this week in film and television

WAVERLY MIDNIGHTS: STAFF PICKS — BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN

Sacha Baron Cohen takes aim at international relations in Borat

BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN (Larry Charles, 2006)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Friday, August 11, and Saturday, August 12, 12 midnight
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.boratmovie.com

Believe the hype. Sacha Baron Cohen holds a mirror up to America, and you might not like what you see — although you’ll laugh your head off while watching it. Cohen stars as bushy haired Kazakhstan journalist Borat Sagdiyev, a role he created for Da Ali G Show, the 2001 series in which he interviewed such luminaries as Newt Gingrich, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Andy Rooney, and Norman Mailer while pretending to be a British hip-hop wigger (Ali G); he also disguised himself as a German fashionista (Bruno) and Borat, a reporter who likes to talk about sex, especially with his sister. In Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Borat leaves his little village in Kazakhstan and travels across the United States with his producer, the rotund Azamat (Ken Davitian), in search of his true love, Baywatch’s Pamela Anderson. Along the way, he is making a documentary about the American way of life, turning a revealing lens on racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, blind patriotism, fundamentalism, and southern hospitality, with a healthy dose of toilet humor (literally).

Sacha Baron Cohen takes on American values and more in Borat

The people he speaks with — a feminist group, gun and car dealers, rodeo cowboys, conservative politicians Bob Barr and Alan Keyes, etiquette and humor experts, Christian evangelicals at a revivalist tent meeting, drunk frat boys in an RV — believe he is really a Kazakh journalist, and Cohen holds nothing back, unafraid to ask any question or kiss any man, often risking his personal safety in hysterical ways. He’s got the biggest cojones we’ve ever seen — and you nearly get to see them when he and Azamat chase each other naked through a hotel, ending up fighting onstage at a mortgage bankers convention. Borat is more Easy Rider than Jackass and Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, a road trip movie that captures the state of the nation in frightening yet very funny ways. Curiously, the only Oscar nomination it received was for Best Screenplay, despite much of it being improvised. A film that probably couldn’t be made today, Borat is screening on August 11 and 12 at midnight in the IFC Center series “Waverly Midnights: Staff Picks,” selected by Andrew M. of the floor staff. The series continues with such other flicks as David Cronenberg’s Crash, James Cameron’s Aliens, and Jim Sharman’s Shock Treatment.

FUTURE IMPERFECT — THE UNCANNY IN SCIENCE FICTION: HOLY MOTORS

Léos Carax’s Holy Motors is a dazzling tribute to Paris, cinema, and the art of storytelling

HOLY MOTORS (Léos Carax, 2012)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday, August 8, 7:00
Series runs through August 31
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.holymotorsfilm.com

French writer-director Léos Carax (Boy Meets Girl, Mauvais Sang) has made only five feature films in his thirty-plus-year career, a sadly low output for such an innovative, talented director, but in 2012 he gave birth to his masterpiece, the endlessly intriguing, confusing, and exhilarating Holy Motors. His first film since 1999’s POLA X, the work is a surreal tale of character and identity, spreading across multiple genres in a series of bizarre, entertaining, and often indecipherable set pieces. Holy Motors opens with Carax himself playing le Dormeur, a man who wakes up and walks through a hidden door in his room and into a movie theater where a packed house, watching King Vidor’s The Crowd, is fast asleep. The focus soon shifts to Carax alter ego Denis Lavant as Monsieur Oscar, a curious character who is being chauffeured around Paris in a white stretch limo driven by the elegant Céline (Édith Scob). Oscar has a list of assignments for the day that involve his putting on elaborate costumes — including revisiting his sewer character from Merde, Carax’s contribution to the 2009 omnibus Tokyo! that also included shorts by Michel Gondry and Bon Joon-ho — and becoming immersed in scenes that might or might not be staged, blurring the lines between fiction and reality within, of course, a completely fictional world to begin with. It is as if each scene is a separate little movie, and indeed, Carax, whose middle name is Oscar, has said that he made Holy Motors after several other projects fell through, so perhaps he has melded many of those ideas into this fabulously abstruse tale that constantly reinvents itself.

