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,” according to Tom Robbins, but a weekend is still a weekend. The pleasure of a Friday night, the knowing the burdens of work week have a brief respite carry themselves into the following two days of leisure, and what better way to indulge in that leisure than heading to the cinema.
And this weekend, there are more than enough wonderful films showing around New York for you to disappear into. Whether you’re in the mood for your favorite Kubrick or Truffaut, the essential Spike Lee, or The Beatles, surely something to satisfy every cinematic appetite. I’ve rounded up the best of what’s playing around the city, so peruse our list, and enjoy.
***FRIDAY, JULY 4***
A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, Richard Lester
Film Forum
“Just another day in the life: fleeing from screaming fans at a train stations, contending with a “very clean” grandfather, jamming in a baggage car, cavorting in a field, wandering by a river, weirding out knotted-browed reporters with absurdist comebacks, wowing crowds at an orgasmic final concert — the Beatles’ film debut rocketed them to another level beyond the latest pop faces as even squarely middle-aged critics, their knives sharpened for yet another schlocky teen idol exploiter, were disarmed into grudging hosannas. Q. Tell me, how do you find America? John: Turn left at Greenland. Director Richard Lester melded his mastery of commercials with New Wave techniques in a semi-documentary style that created something new — and since endlessly imitated — along with Alun Owen’s screenplay in which scripted oneliners and the occasional ad-lib blend seamlessly, thanks, of course, to the exuberant, anarchic personalities of the Fab Four themselves. Q: What would you call that hairstyle? George: Arthur. And those songs just keep on coming: “I Should Have Known Better,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “All My Loving,” “I’m Happy Just to Dance With You,” “She Loves You,” and the title song, inspired by a chance remark by Ringo and written overnight by Lennon and McCartney after filming was completed.”
READ MORE
I’M THE SAME, I’M AN OTHER, Caroline Strubbe
MoMA
“A young man and a little girl—their relationship intense but unclear—make their way from the Flemish coast to a deserted, out of season English coastal resort in the second part of Strubbe’s trilogy-in-progress. The brightness and agitation of the first installment here give way to a contemplative stillness, as the two characters, bound by events neither can speak of, search for ways to re-enter the world of the living.”
READ MORE
SUMMER OF SAM, Spike Lee
BAM
“Lee’s portrait of NYC in the summer of 1977—when Reggie Jackson led the Yankees, disco blared from stereos, the sexual revolution was in full swing, and a killer named Son of Sam gripped the city in fear. Lee’s rich work explores how paranoia infects a community, creating a lynch mob mentality that leads to finger pointing at outsiders and misfits.”
READ MORE
SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT, Spike Lee
BAM
“Lee’s fearless feature debut (shot largely in Fort Greene) took the world by storm by appropriating the indie sex comedy, à la Woody Allen, to address black sexuality. A watershed independent film of the 1980s, She’s Gotta Have It was radical for its concern with a demographic hitherto unrepresented on screen: the cosmopolitan black female.”
READ MORE
RUSSIAN ARK, Alexander Sokurov
IFC Center
“A superior Sokurov feature, and not only for its extraordinarily virtuoso mise-en-scène. Digitally shot in a single continuous take, it wanders around St Petersburg’s Hermitage, taking in the building, its furnishings and objets d’art, and a host of characters, historical and contemporary, both named (Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Nicholas, Alexandra, Anastasia) and anonymous, while pondering the Russian soul and its ambivalent relationship with Europe. As the unseen film-maker and a 19th century French diplomat guide us on our journey through space and time, it’s hard not to be distracted by thoughts of how it was all choreographed, but a magnificent ball scene and the final poignant departure manage to work their magic.” – Time Out (London)
READ MORE
NOTHING BAD CAN HAPPEN, Katrin Gebbe
IFC Center
“Inspired by atrocious true events, Nothing Bad Can Happen follows Tore, a young lost soul involved with an underground Christian punk movement who falls in with a dysfunctional family curious to test his seemingly unwavering faith. After a chance encounter helping Benno, a stranded driver and managing to help start his car again in what appears to be a miracle, Tore is invited back to his home and becomes friendly with him, his wife and two kids. Before long, Tore moves in and gradually becomes part of his family. However, Benno can’t resist playing a cruel game, designed to challenge Tore’s beliefs. As his trials become more and more extreme, Tore finds his capacity for love and resilience pushed to its limits, and beyond.”
