this week in film and television

LIFE AS IMPROV: VERA BRANDES, KEITH JARRETT, AND KÖLN 75

Mala Emde is hypnotic as teenage concert promoter Vera Brandes in Ido Fluk’s Köln 75

KÖLN 75 (Ido Fluk, 2025)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, October 17
www.ifccenter.com

In Ido Fluk’s exciting, propulsive Köln 75, if teenage concert promoter Vera Brandes (Mala Emde) is going to make the impossible happen and first book master pianist Keith Jarrett (John Magaro) for the first-ever jazz show at the Cologne Opera House in Germany, sell tickets, and then convince Jarrett to actually take the stage and perform, she’ll need to improvise like, well, a jazz legend.

Inspired by a true story, the film begins at Vera’s (Susanne Wolff) fiftieth birthday party, where her father (Ulrich Tukur) makes a surprise, unwelcome appearance. “When she was young, she had a lot of potential,” he says in what is supposed to be a celebratory toast. “She is, without a doubt, my greatest disappointment.”

Vera turns to look into the camera and confidently declares, “Let’s do this again!” The action then shifts to the 1970s, with Jazzworld magazine critic-at-large Michael “Mick” Watts (Michael Chernus) discussing some of the most famous recorded false starts in music history. We then meet Vera when she’s sixteen, a freewheeling, free-loving jazz fan into John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, and Dexter Gordon. One night she goes to a club to see British saxophonist Ronnie Scott (Daniel Betts), who, after hanging out with Vera, asks her to book a German tour for him even though she has zero experience. (She tells him she’s twenty-five.) When she asks why her, he answers, “Because I can’t imagine anyone turning you down.”

Soon Vera, her older boyfriend, Jan (Enno Trebs), her best friend, Isa (Shirin Eissa), and a young man she’s just met, Oliver (Leon Blohm), are putting together shows and living life in the fast lane, much to the chagrin of Vera’s stodgy and humorless conservative dentist father and mother (Jördis Triebel).

After watching Jarrett perform a solo concert, Vera decides that she must book the pianist into the Cologne Opera House, staking her entire music future on it even as she faces roadblock upon roadblock, from the opera house’s total lack of support to Jarrett’s unpredictability, neuroses, and nearly debilitating back pain. As Jarrett and his producer, Manfred Eicher (Alexander Scheer), set out on an eight-hour drive with Watts to get to Germany, Vera is determined to not let multiple problems stop her from staging the show and forging her career.

Emde (And Tomorrow the Whole World, 303) is hypnotic as Vera, who is always thinking, always planning, never sitting still; like Scott said, you can’t imagine anyone turning her down. Emde imbues Vera with endless bursts of energy, emotion, and an infectious joie de vivre even when everything is falling apart. Magaro (Past Lives, September 5) offers a terrific counterpoint as Jarrett, who is overwhelmed by a bundle of nerves and a lack of confidence despite his success. As Watts, Chernus (Severance, Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy) serves as a calming force somewhere in between them, speaking directly to the audience as a concerned observer, a journalist who keeps being told that he cannot use anything he witnesses in his story. (Although there was a real jazz writer with the same name, the character is a composite of several people.)

In making the film, writer-director Fluk (The Ticket, Never Too Late) ran into numerous problems of his own, so he and his crew had to improvise as well; for example, the Cologne Opera was not available, so they had to find an alternate space in Poland, and Jarrett and his record company chose not to cooperate, so Fluk could not use Jarrett’s actual music. However, Fluk did have an eight-hour conversation with the real Vera Brandes, who had been waiting fifty years to tell her story to someone. Köln 75 works because it’s not primarily about music, or the 1970s, or Keith Jarrett; instead, it’s told from the perspective of an unsung hero, an intoxicating young woman who refuses to let her dreams die.

Köln 75 opens October 17 at IFC Center, with Brandes, Emde, Chernus, and Fluk on hand for Q&As at the 6:45 screenings on Friday and Saturday night.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

MATURING ON FILM: A DIFFERENT COMING OF AGE AT METROGRAPH

THE COMING OF AGE
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
October 12 – November 2
metrograph.com

The Metrograph series “‘The Coming of Age” is not a collection of works about young people discovering themselves as they advance from puberty to adolescence to adulthood. Instead, it explores films about people growing old.

“We’re aging: Older adults are the fastest growing age demographic globally and expected to double in size in the US by 2060. And yet our film culture clings to youth,” series curator Sarah Friedland said in a statement. “‘The Coming of Age’ liberates the genre from the strictures of youth to present an anti-ageist portrait of growing older in global cinema, drawing on my film-viewing research to prepare for the making of my feature debut, Familiar Touch. Presenting films from the silent era up through our current moment of seismic demographic shift, ‘The Coming of Age’ bears the name of Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal 1970 feminist book on aging and borrows the genre as a frame for seeing and celebrating older adults in the fullness and complexity of themselves. What links each film in this series is not aging as a subject but the aging subject’s perspective, showing old age in the diversity of its experience: as a time for pleasure, poetry, resistance, and even revenge.”

