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 seeing some great films—be it new to you treasures or your favorite classics. 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.
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***FRIDAY, MARCH 27***
CREEPERS (aka PHENOMENA), Dario Argento
Anthology Film Archives
A 14-year old Jennifer Connelly plays a young girl with the ability to communicate with insects. Newly transferred to a Swiss boarding school roiled by a string of murders, she joins forces with an entomologist (Donald Pleasance) and his trusted chimp to find the killer before she becomes the next victim. Mixing elements of giallo, horror, and the supernatural, PHENOMENA is one of Argento’s greatest films.
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A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, Stanley Kubrick
IFC Center
A scathing satire on a society in the not-so-distant future, with an excellent Malcolm McDowell as a prime misfit fascinated by women, Beethoven and ultra-violence.
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CHRISTMAS WEDDING BABY, Kiara Jones
BAM
In this deft cross between romantic comedy and family drama, three sisters gather in their North Florida hometown for the youngest’s Christmastime wedding. The trio struggle with the expectations they face as women—in marriage, motherhood, romance, and their relationships to their opinionated mother—which is to say nothing of the real wrench in the plot: the bride-to-be’s first love has been hired as her wedding photographer.
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LISTEN TO ME MARLON, Stevan Riley
Film Society of Lincoln Center
With a face and name known the world over, Marlon Brando earned acclaim for his astonishing acting range, and infamy for his enigmatic personality. With unprecedented access to a trove of audio recordings made by the actor himself (including several self-hypnosis tapes), documentarian Stevan Riley explores Brando’s on- and off-screen lives, from bursting onto the cinematic scene with such films as The Men and A Streetcar Named Desire to his first Oscar-winning role in On the Waterfront. Archival news clips and interviews shed light on Brando’s support for the civil rights movement as well as on the many trials and tribulations of his children, Christian and Cheyenne. But between these many revelations and disclosures, Brando manages to tell his own story, filled with bones to pick, strong opinions, and fascinating traces of one of the most alluring figures in the history of cinema. A Showtime presentation.
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OJUJU, C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi
BAM
When the water supply in an isolated Nigerian slum becomes infected, the neighborhood quickly morphs into a minefield of flesh-eating undead. Expectant father Romero (a cheeky reference to Night of the Living Dead director George Romero) must weigh his instinct for survival against his anguish when his pregnant girlfriend begins displaying some strange symptoms. He joins forces with smart-aleck friend Peju and the pair attempt to escape the infested hood, dodging zombified drug dealers, ex-lovers, friends, and more along the way. Made on a shoestring budget, C.J. Obasi’s horrorfest proves an impressive, subversive take on the zombie genre.
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DREAMS ARE COLDER THAN DEATH, Arthur Jafa
BAM
The latest film from acclaimed cinematographer Arthur Jafa (Daughters of the Dust, Crooklyn) is a profound rumination on a single question: “What does it mean to be black in America today?” Jafa interweaves the abstract and the concrete, layering his haunting visuals with spoken responses by artist Kara Walker, filmmaker Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep), musician Flying Lotus, and more.
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ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK (aka THEY ARE COMING TO GET YOU), Sergio Martino
Anthology Film Archives
Jane (the queen of giallo, Edwige Fenech) is plagued by a recurring nightmare after losing her unborn child in a car accident. Her busy husband Richard (George Hilton) deals with it by plying her with pills, while her sister books sessions for her at the doctor. Things take a turn for the worse when the creepy blue-eyed man from her nightmares materializes in real life, and the upstairs neighbor enlists her in satanic rituals. Set in Swinging London, ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK is graced by Sergio Martino’s impeccable camera work and Bruno Nicolai’s terrific score.
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THE TRIBE, Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy
MoMA
2014. Ukraine. Directed by Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy. A silent film with a difference, this entirely unprecedented tour de force was one of the must-see flashpoints at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Why? Because its entire cast is deaf and mute and the “dialogue” is strictly sign language—without subtitles. Set at a spartan boarding school for deaf and mute coeds, The Tribe follows new arrival Sergey (Grigory Fesenko), who’s immediately initiated into the institution’s hard-as-nails culture with a beating before ascending the food chain from put-upon outsider to foot soldier in a criminal gang that deals drugs and pimps out fellow students. With implacable camerawork and a stark, single-minded approach worthy of influential English director Alan Clarke, first-time feature director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy overcomes what may sound like impossible obstacles to tell a grim but uncannily immersive story of exploitation and brutality in a dog-eat-dog world, delivering a high-school movie you won’t forget. A Drafthouse Films release. DCP. 132 min.
