this week in film and television

NITEHAWK NASTIES: THE DEVIL’S REJECTS

Sid Haig is back for more clownish fun as Captain Spaulding in THE DEVILS REJECTS

Sid Haig is back for more devilish fun as Captain Spaulding in THE DEVIL’S REJECTS

NITEHAWK MIDNITE SCREENINGS: THE DEVIL’S REJECTS (Rob Zombie, 2005)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Friday, January 2, and Saturday, January 3, 12:10 am
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com

Although writer-director Rob Zombie refuses to call this a sequel to 2003’s House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects is a sequel to Zombie’s 2003 horror hit House of 1000 Corpses. Mad clown Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) is back, as are murderous siblings Otis (Bill Moseley) and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie, Rob’s wife). Mother Firefly, played by the vixenous Karen Black in the first flick, is here portrayed with delicious delight by Leslie Easterbrook (of Police Academy fame). In this gorefest, Otis and Baby are on the lam from Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe), who is determined to avenge his brother’s death; they hole up in a skeevy motel with a quartet of hostages that includes perennial Clint Eastwood bad boy Geoffrey Lewis and Three’s Company escapee Priscilla Barnes. Zombie cleverly plays with genre cliches throughout the film; what you think is going to happen — or not happen — gets turned upside down, so you never quite know where things are heading (although you can always count on a shot of his wife’s butt). Zombie, leader of the heavy metal band White Zombie, injects a wry sense of humor by including such ’70s pop music as Elvin Bishop’s “Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years,” David Essex’s “Rock On,” and even Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird,” always at extremely appropriate moments. Add a star if you love films that relish gore; delete two and a half if you can’t stand them. The Devil’s Rejects is being shown January 2 and 3 at 12:10 am as part of Nitehawk Cinema’s Nitehawk Nasties and Nitehawk Midnite Screenings series.

FIRST SATURDAY: “CROSSING BROOKLYN” ARTISTS’ CHOICE

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, January 3, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum welcomes in 2015 by handing over the reins of its free monthly First Saturdays program to several of the artists featured in “Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond,” which concludes on January 4. The night before, curators Eugenie Tsai and Rujeko Hockley will discuss the exhibition at 5:30, “Crossing Brooklyn” artist Linda Goode Bryant will talk about urban farming at 6:15, jazz percussionist Ches Smith will activate David Horvitz’s forty-seven suspended bells as part of a site-specific musical composition at 6:30, and BFAMFAPhD (Blair Murphy, Susan Jahoda, and Vicky Virgin) will delve into the nature of creativity and debt at 7:15. “‘Crossing Brooklyn’ Artists’ Choice” also features live performances by Snarky Puppy, DJ Selly and DJ Asen from Fon, ventriloquist Nigel “Docta Gel” Dunkley (telling the story of Cindy Hot Chocolate from Geltown), immersive dance company Ani Taj and the Dance Cartel, Fela! veterans Chop and Quench led by Sahr Ngaujah, and spoken word poets Corina Copp, Patricia Spears Jones, Rickey Laurentiis, and Charles North as well as Greg Barris’s “Heart of Darkness” comedy showcase with Janeane Garofalo and Ilana Glazer, a print-making art workshop, a creative writing workshop led by Jaime Shearn Coan, and D’hana Perry’s multimedia improvisational “LOOSE.” In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Revolution! Works from the Black Arts Movement,” “Judith Scott — Bound and Unbound,” and “Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time.”

LET THERE BE LIGHT — THE FILMS OF JOHN HUSTON: FAT CITY

Stacey Keach and Jeff Bridges fight for a better life in and out of the ring in FAT CITY

Stacey Keach and Jeff Bridges look for a better life in and out of the ring in John Huston’s FAT CITY

FAT CITY (John Huston, 1972)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Thursday, January 1, 4:00, Sunday, January 4, 8:30, and Monday, January 5, 3:30
Festival runs through January 11
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com

