this week in film and television

BLUE JASMINE

Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) has to start her life all over again with her sister (Sally Hawkins) in Woody Allen’s latest

BLUE JASMINE (Woody Allen, 2013)
Opened Friday, July 26
www.sonyclassics.com

Woody Allen’s best film in years, Blue Jasmine is a modern-day Streetcar Named Desire filtered through the Bernie Madoff scandal. Cate Blanchett gives a marvelously nuanced and deeply textured performance as Jasmine French, an elegant socialite whose immensely wealthy husband, Hal (a wonderfully smarmy Alec Baldwin), amassed his fortune the new-fashioned way: by lying and cheating—only he was the rare financier who got caught and ended up in jail. Now broke and distraught, Jasmine moves in with her sister, Ginger (the delightful Sally Hawkins), a single mother with two kids living in a cramped apartment in San Francisco. Ginger and her ex-husband, Augie (an excellent Andrew Dice Clay), lost all their money by investing with Hal, and she is now trying to rebuild her life, working as a cashier and dating the gruff but dedicated Chili (a strong Bobby Cannavale). Not used to taking care of herself, Jasmine seems lost in a world that no longer treats her like a princess; she takes a job working for a dentist (Michael Stuhlbarg) and attends a computer class, but she is determined to regain her previous status. And that chance comes when she meets Dwight (a gentle Peter Sarsgaard), a man with grand plans who just might be the one to lead her back to the level to which she is accustomed.

Sisters Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) and Ginger (Sally Hawkins) go on an awkward double date in San Francisco

With Blue Jasmine, Allen has written his best screenplay since 1989’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, creating a complex, multilayered narrative that intelligently examines both sides of the financial crisis, as the rich Jasmine loses everything and the lower-middle-class Ginger can’t quite reach the next level. The relationship between the two sisters is bittersweet, evoking Tennessee Williams’s Blanche and Stella, with Jasmine the delusional sibling and Ginger as the much more realistic one, in this case dealing with a pair of Stanley Kowalski-type brutes. The story travels seamlessly back and forth between the past and the present, concentrating on Jasmine’s downward emotional and psychological spiral, which is supremely evident in Suzy Benzinger’s dazzling costume design and the detailed makeup, which focuses particularly on Blanchett’s stunningly emotive eyes. She physically dominates the screen like no previous Allen leading lady, with cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) making sure she fills the screen again and again. It’s a sensational star turn in a film loaded with superb acting. Blue Jasmine is a joy to watch from beginning to end, a deft commentary from a master back at the very top of his game.

Nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Actress (Cate Blanchett), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Sally Hawkins), and Best Original Screenplay (Woody Allen)

RIVER FLICKS FOR GROWN-UPS: MOONRISE KINGDOM

Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) are on the run in Wes Anderson’s delightful MOONRISE KINGDOM

MOONRISE KINGDOM (Wes Anderson, 2012)
Hudson River Park, Pier 63 lawn at 23rd St.
Wednesday, July 24, free, dusk
www.riverflicks.com
www.moonrisekingdom.com

In such unique films as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Darjeeling Limited, black-comedy master Wes Anderson has created a bizarre collection of characters who seem to live in their own alternate realities. In his latest, Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson has once again assembled an oddball assortment of men, women, and children in a terrifically clever and entertaining fairy tale all its own. Tired of being abused by his fellow Khaki Scouts and dismissed by his foster parents, twelve-year-old orphan Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) runs away from Camp Ivanhoe on the island of New Penzance, much to the chagrin of dedicated scout master Randy Ward (Edward Norton). Meanwhile, twelve-year-old loner Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) is fed up with her life as well, which she mostly spends listening to Benjamin Britten, reading fairy tales (fictitious stories made up by Anderson), watching the world through a pair of ever-present binoculars, and despising her parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand). Afraid of what might have happened to the children, the local police officer, Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), gets involved, as does a stern woman from social services (Tilda Swinton) and, eventually, a very different kind of scout, Cousin Ben (Jason Schwartzman). The proceedings are overseen by a narrator (Bob Balaban) who ends up being more than just an omniscient presence. Moonrise Kingdom is an absolute gem of a film, an exciting, original tale about growing up told in a fabulously funny deadpan manner that combines slapstick humor with wildly ironic elements, filled with the endless wonders of childhood, although it is most definitely not for children. Newcomers Gilman and Hayward appear wise beyond their years in the lead roles, with outstanding support from an all-star cast, most prominently Norton as the by-the-book scout master on a mission. Written by Anderson with Roman Coppola and featuring a lovely score by Alexandre Desplat, Moonrise Kingdom is screening July 31 at Hudson River Park’s Pier 63 as part of the free River Flicks for Grown-Ups series, which continues through August 21 with such other 2012 movies as The Avengers and The Hunger Games. For a day-by-day listing of free summer movie screenings throughout New York City, go here.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “SHRUGGY JI” BY RED BARAAT