Running October 12 through November 2, the series includes a wide range of international selections, from Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection and Yasujirô Ozu’s Tokyo Story to F. W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh and “Choreographies of Aging,” consisting of shorts by such directors as Kevin Jerome Everson, Barbara Hammer, and Friedland, who will take part in a postscreening discussion with director Wen Hu after the October 18 presentation. She will also be on hand October 12 to introduce Familiar Touch with star Kathleen Chalfant and critic Amy Taubin at 5:00 and then introduce Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D. at 7:30.

Below is a closer look at four of the films.

De Sica Neorealist classic is the heartbreaking story of a man and his dog

De Sica neorealist classic is the heartbreaking story of an elderly man and his faithful dog

UMBERTO D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1952)
Sunday, October 12, 7:30
Monday, October 20, 4:45
metrograph.com

You might never stop crying. Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist masterpiece Umberto D. stars Carlo Battisti (a professor whom De Sica saw one day and thought would be perfect for the lead role; it would be Battisti’s only film) as Umberto Domenico Ferrari, an elderly former bureaucrat who is too proud to sacrifice his dignity in order to pay his mean-spirited landlady (Lina Gennari), who rents out his room by the hour while he’s out walking his beloved dog, Flag, and trying to find some way to get money and food. Umberto D. is befriended by the boardinghouse maid (Maria Pia Casilio), who is pregnant with the child of one of two servicemen, neither of whom wants to have anything to do with her. As Umberto D.’s options start running out, he considers desperate measures to free himself from his loneliness and poverty. His relationship with Flag is one of the most moving in cinema history. Don’t miss this remarkable achievement, which was lovingly restored in 2002 for its fiftieth anniversary by eighty-six-year-old lighting specialist Vincenzo Verzini, who was known as Little Giotto.

Yun Jung-hee returned to the screen for the first time in sixteen years in moving Poetry

POETRY (SHI) (Lee Chang-dong, 2010)
Friday, October 17, 3:30
Saturday, October 18, noon
www.kino.com/poetry
metrograph.com

Returning to the screen for the first time in sixteen years, legendary Korean actress Yun Jung-hee is mesmerizing in Lee Chang-dong’s beautiful, bittersweet, and poetic Poetry. Yun stars as Mija, a lovely but simple woman raising her teenage grandson, Wook (Lee David), and working as a maid for Mr. Kang (Kim Hi-ra), a Viagra-taking old man debilitated from a stroke. When she is told that Wook is involved in the tragic suicide of a classmate (Han Su-young), Mija essentially goes about her business as usual, not outwardly reacting while clearly deeply troubled inside. As the complications in her life grow, she turns to a community poetry class for solace, determined to finish a poem before the memory loss that is causing her to forget certain basic words overwhelms her. Winner of the Best Screenplay award at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, Poetry is a gorgeously understated work, a visual, emotional poem that never drifts from its slow, steady pace. Writer-director Lee (Peppermint Candy, Secret Sunshine) occasionally treads a little too close to clichéd melodrama, but he always gets back on track, sharing the moving story of an unforgettable character. Throughout the film he offers no easy answers, leaving lots of room for interpretation, like poems themselves.

Ian Fiscuteanu brings to life the slow death of a unique character in Cristi Puiu’s very dark comedy

THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (Cristi Puiu, 2005)
Wednesday, October 22, 6:20
metrograph.com

Poor Mr. Lazarescu. He lives in a shoddy hovel of an apartment in Bucharest, where he drinks too much and gets out too little. He moves around very slowly and has trouble saying what’s on his mind, even to his three cats. His family is sick and tired of telling him to lay off the booze, so they ignore his complaints. Suffering from headaches and stomach pain, he phones for an ambulance several times, but it arrives only after a neighbor calls as well. Mr. Lazarescu then spends the rest of this very long night fading away as he is taken to hospital after hospital by the ambulance nurse, who gets involved in a seemingly endless battle with doctors to try to save him. Ian Fiscuteanu is sensationally realistic as Mr. Lazarescu; you’ll quickly forget that he’s not really a drunk, disgusting, dying old man. Luminita Gheorghiu is excellent as Mioara, the nurse who gets caught up in Mr. Lazarescu’s case. Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard Award, cowriter-director Cristi Puiu’s very dark comedy is simply captivating; despite a slow start, it’ll pull you in with its well-choreographed scenes, documentary style, and careful camera movement. (Also look for the subtle and very specific naming of characters.) Using Éric Rohmer’s “Six Moral Tales” as inspiration, Puiu has said that The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is the first of his own “Six Stories from the Bucharest Suburbs,” this one dealing with “the love of humanity,” followed by 2010’s Aurora.

