this week in film and television

DRUNKTOWN’S FINEST

Felixia (Carmen Moore) and Sick Boy (Jeremiah Bitsui) want more out of life in DRUNKTOWN’S FINEST

DRUNKTOWN’S FINEST (Sydney Freeland, 2014)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St.
Opens Friday, February 20
212-255-2243
www.quadcinema.com
www.drunktownsfinest.com

Award-winning film festival favorite Drunktown’s Finest is a refreshingly original look inside life on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico. “They say this land isn’t a place to live; it’s a place to leave. Then why do people stay?” asks Nizhoni Smiles (MorningStar Angeline) at the beginning of writer-director Sydney Freeland’s debut feature, which opens with a shot of a town that could be any town. The story follows three teenagers trying to improve their lot by getting off the reservation. Sick Boy (Jeremiah Bitsui), who is about to have a child with Angela Maryboy (Elizabeth Frances), is trying to stay out of trouble the weekend before joining the army. Felixia (Carmen Moore) is a transsexual model attempting to jump-start her career by appearing in a Women of the Navajo calendar. And Nizhoni decides to track down her birth family before leaving to go to college in Michigan. The lives of the three protagonists intersect in unexpected ways as outside forces — and questionable decisions — complicate their chosen paths.

Drunktown’s Finest, which boasts Robert Redford as executive producer, might deal specifically with the plight of young Native Americans, but it works because of the universality of the emotions and desires it explores. Freeland lets the stories play out at a natural pace, not forcing any of the issues it raises, which include adoption, child abuse, crime, alcoholism, violence, and gender. The three leads all offer cogent portraits of their complex characters, making their plights sympathetic, believable, and relatable. Films like Drunktown’s Finest often get bogged down in oversentimentality and heavy messages, but Freeland’s smart, subtle script lifts it well above such narrow vanity projects. More than eight years in the making, Drunktown’s Finest was shot in fifteen days and completed via a successful Kickstarter campaign. The soundtrack includes several songs by the 1960s Navajo Nation band the Wingate Valley Boys, beginning and ending with their intoxicating, powerful “Beggar to a King,” a worthy metaphor for this gentle, bittersweet film and its characters’ struggles.

THE IMITATION GAME & THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

Benedict Cumberbatch sheds light on mathematical genius Alan Turing in THE IMITATION GAME

THE IMITATION GAME (Morten Tyldum, 2014)
In theaters now
www.theimitationgamemovie.com

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING focuses on the personal life of mathematical genius Stephen Hawking

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (James Marsh, 2014)
In theaters now
www.focusfeatures.com
This year’s heated Oscar race features a pair of fact-based British films about two of the most intelligent and important men of the last hundred years, but their life stories couldn’t be more different. The Theory of Everything follows Oxford-born theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) as he falls in love with linguist Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones) and is stricken with motor neuron disease while at Cambridge; at the age of twenty-one he is given two years to live, but more than fifty years later he is still alive and vibrant at seventy-three, celebrated far and wide as the smartest human being on the planet. On the other hand, The Imitation Game is about London-born mathematician Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), who died in shame and obscurity in 1954 at the age of forty-one; it would be more than fifty years before his remarkable work for the British government during WWII would be revealed to the public. In both films, the protagonist is on a scientific quest; in The Imitation Game, Turing is trying to break the seemingly unbreakable code of the Nazis’ Enigma machine, while Hawking is after nothing less than a single mathematical equation that can explain the vast universe. Both films were based on recent books, The Imitation Game on Andrew Hodges’s Alan Turing: The Enigma, and The Theory of Everything on Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Hawking. Both films feature extensive scenes filmed on location where some of the action originally took place, The Imitation Game in Bletchley Park and The Theory of Everything at Cambridge.

Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) doesn’t necessarily play well with others in THE IMITATION GAME

In each film, the genius is supported by the love and friendship of a smart, beautiful woman (Jones as Wilde in Theory, Keira Knightley as Joan Clarke in Imitation), without whom he would probably have never achieved what he did. The Imitation Game plays with the truth more than The Theory of Everything, at least in part because there is much more information available about Stephen and Jane, through books, interviews, public appearances, etc., and not just because the two of them participated in the making of the film (screenwriter Graham Moore spoke extensively with Ms. Hawking, but living and dead subjects have been known to tell a fib or two about themselves). In comparison, Turing’s work was kept secret for half a century, and there is not a cadre of people still around who knew him well. At the Oscars, the films will compete for Best Actor (Cumberbatch, Redmayne), Best Original Score (Alexandre Desplat, Jóhann Jóhannsson), Best Adapted Screenplay (Moore, Anthony McCarten), and Best Picture. In addition, Jones is nominated for Best Actress, Knightley for Best Supporting Actress, and The Imitation Game is also up for Best Director (Morten Tyldum), Best Production Design (Maria Djurkovic and Tatiana Macdonald), and Best Film Editing (William Goldenberg). At the BAFTAs, The Theory of Everything and Redmayne beat out The Imitation Game and Cumberbatch for Outstanding British Film, Adapted Screenplay, and Leading Actor.

Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) makes sure to spend time with his family in THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

Both films were made by directors who are not quite household names, and neither of whom is up for an Academy Award: James Marsh (The Theory of Everything) is an accomplished British documentarian who won an Oscar for Man on Wire and also made the little-seen thriller Shadow Dancer and the popular doc Project Nim, while Tyldum (The Imitation Game) is a Norwegian director whose previous films include the action thriller Headhunters and Buddy, about a danger-loving Oslo twentysomething. While The Theory of Everything plays out chronologically, following Stephen Hawking from his Cambridge days to the publication of his seminal 1988 book, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes and beyond, The Imitation Game is structured around the arrest of Turing for being a homosexual, telling his story to a detective (Rory Kinnear) who thinks Turing is hiding something. They’re both extremely well made, entertaining films with extraordinary lead performances and superb supporting casts, but the edge goes to The Imitation Game, which holds more surprises and mystery than the melodramatic Theory, which pulls harder at the heartstrings, though without overdoing it. Imitation is a multifaceted examination of class, society, science, gender, sexuality, and war, while Theory is a fairly straightforward romance, with science as the backdrop. Each film depicts its main character as a kind of superhero, at intellectual levels far surpassing that of ordinary men, but it’s perhaps most fascinating watching how they interact with others; Turing is deadly serious, often cold and callous, so driven that he has no time to consider others’ feelings, preferring to work alone in his designated group, while Hawking revels in the love of his wife and children and is kind and thoughtful of everyone he meets, understanding that he is just one part of an enormous universe. Regardless of which film wins more awards, it’s been both awe-inspiring and heartbreaking getting to know each man onscreen, two geniuses who changed the world but in many ways are polar opposites. But for those keeping score at home, Boyhood beat them both for Best Film at the BAFTAs.

FIXATION: PANDORA’S BOX

Louise Brooks sets hearts and minds afire in G. W. Pabst’s PANDORA’S BOX

CABARET CINEMA: PANDORA’S BOX (DIE BÜCHSE DER PANDORA) (G. W. Pabst, 1929)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, February 20, $10, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org

