this week in film and television

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR: 70th ANNIVERSARY OF BOMBING

A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) examine their Hiroshima affair in Alain Resnais classic

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (Alain Resnais, 1959)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Thursday, August 6, 12:40, 3:00, 5:10, 7:10, 9:10
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

In July 1959, Cahiers du cinéma published a roundtable discussion with Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, and others about Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour, in which Rohmer said, “Hiroshima is a film about which you can say everything. . . . Perhaps Hiroshima really is a totally new film. . . . I think that, in a few years, in ten, twenty, or thirty years, we shall know whether Hiroshima was the most important film since the war, the first modern film of sound cinema. . . . In any case it is an extremely important film, but it could be that it will even gain stature with years.” Some four and a half decades later, Rohmer’s prediction has come true, as a stunning new 4K digital restoration reveals Hiroshima Mon Amour to indeed be one of the most important films in the history of cinema, redefining just what the medium is capable of, as fresh and innovative today as it was to Rohmer, Godard, Rivette, et al. upon its initial release. As the black-and-white film opens, two naked, twisted bodies merge together in bed, first covered in glittering ashes, then a kind of acid rain. The woman (Emmanuelle Riva) is a French actress who is in Hiroshima to make a movie about peace. He (Eiji Okada) is a Japanese architect, a builder working in a city that has been laid to waste. Both married with children, they engage in a brief but torrid affair; as her film prepares to wrap, she gets ready to leave, but he begs her to stay. Theirs is a romance that could happen only in Hiroshima.

Director Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad, Same Old Song), who passed away on March 1 at the age of ninety-one, was meticulous with every detail of the film, from the casting to Marguerite Duras’s stirringly poetic, Oscar-nominated script and dialogue, from Georges Delerue’s and Giovanni Fusco’s powerful, wide-ranging score to crafting each shot as a work of art in itself, using two cinematographers, Michio Takahashi in Japan and Sacha Vierny in France, to emphasize a critical visual difference between the contemporary scenes in Hiroshima and the woman’s past with a German soldier (Bernard Fresson) in Nevers. Hiroshima Mon Amour is a haunting experience, examining love and loss among the ruins of war as two people, at least temporarily, try to create something new. Riva (Three Colors: Blue, Thomas the Impostor) is mesmerizing as the confused, unpredictable woman, her eyes so often turned away from the man, unwilling to face the future, while Okada (Woman in the Dunes, The Yakuza) can’t keep his eyes off her, desperate for their romance to continue. Riva bookended her long career by starring in two of the most unusual yet beautiful love stories ever made, as more than fifty years after Hiroshima she would be nominated for an Oscar for her hypnotizing performance as an elderly woman debilitated by a stroke in Michael Haneke’s Amour. The glorious 4K restoration of Hiroshima Mon Amour,, supervised by Renato Berta, who was Resnais’s chief cameraman on four projects, makes it, to use the words of Eric Rohmer, feel like a totally new film, like we’re experiencing it for the very first time all over again. Hiroshima Mon Amour is having five special screenings on August 6 in commemoration of the seventieth anniversary of the actual bombing that led to the end of WWII.

NITEHAWK OUTDOORS: MALLRATS

Kevin Smith (r.) will talk about MALLRATS, and hopefully its upcoming sequel, at free twentieth anniversary screening Tuesday night in Williamsburg

Who: Kevin Smith, DJ Steve Reynolds
What: Nitehawk Cinema and BuzzFeed Throwback Theater present free outdoor screening of Mallrats (Kevin Smith, 1995)
Where: 50 Kent Ave. between North 11th & North 12th Sts.
When: Tuesday, August 4, free with advance RSVP, doors open at 5:00, music at 7:00, film at sunset
Why: Writer, director, and costar Kevin Smith will be in Williamsburg on Tuesday night for a Q&A prior to a free twentieth anniversary screening of his 1995 cult fave, Mallrats, in which he plays Silent Bob to Jason Mewes’s Jay. Also in the cast are Ben Affleck, Shannen Doherty, Jeremy London, Priscilla Barnes, Michael Rooker, Joey Lauren Adams, Ethan Suplee, Claire Forlani, and, as himself, comic book legend Stan Lee. Mallrats deals with difficult breakups, game shows, Magic Eye pictures, pre-Paul Blart mall security guards, the Easter Bunny, sex, and general loitering. Advance RSVP is required but doesn’t guarantee entry to the event, which also includes a set by DJ Steve “Party Like It’s 1999” Reynolds and such food trucks as OddFellows Ice Cream, Luzzo’s Pizza, Best Buds Burritos, and Landhaus. Smith recently confirmed that he is in the process of making a Mallrats sequel, so this is a great opportunity to hear him discuss the underrated original as well as what’s coming next for these crazy characters.

AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL PICTURES: BLACK SABBATH

A dead medium is not quite ready to say farewell to the world in Mario Bava’s BLACK SABBATH

BLACK SABBATH (Mario Bava, 1963-64)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Saturday, August 1, 6:45, Tuesday, August 4, 7:00, and Saturday, August 8, 9:00
Series runs through July 31 – September 3
212-505-5181
anthologyfilmarchives.org

The film that gave Ozzy Osbourne’s band its name, Black Sabbath is just about everything you could want such a movie to be: cheap, exploitive, and featuring Boris Karloff, with nods to great French and Russian storytellers. (Um, sure . . . of course.) Founded in 1954 by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff, American International Pictures was responsible for hundreds of low-budget independent films through 1980, specializing in horror, Westerns, blaxploitation, sci-fi, biker flicks, teen delinquency, women in prison, and even beach movies. Anthology Film Archives is paying tribute to the famed studio with a three-part series that begins July 31 by focusing on auteurs who either cut their teeth with AIP or were already well established. It’s quite a list; through September 3, Anthology will be screening works by Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Vincente Minnelli, Brian De Palma, and Roger Corman, who will make several appearances at the downtown movie house. Also on the roster is Italian scaremaster Mario Bava, whose Black Sabbath will be shown August 1, 4, and 8. Black Sabbath is, appropriately enough, an anthology of three short films hosted by Boris Karloff, a kind of melding of Karloff’s Thriller television series with Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. The Italian-French coproduction was significantly changed by AIP, altering the order of the films and drastically modifying one of the plots. Black Sabbath opens with “A Drop of Water,” supposedly based on a short story by Anton Chekhov. Late one night, nurse Helen Chester (Jacqueline Pierreux) is summoned by an elderly caretaker (Milly Monti) to a stately home where a medium — sporting perhaps the most frightening face ever on a dead person, with dark, deep-set eyes and a viciously wicked smile that makes her look like an evil doll — has died during a séance. After stealing the medium’s ring off her finger, Helen is suddenly taunted by a buzzing fly and drops of water, evoking what was experienced by the killer in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” who was haunted by the unending sound of a beating heart. (Perhaps not coincidentally, AIP was famous for its Poe adaptations.) The conclusion is truly chilling, with a cool little coda.

Boris Karloff serves as host of Mario Bava’s eerie anthology film BLACK SABBATH and plays one of its creepier characters

In “The Telephone,” the glamorous Rosy (Michele Mercier) returns to her apartment one night after an undisclosed outing and is harassed by a man who keeps calling her on her awesome black and red phone, the severity of his threats growing each time she picks up. When the man claims to be the recently deceased Frank, she turns to a former friend, Mary (Lydia Alfonsi), for help, but it’s going to take a lot more than that to save her from this supernatural peril. The Italian original had a tasty soupçon of lesbianism and prostitution, which was washed clean by AIP, but “The Telephone,” possibly inspired by works by F. G. Snyder and Guy de Maupassant, is still a creepy little story that holds up well in this surveillance-crazed age. The trilogy of terror concludes with the heavily atmospheric vampire yarn “The Wurdalak,” adapted from a novella by Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy. In nineteenth-century Russia, a family awaits the return of its patriarch, Gorca (Karloff, looking like a cross between the Grinch, the Gremlin from the 1963 Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” and the Abominable Snowman), who has gone off to kill a wurdulak, a living cadaver that feasts on the blood of loved ones. Gorca’s son Giorgio (Glauco Onorato), Giorgio’s wife (Rika Dialina), their young son, Ivan, and Giorgio’s younger siblings, Pietro (Massimo Righi) and Sdenka (Susy Andersen), are joined unexpectedly by Vladimir Durfe (Mark Damon), a traveling nobleman who discovers a man with a knife in him outside the family’s cottage. But when Gorca finally shows up, there is something different about him, and the members of the clan must decide whether he’s still their father or if he’s been turned, coming home to feast on his family.

