this week in film and television

MOVIES @ HARLEM LIBRARY: LINCOLN

Daniel Day-Lewis gives a magnificent performance as the sixteenth president of the United States in Steven Spielberg’s LINCOLN

LINCOLN (Steven Spielberg, 2012)
Harlem Library Auditorium
9 West 124th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Thursday, July 18, free, 4:00
www.nypl.org
www.thelincolnmovie.com

Over the years, a handful of fine actors have portrayed Abraham Lincoln, including Walter Huston in D. W. Griffiths’s 1930 Abraham Lincoln, Henry Fonda in John Ford’s 1939 Young Mr. Lincoln, Raymond Massey in John Cromwell’s 1940 Abe Lincoln in Illinois, and Emmy winner Hal Holbrook in the 1974 miniseries Sandburg’s Lincoln, as well as George A. Billings in Phil Rosen’s 1924 The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Walker in Timur Bekmambetov’s 2012 Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. But no one has ever quite captured the essence of the sixteenth president of the United States of America as Daniel Day-Lewis does in his Oscar-winning performance in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. Day-Lewis is mesmerizing as Lincoln, a tall, goodhearted soul trying to end slavery and the Civil War. Based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, the film begins in January 1865, as newly reelected Honest Abe is caught in a tenuous situation: He can work to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, which would abolish slavery, or meet with a contingent from the South (which includes Jackie Earle Haley as Confederate vice president Alexander H. Stephens) to reach a peaceful settlement, but it is unlikely he can do both. Secretary of State William H. Seward (David Strathairn) wants him to forget about the amendment, believing passage in the House of Representatives would be impossible, but Lincoln is determined to do what is right, even if it takes a trio of shady lobbyists (James Spader, John Hawkes, and Tim Blake Nelson) to help get it done. Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner (Angels in America) depict Lincoln as a careful, caring man who loves going off on tangents, telling stories, parables, and even dirty jokes. He lies on the floor with his young son, Tad (Gulliver McGrath), tries to calm his wife, Mary (Sally Field), whom he calls Molly and is still haunted by the death of their son Willy, and attempts to convince their older son, Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), not to join the Union Army. Day-Lewis plays Lincoln as a strong yet fragile man torn apart on the inside much like the country is torn apart over the issue of slavery — as shown particularly in the House, where radical Republican leader Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) is enjoying a vicious battle of words with Democratic standard-bearer Fernando Wood (Lee Pace) that is every bit as contentious as the current Congress. The uniformly fine cast, filled with stage veterans, also includes Holbrook as Francis Preston Blair, Jared Harris as Ulysses S. Grant, Michael Stuhlbarg as George Yeaman, Colman Domingo as Harold Green, Stephen McKinley Henderson as William Slade, Walton Goggins as Wells A. Hutchins, Gregory Itzin as John Archibald Campbell, and Stephen Spinella as Asa Vintner Litton. Unfortunately, Spielberg can’t leave well enough alone, pulling at the heartstrings with an unnecessary opening sequence and a tragically overwrought finale; without those scenes, Lincoln had a chance to become a classic; with them, it is merely a solid film that sheds fascinating new light on a critical moment in U.S. history, portrayed by a master craftsman with immense skill, the first actor to completely disappear into the part of this genuine American hero.

SONG & DANCE: DUCK SOUP

The Marx Brothers classic DUCK SOUP holds a mirror to love and war in hysterical ways

SUMMER ON THE HUDSON — MOVIES UNDER THE STARS: DUCK SOUP (Leo McCarey, 1933)
Riverside Park South, Pier 1 at West 70th St.
Wednesday, July 17, free, 8:30
www.nycgovparks.org
www.marx-brothers.org

One of the wackiest films ever made, Duck Soup stars the Marx Brothers at their absolute best. Groucho is a riot as Rufus T. Firefly, the leader of the strange little country of Freedonia, which is prepared to go to war if necessary with its neighbor Sylvania, represented by blowhard ambassador Trentino (Louis Calhern), who has designs on wealthy Freedonian philanthropist Gloria Teasdale (Margaret Dumont). Meanwhile, spies Chicolini (Chico) and Pinky (Harpo) harass a street vendor (poor Edgar Kennedy), mock Firefly in front of a pseudo-mirror, and just have a jolly old time everywhere they go. But there’s more to the film than outrageous slapstick and wild and woolly quotes; there’s some very deft criticism of politics, government, and, most of all, war. Hail, hail, Freedonia! Duck Soup is screening in Riverside Park on July 17, preceded by viral videos, as part of the free “Summer on the Hudson: Movies under the Stars” series, the theme of which this year is “Song & Dance,” which continues with The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, Fiddler on the Roof, and the 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors. For a day-by-day listing of free summer movie screenings in New York City, go here.

