John Chambers (John Goodman), Les Siegel (Alan Arkin), and Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) come up with quite a rescue plan in gripping ARGO
ARGO (Ben Affleck, 2012)
Hudson River Park, Pier 63 lawn at 23rd St.
Wednesday, July 24, free, dusk
www.riverflicks.com
www.argothemovie.warnerbros.com
The little-known story of an unusual rescue attempt of six American diplomats during the Iran hostage crisis is told in Ben Affleck’s gripping, nearly flawless thriller, Argo. On November 4, 1979, the American embassy was overtaken by Iranian militants, but a half dozen men and women — Bob Anders (Tate Donovan), Cora Lijek (Clea DuVall), Mark Lijek (Christopher Denham), Joe Stafford (Scoot McNairy), Kathy Stafford (Kerry Bishé), and Lee Schatz (Rory Cochrane) — escaped and were given shelter by Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor (Victor Garber). A stymied U.S. State Department turns to CIA operative Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) and his boss, Jack O’Donnell (Bryan Cranston), who come up with a bizarre plan to pretend they are making a Canadian movie in Iran, using that as a guise to get the six embassy employees out of the country. Affleck gets real-life producer Les Siegel (a rioutous Alan Arkin) and makeup maestro John Chambers (John Goodman) to maintain a Hollywood office as the plan kicks into gear, with Affleck serving as the producer in Iran and assigning fake behind-the-scenes roles to the six men and women as the terrorists searching for them grow ever closer. Written by Chris Terrio (Heights) and produced by Affleck with George Clooney and Grant Heslov, Argo is a superbly made thriller with expert pacing, a strong cast, and a knuckle-biting story that will captivate Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Tension is high throughout, with just the right amount of humor and sentimentality, leading to a breathtaking finale. With Argo, one of the best films of 2012, Affleck once again proves himself as a big-time director, following the success of 2007’s Gone Baby Gone and 2010’s The Town. Nominated for seven Oscars and winning three, for Best Adapted Screenplay (Terrio), Best Film Editing (William Goldenberg), and Best Picture, Argo is screening July 24 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 Moonrise Kingdom, The Avengers, and The Hunger Games. For a day-by-day listing of free summer movie screenings throughout New York City, go here.
François Truffaut shot out of the blocks in 1959 with the classic 400 Blows, and he followed it up with Shoot the Piano Player, a magnificent noir about a virtuoso saloon piano player and his always-in-trouble brother. French crooner Charles Aznavour is super-cool as the secretive, shy pianist with a hidden past who gets caught up in his crooked brother’s dangerous predicament, against his better judgment. Comedy mixes with pathos, dance-hall jollies lead to murder and kidnapping, and lost love holds a curse in a dark, haunting film you will never forget. Loosely based on David Goodis’s pulp novel Down There, the film also stars Claudine Huzé, whom Truffaut renamed Marie Dubois, as the waitress Léna and Nicole Berger, Richard Kanayan, Albert Rémy, and Jean-Jacques Aslanian as members of Aznavour’s troubled family. Shoot the Piano Player is screening July 24-26 at 1:30 in MoMA’s ongoing “An Auteurist History of Film” series, along with another black-and-white classic, Pierre Étaix and Jean-Claude Carrière’s deliriously funny short, Happy Anniversary, which won the 1963 Oscar for Best Live Action Short Subject. As a woman (Laurence Lignières) prepares a special anniversary dinner at home, her husband (Étaix) gets trapped in all kinds of craziness as he desperately tries to make it home in time, but the traffic and parking gods are against him. Hysterical slapstick ensues virtually without dialogue, like a classic silent film with a wacky score, melding Chaplin and Keaton with Tati and, dare we say, Jerry Lewis. And you’ll never be able to look at Mr. Bean the same way again. Truffaut called Étaix’s 1965 feature, Yoyo, “a beautiful film in which I loved every shot and every idea, and which taught me many things about movies,” forever linking the two French directors. It’s quite a treat, therefore, to see Truffaut’s slyly comic gangster picture right alongside Étaix’s wildly funny short.
Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo continues his fascinating exploration of cinematic narrative in In Another Country, although this one turns somewhat nasty and tiresome by the end. After being duped in a bad business deal by a family member, an older woman (Youn Yuh-jung) and her daughter, Wonju (Jung Yumi), move to the small seaside town of Mohjang, where the disenchanted Wonju decides to write a screenplay to deal with her frustration. Based on an actual experience she had, she writes three tales in which a French woman named Anne (each played by an English-speaking Isabelle Huppert) comes to the town for different reasons. In the first section, Anne is a prominent filmmaker invited by Korean director Jungsoo (Kwon Hye-hyo), who has a thing for her even though he is about to become a father with his very suspicious wife, Kumhee (Moon So-ri). In the second story, Anne, a woman married to a wealthy CEO, has come to Mohjang to continue her affair with a well-known director, Munsoo (Moon Sung-keun), who is careful that the two are not seen together in public. And in the final part, Anne, whose husband recently left her for a young Korean woman, has arrived in Mohjang with an older friend (Youn), seeking to rediscover herself. In all three stories, Anne searches for a lighthouse, as if that could shine a light on her future, and meets up with a goofy lifeguard (Yu Jun-sang) who offers the possibility of sex, but each Anne reacts in different ways to his advances. Dialogue and scenes repeat, with slight adjustments made based on the different versions of Anne, investigating character, identity, and desire both in film and in real life. Hong wrote the film specifically for Huppert, who is charming and delightful in the first two sections before turning ugly in the third as Anne suddenly becomes annoying, selfish, and irritating, the plot taking hard-to-believe twists that nearly undermine what has gone on before. As he has done in such previous films as 
Yasujirō Ozu’s first film in color, at the studio’s request, is another engagingly told exploration of the changing relationship between parents and children, the traditional and the modern, in postwar Japan. Both funny and elegiac, Equinox Flower opens with businessman Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi) giving a surprisingly personal speech at a friend’s daughter’s wedding, explaining that he is envious that the newlyweds are truly in love, as opposed to his marriage, which was arranged for him and his wife, Kiyoko (Kinuyo Tanaka). Hirayama is later approached by an old middle school friend, Mikami (Ozu regular Chishu Ryu), who wants him to speak with his daughter, Fumiko (Yoshiko Kuga), who has left home to be with a man against her father’s will. Meanwhile, Yukiko (Fujiko Yamamoto), a friend of Hirayama’s elder daughter, Setsuko (Ineko Arima), is constantly being set up by her gossipy mother, Hatsu (Chieko Naniwa). Hirayama does not seem to be instantly against what Fumiko and Yukiko want for themselves, but when a young salaryman named Taniguchi (Keiji Sada) asks Hirayama for permission to marry his older daughter, Setsuko (Ineko Arima), Hirayama stands firmly against their wedding, claiming that he will decide Setsuko’s future. “Can’t I find my own happiness?” Setsuko cries out. The widening gap between father and daughter represents the modernization Japan is experiencing, but the past is always close at hand; Ozu and longtime cowriter Kōgo Noda even have Taniguchi being transferred to Hiroshima, the scene of such tragedy and devastation. Yet there is still a lighthearted aspect to Equinox Flower, and Ozu and cinematographer Yuharu Atsuta embrace the use of color, including beautiful outdoor scenes of Hirayama and Kiyoko looking out across a river and mountain, a train station sign warning of dangerous winds, the flashing neon RCA Victor building, and laundry floating against a cloudy blue sky. The interiors are carefully designed as well, with objects of various colors arranged like still-life paintings, particularly a red teapot that shows up in numerous shots. And Kiyoko’s seemingly offhanded adjustment of a broom hanging on the wall is unforgettable. But at the center of it all is Saburi’s marvelously gentle performance as a proud man caught between the past, the present, and the future. Equinox Flower is screening July 23 at Film Forum, which is holding a “Reprise Presentation” of its earlier, extensive Ozu series with encore screenings of eight of the works, concluding with Tokyo Twilight and 
Back in 1993, writer-director Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time was released, a thinking man’s martial arts epic inspired by Jin Yong’s The Eagle-Shooting Heroes novels. With numerous versions in circulation and the original negatives in disrepair, Wong (Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love) decided to painstakingly reedit and restore the film fifteen years later, renaming it Ashes of Time Redux. The plot – which is still as confusing as ever — revolves around Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung), a loner who lives in the desert, where people come to him when they need someone taken care of. Every year he is visited by Huang Yaoshi (Tony Leung Ka Fai), who keeps him informed of the world outside jianghu — especially about his lost love (Maggie Cheung). Meanwhile, Murong Yang (Brigitte Lin) has demanded that Ouyang kill Huang for having jilted his sister, Murong Yin (also played by Lin), who in turn hires Ouyang to kill Yang. There’s also a blind swordsman (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), a peasant girl with a basket of eggs (Charlie Young), a poor, rogue swordsman (Jacky Cheung), and a bottle of magic wine that can erase memories. Or something like that. But what’s most impressive about Ashes of Time Redux is Christopher Doyle’s thrilling, swirling cinematography, which sweeps the audience into the film, and Wu Tong’s rearranged score, based on the original music by Frankie Chan and Roel A. Garcia and featuring soaring cello solos by Yo-Yo Ma. The film is screening July 21 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image series “Wong Kar-wai,” which continues with such other works by the Hong Kong Second Wave auteur as Days of Being Wild, As Tears Go By, In the Mood for Love, 2046, and his latest, The Grandmaster, for a special “Fist and Sword” event with Wong present.