The film is also a loving tribute to Paris, the cinema, and the art of storytelling, with direct and indirect references to Franz Kafka, E. T. A. Hoffman, Charlie Chaplin, Lon Chaney, Eadweard Muybridge, Georges Franju, and others. (Scob, who starred in Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, at one point even pulls out a mask similar to the one she wore in that classic thriller.) The outstanding cast also features Kylie Minogue, who does indeed get to sing; Eva Mendes as a robotic model; and Michel Piccoli as the mysterious Man with the Birthmark. Holy Motors is screening August 8 in the MoMA series “Future Imperfect: The Uncanny in Science Fiction,” which includes seventy films from around the world that question what is human; the festival continues through August 31 with such other unusual works as Felipe Cazals’s El año de la peste, David Cronenberg’s Shivers and Videodrome, Alex Proyas’s Dark City, the aforementioned Eyes Without a Face, and Geoff Murphy’s The Quiet Earth and Nozim To’laho’jayev’s Budet laskovyi dozhd (“There Will Come Soft Rains”), introduced by Neil deGrasse-Tyson.

THE ACADEMY AT METROGRAPH: PHASE IV

Kendra (Lynne Frederick) gets a close look at the enemy in Saul Bass’s cult classic, Phase IV

PHASE IV (Saul Bass, 1974)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
August 4-10
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

Metrograph’s celebration of the career of logo designer, title credits innovator, and Oscar-winning director Saul Bass has just added his sole feature film, the 1974 sci-fi thriller Phase IV. The long-unavailable work, which was comically crucified on Mystery Science Theater 3000, is an underrated gem, a thinking person’s horror film that is too intellectual for its own good. As the result of some kind of space anomaly, ants are doing things that they’re not supposed to do, communicating among different ant species and developing what appears to be a surprising sentience and intelligence. Dr. Ernest D. Hubbs (Nigel Davenport) and scientist and mathematician James Lesko (Michael Murphy) head out to an awesomely shaped circular lab in the middle of the Arizona desert, where the ant rebellion has begun. Dr. Hubbs tells the Eldridge clan — Mr. Eldridge (Alan Gifford), his wife, Mildred (Helen Horton), their granddaughter, Kendra (Lynne Frederick), and ranch hand Clete (Robert Henderson) — that they’re being evacuated for their own safety, but they don’t listen until it’s too late. As Dr. Hubbs and Lesko continue their complex study of the ants, the creatures start playing a fascinating cat-and-mouse game with the humans, challenging them both mentally and physically. The ants even show more compassion and consideration for their dead; while Dr. Hubbs refuses to mourn the Eldridge grandparents, the ants hold a touching ceremony for their fallen. It all leads to a surreal, psychedelic finale that is part 2001: A Space Odyssey, part Colossus: The Forbin Project, and part The Holy Mountain. Don’t expect the conclusion to make much sense, especially because Paramount edited it down from its original glory (while leaving some bits of it in the official trailer); you can watch the full ending here; it’s a doozy.

