this week in film and television

OUTDOOR CINEMA: L’ATALANTE

Michel Simon has loads of fun as a somewhat decrepit first mate in Jean Vigo’s classic L’ATALANTE

L’ATALANTE (Jean Vigo, 1934)
Socrates Sculpture Park
32-01 Vernon Blvd.
Wednesday, July 13, free, live music at 7:00, screening at sunset
718-956-1819
www.socratessculpturepark.org

Swiss actor Michel Simon is spectacularly hilarious as an aging, somewhat decrepit first mate with a peculiar lust for life and cats in French auteur Jean Vigo’s fourth and final film, L’Atalante. After barge captain Jean (Jean Dasté) and Juliette (Dita Parlo) get married in her small, tight-knit country town, they head for the big city of Paris on the long boat, L’Atalante, that he captains as his job. First mate Père Jules (Simon) and his young cabin boy (Louis Lefebvre) come along for the would-be honeymoon, attempting to make sure it’s a smooth ride, which of course it’s not. Juliette wants to enjoy the Parisian nightlife, Jean is a jealous, overprotective stick-in-the-mud, and Père Jules — well, Père Jules is downright unpredictable, pretty much all id, living life footloose and fancy free even if he doesn’t have much money or many true friends. When a love-struck bicycle-riding peddler (Gilles Margaritis) tries to woo Juliette, Jean grows angry, and an emotional and psychological battle ensues. But through it all, Père Jules just keeps on keepin’ on, never getting too concerned, confident that everything will work out in the end, because that’s what happens in life.

Jean (Jean Dasté) is jealous of a hotshot peddler (Gilles Margaritis) trying to steal his wife (Dita Parlo) in L’ATALANTE

The son of anarchist Miguel Almereyda, who chose his last name because it is an anagram of the French phrase for “there is shit,” Vigo had been labeled a subversive for his first film, À propos de Nice, and his third film, Zéro de conduite, had been banned. So he went a little more conventional, at least for him, with L’Atalante, rewriting with Albert Riéra an original script by Jean Guinée. The film is an insightful tale of love and romance, of wealth and poverty, of hard social conditions, focusing on a wacky man who has experienced a lot in his life, even though he looks like a bum, reminiscent of Simon’s brilliant portrayal of Priape in Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning. Whether putting on a puppet show, displaying his tattoos, getting his fortune read, or walking around with cats on his shoulders, Père Jules is one of the most endearing and memorable characters in the history of cinema, a unique figure who surprises over and over again, and Simon’s portrayal is just amazing; it’s hard to believe that he was only thirty-nine when he made the picture. The highly poetic film, featuring a lovely score by Maurice Jaubert, also echoes F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, only from a comic, often slapstick angle. After shooting was completed, Vigo’s already failing health took a turn for the worse, and a battle ensued over final cut involving the producers and editor Louis Chavance and cinematographer Boris Kaufman (Dziga Vertov’s brother, who went on to shoot such American classics as On the Waterfront and 12 Angry Men). Vigo died in October 1934 at the age of twenty-nine, only a few weeks after L’Atalante was released. L’Atalante is screening July 13 in Long Island City as part of Socrates Sculpture Park’s free summer Outdoor Cinema series, programmed by Film Forum, and will be preceded by a live performance by Le Petit Pepinot, with French food available for purchase from Le Fond and La Maison du Soufflé. The seventeenth annual series continues through August 24 with such other international films as Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami’s Sonita, Lou Ye’s Suzhou River, and Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God.

