this week in film and television

UNACCOMPANIED MINORS: PIXOTE

Hector Babenco’s PIXOTE is a heartbreaking look at an extraordinary young boy

VIEWS OF YOUTH IN FILMS FROM THE COLLECTION: PIXOTE (Hector Babenco, 1981)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Friday, July 27, 8:00, and Monday, July 30, 4:30
Series runs through August 14
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

Hector Babenco’s gripping, heart-wrenching docudrama is set in São Paulo, where a group of young boys struggle to survive on the streets and in a reform school that is more like a prison. When four of them bust out, they get caught up in a dangerous life of drugs, prostitution, and guns. Marília Pêra won numerous international awards for her performance as a prostitute, but the film belongs to eleven-year-old Fernando Ramos da Silva, who plays the title character; you won’t be able to take your eyes off him, except to wipe away the tears. Unable to get his life together after the film, Fernando was later killed by police under suspicious circumstances when he was only nineteen. The Argentine-born Babenco went on to make such films as Kiss of the Spider Woman, Ironweed, and At Play in the Fields of the Lord, but Pixote is his masterpiece. Pixote is screening July 27 and 30 with Orlando Mesquita’s 2001 short, The Ball, as part of the MoMA film series “Unaccompanied Minors: Views of Youth in Films from the Collection,” being held in conjunction with the new exhibit “Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900-2000.” Running through August 14, the festival includes such other compelling films about childhood as Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Djibril Diop Mambéty’s The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun, Laslo Benedek’s Sons, Mothers, and a General, and Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter.

ASIAN AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Michael Kang’s KNOTS will close the thirty-fifth Asian American International Film Festival

Clearview Chelsea Cinemas (and other venues)
260 West 23rd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
July 25 – August 5, $13 ($75 gala, $18 centerpiece, $20 closing night)
212-989-0017
www.aaiff.org/

The thirty-fifth Asian American International Film Festival, which annually explores the Asian diaspora as portrayed in film, gets under way July 25 with a gala event at Asia Society that features the opening-night presentation of Daniel Hsia’s romantic comedy Shanghai Calling, followed by a reception, tasting tables, an open bar, live and silent auctions, and a gift bag. The festival continues with daily screenings at the Clearview Chelsea Cinema through August 5, including such films as Eliaichi Kimaro’s A Lot Like You, H. P. Mendoza’s I Am a Ghost, Deepa Dhanraj’s Invoking Justice, and Lily Mariye’s Model Minority. The centerpiece selection is Simon Yin’s $upercapitalist, which is set in the Hong Kong business world, while the closing-night film is Michael Kang’s Knots, about a young woman looking for love in all the wrong places. Both the centerpiece and closing-night screenings will be followed by after-parties. In addition, there will be a special LGBTQ Cinema Night at the Clearview on July 27, the Museum of Chinese in America will host a collection of “For Youth by Youth” shorts on August 4 at 1:30, and White Rabbit will screen music videos by Asians and Asian Americans on August 4 at 10:00.

RIVER FLICKS FOR GROWN-UPS: BRIDESMAIDS

Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph star as best friends facing a crisis in BRIDESMAIDS

BRIDESMAIDS (Paul Feig, 2011)
Hudson River Park, Pier 63 at 23rd St.
Wednesday, July 25, free, dusk
www.bridesmaidsmovie.com
www.riverflicks.com

First and foremost, don’t link Bridesmaids in with all those lousy Saturday Night Live one-note movies and the string of overrated and overhyped lowbrow trash streaming out of the Judd Apatow factory. And don’t assume it’s a silly chick flick either. As it turns out, Bridesmaids is one of the most consistently funny laugh-out-loud romps of this young century. Directed by Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig, Bridesmaids is an endlessly clever and insightful examination of love, loneliness, and friendship starring SNL’s Kristen Wiig, who cowrote the smart script with Groundlings member Annie Mumolo (who makes a cameo as a nervous flyer). Wiig shows surprising depth and range as Annie, a perennial screw-up whose closest childhood friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph), is marrying into a very snooty upper-crust family. After agreeing to be Lillian’s maid of honor, Annie gets involved in a battle of wits with Lillian’s future sister-in-law, the elegant Helen (a radiant Rose Byrne), who is determined to outshine Annie in every way possible and steal Lillian away from her. Already a mess — she had to close her bakery, she shares an apartment with a bizarre pair of British siblings, she works in a jewelry store where she drives away potential customers with her sorry tales of woe, and she allows herself to be treated miserably as a late-night booty call for a self-centered businessman (Jon Hamm) — Annie experiences a series of hysterical, pathetic setbacks as she attempts to organize the bridal shower and bachelorette party, including a riotous potty-humor scene in a high-end boutique that is likely to go down in comedy history for its sheer relentlessness. The rest of the bridesmaids are quite a hoot — Becca (Ellie Kemper), the Disney-loving kewpie doll; Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey), a foul-mouthed married mother who can’t wait to go crazy away from her family; and the groom’s burly sister, Megan (the hugely entertaining Melissa McCarthy), who lives life without a filter. Annie is so caught up in her own failures that she doesn’t recognize when something potentially good enters her life, in the form of state trooper Nathan Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd). Wiig gives the finest performance of her career as Annie, clearly a role that is very close to her heart. Despite the slapstick nature of many of the jokes, Bridesmaids is filled with heart and soul, making it one of the best comedies in years. Bridesmaids is screening July 25 at Hudson River Park’s Pier 63 as part of the free River Flicks for Grown-Ups series, which continues through August 22 with such films as Limitless, Cowboys & Aliens, Crazy, Stupid Love, and Horrible Bosses. For a day-by-day listing of free summer movie screenings in New York City, go here.