Genre master and onetime boxer John Huston returned to the ring in Fat City, a gritty 1972 drama about a group of has-beens and never-will-be’s struggling to survive in Stockton, California. Stacey Keach stars as Billy Tully, a down-on-his-luck fighter looking to make a comeback at the ripe old age of twenty-nine. He spars at the local Y with eighteen-year-old Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges) and likes what he sees in the kid, telling him to meet his old manager, Ruben (Cheers’ Nicholas Colosanto), who decides to take on the unseasoned youngster. While Ruben lands Ernie — who seems more interested in bragging about having scored with his girlfriend, Faye (Candy Clark), than training properly — his first few bouts, Tully gets day work picking vegetables and hangs out at a local gin joint with a seedy, whiskey-voiced barfly named Oma (an Oscar-nominated Susan Tyrrell). Legendary cinematographer Conrad Hall, who shot such wide-ranging gems as Cool Hand Luke, In Cold Blood, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, and American Beauty, casts a gray pall over the proceedings as dashed hopes and dreams come falling down on these disillusioned perennial losers. In many ways Fat City, based on the novel by Leonard Gardner — who also wrote the screenplay — is an update of Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, but moved to the hard times of early ’70s America, when so many people had no way out. You do not have to be a fight fan to fall in love with this film. A clear influence on such auteurs as Martin Scorsese, Fat City is screening January 1, 4, and 5 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Let There Be Light: The Films of John Huston,” which runs through January 11 and consists of forty films directed by Huston, in addition to a handful of other works he either appeared in or that demonstrate his lasting influence.

TOP FIVE

The upcoming wedding between reality-show star Erica Long (Gabrielle Union) and Andre Allen (Chris Rock) is more demanding than the comedian expects in TOP FIVE.

TOP FIVE (Chris Rock, 2014)
Opened December 12
www.topfivemovie.com

Comedian Chris Rock finds his cinematic groove in Top Five, which serves as his own Stardust Memories. The South Carolina-born, Brooklyn-raised superstar comedian wrote, directed, and stars in the film, about a superstar New York comedian who wants to be taken seriously. The film opens with Andre Allen (a very solid Rock) being interviewed by Charlie Rose about his latest movie, Uprize!, a Haitian slave-revolt epic in which Allen plays the heroic Dutty Boukman. Allen is not afraid that his portrayal of Boukman, who helps kill tens of thousands of white people, will alienate his fan base, who adore him because of his outrageous Hammy the Bear series of cop comedies. Allen then meets up with New York Times journalist Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson), who is profiling him for the paper, following him around on Uprize!’s opening day. She goes with Allen as he does radio promos and visits with friends and family, including his father (Ben Vereen), ex-girlfriend Vanessa (Sherri Shepherd), and old neighborhood friends Lisa (Leslie Jones) and Fred (Tracy Morgan). Always at his side is his trusted best friend and bodyguard, Silk (a riotous J. B. Smoove), who watches out for the star when he’s not looking for some tail for himself. Meanwhile, Allen is getting ready to marry Erica Long (Gabrielle Union), a reality-show star, which means their relationship and upcoming wedding has become a spectacle for all the world to see. At first Allen is hesitant to talk to journalist Brown, but soon he is opening up to her, including discussing his alcoholism and his low point, a hysterical flashback to a drug-and-booze-crazed stop in Houston with Jazzy Dee (Cedric the Entertainer), a boisterous dude who claims to be the man to know in the city. But as Allen continues trudging through his past and imagining his future, he has some heavy thinking to do.

Chris Rock and Rosario Dawson in TOP FIVE

Andre Allen (Chris Rock) and journalist Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson) look for the real thing in TOP FIVE

Rock takes a huge step forward with Top Five, following 2003’s Head of State and 2005’s I Think I Love My Wife, which he also directed and starred in and cowrote. Top Five is a well-paced mix of comedy and drama, smoothly transitioning from serious moments to outrageous hilarity, particularly when Brown relates a Borat-worthy story about sex with her boyfriend (Anders Holm). New York City native Dawson (Kids, Sin City) gives a career-redefining performance as Brown, displaying a broader range than ever before, while Pootie Tang survivor Smoove proves a worthy sidekick to Rock. The film features a constant stream of comedy cameos, reaching its apex with a surprise trio in a strip club, and has a killer soundtrack, which should come as no surprise since Jay Z and Kanye West are among the producers and Questlove served as the executive music producer and co-composer. (The title itself relates to music, as throughout the film Allen asks people to name their top five favorite musicians.) At the center of it all is Rock, who ably walks that fine line between fiction and reality so often trod by writer, director, actor, and stand-up comedian Woody Allen. (Is Rock’s choice of last name in the film merely coincidental? And, like the Woodman, Rock’s personal life is hitting the tabloids, as he just announced he and his wife of nearly twenty years are divorcing.) Rock, who boosted his acting chops while starring on Broadway in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherf**cker with the Hat a few years ago, is excellent as Andre Allen, smiling that sly Guy Fawkes smile while reaching deep to evoke heartbreak and sadness. It’s a poignant performance in a film that is not afraid to take chances, much like its creator.