BURNING BRIGHT — NEW FRENCH FILMMAKERS: PARIS, LOVE, CUT

Gabrielle (Louise Coldefy) and Arnaud Viard (Arnaud Viard) explore acting and more in PARIS, LOVE, CUT

CINÉSALON: PARIS, LOVE, CUT (ARNAUD FAIT SON 2ÈME) (Arnaud Viard, 2015)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, July 12, $14, 4:00 & 7:30 (later screening introduced by Alan Brown)
Series continues Tuesdays through July 26
212-355-6100
fiaf.org

“I like mixing fiction and reality,” writer, director, and star Arnaud Viard says in his second film, Paris, Love, Cut, the French title of which is Arnaud fait son 2ème film, or “Arnaud Makes His Second Film.” As the movie opens, Viard, sitting on the toilet, says directly into the camera, “Sometimes, in life, nothing works. You struggle . . . Nothing. Then, one day, it all flows. Just like that. Fluid. Magnificent. As if you were constipated, then suddenly . . . not at all. Last time things flowed was when I made my first film.” A longtime television actor who made his biggest impact as Jean-François in the French series Que du bonheur, Viard released his debut feature, Clara et moi, in 2004, then experienced difficulties raising money for his follow-up. In Paris, Love, Cut, Viard plays a version of himself, a longtime television actor who made his biggest impact as Jean-François in the French series Happy Times and who released his debut feature in 2004, then experienced difficulties raising money for his follow-up. Viard is trying to have a baby with his girlfriend, Chloé (Irène Jacob), but she is having trouble getting pregnant, echoing his inability to give birth to his second film, which he decides will be about a man unable to get an erection. He takes a job teaching an acting class, where he falls for twenty-one-year-old student Gabrielle (Louise Coldefy), whose goal is to become a famous actress. As he meets with his producer (Christophe Rossignon), other directors, his ailing mother (Nadine Alari), a sex coach (Chris Esquerre), a psychoanalyst (Pierre Aussedat), a tax agent (Marie-Christine Laurent), his sisters, and various dates, he has a generally positive take on life; he is soft-spoken and gentle, with a fun sense of humor whether being audited or going to a party thrown by his students, one of whom (Hamza Meziani) gets to the heart of the matter when he delivers a monologue from Alfred de Musset’s Don’t Fool with Love: “All men are liars, false, fickle, hypocritical, cowardly, contemptible, sensual. All women are faithless, deceitful, vain, curious, and depraved. The world is a bottomless sewer where shapeless beasts writhe on mountains of filth. But one thing is holy and sublime, the union of two beings, so imperfect and horrible.”

Much of Paris, Love, Cut serves as personal and professional wish fulfillment for both the real and the fictional Viard — if there is a difference. Evoking a mix of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall and Manhattan, Nanni Moretti’s Caro Diario, and Caveh Zahedi’s I Am a Sex Addict, Viard lays his neuroses out there for all to see, primarily keeping it as lighthearted as the soundtrack, while also getting naked with some beautiful women. He pays homage to François Truffaut and The Last Metro while exploring a midlife crisis that isn’t really much of a crisis, which is not to say he isn’t facing some difficult situations and has to make some hard choices. But like the title of his real and fictional series, these are still some pretty happy times for him, in a pretty happy movie. FIAF is presenting the U.S. premiere of Paris, Love, Cut at 4:00 and 7:30 on July 12 in its CinéSalon series “Burning Bright: New French Filmmakers”; the later screening will be introduced by writer-director Alan Brown (Book of Love, Superheroes). The series continues Tuesday nights in July with Thomas Salvador’s Vincent and Jean-Charles Hue’s Eat Your Bones.

INDIAN POINT

The future of Indian Point and nuclear energy is debated in new documentary

INDIAN POINT (Ivy Meeropol, 2015)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Howard Gilman Theater
144 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Opens Friday, July 8
212-875-5050
www.indianpointfilm.com
www.filmlinc.org