Chantal Akerman creates a unique profile of her mother in deeply personal No Home Movie

NO HOME MOVIE (Chantal Akerman, 2015)
Friday, October 24, 4:45
metrograph.com
icarusfilms.com

Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie was meant to be a kind of public eulogy for her beloved mother, Natalia (Nelly) Akerman, who died in 2014 at the age of eighty-six, shortly after Chantal had completed shooting forty hours of material with her. But it also ended up becoming, in its own way, a public eulogy for the highly influential Belgian auteur herself, as she died on October 5, 2015, at the age of sixty-five, only a few months after the film screened to widespread acclaim at several festivals (except at Locarno, where it was actually booed). Her death was reportedly a suicide, following a deep depression brought on by the loss of her mother. No Home Movie primarily consists of static shots inside Nelly’s Brussels apartment as she goes about her usual business, reading, eating, preparing to go for a walk, and taking naps. Akerman sets down either a handheld camera or a smartphone and lets her mother walk in and out of the frame; Akerman very rarely moves the camera or follows her mother around, instead keeping it near doorways and windows. She’s simply capturing the natural rhythms and pace of an old woman’s life. Occasionally the two sit down together in the kitchen and eat while discussing family history and gossip, Judaism, WWII, and the Nazis. (The elder Akerman was a Holocaust survivor who spent time in Auschwitz.) They also Skype each other as Chantal travels to film festivals and other places. “I want to show there is no distance in the world,” she tells her mother, who Skypes back, “You always have such ideas! Don’t you, sweetheart.” In another exchange, the daughter says, “You think I’m good for nothing!” to which the mother replies, “Not at all! You know all sorts of things others don’t know.”

Shots of a tree fluttering in the Israeli wind enhance the peaceful calm of No Home Movie

Later they are joined by Chantal’s sister, Sylviane, as well as Nelly’s home aide. The film features long sections with no dialogue and nobody in the frame; Akerman opens the movie with a four-minute shot of a lone tree with green leaves fluttering in the wind in the foreground, the vast, empty landscape of Israel in the background, where occasionally a barely visible car turns off a far-away road. Akerman returns to Israel several times during the film, sometimes shooting out of a moving car; these sections serve as interludes about the passage of time as well as referencing her family’s Jewish past. At one point, Akerman makes potatoes for her mother that they eat in the kitchen, a direct reference to a scene in Akerman’s feminist classic, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai due Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Knowing about what happened to both mother and daughter postfilming casts a shadow over the documentary, especially when Chantal tells her mother, “I’m in a very, very good mood. . . . Let’s enjoy it; it’s not that common.” As the film nears its conclusion, there is almost total darkness, echoing the end of life. Through it all, Akerman is proud of her mother; reminiscing about kindergarten, she remembers, “And to everybody, I would say, this is my mother.” No Home Movie achieves that very same declaration, now for all the world to see and hear.

Agnès Varda takes an unusual approach to autobiography in The Beaches of Agnès

THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS (LES PLAGES D’AGNÈS) (Agnès Varda, 2008)
Friday, October 24, 2:00
Sunday, October 26, 11:00 am
metrograph.com

“The whole idea of fragmentation appeals to me,” filmmaker, photographer, and installation artist Agnès Varda says in the middle of her unusual cinematic autobiography, the César-winning documentary The Beaches of Agnès. “It corresponds so naturally to questions of memory. Is it possible to reconstitute this personality, this person Jean Vilar, who was so exceptional?” She might have been referring to her friend, the French actor and theater director, but the exceptional Belgian-French Varda might as well have been referring to herself. Later she explains, “My memories swarm around me like confused flies. I hesitate to remember all that. I don’t want to.” Fortunately for viewers, Varda (Jacquot de Nantes, The Gleaners and I) does delve into her past in the film, sharing choice tidbits from throughout her life and career, in creative and offbeat ways that are charmingly self-effacing. Using cleverly arranged film clips, re-creations, photographs, and an array of frames and mirrors, the eighty-year-old Varda discusses such colleagues as Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais; shares personal details of her long relationship with Jacques Demy; visits her childhood home; rebuilds an old film set; speaks with her daughter, Rosalie Varda, and son, Mathieu Demy; talks about several of her classic films, including La Pointe Courte, Cléo from 5 to 7, and Vagabond; and, in her ever-present bangs, walks barefoot along beaches, fully aware that the camera is following her every move and reveling in it while also feigning occasional shyness. Filmmakers don’t generally write and direct documentaries about themselves, but unsurprisingly, the Nouvelle Vague legend and first woman to win an honorary Palme d’or makes The Beaches of Agnès about as artistic as it can get without becoming pretentious and laudatory.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

NOT SAFE AT HOME: AMONG NEIGHBORS AT THE QUAD

Among Neighbors explores horrific events that linger in a small Polish town (courtesy of 8 Above)

AMONG NEIGHBORS (Yoav Potash, 2025)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, October 10
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com
www.amongneighbors.com

“It’s much easier to sell a pleasant history than a difficult history,” professor Dariusz Stola says in Yoav Potash’s remarkable documentary, Among Neighbors.