LET THERE BE LIGHT — THE FILMS OF JOHN HUSTON: HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON

A marine corporal (Robert Mitchum) and a Catholic novitiate (Deborah Kerr) are stuck on a deserted island in John Huston’s HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON

HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON (John Huston, 1957)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Tuesday, December 30, 3:45, and Saturday, January 3, 3:45
Festival runs December 19 – January 11
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com

In 1944, a marine corporal (Robert Mitchum) washes up on an island that has only one other occupant: a Catholic novitiate (Deborah Kerr) preparing to take her final vows, stranded there because of the war and the death of an aged priest. When the Japanese first bomb the island, then occupy it, the rugged Mr. Allison and the demure Sister Angela are forced to hide out together in a cave as they face both starvation and enemy capture. Adapted by director John Huston and John Lee Mahin (No Time for Sergeants, Show Boat) from Charles Shaw’s 1952 novel, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is a charming character study, a different kind of love story that develops within a lush, gripping Cinemascope WWII drama. Connecticut native Mitchum (Out of the Past, The Night of the Hunter), who is often shown bare-chested, and Glasgow-born Kerr (From Here to Eternity, Separate Tables), mostly hidden within her white habit (which stays remarkably clean through most of the film), are at their best as they reveal details of lives that are more similar than they initially imagine. (Kerr was nominated for an Oscar for the film, one of her six Best Actress nods, earning an honorary Academy Award in 1994, while Mitchum’s lone nomination was for Best Supporting Actor in 1945’s The Story of G.I. Joe.)

Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, and crew members on the set of HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON on the island of Tobago

Huston draws numerous parallels between the institutions they have dedicated themselves to, the military and the church, each involving a strict set of rules and behavior, along with specific uniforms. But while Mr. Allison puts his belief in himself and his fellow marines, Sister Angela relies on a higher authority. Mitchum and Kerr, who evoke Humphrey Bogart’s resilient Mr. Allnut and Katharine Hepburn’s prim Rose Sayer in Huston’s The African Queen, went on to make three more films together, The Sundowners (another Oscar nod for Kerr) and The Grass Is Greener in 1960 and the 1985 British TV movie Reunion at Fairborough. Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is screening December 30 and January 3 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Let There Be Light: The Films of John Huston,” which runs through January 11 and consists of forty films directed by the master, from Across the Pacific and The Barbarian and the Geisha to Fat City and In This Our Life, from The Kremlin Letter and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean to Moulin Rouge and The List of Adrian Messenger, in addition to a handful of other works he either appeared in (Tentacles!) or that demonstrate his lasting influence (There Will Be Blood).

THE CONTENDERS 2014: FINDING VIVIAN MAIER

Documentary turns the camera on mysterious street photographer Vivian Maier (photo by Vivian Maier / courtesy of the Maloof Collection)

FINDING VIVIAN MAIER (John Maloof & Charlie Siskel, 2013)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday, December 30, 7:30
Series runs through January 16
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.findingvivianmaier.com

By their very nature, street photographers take pictures of anonymous individuals, capturing a moment in time in which viewers can fill in their own details. In the wonderful documentary Finding Vivian Maier, codirectors John Maloof and Charlie Siskel turn the lens around on a street photographer herself, attempting to fill in the details of the curious life and times of Vivian Maier, about whom very little was known. “I find the mystery of it more interesting than her work itself,” says one woman for whom Vivian Maier served as a nanny decades earlier. “I’d love to know more about this person, and I don’t think you can do that through her work.” In 2007, while looking for historical photos for a book on the Portage Park section of Chicago, Maloof purchased a box of negatives at an auction. Upon discovering that they were high-quality, museum-worthy photographs, he set off on a mission to learn more about the photographer. Playing detective — while also developing hundreds of rolls of film, with thousands more to go — Maloof meets with men and women who knew Maier as an oddball, hoarding nanny who went everywhere with her camera and shared little, if anything, about her personal life. “I’m the mystery woman,” Maier says in a color home movie. Her former employers and charges, including talk-show host Phil Donahue, debate her background, the spelling and pronunciation of her name, her accent, and how she might have felt about a documentary delving into her secretive life.