If you missed them at SummerStage in Central Park on July 14 and the Clearwater Festival on June 16, you still have another chance to catch Brooklyn-based bhangra funk dhol ‘n’ brass party band Red Baraat on July 30, when they’ll headline a free Greene Music on the Main Stage show in Ft. Greene Park with Debo Band and DJ Duane Harriott. Touring behind Shruggy Ji (Sinj, January 2013), their follow-up to their 2012 full-length studio debut, Chaal Baby, and the 2011 Bootleg Bhangra Live, which was recorded live at Southpaw in Brooklyn, the band is led by Sunny Jain, who marches across the stage pounding on his two-headed dhol, backed by a horn section that includes Mike Bromwell on soprano sax, Sonny Singh on trumpet, MiWi La Lupa on bass trumpet, Ernest Stuart on trombone, and John Altieri on sousaphone. To get a taste of the group’s unique international mix of multiple genres, you can stream their albums for free on Bandcamp, including their latest, the remix collection Big Talk, which features such tracks as “Baraat to Nowhere” and “Fully Funtastique.” We saw Red Baraat in June 2012 at the Northside Festival in McCarren Park, and they were indeed just that, fully funtastique.

HIGHLIGHTS OF CANNES FILM FESTIVAL WITH GILLES JACOB / MOVIE NIGHT WITH PAUL SCHRADER: PICKPOCKET

Michel (Martin LaSalle) eyes a potential target in Robert Bresson’s highly influential masterpiece PICKPOCKET

PICKPOCKET (Robert Bresson, 1959)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, July 30, $10, 12:30, 4:00, 7:30
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Tuesday, July 30, $16, 7:30
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

Robert Bresson’s 1959 Pickpocket is a stylistic marvel, a brilliant examination of a deeply troubled man and his dark obsessions. Evoking Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Martin LaSalle made his cinematic debut as Michel, a ne’er-do-well Parisian who lives in a decrepit apartment, refuses to visit his ailing mother (Dolly Scal), and decides to become a pickpocket. But it’s not necessarily the money he’s after; he hides the cash and watches that he steals in his room, which he is unable to lock from the outside. Instead, his petty thievery seems to give him some kind of psychosexual thrill, although his pleasure can seldom be seen in his staring, beady eyes. As the film opens, Michel is at the racetrack, dipping his fingers into a woman’s purse in an erotically charged moment that is captivating, instantly turning the viewer into voyeur. Of course, film audiences by nature are a kind of peeping Tom, but Bresson makes them complicit in Michel’s actions; although there is virtually nothing to like about the character, who is distant and aloof when not being outright nasty, even to his only friends, Jacques (Pierre Leymarie) and Jeanne (Marika Green), the audience can’t help but breathlessly root for him to succeed as he dangerously dips his hands into men’s pockets on the street and in the Metro. Soon he is being watched by a police inspector (Jean Pélégri), to whom he daringly gives a book about George Barrington, the famed “Prince of Pickpockets,” as well as a stranger (Kassagi) who wants him to join a small cadre of thieves, leading to a gorgeously choreographed scene of the men working in tandem as they pick a bunch of pockets. Through it all, however, Michel remains nonplussed, living a strange, private life, uncomfortable in his own skin. “You’re not in this world,” Jeanne tells him at one point.