phase iv

While most genre movies make their killer creatures giant, like Empire of the Ants, The Deadly Mantis, and Them!, Bass keeps his bugs regular size, but they are often shot in spectacular close-ups by National Geographic time-lapse expert and insect photographer Ken Middleham (The Hellstrom Chronicle, Damnation Alley), making them appear to be enormous. Despite their size, the ants build some amazing structures, one a Stonehenge-like series of towers that would make Spinal Tap drool. (The production designer was John Barry, who later worked on the Star Wars and Superman series, while Dick Bush did the less-than-stellar cinematography.) The script, by playwright and screenwriter Mayo Simon (Futureworld, Marooned), is no mere stale Cold War parable or military manifesto but subtly references totalitarianism and communism while recognizing the coming climate change crisis. (In 1980, Bass would make The Solar Film with his wife, Elaine, about solar energy.) Meanwhile, the creepy, ominous score is by Brian Gascoigne, Stomu Yamashta, David Vorhaus, and Desmond Briscoe. Davenport (A Man for All Seasons, Bram Stoker’s Dracula) is gruff as the determined Hubbs, while the sensitive Murphy (Manhattan, An Unmarried Woman) and Frederick (Voyage of the Damned, Nicholas and Alexandra) form a sweetly innocent bond. The film is quite a warning, one that humankind is clearly still not taking seriously all these years later. Phase IV — which was also poorly marketed, as evidenced by the poster at left — is screening August 4-10 at Metrograph in the new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ year-long residency there, which also includes the program “Why Man Creates — the Work of Saul Bass,” consisting of the Bronx-born Bass’s Why Man Creates, which won the Academy Award for Best Short Documentary Subject, The Solar Film, Saul Bass: In His Own Words, a trailer reel, a commercial reel, and classic title sequences.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: THE FILMS OF ALAN CLARKE

Anthology Film Archives is hosting a mostly free retrospective of the work of British director Alan Clarke

Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
August 4–20, free (except for two screenings)
212-505-5181
anthologyfilmarchives.org

Working-class British theater, television, and film director Alan Clarke wrote and directed socially conscious, provocative works that challenged the status quo. “As a director, it seems to me that Clarke had it all — he had range, he had vision, he put energy on the screen, he could tell a story, he discovered fantastic actors and got great performances from them, and he could use a camera like a dream. He remains, in my eyes, quite simply the greatest British director of my lifetime,” Paul Greengrass said in the Guardian in 2005 on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of Clarke’s passing. The BBC is remastering nearly two dozen films he made for the channel, which has spurred Anthology Film Archives to host the retrospective “The Elephant in the Room: The Films of Alan Clarke,” which runs August 4-20. And just as most of Clarke’s films were shown on free television, most of the screenings in the retrospective will be free as well. The series begins August 4 with 1987’s Christine and 1989’s Elephant and continues with such other films as 1985’s Contact, 1970’s Sovereign’s Company, 1974’s Penda’s Fen, 1970’s The Hallelujah Handshake, and 1972’s To Encourage the Others. The only screenings that require paid admission are 1986’s Rita, Sue and Bob Too and the 1979 version of Scum, both of which were released in cinemas. (The 1977 theatrical version of Scum is free.) Don’t worry if the titles of most of the films are unfamiliar to you; among the stars are David Bowie, Tim Roth, Ray Winstone, Jane Horrocks, Gary Oldman, and others. In his book Alan Clarke, Dave Rolinson wrote, “Clarke was, as W. Stephen Gilbert argued upon the director’s untimely death from cancer at the age of fifty-four, ‘an unswerving champion of the individual voice and the noncomformist vision.’ He gave voice to those on the margins of society. . . . Individuals often come into contact with institutions, and are either initiated into them or broken, rehabilitated or cut adrift, rendered compliant or silenced. They face a struggle to articulate themselves in their own language.” Anthology is doing a great service by bringing back Clarke’s unswerving voice, and especially primarily for free.

4 DAYS IN FRANCE

Pierre Thomas (Pascal Cervo) uses Grindr as a GPS in Jérôme Reybaud’s 4 Days in France)

4 DAYS IN FRANCE (JOURS DE FRANCE) (Jérôme Reybaud, 2016)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, August 4
212-255-2243
www.quadcinema.com
www.cinemaguild.com

