this week in film and television

RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN

Yoon Heejung (Kim Minhee) and Ham Chunsu (Jung Jaeyoung) get to know each other twice in Hong Sangsoo’s RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN

RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN (지금은맞고그때는틀리다) (Hong Sangsoo, 2015)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
June 24 – July 7
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

It’s déjà vu all over again in South Korean writer-director Hong Sangsoo’s latest masterpiece, Right Now, Wrong Then. Hong’s previous films, such as Tales of Cinema, The Day He Arrives, In Another Country, and Oki’s Movie, have explored the nature of cinematic storytelling: often, a film director is the protagonist, and scenes and characters repeat from different points of view. In Right Now, Wrong Then, Hong again plays with the temporal aspects of narrative; he essentially starts the film over at the halfway point, switching around the words of the title and repeating opening credits. Jung Jaeyoung won several Best Actor awards for his portrayal of art-house director Ham Chunsu, who has accidentally arrived a day early to the Korean province of Suwon, where he will take part in a Q&A following a screening of one of his films. Wandering around the town, he enters the blessing hall of an old palace and meets Yoon Heejung (Kim Minhee), a shy, aspiring painter. They talk about their lives, their hopes and dreams, as they go out for coffee and tea, eat sushi and drink soju, and meet up with some friends of Heejung’s. And then they do it again, primarily scene by scene, with variations in dialogue and temperament that offer sly twists on what happened in the first half. It’s as if Chunsu and Heejung are given the kind of second chance that one doesn’t get in real life, only in movies, or maybe Hong is showing us an alternate universe where myriad possibilities exist.

Art-house director Ham Chunsu (Jung Jaeyoung) doesn’t mind being the center of attention in award-winning RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN

Winner of the Golden Leopard for Best Film at Locarno, Right Now, Wrong Then moves at the patient, naturalistic pace and rhythm of real life, with numerous long scenes lasting between five and ten minutes with no cuts. Cinematographer Park Hongyeol, who has photographed six other Hong films, occasionally zooms in on a character, a tree, or other objects, the movement of the camera often slightly awkward, reminding us that we are watching a movie. However, the camera placement and movement, which are decided by Hong, is not what we’re used to in conventional cinema; Park and Hong eschew standard speaker-reaction back-and-forth shots, instead allowing the camera to linger in the same spot for a while, or focus in on the person not talking, or concentrate on a minute detail that appears insignificant. Adding to the film’s vitality, Hong writes each scene the same day that it’s shot, resulting in a freshness that is intoxicating. Jung (Our Sunhi, Moss) is a marvel as Chunsu, a quirky, jittery figure who is not quite as cool or humble as he might think he is, while former model Kim (Hellcats, Very Ordinary Couple) is sweetly engaging as the tentative Heejung, who is trying to find her place in the world. Meanwhile, popping up every once in a while is Jeong Yongjin’s playful, carnivalesque music, as if we’re watching life’s endless circus, which, of course, we are.

FIRST SATURDAY: VISUALIZE INDEPENDENCE

Dread Scott (American, born 1965). Performance still from On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide, 2014. Pigment print, 22 × 30 in. (55.9 × 76.2 cm). Project produced by More Art. Collection of the artist, Brooklyn. © Dread Scott. (Photo: Mark Von Holden Photography. © Dread Scott