READ MORE
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, Alain Resnais
IFC Center
“This radical experiment in film form by director Alain Resnais and screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet was a surprising commercial success in 1961, even in the U.S., and it’s been a rallying point for the possibilities of formal filmmaking ever since. A highly seductive parable about seduction, it’s set in and around a baroque European chateau/hotel, where the nameless hero (Giorgio Albertazzi) tries to persuade the nameless heroine (Delphine Seyrig) that they met the previous year. Shot by Sacha Vierny in otherworldly black-and-white ‘Scope, it oscillates ambiguously between past, present, and various conditional tenses, mixing memory and fantasy, fear and desire. The overall tone is poker-faced parody of lush Hollywood melodrama, yet the film’s dreamlike cadences, frozen tableaux, and distilled surrealist poetry are too eerie, too terrifying even, to be shaken off as camp. For all its notoriety, this masterpiece among masterpieces has never really received its due.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum
READ MORE
HIGH NOON, Fred Zinnemann
IFC Center
“A Western of stark, classical lineaments: Cooper, still mysteriously beautiful in ravaged middle-age, plays a small town marshal who lays life and wife on the line to confront a killer set free by liberal abolitionists from the North. Waiting for the murderer’s arrival on the midday train, he enters a long and desolate night of the soul as the heat gathers, his fellow-citizens scatter, and it grows dark, dark, dark amid the blaze of noon. Writer Carl Foreman, who fetched up on the HUAC blacklist, leaves it open whether the marshal is making a gesture of sublime, arrogant futility – as his bride (Kelly), a Quaker opposed to violence, believes – or simply doing what a man must. High Noon won a fistful of Oscars, but in these days of pasteboard screen machismo, it’s worth seeing simply as the anatomy of what it took to make a man before the myth turned sour.” – Time Out (London)
READ MORE
THE SEXUALIST, Kemal Hurulu
Nitehawk Cinema
“The Sexualist chronicles the production of part-time astrologist Jeffrey Montclair’s latest nudie movie. Jumping between self-parody and bizarre screwball antics, and complete with a ‘gay gorilla,’ director Kemal Horulu’s mind-bending satire of the sex film industry serves as a textbook example of oddball, experimental filmmaking from the earliest years of hardcore feature films.”
READ MORE
JAWS, Steven Spielberg
Nitehawk Cinema
“Steven Spielberg’s glorious Jaws is the film that defined the blockbuster and has made generations of movie-goers terrified of going into the water. When a giant great white sharks swims into the town of Amityville during the fourth of july holiday and begins munching on vacationers, it sets off a battle on both land and in the sea. The first half of Jaws is the struggle of New Yorker sheriff Brody is get the mayor on board that a man-eating shark is cause enough to close the beach. The second half is an adventurous boat trip with Brody, marine biologist “city hands” Hopper, and gruff fisherman “chalkboard” Quint as they battle the shark on its own turf. In between, you get a lot of intensely scary moments. Trust us, you’ll never forget the first time you see that shark pop out of the water on the big screen!”
READ MORE
LIFE ITSELF, Steve James
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
“As filming began at a Chicago-area hospital, Roger Ebert had long since lost the ability to speak (a 2006 operation left him without much of his jaw). But he was, regardless, a most willing participant in this emotional portrait of a life spent in cinema. This doc, made by fellow Chicagoan Steve James (whose earlier work was famously championed by Ebert), chronicles Ebert’s professional ascent from old-school newspaperman to the most famous and influential film critic of his time. Ebert’s early story, with passages taken directly from his 2011 best-selling memoir from which the film gets its title, is intercut with material shot at the hospital during the final four months of his life. It is these scenes, intimate and unflinching, that provide context for a life most wonderfully lived.”
