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WELCOME TO METROGRAPH — A TO Z: PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID

Kris Kristofferson and James Coburn get involved in a violent bromance in Sam Peckinpah Western

PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Tuesday, December 27, 2:45, 8:30
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

The “Welcome to Metrograph: A to Z” series continues December 27 with the 122-minute “preview” director’s cut of Sam Peckinpah’s convoluted but compellingly curious Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. The film is based on the real-life story of the two gunslingers; the former a sheriff who dedicates his life to tracking down and killing the latter, a kind of folk hero to the locals. Written by Rudy Wurlitzer (Two-Lane Blacktop, Walker), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a strange bromance flavored with colonialism, misogyny, and patriarchy, featuring lots of bloody violence. Unsurprisingly and disturbingly, nearly every female character is either a prostitute or a potential rape victim (or both). The relationship between the clean-shaven Kristofferson (Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea) and Coburn (The Magnificent Seven, The President’s Analyst) is never properly established, somewhere between friends and enemies — the respect they have for each other is confusing — and the plot jumps around way too much. Meanwhile, among the films it evokes today is Brokeback Mountain, although that might not have quite been the director’s point.

Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs) casts the film with myriad cameos and small roles played by familiar faces, if not necessarily familiar names, and they’re worth pointing out here: Jason Robards, Harry Dean Stanton, Slim Pickens, Jack Elam, Chill Wills, John Beck, Charles Martin Smith, Richard Bright, Barry Sullivan, Richard Jaeckel, R. G. Armstrong, Katy Jurado, Matt Clark, Paul Fix, Luke Askew, Rutanya Alda, L. Q. Jones, Jack Dodson, Emilio Fernández, and Rita Coolidge, who married Kristofferson in 1973. However, the best casting is Bob Dylan as the smirking Alias, an oddball who says very little while remaining close to the action. Dylan also wrote the Grammy-winning soundtrack, which is anchored by the classic Western dirge “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Dylan sums up the mood of the film in “Billy 1,” singing, “They say that Pat Garrett’s got your number / So sleep with one eye open when you slumber / Every little sound just might be thunder / Thunder from the barrel of his gun.” In addition, Dylan is involved in the best exchange of dialogue in the picture. After getting his hair done, Garrett asks Alias, “Who are you?” to which Alias replies, “That’s a good question.” If you’ve only seen the studio-butchered 106-minute version, you’re in for a treat, as this cut is much better, though it’s still far from Peckinpah’s best. A 35mm print is screening at Metrograph on December 27 at 2:45 and 8:30; the alphabetical “Welcome to Metrograph” series continues this month with such other “P” flicks as Paper Moon, Performance, Point Blank, Punch-Drunk Love, and Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.

PATERSON

Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani star as a happy New Jersey couple in Jim Jarmusch’s PATERSON

PATERSON (Jim Jarmusch, 2016)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Opens Tuesday, December 27
212-330-8182
www.landmarktheatres.com
www.bleeckerstreetmedia.com

Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson is a beautifully poetic, deceptively simple wonder about the beauty, poetry, and wonderful simplicity of life, an ode to the little things that make every day special and unique. Adam Driver stars as Paterson, a New Jersey Transit bus driver and poet who lives in Paterson with his girlfriend, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), who spends much of her time decorating their small, quaint house, painting black and white circles and lines on curtains, couches, dishes, walls, and even her clothing, continually creating works of art out of nearly everything she comes into contact with. The film takes place over an ordinary week for the sweet-natured couple, who are very much in love, each allowing the other the freedom to explore who they are and offering their complete support. Every morning, Paterson wakes up around 6:12, as the sunlight streaks over their sleeping bodies. He checks his Casio wristwatch to confirm the time — he doesn’t use an alarm clock, nor does he own a cell phone or a computer — then snuggles closer with Laura for a few extra minutes. He eats Cheerios out of a bowl painted by Laura with circles that match the shape of the cereal. He studies a matchbook, which becomes the starting point for his next poem. Lunchbox in hand, he walks to the Market St. garage and gets on board the 23 bus. He writes a few lines of poetry, listens to fellow bus driver Donny’s (Rizwan Manji) daily complaints, then heads out on his route through his hometown, picking up pieces of some very funny passenger conversations. For lunch he sits on a bench overlooking the Paterson Great Falls and composes more mostly non-rhyming lines in his “Secret Notebook,” which he will not show anyone but Laura. At quitting time, he walks home, checks the mail, fixes the tilted mailbox, sees what new art Laura has created, and takes their English bulldog, Marvin (Nellie, who won the Palm Dog at Cannes and passed away two weeks after shooting concluded), for a walk after dark, stopping for a beer and chatting with bar owner Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley). He then goes back home, ready to do it all over again the next day. But Paterson is no bored working-class suburbanite living out a dreary routine; he finds something new and special in every moment, from his job to his relationship to his nightly trips to the bar. Every day is different from the one before, Jarmusch celebrating those variations that make life such a joy.