Black Sabbath might be minor Bava, but it’s a great place to start if you know little or nothing about the Italian director, who made such other films as Black Sunday, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, and Kill, Baby, Kill before passing away in 1980 at the age of sixty-five. Black Sabbath has that classic Bava look and feel, with colorful, lush sets, eerie cinematography by Bava and Ubaldo Terzano, captivating suspense, and essentially competent acting with questionable dubbing. Karloff has a ball both as the host of the whole thing and the star of the third film, chewing up the scenery with his playful eyes and mocking brow. He would go on to make a bunch of films for AIP, including Corman’s The Terror and The Raven, Daniel Haller’s Die, Monster, Die! and Jacques Tourneur’s The Comedy of Terrors, alongside such fab costars as Jack Nicholson, Vincent Price, and Peter Lorre. American International served as a training ground for up-and-comers as well as a last bastion for aging actors and directors, and the strange and scary Black Sabbath fits right into their majestic raison d’être.

ANDREI TARKOVSKY, SCULPTING IN TIME: ANDREI RUBLEV

Icon painter Andrei Rublev (Anatoly Solonitsyn) takes off on an epic journey in Soviet masterpiece

ANDREI RUBLEV (ANDREY RUBLYOV) (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle at 58th St. & Eighth Ave.
Friday, July 31, $10, 7:00
Series continues Friday nights through August 28
212-299-7777
madmuseum.org

Soviet auteur Andrei Tarkovsky followed up his dazzling debut, Ivan’s Childhood, with the three-and-a-half-hour epic Andrei Rublev, a quietly powerful tale of a monk and icon painter making his way through early fifteenth-century Russia. But it is much more than a historical, biographical look at the real-life figure during the creation of tsarist Russia. “I knew it would certainly not be a historical or biographical work,” Tarkovsky wrote in his 1986 book Sculpting in Time. “I was interested in something else: I wanted to investigate the nature of the poetic genius of the great Russian painter. I wanted to use the example of Rublyov to explore the question of the psychology of artistic creativity, and analyse the mentality and civic awareness of an artist who created spiritual treasures of timeless significance.” The film begins with a seemingly unrelated prologue in which a man named Yefim (Nikolay Glazkov) takes off in a hot-air balloon as the townspeople try to prevent him from flying, as if he is defying God by soaring in the sky. Tarkovsky then spreads out his tale over the course of eight vignettes, some of which feature Rublev (Anatoly Solonitsyn) as a minor character, more of a background observer than the protagonist. A gentle, slow-moving man with a deep contemplation of existence, Rublev, along with his traveling companions and fellow painters Daniil (Nikolai Grinko) and Kirill (Ivan Lapikov), encounters a skomorokh (Rolan Bykov) performing in a barn before being interrupted by the authorities; meets up with aging master Theophanus the Greek (Nikolai Sergeyev); has a falling-out with Kirill; is joined by a new apprentice, Foma (Mikhail Kononov); comes upon a pagan bacchanalia in the woods; befriends the beautiful holy fool Durochka (Irma Raush, Tarkovsky’s wife at the time); finds himself in the middle of a power struggle between the grand prince and his brother, leading to a brutal Tatar invasion; takes a vow of silence after committing a major sin; and watches as a young boy, Boriska (Nikolai Burlyayev, who played Ivan in Tarkovsky’s feature debut), leads the construction of a church bell in a small town, the ropes surrounding the lifting of the bell referencing the ones that Yefim hung from earlier, each trying to get closer to God in their own way.

