Presenting our weekly guide to must-see movies in New York: from Something Wild at IFC Center to Artists and Models at MoMA, here are 15 best films to playing in New York this week.
***MONDAY, AUGUST 3***
PHOENIX – One of the Year’s Most Stunning Films with the Performances That Haunt
Christian Petzold // IFC Center – 10:40 a.m., 12:35 p.m., 3:10 p.m., 5:25 p.m., 7:45 p.m., 9:55 p.m.
A spellbinding mystery of identity, illusion, and deception unfolds against the turmoil of post-World War II Germany in the stunning new film from acclaimed director Christian Petzold (BARBARA, JERICHOW). Berlin, 1945: Nelly (Nina Hoss), a German-Jewish, ex-nightclub singer, has survived a concentration camp. But, like her country, she is scarred, her face disfigured by a bullet wound. After undergoing reconstructive surgery, Nelly emerges with a new face, one similar but different enough that her former husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), doesn’t recognize her. Rather than reveal herself, Nelly walks into a dangerous game of duplicity and disguise as she tries to figure out if the man she loves may have been the one who betrayed her to the Nazis. Submerged in shadowy atmosphere and the haunted mood of post-war Berlin, Phoenix weaves a complex, Hitchcockian tale of a nation’s tragedy and a woman’s search for answers as it builds towards an unforgettable, heart-stopping climax. – via IFC Center
BELL DIAMOND – An Overwhelming Emotional Force of Real Life
Jon Jost // BAM – 9:30 p.m.
The rarely seen, social realist films of Jon Jost are ripe for discovery. Set against the wide open skies and abandoned mines of Butte, MT, Bell Diamond is a quietly intense study of a Vietnam vet (Gaddis) dealing with his wife’s desertion and the physical effects of exposure to Agent Orange. Jost’s uncompromising naturalism lends the film the overwhelming emotional force of real life. – via BAM
COMPULSION – Playing in the True Crime Series
Richard Fleischer // Film Forum – 12:40 p.m., 4:55 p.m., 9:10 p.m.
Fictionalized
version of the 1924 Leopold-Loeb
case, with Orson Welles arriving
late as the Clarence Darrow figure, his summing up for the defense of thrill-killers Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman an electrifying tour de force. Collective Cannes Best Actor Award to Stockwell, Dillman, and Welles. – via Film Forum
WILL – A Hard-hitting Slice of Life Urban Drama
Jessie Maple // BAM – 7:00 p.m.
This hard-hitting, slice-of-life urban drama is widely cited as the first independent feature directed by an African-American woman in the post-civil rights era. A heroin-addicted basketball coach (Adedunyo) and his wife (Emmy winner Devine) adopt a troubled 12-year-old homeless boy. Shot on 16mm on the streets of Harlem, director Jessie Maple’s unflinching look at struggle and resilience in the inner city was made on a budget of just $12,000. “I wanted to show the neighborhood,” Maple said, “that everything was there, right in the neighborhood. No matter how low you are you can come back up. That’s what Will is. People can’t count themselves out that quick.” — via BAM
THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING – Playing in the True Crime Series
Richard Fleischer // Film Forum – 2:45 p.m., 7:00 p.m.
Joan Collins’ showgirl Evelyn Nesbit is the one in that swing, elaborate foreplay for Ray Milland’s legendary architect Stanford White — but if her eventual husband, Farley Granger’s dissipated playboy Harry Thaw knew all that, why’d he pull out a gun on Madison Square Garden’s rooftop? 49 years later, the real Nesbit served as technical adviser. — via Film Forum
***TUESDAY, AUGUST 4***
COUNTING – A Richly Evocative, Elegiac Look at the Fabric of Urban Life
Jem Cohen // IFC Center – 12:25 p.m., 2:35 p.m., 5:00 p.m., 7:25 p.m., 9:45 p.m.
Acclaimed filmmaker Cohen follows up his masterful Museum Hours with a richly evocative, elegiac look at the fabric of urban life. Presented in 15 chapters dedicated to such influences as Chekhov and Chris Marker, this lyrical documentary travels from New York to Moscow, to Istanbul and beyond, capturing street protests and snowfalls, subway buskers and cemeteries. – via IFC Center
PARTING GLANCES – Playing in the Indie 80s Series
Bill Sherwood // BAM – 7:30 p.m., 9:30 p.m.
This marvelously witty, compassionate snapshot of Manhattan’s 1980s gay community was one of the first films ever to lend a human face to the HIV crisis. New York City couple Michael (Ganoung) and Robert (Bolger) grapple with the emotional fallout of their impending separation and the illness of a friend (Buscemi, memorable in his first major role) dying of AIDS. – via BAM
THE THIRD MAN — One of the Most Important Works in Cinematic History
Carol Reed // Film Forum – 12:30 p.m., 2:40 p.m., 4:50 p.m., 7:10 p.m., 9:20 p.m.