Michel (Martin LaSalle) can’t keep his hands to himself in Bresson classic

Bresson (Au hasard Balthazar, Diary of a Country Priest) fills Pickpocket with visual clues and repeated symbols that add deep layers to the narrative, particularly an endless array of shots of hands and a parade of doors, many of which are left ajar and/or unlocked in the first half of the film but are increasingly closed as the end approaches. Shot in black-and-white by Léonce-Henri Burel — Bresson wouldn’t make his first color film until 1969’s Un femme douce — Pickpocket also has elements of film noir that combine with a visual intimacy to create a moody, claustrophobic feeling that hovers over and around Michel and the story. It’s a mesmerizing performance in a mesmerizing film, one of the finest of Bresson’s remarkable, and remarkably influential, career. In a scheduling quirk, Pickpocket is screening on July 30 at two different locations in the city. First, at 12:30, 4:00, and 7:30, it will be shown at FIAF, concluding the CinémaTuesdays series “Highlights of Cannes Film Festival with Gilles Jacob,” consisting of works chosen by festival president Jacob in honor of the glamorous event’s sixty-fifth anniversary. Also at 7:30, it will be presented at the IFC Center by writer-director Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Affliction), who called the film “an unmitigated masterpiece” in his extensive 1969 two-part review in the Los Angeles Free Press and told Sheila Johnston in a 2003 interview for the Telegraph, “I adore Pickpocket and can watch it endlessly. To me it’s as close to perfect as there can be.”

A VIEW FROM THE VAULTS — WARNER BROS. TODAY: WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini) and Max (Max Records) discuss life in Spike Jonze’s inventive live-action version of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (Spike Jonze, 2009)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, July 28, 2:30, and Sunday, August 11, 2:30
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.wherethewildthingsare.warnerbros.com

The endlessly inventive Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation.) has done the seemingly impossible, expanding Maurice Sendak’s classic 1963 children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are, into a fun and fantastical feature-length film. Written by Jonze and Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), the movie uses the ten sentences of the book and Sendak’s magical characters and transforms them into a world of wonder. Acting out after his sister’s friends crush his igloo and his divorced mother (Catherine Keener) ignores him in favor of a new boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo), nine-year-old Max (Max Records) runs away and sails across the ocean, landing on a faraway island where seven giant monsters live. In search of a leader, they name Max king, but he gets more than he bargained for as the ruler of the cynical Judith (voiced by Catherine O’Hara), the dumpy Ira (Forest Whitaker), the independent KW (Lauren Ambrose), the mysterious Bull (Michael Berry Jr.), the sad sack Alexander (Paul Dano), the dependable Douglas (Chris Cooper), and, most importantly, the manic-depressive Carol (James Gandolfini).

Max becomes king of the forest in cinematic adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic bedtime story

Each character represents a different part of Max, a developing emotion that he must learn to deal with as he grows up. He is immediately drawn to Carol, whom he first sees destroying the group’s small, makeshift homes, echoing Max’s feelings about his own family situation. Max’s relationship with Carol — himself in the midst of a breakup with KW — is the heart of the story, as Carol goes from one extreme to another, at one point bouncing around the forest with sheer glee, then snuggling up with everyone in a warming group sleep, and finally turning into a dangerous ogre. As Jonze has pointed out, Wild Things, which received the full blessing of Sendak, is not necessarily a movie for children but about childhood. It beautifully captures a child’s innate sense of adventure and imagination while also showing that choices come with consequences. Fans of the book will be amazed at how well Jonze depicts the Wild Things themselves, which come alive as if they just jumped right out of the pages of the book; actors (not the voice-over artists) are in the costumes, their faces digitally manipulated by CGI effects, but they feel as real as they did when your mother first read you the enchanting story while tucking you in your bed. Where the Wild Things Are is screening July 28 and August 11 as part of the MoMA series “A View from the Vaults: Warner Bros. Today,” which consists of thirty-one films from the last twenty years of movies coming out of the famed studio, including the Harry Potter, Dark Knight, and Lord of the Ring series as well as such wide-ranging fare as Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, Ted Braun’s Darfur Now, Jay Roach’s The Campaign, Christopher Nolan’s Inception, and George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck.

