Political newcomer Bill McKay (Robert Redford) runs for the Senate in THE CANDIDATE
THE CANDIDATE (Michael Ritchie, 1972)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, July 23, 2:00, 7:00, 9:30
Series runs July 15 – August 3
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Four years before playing real-life Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward, who along with Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) blew the lid off the Watergate cover-up, in the Oscar-nominated All the President’s Men, Robert Redford found himself portraying the other side of the political spectrum, starring as a progressive legal aid lawyer who is chosen to run for the Senate in Michael Ritchie’s savvy, documentary-style film The Candidate. The Democratic Party needs someone to run against incumbent Republican Senator Crocker Jarmon (Gidget’s Don Porter), so political operative Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle) approaches McKay, an attractive, well-respected, and popular community activist whose father, John J. McKay (Melvyn Douglas), was California governor. At first the younger McKay has no interest in running for office, but when Lucas tells him he can say whatever he wants to get his message out — because he’ll have no chance to win — McKay signs on. He hits the streets shaking hands and spreading his philosophy, closely followed by media man Howard Klein (Allen Garfield), who is amassing footage for television advertisements promoting “the better way” with Bill McKay. (McKay’s ads are narrated by Barry Sullivan, who appeared with Redford in Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, Jarmon’s commercials by Broderick Crawford, who won an Oscar for playing the Huey Long–like Louisiana governor Willie Stark in All the King’s Men in 1949.) It’s clear from the start that McKay is a political newbie while Jarmon is a seasoned pro who knows all the right things to say and do, but McKay’s grass-roots approach soon begins taking hold, and as the race heats up, the challenger is suddenly faced with tough decisions about taking power, compromising his principles, and falling in line with the party machine instead of fighting the good fight as he has done all his life.
Ritchie (Smile, The Bad News Bears) and Redford, who previously collaborated on the director’s first film, Downhill Racer, shoot The Candidate in a cinéma vérité style, blending fiction and reality with cameos by television newsmen Howard K. Smith and Rollin Post, reporter Mike Barnicle, actress Natalie Wood (who starred with Redford in This Property Is Condemned), and such politicians as Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Alan Cranston, and John Tunney, whom McKay is loosely based on (along with Jerry Brown). Ritchie had worked on Tunney’s 1970 Senate campaign, which was run by Candidate associate producer Nelson Rising. In addition, screenwriter Jeremy Larner, who won an Oscar for his script, had been the principal speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential bid. (And as a bonus, Douglas’s wife, Helen Gahagan, was the first California Democratic woman to be elected to Congress and ran against Richard M. Nixon for Senate in 1950, losing while coining the nickname “Tricky Dick.”) The excellent cast also features Michael Lerner, Quinn Redeker, Morgan Upton, Kenneth Tobey as a union man, and Karen Carlson as McKay’s wife, Nancy. Photographed by Victor J. Kemper (Husbands, Dog Day Afternoon) and with a score by actor-musician John Rubinstein (son of concert pianist Artur Rubinstein), the film gets right to the heart of the faults of the two-party political system and the manipulation of the media, feeling as relevant as ever despite all the major changes in technology, the 24/7 news cycle, and the advent of social media over the ensuing forty-plus years. There have been many McKay-like candidates over the years, from Dan Quayle to John Edwards to even Barack Obama, with varying degrees of success. But especially with the 2016 Republican National Convention under way, The Candidate seems as fresh and alive, as believable and engaging as ever. “He’s got the name, the looks, and the power,” Nancy McKay says in the film, which concludes with one of the great lines in cinema history. The Candidate is screening July 23 in the BAMcinématek series “Four More Years: An Election Special,” which continues through August 3 with such other politically tinged works as Robert Altman’s Nashville, Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog, D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’s The War Room, and Mike Nichols’s Primary Colors.
“Nothing is impossible in a housing project,” several people say in Junji Sakamoto’s delightfully absurdist and downright weird black comedy The Projects, making its North American debut on July 19 at Japan Society’s tenth annual Japan Cuts Festival. Elderly couple Hinako (Naomi Fujiyama) and Seiji Yamashita (Ittoku Kishibe) have moved to an inexpensive suburban Osaka housing project, known as a danchi, after closing their popular herbal remedies shop following the tragic death of their son, Naoya. The couple lives quietly, unable to process their grief or move forward, but they’re back in business when one of their strangest customers, the well-dressed, oddly speaking Shinjo (Takumi Saitoh), tracks them down and essentially demands, in his calm, direct manner, that they begin making his special remedy again. Meanwhile, Seiji, who would rather be left alone, is dragged into the race for head of the tenant association, running against Gyotoku (Renji Ishibashi), who is having an affair with a younger resident and is married to Kimiko (Michiyo Okusu), who is obsessed with properly separating the danchi’s garbage, and young upstart Yoshizumi (Takayuki Takuma), who is not afraid to discipline his son, Kitaro (Hiroaki Ogasawara), in full view of his neighbors. After Seiji loses, he decides to hide from everyone, retreating under the floorboards whenever someone stops by, which leads a gossiping group of ladies (Hikaru Horiguchi, Yukari Taki, Mayu Harada, Mari Hamada, and Miyako Takeuchi) to believe that Hinako has actually killed her husband and chopped up the body. As the media and police get involved, things get crazier and crazier as the totally bizarre conclusion approaches. 
Amy Schumer’s meteoric rise continued last summer with Trainwreck, and this semiautobiographical, raunchy romantic comedy did nothing to derail this New York native’s ascent. Schumer, who first broke through to national attention on Comedy Central’s roast of Charlie Sheen, then won a prestigious Peabody Award for her extremely clever and insightful cable series, Inside Amy Schumer, wrote and stars in Trainwreck, playing Amy, a magazine writer who prefers drinking and quick sex to cuddling and sleepovers. Once the deed is done, either she or the dude is gone, and she continues on with her supposedly happy life, which includes her sister, Kim (Brie Larson), who has had the gall to go all suburban mom and housewife on her; her philandering father, Gordon (Colin Quinn), a Mets fanatic who is suffering from MS; and her boss at S’Nuff, Dianna (an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton), a sassy Brit with no time for melodrama. Fortunately, through most of the film, director Judd Apatow eschews the melodrama as well, until he lets it all cave in with closing scenes that undo nearly everything that has been built up before. Thankfully, however, most of what happens before is as smart and funny as it is outrageous and perceptive. Amy is assigned a story on Dr. Aaron Conners (Bill Hader), a sports specialist whose best friend is LeBron James, who is a blast playing himself as a deeply sensitive, extremely cost-conscious man. Amy has to reevaluate her world view when she starts falling for Aaron, going against everything she believes in by dating a nice guy who just might really care about her.