Lee Hirsch’s highly anticipated documentary, Bully, took a serious blow earlier this week when the Motion Picture Association of America’s Classification and Rating Administration refused to change the film’s rating from an R to PG-13 (based primarily on foul language), falling short by a single vote. Losing the appeal means that Hirsch will not be able to screen the film, which follows five stories of real-life bullying, in many schools around the country. After the appeal was denied, executive producer Harvey Weinstein released a statement that said in part, “As of today, the Weinstein Company is considering a leave of absence from the MPAA for the foreseeable future. We respect the MPAA and their process but feel this time it has just been a bridge too far. I have been through many of these appeals, but this one-vote loss is a huge blow to me personally. Alex Libby gave an impassioned plea and eloquently defended the need for kids to be able to see this movie on their own, not with their parents, because that is the only way to truly make a change.” Libby is one of the featured bullying victims in the film, which opens in theaters March 30. Hirsch (Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony) added, “To say that I am disappointed and distressed would be a grave understatement. It is my great hope that Bully reaches the audience for whom it was made: kids, the bullied, and the bullies and the 80% of kids who can make the most impact by becoming upstanders rather than bystanders.”
this week in film and television
SUNSHINE AT MIDNIGHT: CRUISING
Al Pacino goes cruising for a killer in William Friedkin’s controversial 1980 drama
CRUISING (William Friedkin, 1980)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Friday, February 24, and Saturday, February 25, 12 midnight
212-330-8182
www.landmarktheatres.com
We have a frightening confession to make: We first saw Cruising with our mother. Back in 1980, we would immediately see anything with Al Pacino in it; he had been the king of the ’70s, making such memorable films as The Panic in Needle Park, The Godfather, Scarecrow, Serpico, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, and . . . And Justice for All. We even forgave him his one misstep, Bobby Deerfield. But as it turned out, the ’80s were not so kind to ol’ Al, save for Scarface. When we heard that Cruising was opening at a local theater, we didn’t care what it was about; it was rated R (after fighting off an X), so we couldn’t go without an adult, and our mother was more than game to see the latest Pacino flick, directed by William Friedkin, the mastermind behind The French Connection and The Exorcist. The controversial movie follows an ambitious cop (Pacino) as he goes deep — and we do mean deep — undercover into New York City’s homosexual S&M culture in the West Village in order to catch a serial killer. Cruising features cool and unusual city locations, and it also stars Paul Sorvino, Karen Allen, Don Scardino, and Joe “Maniac” Spinell. (And be on the lookout for such other familiar faces as James Remar, Sonny Grosso, Ed O’Neill, and Powers Boothe.) We actually can’t remember what we thought of the movie back then, and we haven’t dared go near it ever since. Perhaps it’s finally time. It will be playing at the Landmark Sunshine on Friday and Saturday at midnight. We strongly advise against going with your mother.
THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD
Nik (Tristan Halilaj) has some important decisions to make in Joshua Marston’s THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD
THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD (Joshua Marston, 2012)
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts., 212-757-2280
Landmark Sunshine Cinema, 143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves., 212-330-8182
Opens Friday, February 24
www.sundanceselects.com
In 2004, American writer-director Joshua Marston dramatized the plight of an impoverished young Colombian woman who becomes a drug mule in the gripping Maria Full of Grace. He has now turned his attention on another amazing international story, family blood feuds in northern Albania, in the riveting The Forgiveness of Blood. Tristan Halilaj stars as Nik, a teenager with dreams of opening his own internet café. But when a land dispute results in the death of a villager, Nik’s father (Refet Abazi) goes into hiding to avoid facing the Kanun, a fifteenth-century code of law that would give the family of the dead man the right to take the life of a male member of Nik’s clan. While his father is on the lam, Nik must stay inside his house in a forced isolation that could continue for years; if he steps outside, he is likely to be shot and killed. Meanwhile, Nik’s younger sister, Rudina (Sindi Laçej), a dedicated student who hopes to go to university, must take over her father’s business, leaving school to sell bread from a small, ramshackle cart pulled by their faithful old horse, Klinsmann. As the family crisis deepens, Nik considers taking matters into his own hands, with potentially devastating consequences. Marston thoroughly researched the remarkable story, spending time in Albania meeting with families in the midst of real blood feuds, attending a national conference of blood-feud mediators, and teaming up with Albanian native Andamion Murataj to write the script, which won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlin Film Festival. Marston does an excellent job balancing the centuries-old code of law with the rise of modern technology in Albania, not overstating the fascinating contradiction or making any ethnocentric judgments; Nik and his friends post things on Facebook from their handheld devices, and Nik and Rudina’s mother (Ilire Vinca Çelaj) receives occasional text messages from her husband while he is away. Marston imbues the film with a further believability by hiring many untrained actors, including Halilaj and Laçej, who handle their roles admirably. Featuring a beautiful score by Leonardo Heiblum and Jacobo Lieberman, The Forgiveness of Blood is a tense, unforgettable film bristling with powerful emotion, with well-drawn characters and a tense, unpredictable narrative. Don’t miss it.