Ten years in the making, the film is a gripping, deeply emotional murder mystery surrounding the killing of Jews in the small town of Gniewoszów, Poland — months after WWII had concluded. In 2014, Potash was invited by Aaron Friedman Tartakovsky and his mother, Anita Friedman, to film the rededication of a Jewish cemetery in the shtetl where Anita’s father was from, but as Potash spoke with residents, he discovered long-buried, dark secrets involving violence and the whitewashing of what had occurred there.

Nine years earlier, the Friedman family had faced physical threats when they tried to visit the Gniewoszów firehouse, which was formerly the old synagogue. In 2018, the Polish government amended the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, criminalizing any speech or action that suggested the country was complicit in the Holocaust. In 2020, Stola was forced to resign from his role at the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews over disagreements about what the institution could and could not display.

Potash, who wrote, directed, produced, and coedited the film and served as one of the cinematographers, meets with several longtime Polish residents, who will say only so much. Henryk and Sławomir Smolarczyk don’t feel there is anything strange about their collection of dusty Jewish tombstones from the destroyed cemetery. Janina Grzebalska recalls playing with Jewish children, attending Jewish weddings, and enjoying matzah. One unidentified woman who came to Gniewoszów for work in 1953 asks, “Is this about the Jewish issues? It was already silenced.”

But Potash starts uncovering the truth from Pelagia Radecka, who, for the first time, reveals the story of her relationship with the Weinbergs, the Jewish family who operated a fabric shop across the street from her house and were victims of a horrific tragedy. Haunted by her memories, Radecka has been trying to find out what happened to her friend, Janek Weinberg, for seventy years. Meanwhile, the granddaughters of Gniewoszów painter Harry Lieberman put Potash in touch with Yaacov Goldstein, who was separated from his family during the Holocaust and shares his unforgettable tale of survival. Pelagia’s and Yaacov’s harrowing stories are brought to life through archival footage, photographs, home movies, and spellbinding hand-drawn black, gray, and white animation (highlighted by powerful splashes of blue and yellow) as they narrate their experiences.

“They were our neighbors,” Pelagia says, shocked by what she had witnessed.

Yaacov declares, “I am a survivor of the Holocaust. And to say that Polish people didn’t help the Germans, did not hate, and didn’t kill Jewish people — it’s against the truth!”

Potash (Crime After Crime, Food Stamped) also speaks with matzevot photographer Łukasz Baksik and mass graves investigator Aleksander Schwarz, the latter noting, “We have so many cases, you wouldn’t believe.”; Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland; journalist Konstanty Gebert, who points out, “This one small town represents what happened in hundreds of small towns. The Germans come in, and it’s the end of normal relations between Jews and non-Jews.”; and historian Magda Teter, who puts it all into perspective, relating it to what is going on in America and around the world: “The assault on history and the criminalization of history in many countries today is part of a larger assault on democracy and democratic values.” Meanwhile, Polish ambassador Piotr Wilczek asserts, “There are only individual, very rare cases of antisemitism in Poland. The problem is really in many countries. So I really don’t know why Poland is singled out in such a way.”

In January 2024, Igor Golyak’s theatrical adaptation of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class detailed the real-life 1941 pogrom in the small Polish village of Jedwabne, where Catholic children turned against their Jewish schoolmates, leading to a mass murder that was covered up for decades. In the 2021 documentary Three Minutes — A Lengthening, director Bianca Stigter does a deep dive into one hundred and eighty seconds of vacation footage taken in 1938 in the small town of Nasielsk, Poland, attempting to identify the people in the images and figure out what happened to them; of the three thousand Jews who lived in Nasielsk at the time, fewer than a hundred survived the Nazi invasion.

Meanwhile, antisemitism is on the rise yet again in America, where the current administration is erasing certain parts of our history and rewriting others, especially those concerning minorities and diversity. Immigrants are being vilified with grotesque language and shameful policies. Thus, Among Neighbors is not just about a small village in Poland; it is about respect, dignity, compassion, and the truth everywhere, at any time. When Yaacov says, “It was like we were not human beings,” it is hard not to think that he is referring to the treatment of Black and brown people in the United States. That point strikes a chord when Stola says, “They felt, in Poland, at home, that this is a safe place.”

