this week in film and television

OFF AND RUNNING

Avery tries to hold together her complicated life in OFF AND RUNNING

OFF AND RUNNING (Nicole Opper, 2009)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
January 29 – February 4
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.firstrunfeatures.com

Nicole Opper’s OFF AND RUNNING starts off as a heartwarming tale of a Brooklyn family that refers to itself as the United Nations — lesbian mothers Tova (from Israel) and Travis (from Illinois) and their adopted children: multiracial Rafi, African American Avery, and Korean Zay-Zay. Opper focuses on Avery, a teenage track star who has suddenly decided to contact her birth mother, beginning her descent into a troubled world that jeopardizes her relationship with her family as well as her once-promising future. Her struggles appear to stem from her insistence on developing a black identity; she takes great offense at being called an “Oreo” by some of her African American friends and soon is turning her back on her dismayed parents, who give their children remarkable freedom along with their deep love. Although OFF AND RUNNING is a moving portrait of a very modern American family, it at times feels like a carefully manipulated reality TV show, with Avery calling the shots. In fact, director Opper has been a mentor and teacher to Avery since she first encountered the youngster at a Hebrew school she was visiting for an earlier film. Opper helped Avery craft her voice-over narration and even worked with her in the editing room, calling into question her objectivity. There are times when viewers will wonder why the filmmaker and Avery’s parents don’t just scare her straight, instead sitting idly by as the confused girl makes wrong choice after wrong choice. Still, OFF AND RUNNING, featuring stirring music is by experimental violinist Daniel Bernard Romain, is a fascinating study that raises many important social and cultural issues.

KUROSAWA FESTIVAL DOUBLE FEATURE: YOJIMBO/SANJURO

Toshiro Mifune can’t believe what he sees in YOJIMBO.

YOJIMBO (Akira Kurosawa, 1961)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Wednesday, February 3, 1:30, 5:25, 9:20
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Toshiro Mifune is a lone samurai on the road following the end of the Tokugawa dynasty in Akira Kurosawa’s unforgettable masterpiece. Mifune comes to a town with two warring factions and plays each one off the other as a hired hand. Neo’s battles with myriad Agent Smiths are nothing compared to Yojimbo’s magnificent swordfights against growing bands of warriors that include one man with a gun. Try watching this film and not think of several Clint Eastwood Westerns as well as HIGH NOON.

Toshiro Mifune can’t believe what he sees in SANJURO.

SANJURO (Akira Kurosawa, 1962)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Wednesday, February 3, 3:35, 7:30
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

In this YOJIMBO-like tale, Toshiro Mifune shows up in a small town looking for food and fast money and takes up with a rag-tag group of wimps who don’t trust him when he says he will help them against the powerful ruling gang. Funnier than most Kurosawa samurai epics, the film is unfortunately brought down a notch by a bizarre soundtrack that ranges from melodramatic claptrap to a jazzy big-city score.

REELABILITIES: MARY AND MAX

Max becomes friends with an Australian girl in charming claymation film

MARY AND MAX (Adam Elliot, 2009)
JCC in Manhattan and other venues
334 Amsterdam Ave. at West 76th St.
Tickets: $10 per screening, Festival Pass $40
Special events: free (some require advance reservations)
212-505-5700
www.maryandmax.com
www.reelabilities.org
www.jccmanhattan.org

Having just played the New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center, Adam Elliot’s stop-motion animated MARY AND MAX is now the opening-night selection at the second annual ReelAbilities: NY Disabilities Film Festival, which runs January 28 through February 2 at the JCC in Manhattan and other venues. Winner of numerous awards all over the world, MARY AND MAX is the touching, unforgettable tale of two loners who become pen pals, sharing the details of their hopes and dreams over decades. Mary (voiced by Bethany Whitmore as a young girl and Toni Collette when she gets older) is an oddball child living in a small town in Australia. Seeking a friend, she sends a letter to a random person she finds in a phone book. Max (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a childlike middle-aged man suffering from Asperger’s Disorder in New York City. Through the years, their long-distance relationship goes through emotional ups and downs, building to a surprising ending that still has us scratching our heads. Elliot, who won an Oscar for his short film HARVIE KRUMPET in 2003, wrote, directed, and designed the sets and characters for MARY AND MAX, inspired by the photography of Diane Arbus. He brings Mary and Max to life in charming ways, adding little details and flourishes that will endear you to them even though they both are very, very strange. The film, wonderfully narrated by Barry “Dame Edna” Humphries, required more than 130,000 individual frames and 212 puppets and took 57 weeks to shoot; the result is simply charming. (MARY AND MAX will be screened January 28 at the JCC in Manhattan, January 30 at the JCC in Staten Island, January 31 at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington and at Abilities! in Albertson, and February 1 at Columbia University.)