Jérôme Reybaud’s feature debut, 4 Days in France, is a hypnotic existential road movie about deep-set, pervasive loneliness, tinged with bittersweet dark humor. In the middle of the night, Pierre Thomas (Pascal Cervo) packs a bag and quietly walks out on Paul (Arthur Igual), who doesn’t notice he’s gone until he wakes up in the morning, mystified by his lover’s absence. Pierre heads out across the French countryside and through small towns in his white Alfa Romeo sedan, using Grindr as his GPS, seeking out anonymous sex with men in remote gay hook-up areas. The distraught Paul, meanwhile, goes to the opera — Mozart’s Così fan tutte, which can be translated as “Women are like that” — without Pierre and realizes how much he misses him, so he takes off after his errant partner. He follows him on Grindr as well, but he is already far behind. As this slow-speed “chase” goes on, both Pierre and Paul encounter a series of lonely individuals, played by well-known French actors and celebrities, including Fabienne Babe as Diane Querqueville, who performs at an out-of-the-way nursing home; Natalie Richard as a bookseller who Pierre doesn’t remember; Lætitia Dosch as a philosophical thief; Liliane Montevecchi as Pierre’s elegant aunt; Jean-Christoph Bouet as an older man who services strangers; Florence Giorgetti as a strong-willed woman protecting her turf; Corinne Courèges as a Happy Dough employee with a surprising proposition for Paul; Hervé Colas as an unfriendly butcher; Dorothée Blanck as a woman pulling a wagon; Bertrand Nadler as a traveling salesman Pierre encounters in a hotel parking lot; Marie France as a woman who has an unexpected task for Pierre to help her with; and Emilien Tessier as a man literally standing between two worlds. Neither Paul nor Pierre ever say that much, although we do learn that Pierre is rather fastidious and naturally polite, preferring to follow rules and not be touched unless he wants to be.

Paul (Arthur Igual) doesn’t understand why his lover left him in 4 Days in France)

We actually learn more about the minor characters, some of whom are onscreen for a very short period of time, than we do about Paul and Pierre; there’s no back story establishing who they are and what kind of relationship they have, no explanation of why Pierre left and what he is searching for, yet writer-director Reybaud gets us to become wholly involved in their lives, desperately hoping that Paul catches up to Pierre and they make up, even as neither is exactly faithful during this trying dilemma. But each vignette, in the spirit of such Jim Jarmusch films as Stranger Than Paradise, Night on Earth, and Coffee and Cigarettes, comments about the state of human existence in the twenty-first century in abstract, obscure, yet tantalizing ways. The wall that separates Pierre from the salesman in the hotel is the centerpiece of the film, the two men on opposite sides, both in need of almost any kind of connection. Another critical scene is when a young woman steals Pierre’s travel bag and they end up going through it together, figuring out what his various possessions are worth — compared to the value of being with other people. Reybaud prefers long scenes with little camera movement, particularly in cars; Pierre drives for miles and miles, through such gorgeous scenery as the Alps and vast green landscapes — the lovely cinematography is by Sabine Lancelin, who has worked with Manoel de Oliveira, Chantal Akerman, Michel Piccoli, Éric Rohmer, and Raoul Ruiz — and the camera mostly remains still, as if putting the viewer in the backseat in this strange yet involving journey.

And despite clocking in at 140 minutes, 4 Days in France is utterly addictive even though nothing of great significance ever really happens. Early on, when Pierre drives a stranded Diane to the nursing home, she asks if he wants to come in and watch her show. He says no; he would never do anything like that, at least partly because he is likely to be suffering from a fear of death, among several other private maladies. But Reybaud lets the audience see Diane as she whisper-sings in a sparkly costume. When it comes right down to it, this film is not about why Pierre walked out on Paul and set out on his own; it’s really just about how none of us wants to be alone. “Where are you going?” the woman with the wagon asks Pierre, who casually responds, “I don’t know.” 4 Days in France opens August 4 at the Quad, with Reybaud participating in Q&As following the 6:40 shows on Friday and Saturday night.