READ MORE
THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES, Roy Ward Baker
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
“Shaw Brothers wanted to rule the world in 1974, and stage one in their plan for global domination was to team up with Hammer Studios, England’s House of Horror, and make a kung-fu vampire movie. Starring Peter Cushing as Van Helsing the vampire hunter, and Shaw Brothers icon David Chiang as his Chinese counterpart, this Saturday matinee horror hybrid was co-directed by Chang Cheh (uncredited; The One-Armed Swordsman) and Roy Ward Baker (Quatermass and the Pit). The story is basic: Dracula is sucking the blood of virgins and turning large chunks of the Chinese countryside into devastated, nightmarish wastelands. Cushing and Chiang team up and head into the heart of darkness to kick Dracula to death. That’s it. But it’s the way the story is told that stands out. Hammer turns its gothic gaze to China, and gives us a cobwebbed creep-scape of deserted villages, abandoned cemeteries, and shadowy shrines where golden-masked vampires flit through the night, feasting on a terrified populace in this gloomy, moody, surreal nightmare of endless undead cannibalism.”
READ MORE
__________________________________________________
***SATURDAY, JULY 5***
HAN GONG-JU, Su-Jin Lee
MoMA
“We’re introduced, in medias res, to the titular teen Han Gong-Ju as she’s being shuffled from meeting to meeting, in attempts to settle into a new city, a new school, and a new life. A sense of past trouble or tragedy hangs over her, though the film isn’t quick to reveal itself; Han Gong-Ju’s story eventually emerges—at times gently teased, at times brutally dragged forth. In his unusually brave debut feature, director Su-jin Lee handles both complex plotting and difficult subject matter with thoughtful sophistication.”
READ MORE
DO THE RIGHT THING, Spike Lee
BAM
In this landmark Brooklyn classic, the streets of Bed-Stuy boil and tensions run high on the hottest day of the year. Loaded with an amazing supporting cast (including Samuel L. Jackson, John Turturro, and Rosie Perez) and music by Public Enemy, Do the Right Thing swings effortlessly from satire to social commentary, and 25 years after its controversial release it remains an important cultural touchstone for a very different Brooklyn.
READ MORE
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Stanley Kubrick
Museum of the Moving Image
“As brilliantly engineered as the space program itself, Kubrick’s mysterious and profound epic—“the ultimate trip”—is about nothing less than the beauty and banality of civilization, blending cool satire, an elaborate vision of the future, and passages of avant-garde cinematic inventiveness.”
READ MORE
THE LOCKET, John Brahm
IFC Center
“One of the many émigrés to Hollywood who gave a distinctively Germanic twist to established genres, Brahm hit a winning streak of baroque melodramas in the mid-’40s which are all visually remarkable and emotionally supercharged. Virtually all action in The Locket is contained in the ever-receding flashbacks that present an imminent bride and ‘hopelessly twisted personality’ almost exclusively through the eyes of her past lovers. A psychodrama, definitely, complete with analyst, but strangely ambivalent about its own insights, right up to the mesmerising finale of the bride meeting her traumatic Calvary on her way up the aisle.” – Time Out (London)
READ MORE
GROUNDHOG DAY, Harold Ramis
IFC Center
“How would it feel to wake up to the same day every day? Would you crack up at the sheer tedium of it all? Cynically exploit others (they don’t know they’re trapped in a time warp) with what you learned about them the day before? Or use the situation to better yourself? That’s the dilemma facing misanthropic TV weatherman Phil Connors (Murray) when he once more visits the small town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania – ‘weather capital of the world’ – to report on its annual Groundhog Day ceremony. What’s so satisfying about Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis’ script – besides the sheer plethora of gags – is the way it rigorously covers every last nuance of Connors’ nightmarish predicament: he can drink himself legless without fear of the morning after, endlessly refine his chat-up lines, become an expert in 19th century French verse, but whatever he does he ends up back where he was on the dot of six. Ramis directs this surreal suburban fantasy with an admirably light touch, revelling in its absurd repetitions, surprising us with narrative ellipses, and allowing Murray ample space to indulge his special mix of sarcasm and smarm. But this is first and foremost a comedy of ideas, on which score it never falters.” – Time Out (London)