Dread Scott, performance still from “On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide,” pigment print, 2014 (Project produced by More Art. Collection of the artist, Brooklyn. © Dread Scott. Photo: Mark Von Holden Photography. © Dread Scott)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, July 2, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum honors America’s 240th birthday with an evening of free programs dedicated to free speech and social change on July 2. The monthly First Saturday events will feature live performances by Pablo Helguera’s project El Club de Protesta (the Protest Club), Bread and Puppet Theater (Underneath the Above Show #1), Dennis Redmoon Darkeem (smudging ritual, interactive Good Trade), and DJ Chela; a screening of Judd Ehrlich’s Keepers of the Game (followed by a talkback with cast members Louise and Tsieboo Herne); highlights from the “LGBTQ New Americans” oral history project (followed by a talkback); storytelling with percussionist Sanga of the Valley; a pop-up gallery talk for “Agitprop!”; a curator tour of the American art collection with Connie Choi; a hands-on workshop in which participants can make their own personal flag using cloth collages; and interactive “Legislative Theatre” with Theatre of the Oppressed NYC. In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Disguise: Masks and Global African Art,” “Tom Sachs: Boombox Retrospective, 1999–2016,” and “Stephen Powers: Coney Island Is Still Dreamland (to a Seagull).”

BRYANT PARK SUMMER FILM FESTIVAL: EAST OF EDEN

Cal Trask (James Dean) just wants to be loved in Elia Kazan’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s EAST OF EDEN

EAST OF EDEN (Elia Kazan, 1955)
Bryant Park
Sixth Ave. between 40th & 42nd Sts.
Monday, June 27, free, sunset
Festival continues Mondays through August 22
www.bryantpark.org

“I guess there’s just a certain amount of good and bad you get from your parents and I just got the bad,” Cal (James Dean) says in Elia Kazan’s cinematic adaptation of part of John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel, East of Eden, a modern retelling of the biblical Cain and Abel story. In his first starring role, Dean received a posthumous Oscar nomination for his moody, angst-ridden performance as Cal Trask, a troubled young man who discovers that the mother (Best Supporting Actress winner Jo Van Fleet) he thought was dead is actually alive and well and running a successful house of prostitution nearby. Cal tries to win his father’s (Raymond Massey as Adam Trask) love and acceptance any way he can, including helping him develop his grand plan to transport lettuce from their farm via refrigerated railway cars, but his father seems to always favor his other son, Aron (Richard Davalos). Aron, meanwhile, is in love with Abra (Julie Harris), a sweet young woman who takes a serious interest in Cal and desperately wants him to succeed. But the well-meaning though misunderstood Cal does things his own way, which gets him in trouble with his father and brother, the mother who wants nothing to do with him, the sheriff (Burl Ives), and just about everyone else he comes in contact with. Set in Monterey and Salinas, East of Eden begins with a grand overture by Leonard Rosenman, announcing the film is going to be a major undertaking, and it lives up to its billing. Dean is masterful as Cal, peppering Paul Osborn’s script with powerful improvisational moments as he expresses his frustration with his family and life in general. His inner turmoil threatens to explode in both word and gesture as he just seeks to be loved. Dean would follow up East of Eden with seminal roles in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant before his death in a car crash in 1955 at the age of twenty-four, leaving behind a remarkable legacy that has influenced generations of actors ever since. East of Eden is screening June 27 at the Bryant Park Summer Film Festival, which continues Monday nights through August 22 with such other classic flicks as Preston Sturges’s The Palm Beach Story, Richard Donner’s The Omen, and Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter.

NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL: WHAT A WONDERFUL FAMILY!

All Tomiko (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) wants for her birthday is a divorce from her husband, Shuzo (Isao Hashizume), in WHAT A WONDERFUL FAMILY!

WHAT A WONDERFUL FAMILY! (家族はつらいよ) (Yoji Yamada, 2016)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Sunday, June 26, 12 noon
Festival runs June 22 – July 9
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org
www.subwaycinema.com