Are there any safe places anymore?

Among Neighbors, which features an extraordinary ending that requires multiple tissues, runs October 10–16 at the Quad, with Potash participating in Q&As on October 10 at 7:20 (with filmmaker Yael Melamede), October 11 at 7:20 (with actor Simon Feil), and October 12 at 3:30 (with professor Annette Insdorf).

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

RESTORING CHAOS: JAPAN SOCIETY CELEBRATES YUKIO MISHIMA CENTENNIAL

YUKIO MISHIMA CENTENNIAL SERIES: EMERGENCES
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
September 11 – December 6
japansociety.org

“Only art makes human beauty endure,” Yukio Mishima wrote in his 1959 novel Kyoko’s House.

In his short life — Mishima died by suicide in 1970 at the age of forty-five — the Japanese author and political activist penned approximately three dozen novels, four dozen plays, five dozen story and essay collections, ten literary adaptations, and a libretto, a ballet, and a film.

Japan Society is celebrating the hundredth year of his birth — he was born Kimitake Hiraoka in Tokyo in January 1925 — with “Yukio Mishima Centennial Series: Emergences,” comprising six events through December 6. The festival begins September 11–20 with Kinkakuji, SITI company cofounder Leon Ingulsrud and Korean American actor Major Curda’s theatrical adaptation of Mishima’s intense 1956 psychological novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, based on the true story of extreme postwar actions taken by a young Buddhist monk. Creator and director Ingulsrud cowrote the script with Curda, who stars in the play. The stage design is by Japanese visual artist Chiharu Shiota, whose international installations, featuring red and black yarn structures, include “In the Light,” “My House Is Your House,” and “Memory of Lines.” Her latest, “Two Home Countries,” runs September 12 through January 11 in the Japan Society gallery, consisting of immersive, site-specific works created in commemoration of the eightieth anniversary of the end of WWII.

There are unlikely to be many empty seats at Japan Society for Kinkakuji and other Mishima events (photo © Ayako Moriyama)

There will be eleven performances of Kinkakuji, with a gallery-opening reception following the September 11 show, a separate gallery talk on September 12, a lecture preceding the September 16 show, and an artist Q&A on September 17. Each ticket comes with free same-day admission to “Two Home Countries.”

On September 27, Japan Society, as part of the John and Miyoko Davey Classics series, will screen Kon Ichikawa’s 1958 film, Conflagration, based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and starring Raizo Ichikawa, Tatsuya Nakadai, and Ganjiro Nakamura.

In conjunction with L’Alliance New York’s Crossing the Line Festival, Japan Society will present Le Tambour de Soie (The Silk Drum) on October 24 and 25, Yoshi Oida and Kaori Ito’s adaptation of Mishima’s 1957 Noh play Aya no Tsuzumi, a dance-theater piece about love and aging featuring downtown legend Paul Lazar and choreographer Ito, with music by Makoto Yabuki. The second show will be followed by an artist Q&A. On November 6, Japanese novelist and cultural ambassador Keiichiro Hirano (Nisshoku, Dawn) and Tufts University Mishima scholar Dr. Susan J. Napier will sit down for a conversation discussing Mishima’s life and legacy.

Le Tambour de Soie (The Silk Drum) will be performed October 24 and 25 at Japan Society (photo © courtesy of the Maison de la Culture d’Amiens)

On November 15 and 16, the Tokyo-based company CHAiroiPLIN brings The Seven Bridges (Hashi-zukushi) to Japan Society, a visually arresting adaptation for all ages of Mishima’s short story about four women seeking wishes during a full moon. The series concludes December 4–6 with the US debut of Hosho Noh School and Mishima’s Muse – Noh Theater, three unique programs of noh and kyogen theater comprising performances of works that inspired Mishima: Shishi (Lion Dance), Busu (Poison), Aoi no Ue (Lady Aoi), Kantan, and Yoroboshi. The December 4 performance will be followed by a ticketed soirée, and there will be an artist Q&A after the December 5 show with Kazufusa Hosho, the twentieth grand master of Hosho Noh School, which dates back to the early fifteenth century. In addition, members of Hosho Noh School lead a workshop on December 6.

“This series revitalizes Mishima’s contributions to the world of the arts through a slate of brand new commissions and premieres adapting his writings, as well as a historic US debut for a revered noh company,” Japan Society artistic director Yoko Shioya said in a statement. “This series recognizes not only Mishima’s critical legacy but the ongoing current influence of this essential postwar author on artists today.”

That legacy can be summed up in this line from his 1963 novel Gogo no Eikō (The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea): “Of course, living is merely the chaos of existence, but more than that it’s a crazy mixed-up business of dismantling existence instant by instant to the point where the original chaos is restored.”