UNIVERSAL 100: SCARLET STREET

Femme fatale Joan Bennett gets her claws into meek amateur painter Edward G. Robinson in Fritz Lang’s psychological film noir SCARLET STREET (courtesy Photofest)

SCARLET STREET (Fritz Lang, 1948)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, July 22, and Monday, July 23
Series continues through August 9
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Director Fritz Lang and screenwriter Dudley Nichols’s adaptation of Jean Renoir’s 1931 La Chienne, based on the novel by Georges de La Fouchardière, is a transplanted German street film moved to New York City. Edward G. Robinson stars as Christopher Cross, one of the all-time-great saps in the history of cinema. A henpecked cashier at a large clothing store where he has just been given his twenty-five-year gold watch, Cross instantly falls in love with a floozy he meets on a rainy night, Kitty March (Joan Bennett), who is soon conspiring with her sleazy boyfriend, Johnny (Dan Duryea), to bilk Cross, thinking that he is a wealthy painter whose canvases go for upwards of fifty grand apiece. Meanwhile, Cross continues to think that Kitty is a good girl who will marry him if he were free. But as Chris’s suspicions about Johnny grow, so does the tension, leading to a classic noir finale. Filmed on Hollywood sets designed to resemble Greenwich Village and Brooklyn, Scarlet Street is a dark, somber psychological thriller built around a mark and a femme fatale, reminiscent of Josef von Sternberg’s 1930 tale The Blue Angel, in which Emil Jannings is willing to sacrifice everything for Marlene Dietrich. Robinson, so good at playing tough gangsters, shows a surprisingly vulnerable, tender side as Cross, who refuses to see the truth staring him in the face, just as his paintings lack proper perspective. Duryea has a field day as Johnny, while Bennett is appropriately shady as the deceitful moll. Scarlet Street is screening July 22-23 with John Farrow’s 1948 thriller, The Big Clock, starring Charles Laughton and Ray Milland, as part of Film Forum’s Universal 100, a wide-ranging celebration of the studio’s centennial that continues with such other double features as Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life and All That Heaven Allows, James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein and Edgar G. Ullmer’s The Black Cat, and Stanley Donen’s Charade and Michael Gordon’s Pillow Talk.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

The Bat Man might have met his match in the villainous Bane in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Christopher Nolan, 2012)
Opens Friday, July 20
www.thedarkknightrises.com

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.

Heath Ledger gives a spectacular performance as the Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT

THE DARK KNIGHT (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
www.thedarkknight.warnerbros.com

Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to his 2005 hit Batman Begins is one of the most brilliant superhero films ever made. Christian Bale is back as billionaire bachelor Bruce Wayne, who spends his evenings fighting crime in Gotham City, which is under siege, victim to a brutal crime spree led by the vicious Joker (Heath Ledger in a massive, Oscar-winning performance). As the madman with the wild hair and evil clown face starts knocking off public officials, mob bosses, ordinary citizens, and even his own minions, Wayne is also beset by the blossoming relationship between Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhall), the woman he loves and who knows his secret, and the new DA, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who has come into his high-profile job with both arms swinging, determined to make Gotham City safe. The Bat Man is joined once again by his faithful butler, Alfred (Michael Caine), Wayne Industries exec Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), and police lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman); the film also features Anthony Michael Hall as a television talk-show host who finds himself in danger, Eric Roberts as a smooth-talking gangster, and Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow in a brief cameo. The Dark Knight is a carefully constructed tale of good and evil, love and death, and everything in between, working as both a thrilling action movie as well as a psychoanalytic examination of what lurks deep in the soul. Although there are special effects aplenty, it is primarily a very intimate, personal film about one man’s tortured existence. In a summer of the high-octane superhero flick (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy II, Hancock), The Dark Knight towers above them all.