Adam Driver plays a poetic New Jersey Transit bus driver named Paterson in PATERSON

Set to a subtle electronic score by Sqürl, Jarmusch and Carter Logan’s band, Paterson is a gorgeous film, lovingly photographed by Frederick Elmes, who captured a very different kind of town in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, and edited to the sweet rhythm of a basic existence by Affonso Gonçalves. Paterson’s poems were written by award-winning poet Ron Padgett, who, like Jarmusch, studied with Kenneth Koch; the works, which unfold day by day, include the previously published “Love Poem” (a tribute to Ohio Blue Tip Matches and love), “Glow,” “Pumpkin,” and “Poem” as well as three written specifically for the film, “Another One,” “The Run,” and “The Line.” The words appear on the screen in a font based on Driver’s handwriting as he narrates them in voiceover. (Among the other poets referenced in the film are Frank O’Hara, Wallace Stevens, Petrarch, and Emily Dickinson.) The film is also very much about duality and pairs, which Jarmusch has said in interviews was not always intentional. Adam Driver, who served in the Marines, plays a driver and former Marine named Paterson who lives and works in Paterson. He is constantly seeing twins, from two brothers named Sam and Dave (Trevor and Troy Parham) to two young girls on his bus to two older men on a bench. While Paterson and Laura seem meant to be together, their happiness infectious, he looks on every night as Everett (William Jackson Harper) desperately pleads with Marie (Chasten Harmon) to take him back. At the bar, Paterson often speaks to Doc about the pictures on the wall of fame, photos about such native sons as Uncle Floyd and his brother, Jimmy Vivino, as well as local superstar Lou Costello, part of one of the most popular comedy duos ever with Bud Abbott, who was born in Asbury Park (and thus does not qualify for the wall). Paterson’s favorite poet is lifelong New Jersey-ite William Carlos Williams, who Laura playfully refers to as Carlos Williams Carlos. (In making the film, Jarmusch was inspired by one of Williams’s most popular phrases, “No ideas but in things.”) And when Paterson’s not encountering twins, he’s bumping into random poets (Sterling Jerins, Method Man, Masatoshi Nagase) during his walks. Paterson is a poetic marvel all its own, a dazzling film about love and harmony, about finding creativity in every aspect of life, led by marvelous performances by Driver and Farahani and written and directed by a master of cinematic restraint. Paterson opens December 27 at the Landmark Sunshine, with Jarmusch participating in a Q&A following the 7:15 show on December 30.

GOING STEADI — 40 YEARS OF STEADICAM: AFTER HOURS

Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) nightmare starts innocently enough while reading Henry Millers Tropic of Cancer in a diner in AFTER HOURS

Paul Hackett’s (Griffin Dunne) nightmare starts innocently enough while reading Henry Miller’s TROPIC OF CANCER in a coffee shop in AFTER HOURS

AFTER HOURS (Martin Scorsese, 1985)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Sunday, December 25, 6:00, and Monday, January 2, 9:15
Series runs through January 3
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.org

“We are all alone here and we are dead,” Henry Miller writes in the first paragraph of Tropic of Cancer, which is the book narcissistic word processor Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) is reading in a New York City coffee shop, catapulting him into a harrowing downtown nightmare in Martin Scorsese’s brilliant horror comedy, After Hours. Dunne, in one of his two best roles — the other was in John Landis’s very different horror comedy, 1981’s An American Werewolf in London — is exceptional as Hackett, a stand-in for the proverbial everyman seeking safety and home but bedeviled by circumstance, again and again and again. At the coffee shop, Hackett meets charming but unpredictable Marcy Franklin (Roseanna Arquette), who invites him over to her friend’s loft in SoHo. It’s already late, but the titillated Upper East Sider decides to takes a cab downtown; however, the last of his money, a twenty-dollar bill, literally flies out the window as his taxi driver (Larry Block) speeds like a madman through the mean streets of Manhattan. These eighties days predate ATMs, cashback, and Ubers, and Hackett spends the rest of his very long night encountering a bizarre cast of characters, none of whom seems able to give him the fifty-three cents he needs to cover the new subway fare of $1.50, which rose suddenly at midnight, plunging him into after-hours chaos. Among those he meets are kinky sculptor Kiki Bridges (Linda Fiorentino) and her sadist lover, Horst (Will Patton); lonely cocktail waitress and sixties leftover Julie (Teri Garr); helpful bartender Tom (John Heard); possible thieves Neil (Cheech Marin) and Pepe (Tommy Chong); ice-cream-truck driver Gail (Catherine O’Hara); and lonely lady June (Verna Bloom). Not the best judge of character, at least partly because he’s not exactly a sympathetic listener, the Yuppie-ish Hackett is soon running through the streets of SoHo in the rain, chased by an angry vigilante mob.

Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) has plenty to scream about after meeting sculptor Kiki Bridges (Linda Fiorentino) in Martin Scorsese’s brilliant black comedy

Written as a film-school project by Joseph Minion and inspired by Joe Frank’s monologue “Lies” (which led to a plagiarism battle), After Hours is shot in a modern noir style by regular Scorsese cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (Goodfellas, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Departed). Much of the film takes place in dark rooms and spaces; at one point, inside the S&M Berlin Club, Scorsese himself, in a cameo as a stage tech, shines a spotlight right into the camera, temporarily blinding the viewer. The many dichotomies in the film range from light and dark to uptown/downtown to fire and water; there are multiple references to fire and burns, as if Paul is trapped in a kind of hell, and it is often raining as he tries to find a way out. Paul’s metaphorical impotency is also a major theme; he keeps meeting women who are sexually attracted to him, but just as he can’t get north of SoHo, he has no luck in various bedrooms, for various reasons. In a bathroom, he sees a drawing of a shark chomping on an erect penis, and it’s no coincidence that Gail drives a Mr. Softee truck. The film also features cameos by character actors Clarence Felder as a bouncer, Dick Miller, Rocco Sisto, and Victor Argo as diner and coffee-shop employees, and Bronson Pinchot as Paul’s ambitious coworker, while the fab score ranges from Mozart and Bach to Joni Mitchell, the Monkees, Bad Brains, and Peggy Lee. A ferocious, fast-paced fantasia about abject loneliness, pretentious art, and the ever-present prospect of death, After Hours is screening December 25 and January 2 at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Going Steadi: 40 Years of Steadicam,” which consists of twenty-nine films that feature the use of the Steadicam, invented by Garrett Brown and first used in 1976 in Hal Ashby’s Bound for Glory; the Steadicam operator for After Hours was one of the masters, Larry McConkey (Goodfellas, The Silence of the Lambs, Kill Bill). The series runs through January 3 and also includes Goodfellas, Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and The Shining, Warren Beatty’s Bulworth, Bertrand Tavernier’s Coup de Torchon, Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights and Magnolia.

FROM CORALINE TO KUBO — THE MAGIC OF LAIKA: CORALINE IN 3-D

Coraline finds a doorway to another dimension in film adapted from popular children’s book

CORALINE IN 3-D (Henry Selick, 2009)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Saturday, December 24, and Sunday, December 25, 12 noon
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.coraline.com

Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) is an adventurous eleven-year-old in search of some fun and excitement in her new creaky home in Oregon. She finds just what she thinks she was looking for when a rodent introduces her to a hidden passageway that leads to an alternate universe, where replicas of her parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) are more interested in her and give her whatever she wants. However, this button-eyed Other Mother and Other Father have other plans for her and her real family as well. Written and directed by Henry Selick, Coraline lacks the frantic, nonstop energy of his breakthrough film, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, but it is still a fun, creepy trip down the Narnia-esque rabbit hole. Combining his trademark stop-motion animation (James and the Giant Peach) with breathtaking stereoscopic 3-D that adds remarkable depth to the images, Selick does a marvelous job bringing to life the popular children’s novel by Newbery Medal–winning author Neil Gaiman (Sandman), who wrote the book for his young daughters. (Full disclosure: In another part of our life, we work for the company that publishes Gaiman’s children’s books, including Coraline.) The supporting cast of characters includes former music-hall divas Miss Spink and Miss Forcible (the Absolutely Fabulous British comedy team of Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French), the wise Cat (Keith David), mouse circus leader Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane), and local boy Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey Jr.), who was created specifically for the movie. Be sure to stick around for one last cool 3-D effect at the end of the credits. Coraline is screening on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at 12 noon, concluding the Metrograph series “From Coraline to Kubo: The Magic of LAIKA,” consisting of four 3-D films featuring animation by LAIKA studios in Oregon.

