Malcolm McDowell gets plenty crazy as rock god Reggie Wanker in Allan Arkush’s GET CRAZY
GET CRAZY (Allan Arkush, 1983)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Saturday, December 1, $45-$70, 2:00
Series continues through August 9
212-505-5181
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org
www.gvshp.org
One of the most underrated, little-seen rock-and-roll movies ever made, Get Crazy should be a cult classic. Directed by Allan (Rock ‘n’ Roll High School) Arkush, Get Crazy evokes the closing of the Fillmore East as Neil Allen (Daniel Stern) and Willy Loman (Gail Edwards) help put together a New Year’s Eve farewell concert for the beloved Saturn Theater, which the conniving Colin Beverly (Ed Begley Jr.) is trying to steal out from under Max Wolfe (Allen Garfield). Among the special guests at the show are Bill Henderson as the Muddy Waters clone King Blues, Captain Cloud (Howard Kaylan of the Turtles) and the Rainbow Telegraph, and Nada (Kid Creole Coconut Lori Eastside) with Piggy (Lee Ving of Fear), but the movie is stolen by Malcolm McDowell as the Mick Jagger ripoff Reggie Wanker, who literally lets his member do the talking, and Lou Reed as the Dylan/Donovan homage Auden, a folksinger desperate to write a song before the show, so he spends most of the film riding around in a cab, rambling on about whatever is right in front of him. And be sure to keep an eye out for John Densmore, Fabian, Bobby Sherman, Clint Howard, Linnea Quigley, and Paul Bartel. In addition to the live numbers, the soundtrack includes songs by Sparks, Marshall Crenshaw, the Ramones, and Reed, whose awesome “Little Sister” plays over the closing credits. Extremely silly but still loads of fun Get Crazy is screening December 1 at 2:00 at Anthology Film Archives as a fundraiser for the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and will be followed by a panel discussion about the history of the East Village cultural scene with members of the cast and crew and Joshua White of the Joshua Light Show, moderated by Jesse Kornbluth. The festivities will then continue at the after-party at Veselka Bowery, with a two-hour open bar and appetizers.
Christopher Nolan’s dazzling Dark Knight Trilogy comes to a rousing conclusion with The Dark Knight Rises. It’s been eight years since the death of Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), and things have been relatively quiet in Gotham City under a new prison initiative enacted by Commissioner Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman). The Bat Man has disappeared, believed to have gone into hiding after being accused of murdering Dent in cold blood, with the real story kept buried by Gordon. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become a Howard Hughes-like recluse, limping around stately Wayne Manor with a cane and refusing to see anyone as his grand fortune wastes away. But the sudden appearance of a new master criminal, the Darth Vader-esque Bane (Tom Hardy), a crafty cat burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), and a potential hostile takeover of Wayne Industries brings the Bat Man back to try to save the city against seemingly impossible odds. The Dark Knight Rises is the darkest Batman movie yet, as Wayne searches even deeper into his soul to find his reason for being and to determine his future — and that of his beloved city. He is joined by financial wizard Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), Wayne Industries technical mastermind Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), and determined cop John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in a race against time, something they have precious little of. Various plot elements and imagery evoke such previous movie series as Star Wars, Star Trek, and Mad Max while, to the film’s detriment, also calling up the 9/11 terrorist attacks and even the Occupy Wall Street movement. But the film gets past those faults as it rises up to an absolutely breathtaking, sensational finale. Nolan wraps things up brilliantly, even bringing back Ra’s Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) and giving a cool cameo to Cillian Murphy (a veteran now of all three movies), but it’s Bale’s complex performance as a man in search of his identity that is the driving force behind what has been a magnificent trilogy. The Dark Knight Rises is being shown November 30 at 7:00 as part of MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” consisting of exemplary films they believe will stand the test of time, with Nolan on hand to participate in a postscreening discussion; upcoming entries include Peter Ramsey’s Rise of the Guardians, Ben Lewin’s The Sessions, David France’s How to Survive a Plague, and Behn Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild.
One of the greatest documentaries ever made about New York City can now be seen in a recently restored 35mm print, offering a new look at an underground classic. Lionel Rogosin’s On the Bowery caused quite a stir upon its release in 1956, winning prizes at the Venice Film Festival while earning criticism at home for daring to portray the grim reality of America’s dark underbelly. After spending six months living with the poor, destitute alcoholics on Skid Row as research, idealistic young filmmaker Rogosin spent the next four months making On the Bowery, a remarkable examination of the forgotten men of New York, ne’er-do-wells who can’t find jobs, sleep on the street, and will do just about anything for another drink. Rogosin centers the film around the true story of Ray Salyer, a journeyman railroad drifter stopping off in New York City seeking temporary employment. Salyer is quickly befriended by Gorman Hendricks, who not only shows Salyer the ropes but also manages to slyly take advantage of him. Although the film follows a general structure scripted by Mark Sufrin, much of it is improvised and shot on the sly, in glorious black and white by Richard Bagley. The sections in which Bagley turns his camera on the streets, showing the decrepit neighborhood under the El, set to Charles Mills’s subtle, jazzy score and marvelously edited by Carl Lerner, are pure poetry, yet another reason why On the Bowery is an American treasure. The film is screening November 28 & 29 at 1:30 as part of MoMA’s continuing series “An Auteurist History of Film,” along with a pair of seminal silent shorts also set in New York City, Rudy Burckhardt’s 1953 Under the Brooklyn Bridge and Helen Levitt and James Agee’s 1952 In the Street; interestingly, Rogosin tried unsuccessfully to get Agee to work on On the Bowery and fired Levitt as the film’s editor.
Ingmar Bergman’s Shame is a brilliant examination of the physical and psychological impact of war, as seen through the eyes of a happily married couple who innocently get caught in the middle of the brutality. Jan (Max von Sydow) and Eva Rosenberg (Liv Ullmann) have isolated themselves from society, living without a television and with a broken radio, maintaining a modest farm on a relatively desolate island a ferry ride from the mainland. As the film opens, they are shown to be a somewhat ordinary husband and wife, brushing their teeth, making coffee, and discussing having a child. But soon they are thrust into a horrific battle between two unnamed sides, fighting for reasons that are never given. As Jan and Eva struggle to survive, they are forced to make decisions that threaten to destroy everything they have built together. Shot in stark black-and-white by master cinematographer Sven Nykvist, Shame is a powerful, emotional antiwar statement that makes its point through intense visual scenes rather than narrative rhetoric. Jan and Eva huddle in corners or nearly get lost in crowds, then are seen traversing a smoky, postapocalyptic landscape riddled with dead bodies. Made during the Vietnam War, Shame is Bergman’s most violent, action-filled film; bullets can be heard over the opening credits, announcing from the very beginning that this is going to be something different from a director best known for searing personal dramas. However, at its core, Shame is just that, a gripping, intense tale of a man and a woman who try to preserve their love in impossible times. Ullmann and von Sydow both give superb, complex performances, creating believable characters who will break your heart. Shame is screening November 30 at BAM as part of the BAMcinématek series “Max von Sydow,” consisting of twenty-two wide-ranging films celebrating the outstanding career of the now-eighty-three-year-old Swedish actor; the festival continues with such other works as William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror,, Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters, John Milius’s Conan the Barbarian, and, yes, Mike Gordon’s Flash Gordon, with von Sydow playing Ming the Merciless.