READ MORE
CITIZEN KANE, Orson Welles
IFC Center
“What can you say about the movie that taught you what movies were? The first time I saw Kane I discovered the existence of the director; the next dozen or so times taught me what he did—with lights and camera angles, cutting and composition, texture and rhythm… it is still the best place I know of to start thinking about Welles—or for that matter about movies in general.” – Dave Kehr
READ MORE
ZONE PRO SITE: THE MOVEABLE FEAST, Chen Yu-Hsun
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
“Hardcore food porn of the highest order, Zone Pro Site: The Movable Feast is Taiwan’s attempt to turn your stomach into a howling wasteland that cries out for FOOD! FOOD! FOOD! Failed actress Chan runs away to her hometown trying to stay a step ahead of debt collectors looking to recover the $900,000 she owes. When she gets back to the small town where she grew up she discovers that the only way to raise the cash she needs is to start catering out of her stepmother’s hole-in-the-wall restaurant, which leads her to enter a cooking contest with a $1 million prize. Of course, all that cash will go right into the pockets of the gangsters on her tail, but still… it’s that or wind up in pieces. Assisting her on her culinary quest are Doctor Gourmet, a wandering stud who helps people improve the taste of their dishes, and a series of street-stall chefs who used to be her dad’s competition. The result is a movie that’s as colorful as a bowl full of hard candies, an endless foodie feast that will have you gnawing on the stuffing from your seat cushion in hunger.”
READ MORE
THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN, Chang Cheh
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
“The movie that changed everything, The One-Armed Swordsman burst onto the scene in 1967 as riots swept the streets of Hong Kong and bombings pushed the city over the brink into chaos. Putting all that anger and fury on screen, the film tells the tale of a blue-collar swordsman who loses his arm to his master’s pampered teenage daughter when she has snit fit over not getting enough attention. He teaches himself a new one-armed technique using his own father’s broken sword and winds up slaughtering his way into immortality. Chang Cheh’s breakthrough film, with action by the legendary Lau Kar-leung (Drunken Master II) and Tong Kai and starring Jimmy Wang Yu, a man who can convey an entire encyclopedia’s worth of badassery with one glower, The One-Armed Swordsman still has the power to kick over the establishment and drop a blade right through its skull.”
READ MORE
__________________________________________________
***SUNDAY, JULY 6***
THE WIZARD OF OZ, Victor Fleming
BAM
“Entrenched in America’s cultural psyche for more than three-quarters of a century, MGM’s classic fairytale of jewel-toned fantasy lands and homes rediscovered remains the most-watched film in movie history. And with its breathtaking feats of Technicolor and a star-making performance by Judy Garland (not to mention the adorable antics of Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Bert Lahr), it’s easy to see why.”
READ MORE
MALCOLM X, Spike Lee
BAM
Denzel Washington gives an electrifying performance as the iconic human-rights activist in Lee’s sweeping biopic that charts the influential black nationalist’s ever-shifting identities and ideologies: from his troubled childhood and days as a small-time Harlem hoodlum to his spiritual awakening in prison and conversion to Islam. Crackling with a live-wire intensity and culminating in an appearance by Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X is no less than “one of the great screen biographies” (Roger Ebert).