KUROSAWA & MIFUNE: THE BAD SLEEP WELL

Nishi (Toshirô Mifune) is desperate for revenge in Akira Kurosawa’s dark Shakespearean noir, THE BAD SLEEP WELL

WEEKEND CLASSICS: THE BAD SLEEP WELL (悪い奴ほどよく眠る) (Akira Kurosawa, 1960)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
December 23-27, 11:00 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

IFC Center’s eleven-film Weekend Classics series “Kurosawa & Mifune” comes to a close Christmas weekend with one of the pair’s underseen best, the Shakespearean noir, The Bad Sleep Well. The twelfth of sixteen films director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshirô Mifune made together between 1948 and 1965, The Bad Sleep Well is a tense, gripping thriller in which Kurosawa takes on post-WWII Japanese corporate culture, incorporating elements of Hamlet into the complex narrative. The 1960 film begins with a long wedding scene in which everything is set in motion, from identifying characters (and their flaws) to developing the central storylines. Kōichi Nishi (Mifune) is marrying Yoshiko (Kyōko Kagawa), a young woman with a physical disability whose father is Iwabuchi (Masayuki Mori), the vice president of Public Corporation, a construction company immersed in financial scandal as related by one of the many cynical reporters (Kōji Mitsui) covering the party and anticipating possible arrests. Also at the affair are Iwabuchi’s cohorts in crime, Miura (Gen Shimizu), Moriyama (Takashi Shimura), Shirai (Kō Nishimura), and Wada (Kamatari Fujiwara), as well as Iwabuchi’s rogue son, Tatsuo (Tatsuya Mihashi), who threatens to kill Nishi if he does anything to hurt his sister. It soon becomes clear that Nishi in fact does have more on his mind than just marrying into the company. “Even now they sleep soundly, grins on their faces,” Nishi declares. “I won’t stand for it! I can never hate them enough!”

Akira Kurosawa on set at the abandoned munitions factory in THE BAD SLEEP WELL

Photographed in an enveloping, almost 3-D black-and-white by Yuzuru Aizawa and with a propulsive, jazzy score by Masaru Sato, The Bad Sleep Well is a deeply psychological, eerie tale that finds inspiration in the story of Hamlet, Polonius, Ophelia, Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and Horatio. But whereas Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and Ran were more direct interpretations of Macbeth and King Lear, respectively, Kurosawa, who edited the film and cowrote it with Hideo Oguni, Eijirô Hisaita, Ryûzô Kikushima, and Shinobu Hashimoto, uses the Shakespeare tragedy more subtly as he investigates greed, envy, revenge, betrayal, suicide, torture, ghosts, and murder; in fact, many critical plot points, including those involving violence, occur offscreen. The locations are spectacular, especially a volcano and an abandoned, decimated munitions factory that clearly references the destruction wrought by WWII. The actors wear their hearts on their sleeves, often emoting with silent-film tropes, especially Shimura, Fujiwara, and Nishimura as Iwabuchi’s nervous, perpetually worried underlings and Mihashi as the wild, unpredictable prodigal son. Mifune is stalwart throughout, wearing pristine suits and eyeglasses that mask what is bubbling inside him, threatening to explode, while Mori is a magnificently evil villain. At 150 minutes, it’s a long film, but it’s worth every minute; it could have actually been longer, but Kurosawa, in his first film made through his own independent production company, instead chose an abrupt yet fascinating ending with all kinds of future implications. Made between the period piece The Hidden Fortress and the samurai Western Yojimbo, The Bad Sleep Well was advertised as “a film that will violently jolt the paralyzed soul of modern man back to its senses,” and it still does just that, as corporate corruption seems to never end. Oh, and it also features one of the best wedding cakes ever put on celluloid.

CHRISTMAS DAY: GENE WILDER MARATHON

Gene Wilder is centerpiece of Christmas and Hanukkah celebration at the JCC on December 25

JCC in Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th St.
Sunday, December 25, 12 noon – 6:00, $7 per film, $18 for all three
646-505-4444
www.jccmanhattan.org