Street photographer Vivian Maier captured a unique view of the world in more than 100,000 pictures (Vivian Maier / courtesy of the Maloof Collection)

Street photographer Vivian Maier captured a unique view of the world in more than 100,000 pictures (photo by Vivian Maier / courtesy of the Maloof Collection)

Maloof also discusses Maier’s work with such major photographers as Joel Meyerowitz and Mary Ellen Mark. “Had she made herself known, she would have become a famous photographer. Something was wrong. . . . A piece of the puzzle is missing,” Mark says while comparing Maier’s work to such legends as Robert Frank, Lisette Model, Helen Levitt, and Diane Arbus. Maloof tries to complete what becomes an ever-more-fascinating puzzle in this extremely enjoyable documentary that gets very serious as he finds out more about the mystery woman who is now considered an important twentieth-century artist. Finding Vivian Maier also has an intriguing pedigree; codirector and producer Siskel (Religulous) is executive producer of Comedy Central’s Tosh.0, executive producer Jeff Garlin (I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With) is a comedian who played Larry David’s best friend and agent on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Kickstarter contributor and interviewee Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs, Lie to Me) is an Oscar-nominated actor who collects Maier’s work. Finding Vivian Maier, which has made the Academy Award shortlist for Best Documentary, is screening December 30 at 7:30 as part of MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” which consists of films the institution believes will stand the test of time; the series continues with such other 2014 works as Ava DuVernay’s Selma, Paul W. S. Anderson’s Pompeii, Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler, and Alejandro González Iňárritu’s Birdman (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). And as an added bonus, you can see the exhibition “Vivian Maier: In Her Own Hands” through December 31 at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in the Fuller Building on East Fifty-Seventh St.

IDA

Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska) learns surprising things about her family from her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza) in IDA

IDA (Paweł Pawlikowski, 2013)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
212-924-3363
www.cinemavillage.com
www.musicboxfilms.com

Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida is one of the most gorgeously photographed, beautifully told films of the young century. The international festival favorite and shortlisted Foreign Language Oscar contender is set in Poland in 1962, as eighteen-year-old novitiate Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is preparing to become a nun and dedicate her life to Christ. But the Mother Superior (Halina Skoczyńska) tells Anna, an orphan who was raised in the convent, that she actually has a living relative, an aunt whom she should visit before taking her vows. So Anna sets off by herself to see her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a drinking, smoking, sexually promiscuous, and deeply bitter woman who explains to Ida that her real name is Ida Lebenstein and that she is in fact Jewish — and then reveals what happened to her family. Soon Ida, Wanda, and hitchhiking jazz saxophonist Dawid Ogrodnik are on their way to discovering some unsettling truths about the past.

Lis (Dawid Ogrodnik) and Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska) discuss life and loss in beautifully photographed IDA

Polish-born writer-director Pawlikowski (Last Resort, My Summer of Love), who lived and worked in the UK for more than thirty years before moving back to his native country to make Ida, composes each shot of the black-and-white film as if it’s a classic European painting, with cinematographers Łukasz Żal and Ryszard Lenczewski’s camera remaining static for nearly every scene. Pawlikowski often frames shots keeping the characters off to the side or, most dramatically, at the bottom of the frame, like they are barely there as they try to find their way in life. (At these moments, the subtitles jump to the top of the screen so as not to block the characters’ expressions.) Kulesza (Róża) is exceptional as the emotionally unpredictable Wanda, who has buried herself so deep in secrets that she might not be able to dig herself out. And in her first film, Trzebuchowska — who was discovered in a Warsaw café by Polish director Małgorzata Szumowska — is absolutely mesmerizing, her headpiece hiding her hair and ears, leaving the audience to focus only on her stunning eyes and round face, filled with a calm mystery that shifts ever so subtly as she learns more and more about her family, and herself. It’s like she’s stepped right out of a Vermeer painting and into a world she never knew existed. The screenplay, written by Pawlikowski and theater and television writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, keeps the dialogue to a minimum, allowing the stark visuals and superb acting to heighten the intensity. Ida is an exquisite film whose dazzling grace cannot be overstated.