Andy Serkis gives many reasons to be cheerful channeling Ian Dury in biopic
sex & drugs & rock & roll (Mat Whitecross, 2010)
Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick St. at Laight St.
May 5-11
212-941-2001
www.tribecafilm.com
British actor Andy Serkis, who has appeared in such diverse roles as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Rigaud in the widely hailed 2008 LITTLE DORRIT miniseries, transforms himself into punk rocker Ian Dury in the biopic sex & drugs & rock & roll. Directed by documentarian Mat Whitecross (THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE), the film follows Dury as an adult desperate to make it in the music biz, putting his career ahead of his family. The first half is awkward to watch, as there is not much to like about the character, a nasty, self-centered brute with a huge chip on his shoulder who leaves his caring wife (Olivia Williams) for a young fan (Naomie Harris). But as Whitecross and actor-turned-writer Paul Viragh reveal more of Dury’s past, centering on his relationship with his father (Ray Winstone) and being confined to a poorly run hospital after he contracted polio, Dury becomes a more compelling figure, especially as success approaches. Serkis does all his own singing in the film, set to newly recorded versions of such Ian Dury and the Blockheads classics as “Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick,” “What a Waste,” “Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3,” and the title song. The soundtrack was composed by Dury’s longtime collaborator, Blockhead Chaz Jankel (played by a bland Tom Hughes), who also served as a consultant on the film. It takes a while to get going, but once it does, sex & drugs & rock & roll grabs you, anchored by Serkis’s remarkable performance.
This cold-war-era classic stars Michael Rennie as an alien who lands on earth with a very important message: No peace, no planet. He brings along with him one of the great robots in cinema history, Gort (Lock Martin), and later utters to Patricia Neal one of the ten best lines ever: “Klaatu borada nikto.” This science-fiction fave works on a number of different and fascinating levels; during a 1998 UC Berkeley interview, director Robert Wise even noted, “Some people read a religious connotation into the thing, the resurrection and all. If you want to put a beard on Rennie and all, he could be a Christ figure.” The film will be screening May 7 at the Rubin Museum as part of its Cosmic Cabaretcinema series, featuring “films that explore a new frontier in humankind’s understanding of the universe,” and will be introduced by writer Larry Doyle, a veteran of THE SIMPSONS and BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD.
Jean-Pierre Léaud gives a bravura performance in Jean Eustache’s New Wave classic about love and sex in Paris following the May 1968 cultural revolution. Léaud stars as Alexandre, a jobless, dour flaneur who rambles on endlessly about politics, cinema, music, literature, sex, women’s lib, and lemonade while living with current lover Marie (Bernadette Lafont), obsessing over former lover Gilberte (Isabelle Weingarten), and starting an affair with new lover Veronika (Françoise Lebrun), a quiet nurse with a rather open sexual nature. The film’s three-and-a-half-hour length will actually fly by as you become immersed in the complex characters, the fascinating dialogue, and the excellent acting. Much of the movie consists of long takes in which Alexandre shares his warped view of life and art in small, enclosed spaces, the static camera focusing either on him or his companion. The film is screening on May 3 as part of the Neue Galerie’s Battlefields film series, featuring works involving soldiers in WWI, in conjunction with the current exhibit focusing on World War I veteran Otto Dix. The series concludes May 10 with Albert and Allen Hughes’s FROM HELL, starring Johnny Depp.
After hard-luck fisherman Syracuse (a decidedly unglamorous Colin Farrell) raises his net to find out he has caught a woman (Alicja Bachleda) from the bottom of the sea, his life takes a dramatic shift in Neil Jordan’s wonderful fairy tale, ONDINE. Syracuse, also known disaffectionately as Circus for his checkered past, resuscitates the beautiful woman, who appears to have lost her memory and later chooses the name Ondine, which means “little wave.” Syracuse brings Ondine fishing with him, and when she sings her strange, haunting song, he catches more lobster and salmon than he ever has before. But his wheelchair-bound daughter, Annie (Alison Barry), who needs a new kidney, thinks than Ondine might be more than just good luck; she believes that Ondine is a selkie, a supposedly mythological sea creature who can live on land for seven years before having to return to her watery home. But when a mysterious stranger suddenly shows up in town, everyone is forced to reevaluate their changing lives. Gorgeously shot by master cinematographer Christopher Doyle (IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE) in the coastal village of Castletownbere and along Poulin Harbor, ONDINE is a compelling story that easily could have turned into treacly melodrama but manages to keep surprising up to the very end. Farrell is excellent as the uneducated, simple, but lovable Syracuse who, when not fishing or taking his daughter to her weekly dialysis treatment, shares his tale with the town priest (Stephen Rea) in some very funny scenes. Jordan (MONA LISA, THE CRYING GAME), who has a house in Castletownbere, has made a fairy tale audiences can really believe in with ONDINE, which features a lush soundtrack by Sigur Rós’s Kjartan Sveinsson that accompanies the lush locations.