Upadana, or attachment is one of the three Buddhist poisons, along with aversion and ignorance. The Rubin Museum’s latest Brainwave series, “The Attachment Trap,” featuring film screenings and discussions and intimate talks that pair scientists with performers, explores the notion of the attachment trap, which it describes as “a metaphor for a core Buddhist principle: by holding tightly to external sources of happiness, we prevent ourselves from being truly free.” Running through April, the series includes Jake Gyllenhaal and neuroscientist Moran Cerf talking about “The Actor’s Dream,” writer Kevin Sessums and neuroscientist Carl Hart examining “I Left It on the Mountain,” and game designer Eric Zimmerman and neuroscientist John Krakauer attempting to answer the question “Is Life a Game?” Another key component of the Brainwave festival is the Friday-night film program, this year titled “Fixation,” consisting of movies that deal with attachment, which can also be interpreted as desire or greed. The series began, appropriately enough, with Brian De Palma’s Obsession and continues February 20 with G. W. Pabst’s 1929 silent Weimar classic, Pandora’s Box. Based on plays by Frank Wedekind, Pandora’s Box stars Kansas-born Louise Brooks as Lulu, a good-time girl who loves drinking, dancing, and the attention of men. Lulu, in a trend-setting hair bob and bangs, seemingly just can’t say no, whether it’s as the mistress of married newspaper publisher Dr. Ludwig Schön (Fritz Kortner) or her aging first patron, the father-figure Schigolch (Carl Goetz). Schön’s grown son, Alwa (Francis Lederer), and Countess Augusta Geschwitz (Alice Roberts) also have taken quite a fancy to Lulu. Even after Dr. Schön gets engaged to the well-connected socialite Charlotte Marie Adelaide von Zarnikow (Daisy D’ora), he can’t stay away from Lulu, despite knowing the harm that could bring to his reputation and his future. He helps finance and publicize a variety show that Lulu joins through trapeze artist Rodrigo Quast (Krafft-Raschig), a friend of Schigolch’s. But when Dr. Schön brings his fiancée to see the revue, jealousy takes center stage, and things starting going downhill for Lulu in myriad ways, including murder, blackmail, prison, and sex slavery.

Lulu (Louise Brooks) and Dr. Ludwig Schön (Fritz Kortner) share a dangerous love in PANDORA’S BOX

Brooks, a former Ziegfeld dancer who also starred in Pabst’s Diary of a Lost Girl, is riveting as Lulu, a role that almost went to Marlene Dietrich, who ended up playing the lascivious Lola in Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel instead, a film with similar themes. Brooks practically floats through Pandora’s Box, as nearly every character puts her up on a pedestal, desiring her in one way or another — most often, of course, sexually. But she is no mere beautiful angel whose life spirals out of control because of others, nor is she a devious devil out to destroy all in her path; however, she does make her bed and is ultimately forced to lie in it, as most clearly evidenced by her outrageously sly smile upon getting caught in flagrante backstage with Dr. Schön by his fiancée. (The revue scene is a staggering tour de force of acting and directing, with Sigfried Arno as the haggard stage manager, providing necessary comic relief.) The relationship between Dr. Schön and Lulu is reminiscent of the ill-fated romance between Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) and Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore) in Welles’s Citizen Kane, which might not be mere coincidence, as Kane coscreenwriter Herman Mankiewicz escorted an eighteen-year-old Brooks to see No, No Nanette on Broadway in 1925 and, after he became alcoholically incapacitated, Brooks ghost-wrote his New York Times review, a scene that also worked its way into Kane. More than eighty-five years after its release, Pandora’s Box is still a racy, surprising cautionary tale well ahead of its time, centered by a legendary performance by Brooks, one that is easy to get attached to; Brooks made her last onscreen appearance in the 1938 John Wayne Western Overland Stage Raiders and, after trying her hand at a number of more menial jobs, became a successful film writer, with her works collected in the well-received 1982 book Lulu in Hollywood. The 9:30 Cabaret Cinema screening of Pandora’s Box at the Rubin will be introduced by documentarian Lana Wilson (After Tiller); tickets are $10, but admission to the museum is free starting at 6:00, so get there early to check out such current exhibits as “Witness at a Crossroads: Photographer Marc Riboud in Asia” and “The All-Knowing Buddha: A Secret Guide.”

ECCENTRICS OF FRENCH COMEDY: THE TREE, THE MAYOR, AND THE MEDIATHEQUE

A patch of greenery and an old tree are the center of controversy in Éric Rohmer satire

CINÉSALON: THE TREE, THE MAYOR, AND THE MEDIATHEQUE (L’ARBRE, LE MAIRE ET LA MÉDIATHÈQUE) (LES SEPTS HASARDS) (Éric Rohmer, 1993)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, February 17, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through February 24
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