A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM

U.S. Grant National Memorial Park
West 122nd St. at Riverside Dr.
Sunday, July 28, free, 12 noon – 8:30 pm
877-427-5364
www.harlemweek.com

On Sunday, July 28, “A Great Day in Harlem” kicks off the annual Harlem Week festivities, a month of free events including live music, film screenings, community fairs, a college expo, and more. This year’s theme is “Living the Dream: Celebrating History,” paying tribute to the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. “A Great Day in Harlem” takes place in U.S. Grant National Memorial Park, featuring a cultural showcase with music and dance at 1:00, a gospel caravan at 3:00, and a fashion fusion showcase at 5:00, followed by “A Concert under the Stars: Songs in the Key of Life,” a salute to Stevie Wonder’s seminal 1976 Motown classic, led by Ray Chew & the Harlem Music Festival All-Stars with special guests. Harlem Week continues through August 24 with such other events as Great Jazz on the Great Hill in Central Park, the Tri-State Junior Tennis Classic in Mill Pond Park, Summer in the City with Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Contours, and the ImageNation Outdoor Film Festival in St. Nicholas Park, the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in Marcus Garvey Park, the 5K Anti-Gun Violence Walk for Peace, and much more.

A VIEW FROM THE VAULTS — WARNER BROS. TODAY: WATCHMEN

Nite Owl and Silk Spectre fight crime in WATCHMEN

Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) fight crime in WATCHMEN

WATCHMEN (Zack Snyder, 2009)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, July 27, 5:00
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.watchmenmovie.warnerbros.com

After more than twenty years, it finally arrived. Zack (300) Snyder’s brilliant, near panel-by-panel re-creation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s genre-defining Watchmen doesn’t update the setting one bit. It’s still an alternate history, a dystopian 1980s with Richard Nixon in office, celebrating victory in Vietnam while trying to with the Cold War against the Russians. That era’s very real preoccupations might not quite match our own, but in this age of international terrorism, fear of violent death is still used as an effective political tool. Snyder’s bold move, to keep the ’80s setting intact, complete with hair, color, and style, is visually stunning, if oddly disconcerting; he also does an outstanding job going back to the ’50s and ’70s, following Gibbons’s beautiful design and Moore’s musical sensibility. (The soundtrack includes obvious songs by Dylan, Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, and Wagner as well as a killer “Desolation Row” by My Chemical Romance over the closing credits.) Yet the genius lies in the universal nature of Moore’s story. Snyder maintains his atmosphere of dread, of people being tiny cogs caught in a machine manufacturing fear to control humanity, and it works. Because for many, that same system operates today, albeit with different faces, different bad guys, and different silhouettes and color schemes. Snyder’s refusal to update the superficial points out all the more strongly the essential power of Moore’s observations. The look is superb, with Gibbons’s characters walking right off the page and into three dimensions, breathing humans that fully embody their two-dimensional origins, often more fascinating out of costume than dressed for duty.

Jon Osterman (Billy Crudup) turns into Dr. Manhattan in WATCHMEN

The story, of course, is more difficult to transfer intact. There are added scenes that weren’t panels as well as inevitable elisions and telescoping of the original twelve-issue limited series. The sheer genius of Moore’s metafiction, his exploration of the Nietzschean “superman” and his comic book counterparts, and the supratextural additions, such as his deftly woven counterpoint comic-within-a-comic Tales of the Black Freighter, don’t all make it to the big screen. How could they? The movie’s more than two and a half hours already. If you didn’t read the book, you might miss the metafiction, the counterpoint, and possibly much of the plot, but the awesome Rorschach and the amazing Dr. Manhattan are psychologically and visually pitch-perfect. See it for the characters, at the very least (played by Billy Crudup, Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Goode, Malin Akerman, and Carla Gugino bringing to life Nite Owl, the Silk Spectre, Ozymandias, and others, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan nearly stealing the show as the Comedian). Mirroring the destruction/rebuilding of the narrative arc, Moore’s book itself effectively deconstructed the comic book superhero genre, blowing it to bits and pulling it to pieces, setting the stage for the genre’s rebirth, the graphic novel creative explosion of the 1980s and ’90s. Perhaps it is not coincidental that the film came out a time when that genre was experiencing a rebirth of its own, with The Dark Knight and Iron Man garnering both critical praise and public acclaim. But Moore’s commentary on the twentieth century, true compassion, and humankind’s messy urge to annihilate and save itself at the same time still makes a hell of a lot of sense today. Watchmen is screening July 27 at 5:00 as part of the MoMA series “A View from the Vaults: Warner Bros. Today,” which consists of thirty-one films from the last twenty years of movies coming out of the famed studio, including the Harry Potter, Dark Knight, and Lord of the Ring series as well as such wide-ranging fare as Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, Ted Braun’s Darfur Now, Jay Roach’s The Campaign, Christopher Nolan’s Inception, and George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck.