UNDERGROUND MOVIES OUTDOORS
New Design High School, Open Road Rooftop, 350 Grand St.
Automotive High School, 50 Bedford Ave. at North 13th St.
The Old American Can Factory, 232 Third St. at Third Ave., Brooklyn
Brooklyn Tech, 29 Fort Greene Pl., and other venues
May 14 – September 20, $10
718-417-7362
www.rooftopfilms.com
Since 1997, Vassar graduate Mark Elijah Rosenberg has been screening independent shorts in unusual places. Now in its fourteenth year, Rooftop Films continues to expand its scope, this year featuring dozens of feature-length works and experimental shorts, shown at such locations as Brooklyn’s Automotive High School and the Old American Can Factory and Manhattan’s Solar One and New Design High School as well as BAM, El Museo del Barrio, Socrates Sculpture Park, and other venues. This season’s highlights include Spike Jonze’s thirty-five minute I’M HERE on May 21, Pepe Dikono’s Philippino thriller ENGKWENTRO (CLASH) on May 22, Don Hertzfeldt’s WISDOM TEETH on June 5, Ramin Bahrani’s PLASTIC BAG on July 2, and Jeremy Konner and Derek Waters’s Drunk History trilogy on June 4 & 18 and August 6. Tickets are $10, and screenings are preceded by live music by such bands as DeLeon, Frances, Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez, Natureboy, North Highlands, and Twin Sister, usually followed by an after-party with free beer. A Rooftop Films event is always a cool experience, attracting an eclectic group of indie film and music lovers willing to try something different.
With his life in freefall, postal employee Eric Bishop (Steve Evets) gazes up at his poster of soccer legend Eric Cantona and wonders what the Manchester United star would do – and then, like magic, Cantona (played by Cantona himself) appears in his room, to lend advice and help him through his myriad problems. Reminiscent of how Bogie (Jerry Lacy) guides Allan (Woody Allen) in PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM, Cantona hangs out with Bishop, talking about how he dealt with adversity on the field and off and sharing joints while discussing life. Bishop’s stepsons don’t listen to him, his second wife has left him, and he ends up in the hospital after driving the wrong way through a traffic circle. But his close group of motley friends – Spleen (Justin Moorhouse), Jack (Des Sharples), Monk (Greg Cook), Judge (Mick Ferry), Smug (Smug Roberts), Travis (Johnny Travis), and leader Meatballs (John Henshaw) – stick by him through thick and thin, especially when his son Ryan (Gerard Kearns) gets into serious trouble with a local gangster (Steve Marsh). A light-hearted, tender comedy that turns somewhat goofy at the end, LOOKING FOR ERIC was directed by, remarkably enough, British iconoclast Ken Loach, who has previously offered up such dour, serious tales as KES, RIFF-RAFF, CARLA’S SONG, and THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY. Loach and screenwriting partner Paul Laverty were looking for a sweet, innocent film to make when Cantona actually approached them with an idea that they turned into LOOKING FOR ERIC, a nod to such charmers as WAKING NED DEVINE and THE FULL MONTY that includes clips of many of Cantona’s most spectacular goals as well as his infamous farewell press conference.
Inspired by his own childhood raised on a commune, Adam Sherman’s debut film, HAPPINESS RUNS, is filled with angst and ennui, overwhelmed by a dank darkness that very nearly strangles it. Mark L. Young stars as Victor, a high school senior living in a utopian — dystopian? — community where sex and drugs run rampant, among the kids as well as the adults, which include Victor’s incompetent mother (Andie MacDowell) and Insley (Rutger Hauer), the local guru who heals his flock by sleeping with all the women he can. When the prodigal daughter, the beloved and beautiful Becky (Hanna Hall), returns to care for her ailing father, followed by ultracool drug dealer Shiloh (Shiloh Fernandez, looking frighteningly like Joaquin Phoenix), life in this supposedly idyllic setting threatens to explode as greed, jealousy, and violence turn the not-so-free-spirited commune into LORD OF THE FLIES. HAPPINESS RUNS, which has its moments, suffers from the lack of an attractive protagonist; everyone appears to be so miserable that it is difficult to identify with any of them. In his song “Happiness Runs,” ’60s icon Donovan sings, “You can have everything if you let yourself be”; in his first movie, HAPPINESS RUNS, Adam Sherman shows that that is not necessarily always the case.
Film Forum concludes its four-week series “The Newspaper Picture” with one of the grandest of them all, Alan J. Pakula’s ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN. Even though the audience knows the outcome, following two young reporters, Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), as they try to get to the bottom of the Watergate scandal is an absolute joy, an edge-of-your-seat thriller written by master scribe William Goldman. Pakula goes inside the machinations of the Nixon administration and the Washington Post, setting up an epic battle with an all-star cast that also includes Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Jason Robards, Jane Alexander, Ned Beatty, and Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat. Nominated for eight Oscars and winner of two (for sound and art direction), ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN is not just one of the great newspaper pictures of all time but one of the best films of an outstanding decade for movies.