Éric Rohmer’s The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque is a delightfully simple, outrageously funny satire that stands apart from the majority of the French auteur’s works, especially his three famous series: Six Moral Tales, Comedies and Proverbs, and Tales of the Four Seasons. “French can be illogical, as we’ll see,” school principal Marc Rossignol (Fabrice Luchini) tells his young students at the beginning, and the same can be said for the French characters in the film as well, each one thinking they are nothing if not completely logical. Rohmer divides The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque into seven chapters, each built around a conditional “if” clause; for example, chapter four begins, “If Blandine Lenoir, at the monthly ‘Tomorrow,” had not, while recording a cultural broadcast, inadvertently unplugged her answering machine…” Each chapter pits philosophical, sociopolitical foes against one another as the small rural town of Saint-Juire-Champgillon prepares to build a new cultural, sports, and media center on an expanse of greenery that is home to a large, beautiful old tree. The center is the pet project of the mayor, Julien Dechaumes (Pascal Greggory), who aspires to higher office, while Rossignol is dead-set against anyone tampering with the natural environment. The battle heats up as magazine editor Régis Lebrun-Blondet (François-Marie Banier) hires freelance journalist Blandine Lenoir (Clémentine Amouroux) to do a story on the town’s situation.

Reporter Blandine Lenoir (Clémentine Amouroux) finds herself in the middle of controversy in wickedly funny Rohmer satire

Arguments abound over parking lots, the relative values of country vs. city, traditional farming vs. new advances, form vs. function, politics and ecology, and chance vs. the imponderable nature of history, involving Rossignol, Dechaumes, Lebrun-Blondet, Lenoir, architect Antoine Pergola (Michel Jaouen), the mayor’s girlfriend, author Bérénice Beaurivage (Arielle Dombasle), and even Rossignol’s ten-year-old daughter, Zoé (Galaxie Barbouth). Oddly, and most refreshingly, the extremely French rational, irrational, scientific, metaphysical, subtle, obvious, logical, and illogical discussions don’t involve any smoking, drinking, or sex. Even so, The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque, which features an endearingly goofy score by Sébastien Erms, is a purely French film from start to finish, a lovely little slice of life that is one of Rohmer’s unsung masterworks. The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque is screening February 17 at 4:00 & 7:30 in the French Institute Alliance Française’s CinéSalon series “Eccentrics of French Comedy” series; the 7:30 show will be introduced by film critic Nicholas Elliott, and both shows will be followed by a wine reception. The series concludes February 24 with Luc Moullet’s The Land of Madness, introduced by theater director Pavol Liska.

CARMEN DE LAVALLADE: AS I REMEMBER IT

Carmen de Lavallade examines her life and career in multimedia one-woman show (photo by Christopher Duggan)

Who: Carmen de Lavallade
What: As I Remember It
Where: Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater, 450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves., 866-811-4111
When: February 19-21, 24, 8:00, February 25, 1:00, $25-$30
Why: Legendary dancer and choreographer Carmen de Lavallade’s one-woman show, As I Remember It, was developed during two residencies at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in 2012 and 2014. The production will now make its New York premiere at BAC February 19-25, with de Lavallade using archival footage, personal writings, and live dance to share her compelling story, which includes performing onscreen and/or onstage with Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington, and many others; she has also choreographed for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Philadanco, and the Metropolitan Opera. Sadly, since the show began its tour, de Lavallade’s husband of nearly sixty years, multidisciplinary artist Geoffrey Holder, passed away in October 2014, but the eighty-three-year-old de Lavallade has soldiered on. (Their love story was told in Linda Atkinson and Nick Doob’s 2006 documentary, Carmen & Geoffrey.) The hour-long As I Remember It is directed by longtime character actor Joe Grifasi and cowritten with dramaturg Talvin Wilks; the lighting is by James F. Ingalls, video design by Maya Ciarrocchi, set design by Mimi Lien, and costumes by Esther Arroyo. The February 25 matinee finale will be followed by a conversation with the ever-lovely Ms. de Lavallade.