For her birthday this year, Tomiko Hirata (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) wants something simple from her stubborn, not-very-thoughtful husband of fifty years, Shuzo (Isao Hashizume): a divorce. That shocking wish sends the entire Hirata clan into a frenzy in Yoji Yamada’s charmingly bittersweet What a Wonderful Family! The retired Shuzo doesn’t know what he’ll do without Tomiko, but he is not the kind of man to share his feelings; instead, he prefers to go to a local watering hole and flirt with the cute bartender, play golf, or take the dog, Toto, to the park. Their daughter, Shigeko (Tomoko Nakajima), is mad at her husband, Taizo Kanai (Shozo Hayashiya), for stretching the truth about one of his hobbies. Eldest son Konosuke (Masahiko Nishimura) tends not to get involved, even as his wife, Fumie (Yui Natsukawa), essentially runs the household and their children, Kenichi (Takanosuke Nakamura) and Nobusuke (Ayumu Maruyama), just run around. And youngest son Shota (Satoshi Tsumabuki) has a promising future that just might include his new girlfriend, Noriko Mamiya (Yu Aoi), although all of the divorce talk suddenly has him thinking twice.

The Hirata family face some troubling times in bittersweet Yoji Yamada comedy

Yamada (the long-running Tora-san series, Twilight Samurai), who is now eighty-five years old, cowrote the playfully goofy script with Emiko Hiramatsu, not letting things get too serious or depressing. Except for a few sappy moments, Studio Ghibli veteran Joe Hisaishi’s soundtrack is effective in maintaining the generally lighthearted mood, and cinematographer Masashi Chikamori maintains a sharp, bright look to the film. What a Wonderful Family! evokes the legacy of legendary Japanese auteur Yasujirō Ozu; in fact, at one point Shuzo is watching Ozu’s Tokyo Story on television. In another scene, a writing teacher, Takamura (Katsumi Kiba), describes revered Japanese author Natsume Sōseki’s Kokoro as “a beautiful recounting of sweet, sad, and regretful youthful memories”; you wouldn’t be too far off base saying the same thing about What a Wonderful Family!, which is screening June 26 at 12 noon at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the New York Asian Film Festival, which runs through July 9 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the SVA Theatre and includes more than fifty diverse works from Japan, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

THE KING OF COMEDY

The inimitable Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) imagines quite a career for himself in THE KING OF COMEDY

THE KING OF COMEDY (Martin Scorsese, 1982)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
June 24-30
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Jerry Lewis is back in the news right now with the surprise online appearance of clips from his notorious unreleased 1972 film The Day the Clown Cried, a Holocaust picture believed to be so disastrous that he has vowed it will never see the light of day. But from June 24 to 30 at Film Forum, you can revisit one of the former MDA telethon host’s best performances, in Martin Scorsese’s vastly underrated and underappreciated 1982 masterpiece, The King of Comedy. Lewis stars as Jerry Langford, the host of a massively popular late-night television show. (The part was initially offered to Johnny Carson, who turned it down.) Lewis is one cool, calm customer as the smooth, elegant Langford, a far cry from his familiar caricatures in such films as The Bellboy, The Patsy, and The Nutty Professor. The most fascinating role in the film, however, is his stalker, wannabe-comedian Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro), who is desperate to get on Jerry’s show and become part of his inner circle, as well as Masha (Sandra Bernhard), who is in love with Jerry and thinks they are destined to be together. When not hanging around Jerry’s office, harassing Langford’s right-hand associate, Cathy Long (Shelley Hack), and the receptionist (Margo Winkler), Pupkin is in the basement of his home, pretending to be a guest on the show, yakking it up with cardboard cutouts of Langford and Liza Minnelli while his mother (voiced by Scorsese’s real mom, Catherine) yells at him to do something with his life. Pupkin is also trying to impress a former high school classmate, Rita (Diahnne Abbott, who was married to De Niro at the time), a bartender who barely remembers him. When things don’t go quite as planned, Rupert and Masha try to pull off a crazy scheme to get what they feel is their destiny.