BENEATH

A group of teenagers are going to need a much bigger boat in Larry Fessenden’s tense thriller BENEATH

BENEATH (Larry Fessenden, 2013)
IndieScreen, 2899 Kent Ave. at South Second St., 347-227-8030, July 16, 19, 20, 9:00
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St., 212-924-7771, opens Wednesday, July 17
www.beneaththewater.com

Jaws and Friday the 13th meet Lifeboat and Lord of the Flies in indie filmmaker Larry Fessenden’s latest thriller, Beneath. Made for Syfy’s Chiller TV channel, where it will be available on demand beginning July 16 — it is also being released theatrically in New York City this week — Beneath is the first feature film Fessenden (The Last Winter, Habit, Wendigo) has directed but did not write; the occasional actor and musician also served as producer and editor, while the script is by Tony Daniel and Brian D. Smith. The story takes place on a Connecticut lake, where a group of teenagers have gone to celebrate high school graduation. Sexy blonde Kitty (Bonnie Dennison), athletic meathead brothers Matt (Chris Conroy) and Simon (Jonny Orsini), camera-obsessed nerd Zeke (Griffin Newman), demure brunette Deb (MacKenzie Rosman), and pouty townie Johnny (Daniel Zovatto) head out on a rowboat to cross the Black Lake, but they soon learn that they’re going to need a much bigger boat, as there’s something lurking in the water that prefers not to be disturbed. As the teens battle the evil, giant piranha/monkfish, deep, dark secrets float to the surface, leading the kids to fight amongst themselves as much as their mechanical tormentor. Fessenden clearly has fun playing with genre clichés, although there are still plenty of moments in which viewers will find themselves yelling at the screen because of stupid decisions or gigantic plot holes, but he does a good job given his restrictions — because this is essentially a basic-cable movie, there is no cursing or nudity, and the tense action has to have carefully timed pauses built in to allow for eventual commercials. Still, Beneath is an involving, claustrophobic tale in which the characters’ true individual natures emerge as their fear of death grows. To find out more about the history of the lake, a prequel comic book is available, written by Daniel and Smith and illustrated by Brahm Revel. Beneath opens July 17 at the IFC Center and will also be shown July 16, 19, and 20 at IndieScreen in Williamsburg, with Fessenden participating in a Q&A following the July 16 screening.

OZU REPRISE PRESENTATION: THE END OF SUMMER

Ganjirō Nakamura is a sheer delight as the unpredictable patriarch of the Kohayagawa family in THE END OF SUMMER

THE END OF SUMMER (KOHAYAGAWA-KE NO AKI) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1961)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Tuesday, July 16, 1:00, 3:15, 5:30, 7:40, 9:50, and Wednesday, July 17, 1:00, 3:15, 5:30
Series runs through July 25
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Yasujirō Ozu’s next-to-last film, 1961’s The End of Summer, is a poignant examination of growing old in a changing Japan; Ozu would make only one more film, 1962’s An Autumn Afternoon, before passing away on his sixtieth birthday in December 1963. Ganjirō Nakamura is absolutely endearing as Manbei Kohayagawa, the family patriarch who heads a small sake brewery. The aging grandfather has been mysteriously disappearing for periods of time, secretly visiting his old girlfriend, Sasaki (Chieko Naniwa), and her daughter, Yuriko (Reiko Dan), who might or might not be his. In the meantime, Manbei’s brother-in-law, Kitagawa (Daisuke Katō), is trying to set up Manbei’s widowed daughter-in-law, Akiko (Setsuko Hara), with businessman Isomura Eiichirou (Hisaya Morishige), while also attempting to find a proper suitor for Manbei’s youngest daughter, Noriko (Yoko Tsukasa), a typist with strong feelings for a coworker who has moved to Sapporo. Manbei’s other daughter, Fumiko (Michiyo Aratama), is married to Hisao (Keiju Kobayashi), who works at the brewery and is concerned about Manbei’s suddenly unpredictable behavior. When Manbei suffers a heart attack, everyone is forced to look at their own lives, both personal and professional, as the single women consider their suitors and the men contemplate the future of the business, which might involve selling out to a larger company. “The Kohayagawa family is complicated indeed,” Hisao’s colleague tells him when trying to figure out who’s who, an inside joke about the complex relationships developed by Ozu and longtime cowriter Kôgo Noda in the film as well as in the casting.

