this week in film and television

AGNES B. SELECTS: I LIVE IN FEAR

Toshirô Mifune lives in fear in Akira Kurosawa classic

I LIVE IN FEAR (IKIMONO NO KIROKU) (Akira Kurosawa, 1955)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Friday, July 12, 6:30; Thursday, July 18, 9:00; and Saturday, July 20, 9:15
Series runs July 10-21
212-505-5181
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

Akira Kurosawa’s powerful psychological drama begins with a jazzy score over shots of a bustling Japanese city, people anxiously hurrying through as a Theremin joins the fray. But this is no Hollywood film noir or low-budget frightfest; Kurosawa’s daring film is about the end of old Japanese society as the threat of nuclear destruction hovers over everyone. A completely unrecognizable Toshirô Mifune stars as Nakajima, an iron foundry owner who wants to move his large family — including his two mistresses — to Brazil, which he believes to be the only safe place on the planet where he can survive the H bomb. His immediate family, concerned more about the old man’s money than anything else, takes him to court to have him declared incompetent; there he meets a dentist (the always excellent Takashi Shimura) who also mediates such problems — and fears that Nakajima might be the sanest one of all. Also known as Record of a Living Being, I Live in Fear is screening July 12, 18, and 20 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, Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, Miloš Forman’s Loves of a Blonde, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist, and Ken Russell’s Women in Love.

BBQ FILMS SWEDED SUMMER SHOW: BE KIND, REWIND

Mos Def and Jack Black have a wacky plan to save their video store in BE KIND, REWIND

BE KIND, REWIND (Michel Gondry, 2008)
Videology
308 Bedford Ave.
Thursday, July 11, $5, 7:00
www.bbqfilms.com
www.videology.info

When old man Fletcher (Danny Glover) takes off for a week, leaving Mike (Mos Def) in charge of his soon-to-be-demolished video store called Be Kind Rewind (they don’t have any DVDs or recent movies), his most important rule is to “Keep Jerry Out.” Jerry (Jack Black) is a crazy conspiracy theorist who covers himself in metal to ward off alien rays. After a botched attack on the local power plant, Jerry becomes a walking magnet (in a laugh-out-loud hysterical scene) and unknowingly erases all the videos in the store. Taking a page from the Little Rascals plots when Spanky and Alfalfa would suddenly put on a show for some local cause, Mike and Jerry recruit Alma (Melonie Diaz) as they proceed on their very strange attempts at Sweding — making their own versions of such films as Ghostbusters, Rush Hour 2, and Robocop and renting them out as if they were the real thing. Following the brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the extremely strange The Science of Sleep, writer-director Michel Gondry has fashioned a really stupid movie that has an overabundance of heart and charm. Glover and Mos Def are soft and gentle in this Capra-esque comedy, offsetting Black’s hyperactivity. Every time you’re ready to write the film off as being just too silly and ridiculous, something comes along to make you double over in laughter. Be Kind Rewind is having a special sold-out screening July 11 at Videology in Williamsburg, presented by BBQ Films, beginning with $5 themed drinks (the Sweded Mule, the Footage Eraser) at 7:00, followed by the film at 8:00, with gourmet popcorn and a special sweded intermission featuring a live performance by DJ Cherry Magdalene and a ticket raffle for BBQ Films’ August event.

RIVER FLICKS FOR GROWN-UPS: SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) and Pat Jr. (Bradley Cooper) explore love, loss, and dance in Oscar-nominated SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (David O. Russell, 2012)
Hudson River Park, Pier 63 lawn at 23rd St.
Wednesday, July 10, free, dusk
www.silverliningsplaybookmovie.com
www.riverflicks.com

Benny & Joon meets Little Miss Sunshine in writer-director David O. Russell’s cute but severely overrated Silver Linings Playbook. Adapted from Matthew Quick’s novel, the film follows the unusual relationship between Patrick Solitano (Bradley Cooper), a bipolar man who has just been released from a mental institution after beating up his wife’s lover, and Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence), a woman trying desperately to get past the untimely death of her husband. They both deal with their situations in very different ways: While Pat refuses to face reality, clinging to the thinnest of hopes that his wife, Nikki (Brea Bee), still loves him and will take him back, Tiffany sleeps with nearly everyone in her office and gets fired, forcing her to move back in with her parents. The interplay between Pat and Tiffany is absolutely gripping as they each battle with inner demons and mental illness. Pat also battles with his father, Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro), a casualty of the economic crisis whose serious OCD comes out during Eagles games. (The film is set in Philadelphia.) The first half of Silver Linings Playbook is a fascinating study of mental illness, sensationally performed by Cooper and Lawrence, but the second half goes off in ludicrous, ridiculous directions, with Pat Jr. and Tiffany training for a dance competition and Pat Sr. and his friend Randy (Paul Herman) involved in a silly parlay about dance and football. What had been a distinctly different take on two unique characters becomes a standard, conventional tale that nearly, but not quite, destroys everything that had come before it. Russell, who has has displayed a penchant for taking chances in such previous films as Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings, and I ♥ Huckabees and was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for The Fighter, here takes the easy way out, settling for a sitcomlike finale when he could have had so much more. Still, Silver Linings Playbook has a lot going for it, even if it does end up satisfied with the lowest common denominator. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Cooper), Best Actress (Lawrence), Best Supporting Actor (De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Jacki Weaver as Pat Jr.’s loving mother), Best Film Editing (Jay Cassidy and Crispin Struthers), Best Adapted Screenplay (Russell), and Best Director, with Lawrence taking home the golden statuette. The film is screening July 10 at Hudson River Park’s Pier 63, kicking off the free River Flicks for Grown-Ups series, which continues through August 21 with such other 2012 movies as Looper, Argo, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Hunger Games. For a day-by-day listing of free summer movie screenings throughout New York City, go here.