THIS IS OUR KINGDOM: LINDA LINDA LINDA RETURNS FOR TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY

Four girls prepare to play in their high school rock festival in Linda Linda Linda

LINDA LINDA LINDA (Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2005)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, September 5
www.ifccenter.com
gkids.com/films

The twentieth anniversary 4K restoration of Nobuhiro Yamashita’s 2005 teen cult classic, Linda Linda Linda, is reason to sing and dance and celebrate.

Opening at IFC Center on September 5, the film is a brilliant exploration of teen angst, a kind of Japanese John Hughes tale involving female friendship, jealousy, young love, and establishing one’s identity as an all-girl band prepares for the annual Shiba High Holly Festival. But unlike most Hughes flicks, there are few parents and teachers to be seen, and only in extremely minor roles; this is all about the children, on the cusp of adulthood.

The film begins with a teen crew making a video for the festival: “Don’t let anyone tell us that when we’re no longer kids, we grow up,” a student says. “When we grow up, we won’t quit being kids. Where are the real we? Should the real we be here? We’ve only got a little more time to be the real us. . . . ”

When guitarist and lead singer Moe Imamura (Shione Yukawa) has to drop out of the group after damaging the middle finger of her left hand, drummer Kyoko Yamada (Aki Maeda), bassist Nozomi Shirakawa (Shiori Sekine), and keyboardist Kei Tachibana (Yuu Kashii) have to make some fast changes if they are to perform at the show. Kei switches to guitar, but they need a vocalist. The Japanese trio briefly considers former band member Rinko Marumoto (Takayo Mimura), but she is in a fight with Moe.

Sitting outside, they decide to choose the next girl they see, and it turns out to be Son (Bae Doona), a Korean exchange student who is learning Japanese. Son initially says no but ultimately changes her mind and joins the band. They rehearse in Kei’s ex-boyfriend’s (Masaki Miura) studio, where at first they sound terrible as they practice songs by the Blue Hearts, a popular Japanese punk band that existed from 1985 to 1995.

With the pressure on to improve in time for their performance, they experience more adolescent growing pains, as Kyoko develops a crush on Kazuya Oe (Katsuya Kobayashi); the extremely nervous Makihara (Kenichi Matsuyama) confesses his love for Son; the bandmates go food shopping for dinner; master guitarist Takako Nakajima (Yuko Yamazaki) decides not to play at the event; and school music club leader Abe (Keisuke Koide) has her work cut out for her once the concert starts.

Written by Yamashita with Kōsuke Mukai and Wakako Miyashita and named for a Blue Hearts song, Linda Linda Linda feels as fresh and exhilarating today as it was twenty years ago. It’s thrilling watching the band members, always in their school uniforms of white shirt with a green bow, nearly knee-length dark socks and skirt, and light-yellow sleeveless vest, develop as individuals and a group; all the actors play their own instruments and do their own singing, which was not an issue with Shiori, who is the bassist for the Tokyo rock band Base Ball Bear, two of whose songs also appear in the film. The score was composed by guitarist James Iha of Smashing Pumpkins.

Bae (The Host, Air Doll), Aki (Battle Royale, I Never Shot Anyone), Yu (Lorelei: The Witch of the Pacific Ocean, Death Note), and Shiori are terrific as their characters discover new sides of themselves while coming together as a band, even knowing that it’s just for three songs and then they will all likely go their separate ways when they graduate. There’s a particular moving focus on Son, who spends time at the festival’s Japan-Korea Culture Exchange Exhibit, a fish out of water attempting to adapt to her new environs.

Adults exist only on the periphery; even Koyama (Masahiro Komoto), the teacher in charge of the music club, keeps an eye on them but doesn’t understand the dynamics involved. In one hilarious scene, he tries to send a message to the band through Rinko, but he stumbles over words and Rinko cuts him off, asking, “Can I go now?” as he stands with his hands on his hips, not quite knowing what to say but thinking about his own musical past and, perhaps, choices he made.

Hands and fingers serve as a leitmotif throughout the film, metaphors for the students taking more control of their lives as they prepare for the next step. Moe’s broken or sprained finger, suffered while playing basketball in gym class, sets everything in motion. Kei strums her guitar under a poster of Bob Marley smoking a joint, his giant hand practically blessing her. Son grabs a microphone like she’s holding on for dear life. A young girl throws darts at a poster of the different cuts of meat in a cow. The student making the festival video stands defiant, her fists clenched by her side as she declares, “We won’t let our high school days become a memory. . . . This is our kingdom.” And then there’s the strange gift Tomoki gives Kei with her mother (Lily) present.