Six years ago, comic legend Gene Wilder was at the JCC in Manhattan, being interviewed by his wife, Karen Boyer, about his latest book, What Is This Thing Called Love? The star of stage and screen passed away on August 29 of this year, at the age of eighty-three, and the JCC is paying tribute to the man born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee with a Christmas Day marathon featuring three of his best films. The celebration begins at 12 noon with Mel Stuart’s 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, the beloved classic based on Roald Dahl’s beloved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Wilder plays candy baron Willy Wonka, who has decided to retire and give his company to a child who passes all the necessary tests during a fantastical visit to his factory. That will be followed at 2:00 by one of the funniest movies ever made, Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles, in which Wilder portrays the washed-up Waco Kid, an alcoholic gunslinger who is brought back to life when a new sheriff (Cleavon Little) comes to the racist town of Rock Ridge; the all-star cast also includes Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, Alex Karras, Slim Pickens, Dom DeLuise, John Hillerman, David Huddleston, and Rodney Allen Rippy. At 4:00, the festival continues with another comic Western, Robert Aldrich’s underseen, underrated 1979 charmer, The Frisco Kid, with Wilder starring as Avram Belinski, a Jewish immigrant from Poland who partners up with bank robber Tommy Lillard (Harrison Ford) on his way from Philly to San Francisco to serve as a rabbi. The afternoon concludes at 6:00 with a Hanukkah candle lighting and sufganiyot, special jelly donuts that are a Hanukkah treat.

RIDE THE CYCLONE

Six recently deceased characters battle over a possible return to life in RIDE THE CYCLONE (photo by Joan Marcus)

MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theatre
121 Christopher St. between Bleecker & Hudson Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 29, $69-$125
212-352-3101
www.mcctheater.org

When I first heard that the new musical Ride the Cyclone was coming to New York City, I could not have been more excited. I’ve been riding the 1927 Coney Island landmark for decades and still make sure to go at least once every summer. But as I sat in the Lucille Lortel Theater one recent Saturday afternoon, it quickly became apparent that this show has nothing to do with the Brooklyn seaside wooden roller coaster that Charles Lindbergh claimed was more thrilling than flying across the Atlantic. However, I very shortly found myself fully immersed in this MCC production — only the third musical in the company’s thirty-year history — about five members of the Saint Cassian High School Chamber Choir from Uranium, Saskatchewan, who are killed in a tragic accident while riding a roller coaster known as the Cyclone at an unnamed Canadian amusement park. Caught up in a kind of purgatorial way station, Ocean (Tiffany Tatreau), Noel (Kholby Wardell), Constance (Lillian Castillo), Misha (Gus Halper), and Ricky (Spring Awakening’s Alex Wyse, the only cast member not part of the original Chicago Shakespeare Theater production) are not sure what happened to them, but they are assured by mechanical fortune-teller Karnak (Karl Hamilton) that they are indeed dead, and that because he did not warn them of the impending danger, he will offer one of them the chance to return to life. They are joined by Jane Doe (Emily Rohm), a creepy, ghostly girl who is more like her doll than a human; meanwhile, Karnak is counting down the hours of his own existence, as a rather large rat is gnawing through his electrical wiring. Each of the youngsters get their moment to shine, performing a solo that reveals their problems along with their hopes and dreams, dealing with such teen angst as homosexuality, overcoming physical disabilities, being a compulsive overachiever, shame, and finding one’s place in the world, each song delivered in a different genre, from glam rock to hip-hop to sentimental balladry. The cast might sing, “It’s just a ride,” but it’s so much more than that.

The Saint Cassian High School Chamber Choir look to the light in MCC production at the Lucille Lortel (photo by Joan Marcus)

The show has been around since 2008, when it was a cabaret song cycle inspired by mass shooting deaths, including the murder of show cocreator Jacob Richmond’s sister, Rachel, while she was trying to protect a teenager outside a Vancouver club; it is now a multimedia extravaganza, with Scott Davis’s haunted, abandoned amusement park set, Theresa Ham’s spot-on appropriate costumes, Mike Tutaj’s intimate, tongue-in-cheek projections, Greg Hofmann’s blazing lighting, and Garth Helm’s all-pervasive sound. Director and choreographer Rachel Rockwell never lets things slow down, as if the audience is riding a psychological roller coaster, while Brooke Maxwell and Richmond’s book, music, and lyrics cleverly play with genre clichés, avoiding turning the plot into The Breakfast Club while beautifully defining each character with such numbers as “This Song Is Awesome,” “What the World Needs Is People Like Me,” “Space Age Bachelor Man,” and “Take a Look Around.” The energetic cast is a delight, each actor glorying in their spotlight, but additional kudos go to Rohm, whose operatic voice soars throughout the theater. (The musical supervision is by Doug Peck, with musical direction by Remy Kurs.) MCC has extended Ride the Cyclone through December 29, but Richmond is considering keeping it going, perhaps transferring to another theater. As Ocean sings, “I know this dream of life is never-ending / It goes around and round and round again.” It might not be about the Coney Island Cyclone, but this ride is still one well worth taking.