Jerry Lewis gives his most mature performance ever opposite Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s THE KING OF COMEDY

Written by film critic, activist, and author Paul D. Zimmerman, The King of Comedy has held up remarkably well over the years, displaying a thrilling prescience about the state of celebrity obsession and the need to be on television well before the internet and reality shows changed the dynamic between star and fan. De Niro fully embodies the creepy, awkward, splendidly dressed Pupkin, who is essentially the illegitimate love child of Travis Bickle and Jake LaMotta as seen through the lens of Paddy Chayefsky’s Network. And Bernhard, in her first major film role, is a revelation as Masha, exhibiting an expert physicality worthy of the best cinematic comedians, with just the right amount of dark madness. Just as Pupkin goes back and forth between fantasy and reality, Scorsese keeps viewers on edge, not always differentiating between fiction and nonfiction; he has numerous familiar faces play versions of themselves, including radio and television announcer Ed Herlihy and bandleader Les Brown, Tony Randall as a guest host, longtime Carson producer Fred de Cordova as Bert Thomas, producer of The Jerry Langford Show, Dr. Joyce Brothers as one of Randall’s guests, and Emmy-winning producer Edgar Scherick as a network executive. Cinematographer Fred Schuler beautifully captures the hustle of early 1980s New York City, echoing what’s going on inside Pupkin’s deranged mind, while music adviser Robbie Robertson, a friend of Scorsese’s who was in the great Band documentary The Last Waltz, puts together a fab soundtrack that ranges from Ray Charles’s “Come Rain or Come Shine” and the Pretenders’ “Back on the Chain Gang” to Robertson’s own “Between Trains” and Van Morrison’s gorgeous closing credits song, “Wonderful Remark.” Scorsese fills the film with plenty of little treats and sweet touches. Look for the Clash’s Mick Jones, Joe Strummer, and Paul Simonon as the street punks, along with Ellen Foley, Don Letts, Kosmo Vinyl, and Pearl Harbour. In the scene in which Pupkin takes Rita to dinner, a man in the back of the restaurant is curiously mimicking Pupkin’s gesticulations. And Scorsese makes an inside-joke cameo when Randall, preparing to host The Jerry Langford Show, questions something, shrugs, and says to Scorsese, “You’re the director.” The 2013 digital restoration of The King of Comedy is playing at Film Forum June 24-30; the 7:30 show on June 24 will be introduced by Gilbert Gottfried and Frank Santopadre, on June 25 by Aparna Nancherla, and on June 29 by Mario Cantone.

T-REX

Claressa Shields displays the grit and determination to become a champion in T-REX

T-REX (Drea Cooper & Zackary Canepari, 2015)
Made in NY Media Center by IFP
30 John St., Brooklyn
June 24-30
718-729-6677
t-rexthefilm.com
nymediacenter.com

Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari’s debut feature documentary, T-Rex, is an exciting, dare we say hard-hitting look at a teenager attempting to literally fight her way out of depressed and troubled Flint, Michigan. When she was eleven years old, Claressa Shields walked into FWC Berston Gym and immediately showed the kind of skill, desire, and drive that made former professional boxer Jason Crutchfield take her under his wing as coach and mentor, thinking she had enormous potential. “A coach always wants a champion,” he says in the film. “Believe me. That’s why we coach. I just never thought it was going to be a girl.” Claressa trains every day, her sights set on becoming the first woman — actually, she’ll be a mere seventeen years old — to win a gold medal in the 2012 London Olympics, which has added the sport of women’s boxing to its wide-ranging roster of competitive sports. It’s not only a personal quest but a way to help get her poor, undereducated, broken family out of Flint. Her parents are divorced and each has a new partner, her father spent seven years in prison, and her tough-talking younger sister dreams of having ten babies. Allowing Cooper and Canepari full access, Claressa shows herself to be an exceptional boxer as well as a smart, intelligent person with a strong grasp of reality. She also has the confidence and swagger of Muhammad Ali; in fact, the relationship between the Greatest and his daughter, former world champion Laila Ali, serves as a major inspiration to her in her gritty, determined quest.