Linda Linda Linda is a stirring, touching film about the pain and pleasure of youth, concluding with an unforgettable finale that is likely to have you jumping out of your seat, fists raised high in the air.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CLIFF CASHEN: A CHRISTMAS MOVIE TO REMEMBER

Didi (Liz Larsen) and Cliff (Michael Strassner) have a Christmas Eve to remember in The Baltimorons

THE BALTIMORONS
IFC Center, AMC Lincoln Square, Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Brooklyn
Opens Friday, September 5
www.baltimoronsmovie.com

“What’s wrong with you?” dentist Didi asks her emergency patient, Cliff, early in The Baltimorons. He immediately replies, “Everything.”

What’s right with the film? Just about everything.

The Baltimorons is a bittersweet, hilarious escapade from the Duplass Brothers, directed by Jay Duplass and written by Duplass and Baltimore native Michael Strassner. Strassner stars as Cliff Cashen, who, in the first scene, fails pathetically at trying to hang himself in his attic. Six months later, a sober Cliff is driving with his fiancée, Brittany (Olivia Luccardi), to her mother’s house for Christmas Eve dinner. Cliff is an improv comic, but Brittany is worried when fellow comedian Marvin (Rob Phoenix) texts him about participating in a show that night; Cliff has promised Brittany that, as part of his sobriety, he has given up comedy as well as booze.

On his way into the house, he trips over a loose brick and smashes his face against the side of the door, causing significant damage to his mouth and teeth. He finds Dr. Didi (Liz Larsen), apparently the only dentist working on the holiday, and meets her in her office. Cliff might be a bear of a guy, but he is a sensitive man-child who is afraid of needles; it’s also nearly impossible to know when he is telling the truth or joking around.

Upon leaving Didi’s office, Cliff sees that his Cadillac has been towed; with no other options, he accepts an offer from Didi — a divorced mother and grandmother whose ex-husband (Brian Mendes) just got married that morning — to drive him to the impound lot so he can reclaim his car, which was originally his father’s. That leads to a series of extremely funny, moving, and dangerous adventures in which doctor and patient seem stuck together, facing personal and professional challenges that make them take a hard look at who they are and where they are going.

Duplass, who previously worked with his younger brother, Mark Duplass, on such films as The Puffy Chair and Baghead and the series Togetherness, met Strassner through the latter’s Instagram (@strasshola), where Strassner posts wildly unpredictable short videos. They quickly clicked and were soon writing The Baltimorons, which is loosely based on Strassner’s real life. Duplass cast Tony winner Larsen (The Most Happy Fella, Law & Order) after seeing her play matriarch Shelly Pfefferman in A Transparent Musical; Duplass had portrayed one of that character’s children in the hit streaming series. The role of Didi was then adjusted to reflect some elements from Larsen’s life.

It all combines to give the film a realistic feel, with Baltimore a character unto itself; it’s very much a love letter to the city as Jon Bregel’s camera guides us to the since-collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, Federal Hill, the annual Miracle on 34th Street holiday lighting display in Hampden, the Rocket to Venus restaurant, and other locations; there are also several mentions of the Baltimore Ravens and their All-Pro quarterback, Lamar Jackson. (Although the film is not political, it is difficult to think of the National Guard and other military being sent in to save this lovely city.)

Strassner, who played Snoopy in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown when he was in the seventh grade, is a veteran of the Groundlings improv group and has appeared on numerous sitcoms, but he instantly takes hold of the film; it’s virtually impossible not to connect with Cliff, a complex gentle giant who went through a bad time and is now trying to reframe his life. Strassner balances solemnity and gravity with humor and Cliff’s infectious world view; although it essentially makes no sense for Didi to keep sticking to Cliff, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t be exactly what we would do if we were in her situation, and Larsen (The Most Happy Fella, Law & Order) excels as the distraught doctor, melding her obvious and necessary cautiousness with an inner desire to break free, to gain control of a life that is getting away from her. You don’t have to be a sober comic or a lonely dentist to appreciate, understand, and, most important, want to spend more and more time with these two oddly matched people in search of something else.

The Baltimorons is a Christmas movie to remember, worthy of a place in the holiday canon; Jordan Seigel’s charming score even recalls Vince Guaraldi’s music for A Charlie Brown Christmas. There’s a reason why the film won the Audience Award at four different festivals. See it now, but add it to your annual Christmas list as well.

The Baltimorons opens September 5 at IFC Center, AMC Lincoln Square, and Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Brooklyn; Duplass, Strassner, and Larsen will be at IFC for Q&As following the 7:15 screenings on Friday (moderated by athlete, author, and podcaster Rich Roll) and the 4:40 show on Saturday (moderated by actor David Krumholz); they will also be at Alamo for Saturday’s 7:00 show.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

IFC AT TWENTY: BOYHOOD AND ANTICHRIST

Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) and Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) take a look at their lives in Richard Linklater’s brilliant Boyhood

BOYHOOD (Richard Linklater, 2014)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Sunday, August 31, 1:45
Monday, September 1, 11:15 am
Wednesday, September 3, 1:00
www.ifccenter.com

IFC Center is celebrating its twentieth anniversary by screening twenty films, one from each year it’s been open. The first part of the series runs through September 4 and includes 2006’s Inland Empire, 2007’s Fay Grim, 2009’s Antichrist, and 2014’s Boyhood.