The Indian Point Energy Center has been fraught with controversy since it first opened in 1962 in Buchanan, New York, a mere forty-five miles from Midtown Manhattan. Documentarian Ivy Meeropol takes a close look at the past, present, and future of the embattled nuclear power plant in Indian Point, an important film that examines the complex situation from all angles. In the wake of Fukushima, eyes were once again cast at Indian Point, particularly as it approached its twenty-year recertification. Meeropol takes us inside the plant for a fascinating look at its operations, focusing on safety measures and literal and figurative cracks in the system. “This plant, in this proximity to New York City, was never a good risk,” Gov. Cuomo says in a press conference at the beginning of the film. Men and women on multiple sides of the issue speak with Meeropol, offering their take on what is happening. “Everyone has their fingers crossed under the table and they’re, like, let’s just hope nobody fucks up and they don’t have an accident,” says lawyer Phillip Musegaas of the watchdog organization Riverkeeper, which defends and protects the Hudson River. “We try to minimize that risk as much as we can. That’s our job,” explains Brian Vangor, a senior control room operator who has been working at Indian Point for more than thirty-five years. Somewhere in the middle is environmental journalist Roger Witherspoon, who notes, “For those who work in the nuclear industry, this is a ‘safe’ plant. For those who don’t work in the nuclear industry, there are risks you don’t want to live with.” Witherspoon is married to Marilyn Elie, a fierce activist who is part of IPSEC, the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition. But the most interesting individual in the film is Gregory Jaczko, who at the time of filming was the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and faces stiff opposition from within when he starts questioning Indian Point’s recertification.

Meeropol allows everyone to have their say as they discuss Indian Point’s outdated design, the flushing of more than 2.5 billion gallons of water into the Hudson every day, Indian Point’s safety record, clean energy options, and the frightening lessons learned from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. It also delves into the politics involved, as Jaczko tries to get at the truth, even visiting Fukushima, while he hits an unfriendly brick wall at home. Meeropol keeps everything civil despite the contentiousness of the topic. “This is not a film about whether nuclear power is good or bad,” she writes in her director’s statement. “What is this grand bargain we’ve made with ourselves to power the world and how can we make sure it doesn’t destroy us?” After the film was completed and being shown at festivals, it was reported this past February that the level of radioactivity in groundwater by Indian Point had spiked, leading to yet more inspections and investigations. A film that raises all the right questions, Indian Point opens at the Howard Gilman Theater at the Film Society of Lincoln Center on July 8, with Meeropol taking part in Q&As following the 7:00 screenings on July 8 and 9 and the 5:00 show on July 10.

OUR LITTLE SISTER

Four sisters come together after their father’s death in latest masterpiece from Hirokazu Kore-eda

OUR LITTLE SISTER (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2015)
Angelika Film Center, 18 West Houston St. at Mercer St., 212-995-2570
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, July 8
sonyclassics.com

In such films as Still Walking, Nobody Knows, and Like Father, Like Son, Japanese writer-director-editor Hirokazu Kore-eda has crafted beautifully told tales of parents and children, of estrangement and divorce, of death and ritual and the unbreakable bonds between siblings. In his latest minimalist masterpiece, Our Little Sister, he focuses on the women of the happily dysfunctional Kōda family in the scenic city of Kamakura. Sachi (Haruka Ayase), Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa), and Chika (Kaho) live together in a large house, where they go about their days with the normal trials and tribulations of twentysomething women. Sachi, the oldest, is a nurse who acts as a surrogate mother to her younger sisters, since their real mother plays almost no role in their lives. Yoshino, the middle sister, works in a bank and likes to stay out late drinking and partying. And Chika, the baby of the trio, is sweet and goofy, but not as goofy as her mountain-climbing boyfriend. When their long-estranged father dies, they decide to attend the funeral, where they meet their dad’s thirteen-year-old daughter from his second of three marriages, Suzu Asano (Suzu Hirose), a solid, smart girl who seems a bit lost now that both of her parents are dead. So the three older sisters invite her to move in with them in Kamakura and extend their family. The four immediately grow close as they live their daily lives, going to work or school, eating together, interacting with the opposite sex, and honoring their deceased ancestors. Suzu also regales them with tales of their father, some of which surprise them. Not a whole lot happens except a series of heartfelt, realistic scenes that audiences of all kinds can relate to.

Freely adapted from Akimi Yoshida’s josei manga Umimachi Diary, Our Little Sister simmers with the beauty and energy of real life, as Kore-eda offers viewers a fly-on-the-wall look at four exquisite women living day by day. Kore-eda once again blends documentary techniques with the intimate style of Yasujirō Ozu to fully develop his delightful characters, from the four sisters to their great-aunt to a student smitten with Suzu to local diner owner Sachiko Ninomiya (Jun Fubuki), who serves as a kind of tenderhearted matriarchal figure to the community. Yoko Kanno’s sweet music and Mikiya Takimoto’s lovely cinematography make it all a visual and aural pleasure, along with a fabulous cast that acts with an infectious naturalism. No one makes family dramas like Kore-eda, who skillfully avoids treacly plot twists in favor of simplicity, making it all seem easy. If you’ve never seen a Kore-eda film, Our Little Sister is a great place to start, and if you have experienced any of his previous work, this one is another gentle, graceful, and immensely engaging tour de force from one of the world’s most talented and original filmmakers.

BRYANT PARK SUMMER FILM FESTIVAL: THE PALM BEACH STORY

Joel McCrea, Claudette Colbert, and Rudy Vallée are caught up in a romantic triangle in Preston Sturges’s THE PALM BEACH STORY

THE PALM BEACH STORY (Preston Sturges, 1942)
Bryant Park
Sixth Ave. between 40th & 42nd Sts.
Monday, July 11, free, sunset
Festival continues Mondays through August 22
www.bryantpark.org

Writer-director Preston Sturges was on quite a roll in the early 1940s, making a string of memorable pictures that included The Great McGinty, Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, and Hail the Conquering Hero. In the midst of that amazing run is The Palm Beach Story, one of the craziest of the classic screwball comedies. Running out of money, married couple Tom (Joel McCrea) and Geraldine (Claudette Colbert) Jeffers are preparing to leave their ritzy Park Ave. apartment until a straight-talking, shriveled old wienie king (Robert Dudley) hands Gerry a wad of cash so she doesn’t have to move out. She pays off their many bills, but Tom is suspicious of how she got the money, demanding to know if any sex was involved, a rather risqué question for a 1942 Hays Code-era romantic comedy. Gerry decides that she is no good for Tom and insists on getting a divorce even though they still love each other. So she grabs a train to Florida, meeting the wacky Ale & Quail Club and John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallée), a kind, soft-spoken gentleman who takes a liking to her and helps her out of a jam. Things reach a manic pace as Tom heads to Palm Beach as well, trying to save the marriage while fending off the advances of the the Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor). McCrea and Colbert make a great comic duo in, displaying a fiery sex appeal that is still hot all these years later. What’s not hot is the film’s use of black characters, who are horribly stereotyped and are even referred to as “colored” in the credits. It might have been a different time, but there aren’t a whole lot of quality movies that were that blatant about it. In addition, the shooting scene with the Ale & Quail Club goes way over the top. But when the film focuses on Tom and Gerry, caught up in their own endlessly charming game of cat and mouse, The Palm Beach Story shines. The Palm Beach Story is screening July 11 at the Bryant Park Summer Film Festival, which continues Monday nights through August 22 with such other fab flicks as Richard Donner’s The Omen, Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor, and Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter.

JAMES TOBACK PRESENTS MONEYBALL

Oscar nominees Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill take a different approach with the Oakland A’s in MONEYBALL

MONEYBALL (Bennett Miller, 2011)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Saturday, July 9, 6:30
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.moneyball-movie.com

After winning 102 games during the 2001 season but then falling to the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series in five tough games, the cash-poor Oakland A’s also lost three of their most prominent players, Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon, and Jason Isringhausen, to free agency. To rebuild the team with limited funds, general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) turns to an unexpected source: Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a young stat geek who believes that on-base percentage is the key to the game. The A’s scouts find it hard to believe that Beane is looking at has-been catcher Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt), aging outfielder David Justice (Stephen Bishop), and underperforming submariner Chad Bradford (Casey Bond) to get the A’s to the World Series, as does manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who refuses to use the new players the way Beane insists. But when the A’s indeed start winning after a few more questionable deals pulled off by Beane and Brand, the entire sport world starts taking a much closer look at what is soon known as “moneyball.” Based on the 2003 bestseller Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, Moneyball is an exciting film even though the vast majority of it occurs off the field. Pitt is wonderfully understated as Beane, a former five-tool prospect for the Mets and divorced father of a twelve-year-old girl (Kerris Dorsey).