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A NIGHT IN A DORMITORY, Harry Delmar
MoMA
1956. USA. Directed by Arthur Lubin. Screenplay by Devery Freeman, Stephen Longstreet. With Ginger Rogers, Barry Nelson, Carol Channing, James Arness, Clint Eastwood. After 10 years as a freelancer, Rogers returned to her former home base, RKO, for this pleasantly feminist comedy Western—which suitably proved to be the last film released by the battered studio. Under Arthur Lubin’s direction, Rogers returns to her plucky, career-girl persona of the 1930s, complete with squeaky voice: she’s a saleswoman with the unenviable assignment of peddling barbed wire to the open-range ranchers of Texas. Carol Channing, in her first credited movie role, is her comically gangly assistant; as her love interest, Lubin cast his personal protégé, an impossibly handsome young Clint Eastwood. This is likely to be the last public performance of this vintage 35mm IB Technicolor print, which suffers from “vinegar syndrome” and displays some warping in its final minutes. 92 min.
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LES BONNES FEMMES, Claude Chabrol
Museum of the Moving Image
I first saw this in film school and shared it to help the production design of the pilot because it was shot in the streets of Paris, with little embellishment, at exactly the time we were trying to recreate. The thematic aspects were valuable as well, as the film tells the everyday story of four bored working women led astray by their romantic fantasies. My favorite sequence, a kind of postscript to the whole film, is particularly relevant to the series as it features an unknown woman looking right down the lens at the audience. −Matthew Weiner
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NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, Fred Dekker
Nitehawk Cinema
An immensely fun creature feature from director Fred Dekker (The Monster Squad), Night of the Creeps takes on the charmed premise of taking Animal House and turning all the frat boys into zombies controlled by alien brain slugs. With the biggest party night of the year in chaos and all of the jocks in town turned into the living dead, only a buttoned up indoor kid (Jason Lively of Rusty Griswold fame) and a drunk, wiseass detective (Tom Atkins of being awesome in everything he’s in fame) can stop the slugs, kill the jocks and save the girls on Sorority Row. Get your guns ready, cause it’s Miller time.
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**SATURDAY, MARCH 28**
THE SUPREME PRICE, Joanna Lipper
BAM
This gripping documentary traces the evolution of the pro-democracy movement in Nigeria and the efforts made to increase the participation of women in leadership roles. Following the annulment of her father’s victory in the presidential election and her mother’s assassination by agents of the military dictatorship, Hafsat Abiola faces the challenge of transforming a corrupt culture of governance into a democracy capable of serving Nigeria’s most marginalized population: women. Joanna Lipper’s “lean, lucid film” (The Village Voice) scopes from one family’s struggles to those faced by a whole nation.
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IN THE MORNING, Nefertite Nguvu
BAM
Charting the emotional bond among nine young Brooklynites over the course of one day, this tonally complex debut feature from writer-director Nefertite Nguvu weaves together three stories about personal growth and the power of choice and action. Shot by cinematographer Arthur Jafa (Daughters of the Dust, Crooklyn), this moving exploration of relationships grapples with the realities of marriage, infidelity, and heartbreak.
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CHRISTMAS AGAIN, Charles Poekel
Film Society of Lincoln Center
A forlorn Noel (Kentucker Audley) pulls long, cold nights as a Christmas-tree vendor in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. As obnoxious, indifferent, or downright bizarre customers come and go, doing little to restore Noel’s faith in humanity, only the flirtatious innuendos of one woman and the drunken pleas of another seem to lift him out of his funk. Writer-director Charles Poekel has transformed three years of “fieldwork” peddling evergreens on the streets of New York into a sharply observed and wistfully comic portrait of urban loneliness and companionship. While Christmas, Again heralds a promising newcomer in Poekel, it also confirms several great young talents of American indie cinema: actors Audley and Hannah Gross, editor Robert Greene, and cinematographer Sean Price Williams.
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DEATH LAID AN EGG (aka PLUCKED), Giulio Questi
Anthology Film Archives
Giulio Questi’s giallo-on-acid, a pop art manifesto against mass production, takes the plot of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s DIABOLIQUE and turns it into something truly bizarre. Marco (Jean-Louis Trintignant) occupies the center of a love triangle involving his wife (Gina Lollobrigida) and her luscious niece (Ewa Aulin), at the high-tech chicken farm they run – and this busy man still finds the time to kill prostitutes on the side. This is poultry art at its best!
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TORSO, Sergio Martino
Anthology Film Archives
A depraved predator is on the loose in the sleepy university town of Perugia where coeds have been turning up brutally murdered. Exchange student Jane (Suzy Kendall) and her friends decide to take a retreat at a secluded villa. What ensues there is worthy of any horror movie textbook, including one astonishing sequence that ranks among the most suspenseful in the genre. A score by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis complete this giallo classic.