READ MORE
TAPE, Richard Linklater
IFC Center
“This makes good on that old Dogme promise by discarding the crutches of conventional movie drama and concentrating on the raw essentials of character and story. It concerns former friends separated by time and career trajectories, reassembling on the edge of town for a reunion that soon turns sour. Stephen Belber’s play-turned-screenplay offers shades of Mamet and LaBute, but Linklater is as interested in its probing of subjectivity and severance as in the macho contention. Shot on dingy DV entirely within the motel room’s walls, yet tautly structured, resourcefully framed and vigorously performed, the result is neither drab nor theatrical, but credible and compelling.” – Time Out (London)
READ MORE
THE 400 BLOWS, François Truffaut
IFC Center
“François Truffaut’s first feature is also his most personal. Told through the eyes of Truffaut’s cinematic counterpart, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), THE 400 BLOWS sensitively re-creates the trials of Truffaut’s own childhood, unsentimentally portraying aloof parents, oppressive teachers, and petty crime. The film marked Truffaut’s passage from leading critic to trailblazing auteur of the French New Wave.” – Janus Films
READ MORE
BED AND BOARD, François Truffaut
IFC Center
“The fourth installment in François Truffaut’s chronicle of the ardent, anachronistic Antoine Doinel, Bed and Board plunges his hapless creation once again into crisis. Expecting his first child and still struggling to find steady employment, Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) involves himself in a relationship with a beautiful Japanese woman that threatens to destroy his marriage. Lightly comic, with a touch of the burlesque, Bed and Board is a bittersweet look at the travails of young married life and the fine line between adolescence and adulthood.” – Janus Films
READ MORE
LOVE ON THE RUN, François Truffaut
IFC Center
“Antoine Doinel strikes again! In the final chapter of François Truffaut’s saga, we find Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), now in his thirties, convivially concluding his marriage, enjoying moderate success as a novelist, and clinging to his romantic fantasies. The newly single Doinel finds a new object of his affections in Sabine, a record store salesgirl whom he pursues with the fervid belief that without love, one is nothing. Along the way, he renews his acquaintance with previous loves and confronts his own chaotic past. In Love on the Run, Antoine Doinel is still in love and because he’s still in love, he’s still alive.” – Janus Films
READ MORE
STOLEN KISSES, François Truffaut
IFC Center
“Jean-Pierre Léaud returns in the delightful STOLEN KISSES, the third installment in the Antoine Doinel series. It is now 1968, and the mischievous and perpetually love-struck Doinel has been dishonorably discharged from the army and released onto the streets of Paris, where he stumbles into the unlikely profession of private detective and embarks on a series of misadventures. Whimsical, nostalgic, and irrepressibly romantic, STOLEN KISSES is Truffaut’s timeless ode to the passion and impetuosity of youth.” – Janus Films
READ MORE
IRREVERSIBLE, Gaspar Noe
IFC Center
“A tour-de-force… Irreversible pitches you straight into the abyss, revealing Cassel pounded to a pulp and his assailant’s head staved in with a fire extinguisher; then it swivels into the past, negotiating the real-time agony of Bellucci being raped in an underpass, regressing ever backwards into the chaste light of earlier that day. Rest assured it all ends happily ever before. The title doesn’t merely toy with the idea of undoing time, corruption, ruin and such shackles; it also brandishes the suggestion that the film itself poses a cinematic breach, a taboo-torching dereliction of no return. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but there’s no denying Noé’s investment in the shock strategy of extreme realism, nor his virtuosity in the practice.” – Time Out (London)
READ MORE
THE CHINESE BOXER, Jimmy Wang Yu
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
“When you talk about movies that changed the world, The Chinese Boxer unquestionably has to take its place among them. Jimmy Wang Yu was already an established superstar in Hong Kong and Asia, but The Chinese Boxer, his first film as director, wasn’t just the first open-handed martial-arts film from Hong Kong to become a worldwide blockbuster, but its influence on all martial-arts films since, especially Bruce Lee’s, cannot be understated. And like many influential films, it remains a classic because it’s terrific, still incredibly exciting and fun, with fight scenes (including a fantastic climatic battle between Wang Yu and Lo Lieh) that are some of the best in movie history. The story may seem like a like bunch of clichés, filled with scenes you’ve seen in other movies, but keep in mind that this is the movie those films took it from. The Chinese Boxer is one of the true martial-arts classics, as amazing now as it was in 1970.”
READ MORE
The post 29 Films to See This Weekend: Kubrick, Truffaut, Spike Lee + More appeared first on BlackBook.