Christopher Nolan puts a new twist on the Caped Crusader’s origin story in BATMAN BEGINS

BATMAN BEGINS (Christopher Nolan, 2005)
batmanbegins.warnerbros.com

Christopher Nolan takes over the Bat controls with spectacular results in this thrilling examination of the origins of the Bat Man, written by David S. Goyer and Nolan. Like his previous efforts, Memento and Insomnia, Nolan takes a psychological approach in telling the story of Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), a wealthy young man fighting deep-seated fears from his past, including the violent murder of his parents. Determined to get justice and revenge — he is selected for special training by Ducard (Liam Neeson), a Qui-Gon Jinn-like character whose master is the mysterious Ra’s Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe). When Wayne finally returns home, he goes on a one-man mission to save Gotham, with the help of Sgt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), assistant DA Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), old-timer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), and the dependable and loyal Alfred (Michael Caine), as they do battle against the likes of mobster Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) and Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy). Bale plays Wayne/Batman as a tormented, troubled soul, lost in a dark, dangerous world, a more realistic hero than those previously portrayed by Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, and Adam West. And for the first time in a live-action Batman flick we get to really see Arkham Asylum as Nolan lays the groundwork for a pair of sequels. Sci-fi fans will get an extra kick out of all the Blade Runner influences, including the casting of Rutger Hauer as the head of Wayne Industries.

SUNSHINE AT MIDNIGHT: BROADWAY DANNY ROSE

Woody Allen has trouble explaining his gesture to Mia Farrow in BROADWAY DANNY ROSE

BROADWAY DANNY ROSE (Woody Allen, 1984)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Friday, July 20, and Saturday, July 21, 12 midnight
212-330-8182
www.landmarktheatres.com

We don’t mean to be facetious or didactic, but Broadway Danny Rose is one of Woody Allen’s most consistently entertaining movies, and we say that with all due respect. In the hysterically frantic mob comedy, a group of old-time Borscht Belt comedians, including Sandy Baron, Corbett Monica, Jackie Gayle, Morty Gunty, Will Jordan, and Howard Storm (in addition to longtime Allen producer Jack Rollins), have gathered at the Carnegie Deli and are sharing legendary stories about Danny (Allen), with Baron claiming to have the best one of all, which is then told in flashback. Rose, a small-time New York talent agent who represents such minor-league acts as the Impresario of the Musical Glasses (Gloria Parker) and hapless ventriloquist Barney Dunn (Herb Reynolds), gets involved with local gangsters when one of his clients, has-been nightclub singer Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte), asks him to serve as a beard for his girlfriend, Tina Vitale (Mia Farrow), a gum-chewing, tough-talking moll whose former beau is a very jealous mobster. Danny and Tina are soon on the run, at one point finding themselves in a warehouse filled with Thanksgiving Day parade balloons, leading to one of the funniest laugh-out-loud scenes of Allen’s career. A character-driven comedy with a marvelous blend of slapstick and romance, Broadway Danny Rose is Allen at his very best, as actor, writer, and director. And if we might interject a concept at this juncture, just remember: star, smile, strong!

SUMMER MOVIE SERIES: STAR TREK

J. J. Abrams’s reboot of the Star Trek franchise beams onto the Intrepid on July 20 for free screening

STAR TREK (J. J. Abrams, 2009)
Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum
Pier 86, 12th Ave. & 46th St.
Friday, July 20, free, doors open at 7:30
www.intrepidmuseum.org
www.startrek.com

Just as Kirk has his Khan, Spock gets his Nero in J. J. Abrams’s immensely entertaining time-traveling Star Trek movie. Abrams (Lost) goes back to the very beginning, with the tumultuous birth of one James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine), whose father was a legendary member of Star Fleet. Soon he winds up aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, surrounded by a crew that includes a logical Vulcan named Spock (Zachary Quinto); Uhura (Zoe Saldana), a hot language specialist; Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban), a goofy doctor; seventeen-year-old helmsman Pavel Chekov (Anton Yelchin); engineer extraordinaire Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg); and rookie pilot and swordsman Hikaru Sulu (John Cho). In this sort-of Star Trek Babies tale, the young cadets are suddenly thrust into action with Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood), on a mission that involves evil villain Nero (Eric Bana), a rogue Romulan with an ax to grind. Star Trek fans will love all the little homages to the series and the previous films, with both obvious and obscure references every step of the way as we learn how this famous crew first met one another and developed their extremely familiar relationships. Star Trek is screening July 20 on board the flight deck of the Intrepid as part of the museum’s free summer movie series, which continues with The Muppets on July 27, Jurassic Park on August 3, and The Goonies on August 17.