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EC: L’ÂGE D’OR, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí
Anthology Film Archives
Conventional attempts at plot synopsis wither in the face of L’ÂGE D’OR. In Buñuel’s words, “The story is a sequence of moral and surrealist aesthetics. The sexual instinct and the sense of death form the substance of the film. It is a romantic film performed in full surrealistic frenzy.”
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FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, Dario Argento
Anthology Film Archives
A musician accidentally kills the stalker who had been menacing him over the phone. The killing is witnessed by a masked figure, and soon the musician is being blackmailed. One by one everyone around him turns up dead, making him the prime suspect. In this final installment of the ANIMAL TRILOGY, Argento takes his visual stylistics and set pieces to another level. Long unavailable, the film is presented in a rare archival 35mm print. Starring Michael Brandon and Mimsy Farmer.
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THE GREAT MAN, Sarah Leonor
MoMA
2014. France. Directed by Sarah Leonor. When we first meet Markov (Surho Sugaipov), he and fellow French Legionnaire Hamilton (Jérémie Renier) are tracking a wild leopard in a desert war zone, at the end of their posting in Afghanistan. An ambush results in an abdication of duty—despite it stemming from an act of fidelity. We learn that Markov had joined the Legion as a foreign refugee, hoping to gain his French citizenship and provide a better life for his young son. Ultimately, the complications of immigration and legal status seem petty when compared with the primal urge to do right by those who have committed their lives to saving others’. The intrinsic struggle between paternal/fraternal responsibility and unfettered mobility takes on a deeply moving dimension in Sarah Leonor’s alternately heartbreaking and empowering sophomore feature. A Distrib Films release. DCP. U.S. premiere In French; English subtitles. 107 min.
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PARANOIA (aka ORGASMO), Umberto Lenzi
Nitehawk Cinema
Originally titled ORGASMO in Italian, PARANOIA is the first installment of the prolific genre director Umberto Lenzi’s Giallo Sexy trilogy. In this classic psychological thriller, an erotic triangle develops when an American actress played by the beautiful Carroll Baker retires to an Italian villa after her husband’s sudden death, and becomes a target of the seductive Lou Castel (of “Fists in the Pocket” fame) and his dubious sister played by Colette Descombes. Part Diabolique and part Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Lenzi infuses this claustrophobic nightmare with a dose of his unique blend of sleaze and tension, bringing it to culminate in its final explosion. If Lenzi’s masterful camerawork is not enough to drive you to the brink of madness, Piero Umiliani’s eccentric main theme is sure to do the job.
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FILMS BY VIVIENNE DICK AND ERIC MITCHELL’S RED ITALY Museum of the Moving Image
The influence of Amos Poe’s filmmaking strategies and the fostering of a community inspired other filmmakers. Vivienne Dick engages female artists, most of whom are associated with the punk music scene, in a series of Warhol-like portraits in Guerillere Talks (1978, 28 mins.). Beauty Becomes the Beast (1979, 45 mins.) sets the baby-faced punk musician Lydia Lunch against the decaying, rubble-strewn corners of the city. In Red Italy (1979, 55 mins.), Eric Mitchell grapples with the theme of class struggle, while invoking the films of Pasolini and Antonioni.
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AMOS POE’S UNMADE BEDS AND SHORT FILMS BY JACK GOLDSTEIN, CINDY SHERMAN, AND ERICKA BECKMAN
Museum of the Moving Image
Diverging from the highly formal, Structural film practices of a previous generation, a number of New York artists in the mid- to late 1970s engaged the body, meaning, and narrative. Jack Goldstein engages popular culture in Shane, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, White Dove, and Ballet Shoe (1974-75, 10 mins.). In Doll Clothes (1975, 2 mins.), Cindy Sherman presents the woman’s body as a copy, and as an object capable of forging multiple identities. Ericka Beckman offers the body in movement and a woman’s voice in song in Hit and Run (1977, 9 mins). And Amos Poe’s film Unmade Beds (1976, 77 mins.) is a loose remake of Godard’s Breathless, featuring a cameo by Debbie Harry.
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**SUNDAY, MARCH 29**
THE SHORT NIGHT OF GLASS DOLLS, Aldo Lado
Anthology Film Archives
Filmed in Prague, Aldo Lado’s startling debut feature begins with an American journalist finding himself in a morgue, pronounced dead yet fully conscious. Racing against the clock as his doctors prepare for his autopsy, he struggles to mentally reconstruct the series of events that brought him to this sorry pass, and caused his girlfriend to go missing. The most political of the Giallo directors, Lado delivers his message without giving short shrift to the chills and thrills the genre demands.