Pitt earned an Oscar nod for Best Actor for his portrayal of the real-life Beane, a confident but nervous man who may or may not have a big chip on his shoulder. Hill was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as wiz-kid Brand, a fictional character inspired by Paul DePodesta, who refused to let his name and likeness be used in the film; Brand instead is an amalgamation of several of the people who work for Beane. Director Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher, Capote) takes the viewer into a number of fascinating back-room dealings, including a revealing scene in which Beane tries to acquire Ricardo Rincon from the Cleveland Indians, furiously working the phones to pull off the deal. Also nominated for Best Picture, Best Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Adapted Screenplay, Moneyball firmly belongs in the playoff pantheon of great baseball movies, with the added bonus that you don’t have to be a fan or know a lot about the game to get sucked into its intoxicating tale. The film is screening July 9 at 6:30 at Metrograph and will be followed by a Q&A with writer, director, and actor James Toback, who wrote The Gambler and Bugsy and wrote and directed such other pictures as Fingers, Love and Money, and Seduced and Abandoned as well as the 1999 drama Black and White, which stars Mike Tyson, Robert Downey Jr., Brooke Shields, Claudia Schiffer, Raekwon, Ben Stiller, and Gaby Hoffmann and is being shown at Metrograph right after Moneyball and will also be followed by a Q&A with Toback.

HUDSON RIVERFLICKS: BIG HIT WEDNESDAYS — MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) make an unlikely team in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (George Miller, 2015)
Pier 63 Lawn, Hudson River Park
Cross at West 22nd or 24th St.
Wednesday, July 6, free, 8:30
www.hudsonriverpark.org
www.madmaxmovie.com

After a thirty-year hiatus, Max Rockatansky is resurrected in the ultrafeminist Mad Max: Fury Road, but this time the lonely hero is played by Tom Hardy, following in the footsteps of Mel Gibson, who starred in 1979’s Mad Max, 1981’s The Road Warrior, and 1985’s Beyond Thunderdome. After nearly two decades of stops and starts, Mad Max creator George Miller finally completed the fourth picture in the franchise, and it’s quite possibly the best of the bunch. In a postapocalyptic world where the primary goal is simply just to survive, Max has been captured by Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and turned into a blood bag for the skeletal Nux (Nicholas Hoult). But when Max encounters Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) driving a big War Rig, escaping from the Citadel with five of Immortan Joe’s breeding wives — Toast the Knowing (Zoë Kravitz), Capable (Riley Keough), the Dag (Abbey Lee), Cheedo the Fragile (Courtney Eaton), and the Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), who is pregnant — they are forced to team up if they are going to make it to the Green Place and live. Max, who still has regular flashbacks of his brutally murdered wife and child, is, in a way, forming a new family with the tough-as-nails, one-handed Furiosa, the young wives, and even Nux, as Miller (Babe, Happy Feet) and cowriters Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris emphasize motherhood and milk amid the spectacular, nonstop car chases and sensational violence. As always, Miller has included a cast of lunatic fringers, including Slit (Josh Helman), Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones), the People Eater (John Howard), the Bullet Farmer (Richard Carter), the Organic Mechanic (Angus Sampson), the Valkyrie (Megan Gale), the Keeper of the Seeds (Melissa Jaffer), and Corpus Colossus (Quentin Kenihan), along with some awesome vehicles, all caught on film with breathless glee by cinematographer John Seale. Mad Max: Fury Road blends wrought emotion with a mostly analog technical virtuosity that earned it ten Oscar nominations, winning for Best Film Editing (Margaret Sixel), Best Production Design (Colin Gibson and Lisa Thompson), Best Costume Design (Jenny Beavan), Best Makeup and Hairstyling (Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega, and Damian Martin), Best Sound Mixing (Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff, and Ben Osmo), and Best Sound Editing (Mark Mangini and David White). It’s a glorious tale that, if we’re not careful, could be our destiny. Mad Max: Fury Road is screening July 6 on the Pier 63 lawn in Hudson River Park in the Hudson RiverFlicks: Big Hit Wednesdays series, which continues through August 5 with such other 2015 films as Trainwreck, The Big Short, and Creed.