Tarkovsky classic explores the nature of faith and sin and art and creativity as seen through the eyes of several Russian icon painters

At a surprisingly fluid pace despite the film’s length, Tarkovsky and cowriter Andrei Konchalovsky (Runaway Train, Maria’s Lovers) explore such issues as sin, guilt, fear of God, vanity, loyalty, jealousy, poverty, and the search for truth, with Rublev often more of a secondary character or commentor. “People should be reminded that they are human beings, that the Russian people are of one blood and one land. Evil is everywhere around. And there are always those who would sell you for thirty coins,” the cynical Kyrill tells Theophanus as Andrei takes part in a passion procession. “New trials are heaping on the Russian men — Tatars, famine, pestilence. But they keep on working. And carrying their cross humbly. They never despair but resign themselves to their fate, only praying to God to give them strength. Won’t the Most High forgive them their ignorance?” Tarkovsky employs many of the visual letimotifs first seen in Ivan’s Childhood and used throughout his career, including numerous scenes with horses, water, tree roots, and dense forests, beautifully photographed by Vadim Yusov in black-and-white. Among the many memorable images: Paint spills into a river, Andrei pets a bird under a tree in the wind, and the bell is cast as if rising from the fiery pits of hell. Several moments involve brutal violence and torture, particularly of animals; Tarkovsky defended his treatment of one horse that he pushed down an outdoor staircase and is actually killed onscreen. Color brightens the epilogue of the film as Tarkovsky and Yusov lovingly pan across many of Rublev’s actual icon paintings in a kind of artistic creative epiphany. Twice during the film, Andrei looks directly at the camera, right at the viewer, as if he can see us, imploring us to take heed of his mission. A poetic masterpiece that can often be found on lists of the best films ever made, Andrei Rublev is screening July 31 at 7:00 as part of the the Museum of Arts & Design series “Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time,” which runs Friday nights through August 28 and includes all seven of Tarkovsky’s full-length films (Solaris, Stalker, Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, The Mirror, Nostalghia, The Sacrifice) before concluding with the behind-the-scenes documentary Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.

SOUND + VISION 2015 — JOE STRUMMER: THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN

Joe Strummer documentary is part of Julien Temple sidebar at “Sound + Vision” series at Lincoln Center

I WAS THERE: THE MUSIC DOCS OF JULIEN TEMPLE — JOE STRUMMER: THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN (Julien Temple, 2007)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Saturday, August 1, 3:30
Festival runs July 29 – August 7
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
www.joestrummerthemovie.com

Director Julien Temple, who has made two outstanding documentaries about the Sex Pistols (The Great Rock and Roll Swindle and The Filth and the Fury), turns his camera on Joe Strummer of the British punk group the Clash in The Future Is Unwritten. Temple collects remarkable home movies of Strummer, from his early days as young John Mellor, a career diplomat’s son, through his time as the leader of one of the most famous and controversial bands in the world and his death at the age of fifty from a congenital heart defect. Strummer’s friends and family gather around a campfire in Brooklyn’s Empire St.-Fulton Ferry Park and talk about Strummer’s life and career, sharing keen insight in a format that the musician loved; his campfire get-togethers came to be known as Strummerville, a place for people to assemble and discuss life, art, and anything else that came to mind. Temple adds lots of footage of the Clash in action, as well as clips from Strummer’s earlier band, the 101ers, made up of squatters fighting the power, and his last band, the Mescaleros. Temple also brings some of Strummer’s drawings to life, animating them in humorous ways. Strummer essentially narrates the film himself, as Temple includes audio excerpts from Strummer’s “Last Call” radio show and interviews he gave over the years. Temple, a close friend of Strummer’s, paints a fascinating portrait of the complex man, featuring stories from the likes of Bono, Johnny Depp, Flea, Mele Mel, Courtney Love Cobain, Martin Scorsese, Steve Jones, John Cusack, Matt Dillon, Steve Buscemi, Damien Hirst, Roland Gift, Don Letts, Mick Jones, and many others. And there’s lots of music as well, of course, including several versions of “White Riot.” The Future Is Unwritten is screening August 1 at 3:30 in the “I Was There: The Music Docs of Julien Temple” sidebar of Lincoln Center’s annual “Sound + Vision” series, which also includes The Filth and the Fury, The Clash: New Year’s Day ’77, Dave Davies: Kinkdom Come, Ray Davies: Imaginary Man, Glastonbury, Never Mind the Baubles: Christmas with the Sex Pistols, and The Liberty of Norton Folgate, with Temple on hand for various introductions and Q&As.

VACATION

The Griswold clan clearly understands the repulsive monstrosity they have wrought on this earth

VACATION (John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein, 2015)
Opens Wednesday, July 29
vacationthemovie.com

John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s Vacation is one of the most vile, insipid, insulting, mean-spirited, and offensive films ever made, the Human Centipede of comedies. This next-generation sequel to the first four theatrical movies in the popular series — which began in 1983 with National Lampoon’s Vacation and continued as the Griswold clan, featuring Chevy Chase as luckless dad Clark and Beverly D’Angelo as his sexy wife, Ellen, visited Europe and Vegas and celebrated Christmas as only they can — is an unmitigated disaster, a thoroughly repulsive trip through the dregs of nasty humor. Russ “Rusty” Griswold (Ed Helms), originally played by Anthony Michael Hall, is now all grown up and married to Debbie (Christina Applegate), who dreams of going to Paris. But Russ has a better idea — a drive cross-country with their children, the sensitive James (Skyler Gisondo) and the younger Kevin (Steele Stebbins), a cruel little asshole who bullies his older brother relentlessly, to visit Walley World, the ultimate destination of the first film. Russ rents a ridiculous blue Tartan Prancer, the “Honda of Albania,” and off they go on a series of absurd, disgraceful and, most unfortunately, unfunny adventures involving a steer, Debbie’s old sorority, a hot woman (fashion model Hannah Davis) in a red car, white-water rafting with a just-jilted guide (Charlie Day), hapless border guards (Tim Heidecker, Nick Kroll, Kaitlin Olson, and Michael Peña) at the Four Corners Monument, and Russ’s sister Audrey’s (Leslie Mann) very well hung conservative husband (Chris Hemsworth). I have to admit that I did laugh out loud three times, but those extremely brief respites do not make up for the rest of this abhorrent and repugnant monstrosity. Even cameos by Chase and D’Angelo ring false and fall completely flat. There was a sweet, playful charm to the original, written by John Hughes and directed by Harold Ramis and featuring the great Imogene Coca as Aunt Edna and Randy Quaid and Miriam Flynn as Ellen’s in-bred cousins, but there is nothing the least bit appealing about this ill-conceived sequel, written and directed by Goldstein and former Freaks & Geeks star Daley, who have previously cowritten Horrible Bosses, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. At one point, the Griswolds take a break in what turns out to be a basin filled with raw sewage; Vacation will make you feel like you’ve just spent one hundred minutes in that rancid pond.

FIRST SATURDAY: CARIBBEAN HERITAGE

The Braata Folk Singers will help celebrate Caribbean Heritage at Brooklyn Museum on August 1 (photo © copyright Braata Productions)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, August 1, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

After taking last month off because of the July 4 holiday, the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturday program is back August 1 with a celebration of Caribbean Heritage in preparation for the annual New York Caribbean Carnival Parade on Labor Day. There will be live performances by BombaYo, the Braata Folk Singers, Cuban jazz pianist Elio Villafranca, and Klash City Sound System and Supa Frendz; a printmaking workshop; a pop-up carnival with poet Arielle John; a book club talk with Naomi Jackson about her new novel, The Star Side of Bird Hill; and screenings of Black Radical Imagination shorts, clips from Taboo Yardies hosted by director Selena Blake, Jonathan David Kane’s Papa Machete, followed by a Q&A with Kane, and Cecile Emeke’s webseries Ackee & Saltfish, followed by a talkback with Emeke. In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,” “The Rise of Sneaker Culture,” “Kara Walker: ‘African Boy Attendant Curio (Bananas),’” “KAWS: ALONG THE WAY,” “Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence,” and “FAILE: Savage/Sacred Young Minds.”