Since 2002, Austin auteur Richard Linklater has made a wide range of successful films, from the family-friendly School of Rock and Bad News Bears to the second and third parts of the more adult Before series (Before Sunset, Before Midnight), with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, in addition to the Philip K. Dick thriller A Scanner Darkly and the Jack Black black comedy Bernie. But during that entire period he was also making one of the grandest films ever about childhood, the deceptively simple yet mind-blowingly complex Boyhood. The work follows Mason Evans Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) as he goes from six years old to eighteen, maturing for real as both the actor and the character grow up before our eyes. As the film begins, Mason, his older sister, Samantha (Linklater’s real-life daughter, Lorelei), and their mother, Olivia (Oscar winner Patricia Arquette), are preparing to move to Houston just as their usually absent father, Mason Sr. (Hawke), returns from a job in Alaska, supposedly ready to be a more regular part of their lives. But his emotional immaturity leads to divorce, and Mason Jr. spends the next dozen years dealing with school, stepfathers, and the normal machinations of everyday life, including sex, drugs, rock and roll, and, for him, a determination from an early age to become an artist. Along the way, his sister and parents experience significant changes as well as they all learn lessons about life, love, and loss.

Olivia (Patricia Arquette) reads to children Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) and Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) in Boyhood

To make the film, the cast and crew met every year for three or four days of shooting, with writer-director Linklater moving the story ahead by incorporating real elements from Coltrane’s life that add to the natural ease and flow of the story. Despite the obvious difficulties of maintaining continuity over a dozen years, cinematographers Lee Daniel and Shane Kelly and editor Sandra Adair do a masterful job of keeping the narrative right on track. It’s breathtaking to see Mason Jr. go upstairs in one scene, then come downstairs a year later, ready for something new, dressed slightly differently, with a little more facial hair, to signal the change in time. (Linklater also uses the soundtrack to note the passing years, with songs by Coldplay, the Hives, Cat Power, Gnarls Barkley, the Flaming Lips, and others.) Mason Jr.’s unique relationship with each parent and his sister is utterly believable, complete with all the pluses and minuses that entails; at one point, Lorelei, tired of being in the movie, asked her father to kill off her character, and even that energy is apparent onscreen. In addition to Coltrane’s career-making performance, Hawke and Arquette are sensational, doing something no other actors before them have ever done. You won’t be bored for a second of this two-hour, forty-minute journey with a relatively average American family that helps define the modern human condition like no other single film before it. “Photography is truth . . . and cinema is truth twenty-four times a second,” Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor) tells Véronica Dreyer (Anna Karina) in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Petit Soldat. With Boyhood, that statement has rarely been so true. Nominated for six Academy Awards, Boyhood is screening in the IFC Center series “20 Films for 20 Years” on August 31 and September 1 and 3, the first two on 35mm.

Lars von Trier’s Antichrist is yet another controversial work by the Danish filmmaker

ANTICHRIST (Lars von Trier, 2009)
IFC Center
Saturday, August 30, 7:05
Monday, September 1, 9:40
Wednesday, September 3, 4:25
Thursday, September 4, 11:15 am
www.ifccenter.com

Generally, Danish Dogme practitioner Lars von Trier makes films that critics and audiences alike are either repulsed by or deeply love. Controversial works such as Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark, and Dogville win international awards while also driving people out of theaters. In fact, at the New York Film Festival press conference for Antichrist, he was asked how he feels when no one walks out on his work: “Then I have failed,” he replied with a sly grin. Well, there are sure to be many walkouts during Antichrist, a harrowing tale of grief, pain, and despair that begins with a gorgeously shot, visually graphic sex scene followed by a tragic accident. The rest of the film details how the unnamed couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) deal with the loss of their young child; a therapist, he opts to treat her more as a patient than as his wife, a highly questionable decision that threatens to tear them apart — both psychologically and physically, as the film turns into an extremely violent horror flick in the final scenes.

Somehow, I found myself pretty much right in the middle of this one, neither loving it nor hating it while admiring it greatly despite its odd meanderings, loose holes, sappy dialogue, and occasionally awkward scenarios. In certain ways, it’s a bizarre amalgamation of Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (and various other Stephen King stories), Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, Richard Donner’s The Omen, Robert Wise’s Audrey Rose, and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Or something like that. Antichrist is screening in the IFC Center series “20 Films for 20 Years” on August 30 and September 1, 3, and 4, the last at an ungodly 11:15 am

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.].