Akiko (Setsuko Hara) and Noriko (Yoko Tsukasa) represent old and new Japan in Ozu’s penultimate film

The End of Summer tells a far more serious story than Late Spring and many other Ozu films that deal with matchmaking and middle-class Japanese life, both pre- and postwar. The perpetually smiling Hara, who played unrelated women named Noriko in three previous Ozu films, once again plays a young widow named Akiko here, as she did in Late Autumn, while Tsukasa, who played Hara’s daughter in Late Autumn, now takes over the name of Noriko as Akiko’s sister. Late Autumn also featured a character named Yuriko Sasaki, played by Mariko Okada, who went on to play a woman named Akiko in Ozu’s final film, An Autumn Afternoon. Got that? Ozu’s fifth film in color, The End of Summer uses several beautiful establishing shots that incorporate flashing light and bold hues — including a neon sign that declares “New Japan” — photographed by Asakazu Nakai (Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Ran), as well as numerous carefully designed set pieces that place the old and the new in direct contrast, primarily when Akiko and Noriko are alone, the former in a kimono, the latter in more modern dress. But at the center of it all is Nakamura, who plays Manbei with a childlike glee, as if Ozu is equating birth and death, the beginning and the end. The film is screening July 16 & 17 at Film Forum, which is holding a “Reprise Presentation” of its earlier, extensive Ozu series with encore screenings of eight of the works, continuing with The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice, Early Summer, Tokyo Twilight, Equinox Flower, and Late Autumn.

AGNES B. SELECTS: THE CONFORMIST

Jean-Paul Trintignant tries to find his place in the world in Bernardo Bertolucci’s lush masterpiece, THE CONFORMIST

THE CONFORMIST (IL CONFORMISTA) (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Monday, July 15, 9:00; Friday, July 19, 9:15; and Sunday, July 21, 8:45
Series runs July 10-21
212-505-5181
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

Based on the novel by Alberto Moravia, Bernardo Bertolucci’s gorgeous masterpiece, The Conformist, is a political thriller about paranoia, pedophilia, and trying to find one’s place in a changing world. Jean-Louis Trintignant (And God Created Woman, Z, My Night at Maud’s) stars as Marcello Clerici, a troubled man who suffered childhood traumas and is now attempting to join the fascist secret police. To prove his dedication to the movement, he is ordered to assassinate one of his former professors, the radical Luca Quadri (Enzo Tarascio), who is living in France. He falls for Quadri’s much younger wife, Anna (Dominique Sanda), who takes an intriguing liking to Clerici’s wife, Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli), while Manganiello (Gastone Moschin) keeps a close watch on him, making sure he will carry out his assignment. The Conformist, made just after The Spider’s Stragagem and followed by Last Tango in Paris, captures one man’s desperate need to belong, to become a part of Mussolini’s fascist society and feel normal at the expense of his real inner feelings and beliefs. An atheist, he goes to church to confess because Giulia demands it. A bureaucrat, he is not a cold-blooded killer, but he will murder a part of his past in order to be accepted by the fascists (as well as Bertolucci’s own past, as he makes a sly reference to his former mentor, Jean-Luc Godard, by using the French auteur’s phone number and address for Quadri’s). Production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro bathe the film in lush Art Deco colors as Bertolucci moves the story, told in flashbacks, through a series of set pieces that include an erotic dance by Anna and Giulia, a Kafkaesque visit to a government ministry, and a stunning use of black and white and light and shadow as Marcello and Giulia discuss their impending marriage. The Conformist is a multilayered psychological examination of a complex figure living in complex times, as much about the 1930s as the 1970s, as the youth of the Western world sought personal, political, and sexual freedom. The Conformist is screening July 15, 19, and 21 as part of the Anthology Film Archives series “agnès b. selects,” consisting of ten films chosen by the Versailles-born fashion designer that, she explains, “taught me to appreciate other points of view, seen from a different angle, showing passion and the wounds, of every sort, that left their mark on me forever.” Among her other selections are Lindsay Anderson’s If, François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451, Godard’s La Chinoise, Ken Loach’s Family Life, and Akira Kurosawa’s Dodes’ka-Den.