SONG & DANCE: GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933

Mervyn LeRoy’s GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 is screening July 10 as part of free outdoor Summer on the Hudson series

GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933)
Summer on the Hudson: Movies under the Stars
Riverside Park South, Pier 1 at West 70th St.
Wednesday, July 10, free, 8:30
www.nycgovparks.org

Hitting a little too close to home in recent years, Gold Diggers of 1933 is a depression-era musical directed by Mervyn LeRoy (Little Caesar, Mister Roberts) and featuring dance numbers choreographed by Busby Berkeley. Polly Parker (Ruby Keeler), Trixie Lorraine (Aline MacMahon), Carol King (Joan Blondell), and Fay Fortune (Ginger Rogers) are four out-of-work actresses desperate to find a job on Broadway. When cigar-chomping producer Barney Hopkins (Ned Sparks) teams up with newcomer Brad Roberts (Dick Powell) to create a show about the Great Depression itself, the women get excited about the possibility of getting back on the Great White Way, but mistaken identity, financing problems, and class warfare — in the form of wealthy old-money barons Lawrence Bradford (Warren William) and Faneul H. Peabody (Guy Kibbee) — threaten the show and their love lives. Gold Diggers of 1933 is screening in Riverside Park on July 10 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 such other films as Duck Soup, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, Fiddler on the Roof, and the 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors. Oh, and for this outdoor screening, the “Pettin’ in the Park” number should be particularly titillating. For a day-by-day listing of free summer movie screenings in New York City, go here.

A VIEW FROM THE VAULTS — WARNER BROS. TODAY: THE MATRIX TRILOGY

Neo (Keanu Reeves) just might be the One who can save the world in the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix trilogy

THE MATRIX TRILOGY (Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski, 1999, 2003)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
The Matrix: Tuesday, July 9, 7:30
The Matrix Reloaded: Wednesday, July 10, 7:30
The Matrix Revolutions: Thursday, July 11, 7:30
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

With the Matrix trilogy, the Wachowski brothers captured the fear and paranoia, as well as the excitement, of the virtual reality future, creating tech-heavy sci-fi thrillers that turned out to be both philosophical and bombastic. In The Matrix, Keanu Reeves stars as loner Thomas Anderson — aka computer hacker Neo — who just might be the One. Or at least that’s what Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) believes. Neo is recruited into an elite unit that is battling agent machines that protect the alternate reality known as the Matrix. Along his journey, he meets the hot Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), visits the Oracle (Gloria Foster), and learns that “there is no spoon.” Featuring awesome martial-arts choreography by Hong Kong master Yuen-woo Ping, the film deservedly won Oscars for Best Editing, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Visual Effects, and Best Sound. The pulse-pounding music includes songs by Rage Against the Machine, Meat Beat Manifesto, Rob Zombie, Propellerheads, and Marilyn Manson. Unfortunately, everything that was set up in the first film came crashing down in The Matrix Reloaded, a major waste of time and talent. The plot is impossible to follow; the fight scenes, which go on forever, are same thing, different day; the score is maudlin; the secondary characters are worthless; the car chase is ridiculous; and the special effects, especially relating to Zion, are a boring amalgamation of Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien, Men in Black, Ghostbusters, The X-Files, Independence Day, T2, Superman, and many other science-fiction flicks, adding nothing new to a genre the Wachowskis were otherwise redefining. The best part of the film came after the credits, when theaters showed a trailer for the upcoming finale, The Matrix Revolutions. Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, and Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) are all back for the last installment of the Matrix trilogy, in which the brothers Wachowski returned to form, echoing the elements that made the first film a success rather than the trivialities that made the second one a bust. The machines are on their way to Zion, ready to destroy humanity, but Neo’s not ready to give up the fight. The effects are a treat, particularly the upside-down fight at the Merovingians club and the special vision Neo has. And the score is sensationally operatic in an Omen-like way. Ultimately, the three-film adventure works because of how Neo, and Reeves, grows up, much like the audience does as it finds out more and more about this future world that mimics our own. The Matrix films are screening at MoMA on successive nights, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, at 7:30, kicking off “A View from the Vaults: Warner Bros. Today,” consisting 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.