Claressa “T-Rex” Shields fights for a better life against seemingly insurmountable odds in documentary about the Flint boxer

Claressa doesn’t just want to win; she wants to dominate. As the film opens, Claressa is sad and downtrodden at the Olympic trials, surrounded by a handful of media. It turns out that she had just won her bout, but she was disappointed that she hadn’t won by more. Cooper and Canepari wisely let Claressa, her family, and her coach tell her story, dispensing with the usual talking heads providing social or sports-related commentary on her compelling journey from Flint to China to London and, perhaps, beyond. It’s especially poignant when Crutchfield and Claressa start looking into possible endorsement deals, but corporations are not exactly seeking out a poor black teenage girl boxer from Flint to be their next spokesperson. A festival favorite, T-Rex is opening June 24 at Brooklyn’s Made in NY Media Center by IFP. The film ends shortly after the 2012 Olympics, with Claressa deciding whether to continue with boxing; you can find out where she is today by watching the recent ESPN E60 profile of her here.

“NUTS!”

The bizarre story of John Romulus Brinkley is recounted in unique ways in “NUTS!”

“NUTS!” (Penny Lane, 2016)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Wednesday, June 22
212-727-8110
www.nutsthefilm.com
filmforum.org

Penny Lane’s wonderfully titled, inventively told “Nuts!” tells the wacky true tale of Dr. John R. Brinkley, a pivotal twentieth-century figure who was part P. T. Barnum, part Donald Trump, a controversial doctor or a quack, a radio pioneer or a snake-oil charlatan, depending on one’s opinion. He became rich and famous by surgically implanting goat glands into men’s testicles, claiming it increased virility, but his story is about much more than that. “This is a film about John Romulus Brinkley, a doctor, amongst other things, a man who succeeded against terrible odds and powerful opposition, a man who changed the world,” narrator Gene Tognacci explains early on. Lane, who previously profiled another intriguing individual in her debut feature-length documentary, 2013’s Our Nixon, this time follows the often outrageous exploits of Brinkley, using text from Clement Wood’s 1934 book, The Life of a Man: A Biography of John R. Brinkley, home movies and photographs, newspaper and magazine articles, and actual radio broadcasts. She also has seven different animators re-create scenes from Brinkley’s life and career, and each artist or team (Drew Christie & Dane Herforth, Julia Veldman C, Michael Pisano, Krystal Downs, Ace & Son Moving Picture Co., Rose Stark, and Hazel Lee Santino & Downs) employs a unique style while maintaining the film’s overall potent sense of humor. Producer-director Lane, who cleverly edited the film with writer Thom Stylinski, initially casts Brinkley as a sympathetic character just trying to get his own piece of the American dream for him and his family in the tiny town of Milford, Kansas, but as Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, gets ever closer in his obsessive quest to discredit Brinkley, everything the goat-gland doctor has built threatens to unravel. But Lane’s genius is yet to come, as she begins to unravel our assumptions and the very process of biography and history itself as the film proceeds to its inevitable conclusion.

It’s hard to believe that “Nuts!” is true, but that’s all part of the fun. Lane just lays it out there for us to see, and you’ll be rooting for Brinkley as he grows his empire, just as you’ll be booing Fishbein for desperately trying to bring him down. Brinkley was a kind of mad genius, understanding how to get ahead in business by giving the people what they want via early infomercials, realizing the vast power of radio, and flouting the rules whenever he could — and then attempting to change them. Lane limits the talking heads to very occasional comments from historian and former Kansas councilman James Reardon, social and cultural historian Dr. Megan Seaholm, Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves coauthor Gene Fowler, and Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam author Pope Brock. “Nuts!” is all the more comic for its reality, and Lane has succeeded wildly in transferring that notion to the way she has made the film, literally revealing the hands of the artist as the pages of Wood’s sycophantic book are turned; by the end, viewers will be questioning the documentary form itself just as they’re questioning Brinkley’s validity. In fact, Lane is readying a public online database “for audiences to consider the epistemological and ethical issues at the heart of the nonfiction storytelling process.” “Nuts!” opens at Film Forum on June 22, with Lane participating in Q&As following the 8:00 shows on opening night and June 24 and after the 6:10 show on June 25.