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ENTERTAINMENT, Rick Alversonp
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Following up his 2013 breakthrough, The Comedy, director Rick Alverson reteams with that film’s star, Tim Heidecker (here serving as co-writer), for a hallucinatory journey to the end of the night. Or is it the end of comedy? Cult anti-comedian Gregg Turkington (better known as Neil Hamburger) stars as a washed-up comic on tour with a teenage mime (Tye Sheridan), working his way across the Mojave Desert to a possible reconciliation with the estranged daughter who never returns his interminable voicemails. Our sort-of hero’s stand-up set is an abrasive assault on audiences, so radically tone-deaf as to be mesmerizing. Alverson uses a slew of surrealist flourishes and poetic non sequiturs to fashion a one-of-a-kind odyssey that is by turns mortifying and beautiful, bewildering and absorbing. John C. Reilly, Michael Cera, Amy Seimetz, Dean Stockwell, and Heidecker are among the performers who so memorably populate the strange world of Entertainment, a film that utterly scrambles our sense of what is funny—and not funny.
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FROM MAYERLING TO SARAJEVO, Max Ophuls
Film Forum
(1940) In the wake of the murder-suicide of Prince Rudolph at Mayerling, John Lodge’s stiff, but broad-minded Archduke Franz Ferdinand becomes the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian empire, to the distinct unhappiness of its emperor, Franz Josef. But then Franz Ferdinand wants to marry Edwige Feuillère, a mere countess – and a Czech! In Ophüls’ romantically aristocratic world you know where you stand when the morgantically (their children can’t inherit) married couple are about the arrive at their first imperial ball together; a functionary murmurs Feuillère must use the Minor Stairs. Made in France and premiering just before it fell to the Nazis, this was Ophüls’ last picture before Hollywood and a surprisingly faithful, and lavishly produced, account of a Romeo and Juliet passion hindered not by family enmity, but by levels of nobility, a way of life to be wiped out by the events then only 25 years in the past – the same distance in time we have to the fall of the Berlin Wall. (Historical footnote: This would be the last film of American actor Lodge – of the Boston Lodges; he’d been co-star to Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, and Shirley Temple before eventually becoming congressman and governor of Connecticut, as well as U.S. ambassador to Spain, Argentina, and Switzerland). Approx. 97 min. 35mm.
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THE CABINET OF DOCTOR CALIGARI, Robert Wiene
Nitehawk Cinema
One of cinema’s first horror films as well as a German Expressionist film masterpiece, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari creates a vivid and dreamlike world. Werner Krauss stars as a doctor with a carnival attraction, a “somnambulist” (Conrad Veidt) who predicts people’s deaths and, under his master’s control, often causes those deaths. There’s no better way to start off the Halloween film season than at the beginning; The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari is a true original with its angled architectural props, dynamic costumes, touch of surrealist dreamlike state, and psychological twist of an ending.
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KATHRYN BIGELOW’S THE LOVELESS AND JOHN LURIE’S MEN IN ORBIT
Museum of the Moving Image
In downtown New York film, narrative and meaning are often presented with irony. In Men in Orbit (1979, 45 mins.), John Lurie casts himself and Eric Mitchell in a parody of a NASA space flight. These bodies in space recall TV news coverage and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, transported to a recession era when the dream of space travel has been negated. Kathryn Bigelow’s The Loveless (co-directed with Monty Montgomery, 1981, 82 mins. With Willem Dafoe.) presents the audience with the costumes, gestures, and poses of a 1950s era Wild One, stripped of its original meaning. Also featured will be music videos by Robert Longo, for “The One I Love” by R.E.M. and “Peace Sells” by Megadeth, which represent another way visual artists engaged with mainstream culture.
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FILMS BY JAMES NARES AND BETH B AND SCOTT B
Museum of the Moving Image
James Nares, a painter and a member of the punk band the Contortions, employed a number of different styles when he turned to filmmaking. In Waiting for the Wind (1982, 8 mins.), which Amy Taubin has called a “technical tour-de-force, ” Nares exhibits a pre-occupation with violent movement, offering up his own body as the focal point. In The Black Box (1979, 21 mins.) Beth B and Scott B address the issue of torture, while in No Japs at My Funeral (1980, 60 mins.), Nares gives us the first person narrative of a real-life IRA operative.
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GIRL INTERRUPTED, James Mangold
Nitehawk Cinema
Based on a novel of the same name, Girl, Interrupted details the instability felt by a generation during the turbulent socio-political climate of the late 1960s through the lives of complicated young women at a mental institution. Committed for various reasons, ranging from food disorders to incest to suicide attempts, their stories intertwine with the main character Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) whose memoir narrates the film. She has unwittingly signed herself into the hospital after a suicide attempt and it becomes a place where she is shocked into the realities it houses and the boundaries of madness. Not unlike Randle in One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest, Susanna is on a self-destructive bent but harnesses the ability to decide whether she’d go over the edge into insanity or pull herself back into the world.
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