IN CONCERT: SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS

James Murphy says farewell to LCD Soundsystem in multifaceted concert documentary

SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS (Dylan Southern & Will Lovelace, 2011)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Sunday, August 6, 7:30
Series runs through August 13
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.shutupandplaythehits.com

On April 2, 2011, after ten years of building a devoted following that was still growing, electronic dance-punk faves LCD Soundsystem played what was supposed to be its farewell show at Madison Square Garden. Directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, who previously documented the British band Blur in No Distance Left to Run, capture the grand finale in the often bumpy, sometimes revelatory concert film Shut Up and Play the Hits. The movie is divided into three distinct sections that take place before, during, and after the massive blowout, with Southern and Lovelace weaving between them. There is extensive footage of the event at the Garden, including performances of such LCD classics as “Dance Yrself Clean,” “All My Friends,” “Us v Them,” “North American Scum,” and “Losing My Edge.” Although the multicamera approach tries to make you feel like you’re there, onstage and backstage with front man Murphy, keyboardist Nancy Whang, bassist Tyler Pope, drummer Pat Mahoney, and various special guests, it lacks a certain emotional depth, and the sound, primarily during the first songs, is terrible, although that could have been the fault of the tiny theater where we saw it more than the film itself. The second section features music journalist Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto) interviewing Murphy at the Spotted Pig in the West Village a week before the concert, asking inane, annoying questions that Murphy strains to answer.

But the most fascinating part of the film by far, and how it starts, involves Murphy the day after the show. He allows the camera to follow him everywhere, from waking up in his bed with his dog to carefully shaving with an electric razor to visiting the DFA offices for the first time in a year. It’s hard to believe that the night before he was a grandiose rock star but now he is walking his pooch, sitting on a bench in front of a coffee shop, and spending most of the day alone. The camera gets right into his face, showing every gray hair, zooming in on his puffiness and his deep-set, nearly dazed eyes. The film would have benefited from less time with Klosterman and more with Murphy as he contemplates his past, present, and future. It also would have been interesting to hear from the other members of the band, but Shut Up and Play the Hits is specifically about Murphy, who, at forty-one, suddenly doesn’t know what to do with his life, having left an extremely successful gig that was only gaining popularity. (However, in January 2016 the band reunited, once again hitting the road, including a fab headlining gig at the Panorama festival that July.) Shut Up and Play the Hits is screening August 6 at 7:30 in the BAMcinématek series “In Concert,” which continues through August 13 with such other live-music films as Bill and Turner Ross’s Contemporary Color, D. A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop, and Mel Stuart’s Wattstax.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM FIRST SATURDAY: CaribBEING IN BROOKLYN

“Doria Dee Johnson at her home in Chicago, Illinois, 2017” (photo by Melissa Bunni Elian for the Equal Justice Initiative)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, August 5, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum starts preparing for the West Indian American Day Carnival events over Labor Day weekend with the August edition of its free First Saturday program. (First Saturdays is skipped in September.) There will be live performances by RIVA & Bohio Music and the Drums and Bugles International Bands Association; the mobile art center caribBEING House, where visitors can share their own stories; a gallery tour of “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85” with Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art curatorial assistant Allie Rickard; pop-up gallery talks of “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas” with teen apprentices; a screening of Matt Ruskin’s Sundance Audience Award winner Crown Heights, introduced by actress Natalie Paul and followed by a Q&A with film subject Colin Warner, community activist Rick Jones, and attorney Ames Grawert; a sneak peek of Cori Wapnowska’s documentary Bruk Out!, followed by a talkback with Wapnowska and Dancehall Queen Famous Red, moderated by Hyperallergic editor Seph Rodney; a Book Club event with Oneka LaBennett reading and discussing her new book, She’s Mad Real: Popular Culture and West Indian Girls in Brooklyn, followed by a signing; an Artist’s Eye talk by Melissa Bunni Elian on her contribution to “The Legacy of Lynching: Confronting Racial Terror in America”; a wukkout! movement workshop based on high-energy soca dancing; a hands-on workshop in which participants can make paintings with watercolor and salt; and a Flag Fete in which visitors can bring their own national flag, joined by female-identified Caribbean artists Sol Nova, Young Devyn, and Ting & Ting featuring Kitty Cash and special guests.