COP, starring James Woods, is part of overdue look at the career of James B. Harris
Who: James B. Harris
What: “Overdue,” critics Nick Pinkerton and Nicolas Rapold’s ongoing series that pays tribute to overlooked films and filmmakers
Where: BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St., 718-636-4100
When: April 1-6
Why: Writer, director, and producer James B. Harris is finally given his due in this six-day series at BAM featuring eight of his nine films, including Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, Lolita, and Paths of Glory and Don Siegel’s Telefon (starring Charles Bronson) in addition to four of his five directorial efforts, The Bedford Incident with Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark, the Sleeping Beauty update Some Call It Loving, and Fast-Walking and Cop, both starring James Woods. The only film left out is the 1993 crime drama Boiling Point. The eighty-six-year-old Harris will be at BAM for Q&As following the April 1 screening of Some Call It Loving and the 6:30 screening of Cop on April 4 in addition to introducing the 9:30 showing of Paths of Glory on April 4, a film in which he also makes a cameo.
You can add Hagen, the protagonist of Kornel Mundruczó’s White God, to the list of great canine characters in film, joining such esteemed company as Lassie, Benji, Beethoven, Sounder, Old Yeller, and, of course, Cujo. Played by year-old siblings Luke and Bodie, who were discovered by animal coordinator Teresa Miller in the classifieds, Hagen is man’s prototypical best friend — or in this case, the constant companion of thirteen-year-old classical trumpeter Lili (Zsófia Psotta) — smart and caring, loyal and loving, until things go really, really wrong. (Miller trained under her father, Karl Lewis Miller, who worked on such films as They Only Kill Their Masters, Dracula’s Dog, Call of the Wild, Babe, Cujo, and the Beethoven movies.) When her mother (Lili Horváth) and her new husband go away for a few months, Lili is forced to stay with her bitter, unhappy father (Zsótér Sándor), who refuses to register Hagen with the authorities and pay the dog tax. (In Hungary, mixed-breed dogs are taxed but purebred are not in an effort to control the feral population.) He throws Hagen out of their car, leaving him by the side of the road. At first Lili and Hagen try to find each other, but soon the dog becomes entangled in a series of dangerous situations, fighting for his life — and then fighting back, for mistreated mutts everywhere.
Over the course of his storied five-decade career, German-born auteur and photographer Wim Wenders has alternated between making documentaries, primarily about other artists (
New York City-born French filmmaker Eugène Green equates humanity and architecture in the lush, rich film La Sapienza. Named for the concept of gaining wisdom as well as Italian architect Francesco Borromini’s seventeenth-century Roman Catholic Baroque church Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, the film follows an older couple who rediscover their personal and professional passion after meeting a young pair of siblings. Architect Alexandre Schmidt (Fabrizio Rongione) and his wife, sociologist Aliénor (Christelle Prot Landman), are walking through a park in Switzerland when they see a teenage girl (Arianna Nastro) nearly collapse into the arms of a slightly older boy (Ludovico Succio). It turns out that Lavinia is suffering from incapacitating dizzy spells and is cared for by her brother, Goffredo, who is interested in studying architecture. Aliénor becomes involved in Lavinia’s situation while Alexandre, an intense, cynical man, returns to the book he is writing on Borromini (who famously worked in the shadow of Bernini) and travels to Italy with Goffredo as the boy’s reluctant mentor. Green’s (Toutes les nuits, Le monde vivant) first digital feature opens with the glorious sounds of Claudio Monteverdi accompanying cinematographer Raphaël O’Byrne’s magisterial shots of statuary and architecture in Rome. The acting at the start, particularly Rongione’s, is purposefully stiff and mannered, cold and stonelike, but it warms up as the characters learn (or relearn) about the myriad possibilities life offers. Green, who also appears in the film as the grizzled Chaldean, uses the metaphor of Baroque architecture’s role in the Counter-Reformation as a symbol for Alexandre and Aliénor’s relationship, as they finally face long-held emotions and reconsider their future, all while Green lingers on magnificent structures.