BRYANT PARK SUMMER FILM FESTIVAL: WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) offers the experience of a lifetime to young Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum) in classic family film

WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (Mel Stuart, 1971)
Bryant Park
Sixth Ave. between 40th & 42nd Sts.
Monday, July 8, free, sunset
www.bryantpark.org

Based on a 1964 Roald Dahl novel, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is a fanciful frolic through a children’s wonderland, filled with fear, trepidation, love, and lots of candy, both sweet and sour. Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum, in his only film appearance) lives with his dirt-poor family in a ramshackle room, where Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson) can’t even get out of bed. But when goodhearted Charlie finds one of the golden tickets that will allow him to join a once-in-a-lifetime tour of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, Grandpa Joe is suddenly up and about, singing and dancing, and so will you be. Among the other kids with the golden tickets are the spoiled Veruca Salt (Julie Dawn Cole), the selfish Violet Beauregarde (Denise Nickerson), the tube-loving Mike Teevee (Paris Themmen), and the rather sloppy Augustus Gloop (Michael Bollner). Meanwhile, the creepy Mr. Slugworth (Günter Meisne) tries to lure the kids to the dark side as they slowly learn (well, some more than others) that there is more to life than just candy — and themselves. As they are ultimately led through this dreamland by the unpredictable Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder), they encounter chocolate rivers, bubble machines that make people float, and small Oompa Loompas who are quick to clean up any messes, of which there are several. The memorable soundtrack of this thoroughly entertaining, charming family film includes “The Candy Man Can,” “(I’ve Got a) Golden Ticket,” “Pure Imagination,” and, of course, “Oompa Loompa, Doompa-Dee-Do.” Directed by Mel Stuart, who passed away last August after a career that also included Wattstax, Four Days in November, and If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, the film was remade by Tim Burton in 2005 starring Johnny Depp as Wonka with mixed results, but you can catch the original for free on Monday night as part of the annual summer film festival, which continues with such other classic fare as Robert Aldrich’s Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte, John Huston’s The African Queen, Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair, and George Cukor’s The Women.

CASSAVETES: SHADOWS

Rupert Crosse, Hugh Hurd, and Lelia Goldoni examine racism in John Cassavetes’s seminal underground film SHADOWS

SHADOWS (John Cassavetes, 1959)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Tuesday, July 9, 7:00 & 9:30
Series runs July 6-31
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

John Cassavetes’s directorial debut, Shadows, is a landmark moment in the history of independent cinema and one of the most influential films ever made. Shot in black-and-white with a 16mm handheld camera on a modest budget of $40,000, much of which was raised following Cassavetes’s appearance on Jean Shepherd’s radio show — the credits include the line “Presented by Jean Shepherd’s Night People” — Shadows is a gritty, underground examination of race in New York City, one of the first major anti-Hollywood American movies. Although the script is credited to Cassavetes, the film is primarily improvised by a group of mostly nonprofessional or first-time actors using their real first names, set to a jazzy, moody score by Charles Mingus saxophonist Shafi Hadi. Lelia Goldoni stars as twenty-year-old Lelia, a confused young woman who loses her virginity to Tony (Anthony Ray), who thought it was a one-night stand but then decides they should start dating after she becomes clingy. However, Tony freaks out when he meets one of Lelia’s brothers, singer Hugh (Hugh Hurd), who is black. Meanwhile, their other brother, trumpeter Ben (Ben Carruthers), spends his nights with his two buddies, Dennis (Dennis Sallas) and Tom (Tom Reese), bumming money and trying to pick up chicks. Amid Bohemian parties, street fights, and visits to Central Park, Port Authority, Grand Central Terminal, and MoMA’s sculpture garden, Cassavetes and the cast explore life, love, and racism in realistic ways, even if some of the actors are a lot better than others and certain scenes fall flat. Gordon is particularly annoying through much of the film; the most interesting relationship exists between Hugh and his devoted agent, Rupert (Rupert Crosse, who spent the next thirteen years appearing in myriad television series). Look for Cassavetes in the scene in which a stranger harasses Lelia in Times Square. Shadows, which comes alive with the rhythm and energy of late 1950s New York, is being shown July 9 at 7:00 and 9:30 as part of the BAMcinématek series “Cassavetes”; the 7:00 screening will be followed by a Q&A with Goldoni, who appeared in only a few more films after Shadows (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, The Day of the Locust, the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers). The “Cassavetes” series runs July 6-31 with films that Cassavetes either directed and/or starred in, opening, appropriately enough, with Opening Night and continuing with such wide-ranging works as The Dirty Dozen, Edge of the City, The Killers, Machine Gun McCain, Faces, Husbands, Rosemary’s Baby, and Tempest.