi era are accordingly modest. But his protagonist’s apparent simplicity is precisely one of the strengths of this Tuscan director’s fifteenth feature, which opened the Rome Film Festival last year to great acclaim. Rich in emotions, its ups and downs coinciding with those of the country, Ernesto’s life serves as the perfect platform for abundant laughter and tears.”
READ MORE
***THURSDAY, JUNE 12***
DEATH IN VENICE, Luchino Visconti
MoMA
Adapted from the novella by Thomas Mann. Music by Gustav Mahler. With Dirk Bogarde, Romolo Valli, Silvana Mangano, Mark Burns, Marisa Berenson, Björn Andrésen. Visconti’s coming-out-of-the-closet film, based on Mann’s apparent outing of Mahler, is ultimately a meditation on beauty, filmed amid the most beautiful city man has been able to create. As with his The Leopard, the “Father of Neorealism” offers an exquisite canvas on which to depict the ultimate tragedy.
READ MORE
A STREET IN PALERMO, Emma Dante
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
“Based on her own novel, Emma Dante’s first feature is set in Palermo and shot almost entirely in a narrow alleyway in a run-down neighborhood. On a hot Sunday afternoon, three women are caught in what turns out to be a tragic confrontation. Rosa (Dante) and her partner, Clara (Alba Rohrwacher), have just driven in from Milan and are on their way to a friend’s wedding. As they turn onto Via Castellana Bandiera, they find the Calafiore family jammed into a car driven by Samira (Elena Cotta), a mule-headed Sicilian of Albanian descent. Both drivers stubbornly refuse to back up, as tensions escalate and the neighborhood looks on. An accomplished theater director, Dante includes some knowing nods to spaghetti Westerns and genre conventions in her ambitious film debut, and coaxes formidable performances from her skilled cast (Cotta won the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival).”
READ MORE
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, Sergio Leone
BAM
“The final installment in Leone’s “man-with-no-name” trilogy, this film cemented Eastwood’s position as the new American gunslinger archetype. Building to one of the greatest showdowns in cinema history, Eastwood pursues a treasure by reluctantly collaborating with a mercenary gunman (Wallach) and another drifter (Van Cleef). This New York premiere of a 4K restoration brings its breathtaking vistas and Ennio Morricone’s oft-referenced score invigorating new life.”
READ MORE
SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, Amy Jones
Nitehawk Cinema
“Written by famous feminist Rubyfruit Jungle author Rita Mae Brown as an intended parody of the plethora of stalker flicks - director Amy Jones (of Mystic Pizza and Beethoven future-fame) plays it straight instead – positing it in its own world of weirdness – more head-scratchingly strange and outré than outright camp or obvious comedy.”
READ MORE
THE MAFIA ONLY KILLS IN SUMMER, Pierfrancesco Diliberto
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
“Pierfrancesco Diliberto (a renowned TV host and political comedian, better known as Pif) wrote, directed, and stars in this subversive, irreverent feature debut about Arturo, a young boy whose obsession with the Mafia’s casual presence in his city surpasses even his passion for Flora, the beautiful schoolmate who remains his main love interest until adulthood. Pif uses Arturo’s unrequited love story as the vehicle to narrate the most tragic events in Italy’s recent history, starting with the Cosa Nostra’s criminal actions in Sicily in the ’70s, which soon spread through the country (encompassing the barbaric murder of judges Falcone and Borsellino, an event that Pif handles with astounding boldness). Winner of the Audience Award at the Torino Film Festival, Mafia is a brave and intelligent dark comedy with a powerful message.”
READ MORE
SMALL HOMELAND, Alessandro Rosetto
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
“Best friends Luisa and Renata long above all else to leave their stifling provincial town in northeastern Italy, where tensions between locals and immigrants are forever threatening to boil over. They work as maids in a hotel but supplement their income with sexual trysts, sometimes assisted by Luisa’s Albanian boyfriend, and hatch a blackmail scheme that fails to play out as expected. The rhythms of daily life in this border zone—where city meets countryside—are captured in vivid detail in the highly promising fiction debut by experienced documentarian Rossetto.”
READ MORE
The post 20 Films to See This Week: Resnais, Visconti, Leone + More appeared first on BlackBook.