In rubble-strewn postwar Vienna, its occupation divided among four powers, Joseph Cotten’s pulp Wester writer Holly Martins arrives to meet up with his old friend Harry Lime, only to find that he’s dead — or is he? And as the supremely naïve Cotten, a monoglot stranger in a strange land, descends through the levels of deception, and as he discovers his own friend’s corruption, the moral choices loom. A triumph of atmosphere — with its Vienna locations (including the gigantic Riesenrad ferris wheel and the dripping sewers), its tilted camera angels, its Robert Krasker-shot shadows, and Anton Karas’s unforgettable zither theme — and with its stars in perhaps their most iconic roles: bereted Trevor Howard at his most Britishly military; Alida Valli, here truly enigmatic and Garboesque; and Welles’ Harry Lime, arriving in one of the greatest star entrances ever, and adding the famous “cuckoo clock” speech to Greene’s original script, with the whole topped by its legendary, almost endlessly drawn-out finale shot. – via Film Forum
***WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5***
TRUE LOVE – Playing in the Indie 80s Series
Nancy Savoca // BAM – 4:30 p.m., 9:30 p.m.
Marriage, Bronx style: Italian-American couple Michael (Eldard) and Donna (Sciorra) endure a rocky road to the altar—with plenty of interference from their colorful families—in this brash, raucous anti-romantic comedy. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival, True Love is hilarious and wise in its brutally honest depiction of not-quite-fairy-tale love. – via BAM
ROPE – Playing in the True Crime Series
Alfred Hitchcock // Film Forum – 12:30 p.m., 4:00 p.m., 7:30 p.m.
Hitchcock’s boldest technical experiment ever, told in a claustrophobic single set, as a murder by effete, thrill-seeking rich boys Farley Granger and John Dall (as characters clearly based on Leopold and Loeb) is exposed by Professor James Stewart. Shot in continuously moving ten-minute takes, with mid-reel cuts cleverly masked, the entire film seems to be composed of only four shots (count ‘em), causing as much suspense on the set as for the audience. – via Film Forum
MEAN STREETS – Playing in the Scorsese Screens Film Exhibition
Martin Scorsese // MoMA – 8:00 p.m.
Mostly set in Little Italy, where Scorsese grew up, Mean Streets presents the neighborhood as a self-contained world, offering its denizens no escape from the tangled warren of tenements. The story of Charlie (Keitel), a young second-generation Italian American torn between making good in his family’s crime realm and escaping to a better life, is equal parts character study and, as Scorsese would later observe, anthropological tract. Peter Strausfeld designed the monochromatic woodcut-style poster for the Academy Cinema in London, where he designed custom posters from 1947 to 1980. – via MoMA
PAYDIRT – A Time Capsule of 1980s-era Portland Shot at an Actual Marijuana Field
Penny Allen // BAM – 7:00 p.m.
Cash-strapped Oregon winemakers turn to growing pot in order to finance their vineyard in this low-key thriller. Unsung director and environmental activist Penny Allen (who gave Gus Van Sant his first film credit doing sound on her 1979 feature Property) directs this time capsule of 1980s-era Portland shot at an actual marijuana field. – via BAM
SWOON – A Moody, B&W Treatment of the Leopold & Loeb Case
Tom Kalin // Film Forum – 2:10 p.m., 5:40 p.m., 9:10 p.m.
“My blood froze in my heart.” Moody, b&w treatment of the Leopold & Loeb case, replete with studied anachronisms,
and expressionistic touches, as well as putting the pair’s sexuality, unlike other versions, front and center: the lovers in their bed in the middle of the courtroom. – via Film Forum
***THURSDAY, AUGUST 6***
THE TALES OF HOFFMANN – Playing in the Scorsese Screens Exhibition
Martin Scorsese // MoMA – 7:00 p.m.
With its elegant overlay of images and curving typography that recalls the outstretched limbs of a ballerina, the large-format poster for The Tales of Hoffmann, designed by Marc Stone, is a centerpiece of Scorsese Collects. The film, an eye-popping cinematic translation of Jacques Offenbach’s opera, is equally remarkable. The mise-en-scène is everywhere resplendent, from the stage design to the extravagant costuming. Powell and Pressburger’s treatment of these fantastical stories—about an uncanny automaton, a seductive courtesan, and a soprano who sings herself to death—was hugely important to Scorsese, who watched the film repeatedly while cutting Raging Bull. “The music and choreography are both the dancers and the camera, which told the story,” Scorsese observed, “and this is something that stayed with me in my work over the years, in all my films the choreography of the camera played to the music and how the two are combined, complementary to each other.” – via MoMA
BLESS THEIR LITTLE HEARTS – An Unsentimental Portrait of an African-American Family Buckling Under the Strain of Financial Hardship
Billy Woodberry // BAM – 7:00 p.m., 9:30 p.m.
Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep) scripted and lensed this heartrendingly naturalistic drama directed by fellow UCLA film school and LA Rebellion comrade Billy Woodberry. Shot in moody black and white and set to a plaintive jazz soundtrack, this unsentimental portrait of an African-American family buckling under the strain of financial hardship manages to find quiet grace in everyday moments. – via BAM
The post The 15 Best Films Playing in New York This Week: Scorsese, Hitchcock, Petzold + More appeared first on BlackBook.