HIPSTERS (STILYAG)
Oksana Akinshina stars as one of a wild group of Russian hipsters not afraid to stare into the face of communism and dance
HIPSTERS (STILYAG) (Valery Todorovsky, 2008)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, February 24
212-924-3363
www.leisurefeat.com
www.cinemavillage.com
Shortly after the death of Stalin in 1953, groups of Soviet youth decided to rebel against the boring gray conformity of Russian existence and instead celebrate American hipster culture, dressing in colorful clothing, wearing slick pompadours, and meeting in secret locations along “Broadway” where they would dance wildly to jazz and swing. A sort of Eastern European version of Footloose, Valery Todorovsky’s Hipsters follows the story of Mels (Anton Shagin), a member of the Kmsomol, a uniformed youth organization whose main goal is to destroy the hipsters, known as stilyagi in Russian. But when Mels — whose name is an acronym for Marx/Engels/Lenin/Stalin — confronts the beautiful hipster Polly (Oksana Akinshina), he instantly falls madly in love with her. Shortening his name to the more American Mel, he joins up with the hipsters, even learning to play the saxophone as he woos Polly and battles with Katya (Evgenia Brik), the Kmsomol leader who now considers him to be a traitor. Winner of the Best Picture Nika, the Russian equivalent of the Oscars, Hipsters suffers from a standard, predictable story line, but despite frustrating cliché after frustrating cliché, it starts to grow on you, particularly the musical numbers that take place in regular society, not at the underground parties, which are obvious and overdone. And Akinshina is mesmerizing to watch as Polly, a strong young woman not afraid to spit in the face of life-draining communism. In making the first Russian musical in several generations, Todorovsky (The Lover, Vice) combined 1950s American jazz with 1980s Russian Perestroika rock, giving the film a fresh yet retro feel. Despite a whole lot of silliness and a desperate need to be hip itself, Hipsters is a cold war musical not without a little warmth.
MEET THE OSCARS
Grand Central Terminal
Vanderbilt Hall
February 22-26, free
www.oscars.org
www.grandcentralterminal.com
On Sunday night, Demián Bichir, George Clooney, Jean Dujardin, Gary Oldman, and Brad Pitt will be battling it out to take home the Best Actor Oscar, while Glenn Close, Viola Davis, Rooney Mara, Meryl Streep, and Michelle Williams will have their eyes on the Academy Award for Best Actress. But you can get your picture taken with a real statuette before the stars do at the annual “Meet the Oscars” exhibition at Grand Central Terminal. From February 22 to 26, visitors to Vanderbilt Hall can pose while holding an actual Oscar and gaze upon the gold trophy won by Michael Douglas as Best Actor for the New York-set 1987 film Wall Street. Manhattan native Melissa Leo, who was nominated for Best Actress for 2008’s Frozen River and took home last year’s Best Supporting Actress award for her role as the mother in The Fighter, will cut the ribbon on the exhibit on Wednesday morning at 10:00. While the display will remain up through the weekend, the Best Actor and Best Actress statuettes will be on view for only a few days, as they have to be sent back to Hollywood on Saturday to get ready for Sunday night’s competition. Also on view will be a number of Oscars in various stages of completion.
THE ARTIST
Michel Hazanavicius’s THE ARTIST is a charming celebration of silent cinema
THE ARTIST (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011)
www.weinsteinco.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, 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 DESCENDANTS
The King family goes for more than just a run on the beach in Alexander Payne’s marvelous THE DESCENDANTS
THE DESCENDANTS (Alexander Payne, 2012)
www.foxsearchlight.com/thedescendants
Based on the 2007 novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, Alexander Payne’s The Descendants is a masterfully made, beautifully told story of love, loss, and family, highlighted by a graceful, wonderfully nuanced performance by George Clooney. Clooney stars as Matt King, a successful Hawaiian lawyer whose wife (Patricia Hastie) has suffered a devastating water-skiing accident that has left her in a coma. King is suddenly forced to be both father and mother to his two daughters, the troubled Alex (Shailene Woodley), who is in college, and ten-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller), something he admits in voice-over narration he is absolutely clueless about. Meanwhile, he is in the midst of deciding what to do with his family inheritance, an enormous plot of pristine beachfront property that his large group of cousins (including Michael Ontkean and Beau Bridges) wants to sell to a major developer. But his life is again turned upside down when he discovers that his marriage was not quite what he thought it had been, learning a secret about his wife that complicates things even further. Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Clooney), Best Editing (Kevin Tent), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash), The Descendants never takes the easy way out. In his first film since 2004’s Sideways, Payne (Election, About Schmidt) avoids melodramatic clichés and obvious plot twists, instead creating intelligent scenes filled with complex emotions that continually defy expectations. Clooney gives one of the best performances of his career as King, a carefully measured, subtle portrayal that keeps the film firmly balanced, whether he is being shot from the front, his eyes both intensely thoughtful and painfully confused, or shown from the back, his shoulders barely steady, his head facing out into a whole new world. Payne often allows scenes to take place off-screen and behind closed doors, putting his faith in the audience, who will be well rewarded by putting their trust in him. The Descendants is another great success from Payne, one of Hollywood’s best, and most fascinating, storytellers.