HIGHLIGHTS OF CANNES FILM FESTIVAL WITH GILLES JACOB: LOVES OF A BLONDE

The wonderful LOVES OF A BLONDE is part of Cannes Film Festival tribute at FIAF and will be introduced by director Miloš Forman

CinémaTuesdays: LOVES OF A BLONDE (LÁSKY JEDNÉ PLAVOVLÁSKY) (Miloš Forman, 1965)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, July 16, $10, 12:30, 4:00, 7:30
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

Released a few years before the Summer of Love and Prague Spring, Miloš Forman’s Loves of a Blonde is a very funny romantic black comedy that also has a lot to say about women’s burgeoning sexual freedom. The delightful Hanu Brejchovou stars as Andula, a young factory worker whose sexual liberation is ahead of its time in an old-fashioned small town. When a trainload of military reservists arrives, most of the single women do their best to attract the uniformed men at a big party, but Andula is more interested in pianist Milda (Vladimíra Pucholta). In a scene for the ages, three men try to pick up Andula and her two friends, with hysterical results. Later, when Andula visits Milda in Prague, she meets the piano player’s parents (Milada Jezková and Josef Sebánek), who are a droll riot. A Czech New Wave classic that evokes Godard and Truffaut, Loves of a Blonde, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, caused a sensation when it played the New York Film Festival and introduced Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus) to the world. Notably, assistant director and cowriter Ivan Passer, who also worked with Forman on the Oscar-nominated The Firemen’s Ball, defected to America following Prague Spring and went on to make such films as Born to Win and Cutter’s Way. Loves of a Blonde is screening July 16 as part of the FIAF CinémaTuesdays series “Highlights of Cannes Film Festival with Gilles Jacob,” comprising works chosen by festival president Jacob in honor of the glamorous event’s sixty-fifth anniversary, and the one and only Forman himself will be at Florence Gould Hall to introduce the 7:30 show. [ed note: Unfortunately, Forman has had to cancel his appearance.] The series continues July 23 with Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana before concluding July 30 with Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket.

WILLIAMSBURG SUMMER NIGHTS, MOVIES IN THE PARK: THE ARTIST

Michel Hazanavicius’s THE ARTIST is a charming celebration of silent cinema

THE ARTIST (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011)
East River State Park
90 Kent Ave.
Monday, July 15, free, 8:30
718-782-2731
www.weinsteinco.com
www.nysparks.com

French director Michel Hazanavicius has followed his two OSS 117 espionage parodies, Cairo, Nest of Spies and Lost in Rio, with another genre exercise, this time taking on silent film in the charming international hit The Artist. Reteaming Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo from Cairo, Nest of Spies, Hazanavicius tells the story of the end of silent cinema through the clever use of the genre’s own familiar conventions. Dujardin stars as George Valentin, a silent-film idol who believes that talking pictures will just be a passing fad. Bejo, who is married to Hazanavicius, plays Peppy Miller, a young, peppy Hollywood hopeful who embraces the arrival of the sound era, rising as fast as Valentin is falling. It’s a different take on the classic A Star Is Born theme, with plenty of inside jokes and cute references about the movies, although purposefully using clichés doesn’t excuse the film from often being too clichéd itself; many of the scenes are far too predictable, offering few genuine surprises as the plot unfolds. However, Hazanavicius and his crew nail the period both aurally and visually, with splendid costumes by Mark Bridges, production design by Laurence Bennett, set decoration by Robert Gould, cinematography by Guillaume Schiffman, and music by Ludovic Bource. Excellent support is supplied by James Cromwell as Valentin’s loyal valet, John Goodman as cigar-chomping producer Al Zimmer, and Uggie as Valentin’s ever-faithful dog, Jack. Nominated for ten Academy Awards and winning seven, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score, The Artist is a fabulously made though flawed and overrated film that is a charming celebration of the movies — and a great way to get people into theaters to experience the myriad pleasures of black-and-white silent cinema. The film is screening for free on July 15 in East River State Park as part of the “Williamsburg Summer Nights, Movies in the Park” series, which continues with Up on July 22 before concluding with Skyfall on July 29.