THE RED BALLOON

A boy has a magical relationship with a red balloon in children’s classic

THE RED BALLOON (LE BALLON ROUGE) (Albert Lamorisse, 1956)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
February 16-21, free with museum admission, 1:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Lovingly restored several years ago by Janus Films in a new 35mm print, Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, tells the story of a young boy (Pascal Lamorisse, the director’s son) who makes friends with an extraordinary red balloon, which follows him through the streets of Belleville in Paris, waits for him while he is in school, and obeys his every command. But the neighborhood kids are afraid of this stranger and go on a mission to burst the young boy’s bubble. Lamorisse gives life and emotion to the balloon (more than twenty-five thousand were used in the making of the film) in a masterful use of simple special effects well before CGI and other modern technology. The Red Balloon also features the splendid music of Maurice Leroux and the fine photography of Edmond Séchan, which beautifully sets the large red balloon against the gray of the streets and buildings of Paris’s Ménilmontant district. The thirty-four-minute film can also be seen as a parable about Jesus and the birth or Christianity, though it’s best not to read too much into it. The Red Balloon is screening daily February 16-21 at 1:00 at the Museum of Moving Image in conjunction with city schools’ winter break. On February 19 at 2:15, the museum will be hosting “The Red Balloon Animation Adventure,” an hour-long workshop ($5) for children ages six in which kids can create their own little Red Balloon movie.

JOHN CARPENTER — MASTER OF FEAR: ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13

Lt. Bishop (Austin Stoker, c.) has to team up with a pair of murderous felons (Tony Burton and Darwin Joston) to battle a vicious gang in John Carpenter thriller

ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (John Carpenter, 1976)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Sunday, February 15, 2:00 & 6:30
Series continues through February 22
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In his second film as writer, director, producer, and composer (following Dark Star, which he cowrote with Dan O’Bannon), low-budget maestro John Carpenter turns an about-to-be-abandoned police station in the fictional L.A. ghetto of Anderson into the Alamo in the urban-angst thriller Assault on Precinct 13. Setting the stage with a pulsating synth score and a beautifully cheesy opening-credits design, Carpenter captures the rage and unrest burning inside America in the 1970s in this claustrophobic tale of revenge. Austin Stoker stars as Lt. Ethan Bishop, an easygoing cop who is given the supposedly painless job of monitoring a police precinct in South Central Los Angeles on its final day of business, as a few of the last remaining workers pack up boxes and bid the place farewell. But following a police ambush of the Street Thunder gang and the senseless murder of a little girl, an ever-increasing number of gang members soon descend on the station, seeking bloody retribution. Bishop is forced to defend the precinct with secretaries Leigh (Zimmer) and Julie (Nancy Loomis) and dangerous convicts Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston) and Wells (Tony Burton) as the power is cut off and their weapons dwindle. The unending stream of gang members swarm around the station like zombies, trying to burst through doors and windows, as the cops and the cons struggle to come up with a plan to save themselves before all hope is lost. “The very least of our problems is that we’re out of time,” Leigh says to Wilson, who replies, “It’s an old story with me. I was born out of time.”

Carpenter melds together Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo and George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in Assault on Precinct 13, so much so that he edited the film under the pseudonym John T. Chance, the name of the sheriff played by John Wayne in Hawks’s 1959 Western. Meanwhile, the Stoker character Bishop plays is often a dead ringer for Duane Jones, and Martin West’s role as a catatonic father evokes Judith O’Dea’s catatonic Barbara in Romero’s frightfest. Filmed in Panavision, the flick nearly earned an X rating because of the scene in which the girl is shot; Carpenter deleted that from the cut he showed the ratings board but left it in the final film. The production has a lurid look and sound as it represents the battle for the streets going on across the country following the 1960s. “It’s a siege,” Bishop says at one point, incredulous as to what is happening. “It’s a goddamn siege.” Assault on Precinct 13 is a scintillating siege on the senses, a mid-’70s indie cult classic whose reputation continues, deservedly, to grow in stature. Jean-François Richet made a respectable all-star remake in 2005 with Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Brian Dennehy, Ja Rule, John Leguizamo, Maria Bello, Gabriel Byrne, and Drea de Matteo, but there’s nothing quite like the original; be prepared to have the music and images echoing in your brain for weeks. Assault on Precinct 13 is screening on February 15 at 2:00 and 6:30 as part of the BAMcinématek series “John Carpenter: Master of Fear,” which runs through February 22 and includes such other Carpenter gems as They Live, Escape from New York, and Starman in addition to the “Carpenter Selects” titles Straw Dogs, Sorcerer, and Forbidden Planet.