BEESWAX looks at the Hatcher twins at Disabilities Film Festival

The festival also features Ziah H. Hamzeh’s HENRY O! documentary about a blind sportscaster; Andrew Bujalski’s widely praised BEESWAX, about the growing problems between twin sisters; Niko von Glasgow’s NOBODY’S PERFECT, in which the director tries to find eleven other people affected by Thalidomide to pose naked with him for a calendar; Dorit Hakim’s WHITE BALANCE, which follows a young boy as he loses his hearing; Gillies MacKinnon’s ZIG ZAG LOVE, a love story between a male cancer patient and woman with cerebral palsy; and Justin Edgar’s HUNGER HOUSE, a short that looks at how the Nazis treated people with disabilities. All screenings will be followed by a discussion with either the filmmakers or experts in the field covered in that work. In addition, the festival will host several special free events, including a panel discussion with a group of sighted, visually impaired, and completely blind photographers; dances from choreographer Heidi Latsky and the Infinity Dance Company; an autism-friendly concert with Jarrod Emick and Andrew Ross and another with the group Flame; a theatrical piece from Creative Alternatives NY and the Adaptations Drama Group; and a Kids Club art exhibit.

TIM BURTON: SWEENEY TODD

Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter hide a dark secret in SWEENEY TODD

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (Tim Burton, 2007)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, January 27, 8:00
Tickets: $10, 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
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.sweeneytoddmovie.com

Oh yes, there will be blood. Tim Burton’s adaptation of the hit Broadway musical SWEENEY TODD is bloody good fun. After being sent to prison for fifteen years by Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who had designs on his wife (Laura Michelle Kelly), innocent barber Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) returns to nineteenth-century London, reborn as Sweeney Todd, now a dark, ominous figure dead set on gaining his dastardly revenge. He gets back his coveted silver razors, which he considers an extension of his arm, and sets up shop in his old place, above the store where Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) sells meat pies crawling with cockroaches. When Todd begins slicing throats with expert precision, Lovett has a novel way of doing away with the bodies — while increasing business. Burton and screenwriter John Logan (THE AVIATOR, THE LAST SAMURAI) have done a terrific job translating the show onto the big screen, as Depp, Bonham Carter, and the rest of the cast — including Sacha Baron Cohen as a magical elixir salesman, Timothy Spall as the judge’s wingman, and Jayne Wisener as Todd’s daughter, who is doomed to marry the judge — do a wonderful job with such Stephen Sondheim songs as “No Place Like London,” “Poor Thing,” “My Friends,” “Pretty Women,” and “Not While I’m Around.” Depp is marvelous as the demon barber of Fleet Street, wearing a fright wig with a shocking streak of white, singing most of his dialogue with a gentle devilishness, enhanced by his haunting, penetrating eyes. The goth opera not only sounds good but looks even better, courtesy of cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, production designer Dante Ferretti, and costume designer Colleen Atwood. Burton and Depp, who have previously collaborated on EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, ED WOOD, SLEEPY HOLLOW, CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, and CORPSE BRIDE, have another winner on their hands.

German Expressionist classic is part of Tim Burton influences film fest

The film is screening at MoMA in conjunction with the wonderful, expansive Tim Burton retrospective, which runs through April 26; also on the schedule are CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (January 27 & February 1), BATMAN RETURNS (January 28), BEETLEJUICE (January 31), BATMAN (February 3), VINCENT and ED WOOD (February 4), EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (February 5), FRANKENWEENIE and THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (February 7), and PLANET OF THE APES (February 7). In addition, “Tim Burton and the Lurid Beauty of Monsters” features works that influenced Burton; coming up are Harold Young’s THE MUMMY’S TOMB (January 28 & February 6), Lew Landers’s THE RAVEN (January 29), Roger Corman’s PIT AND THE PENDULUM (January 29), Jack Arnold’s THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (January 30), Arnold’s REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (January 30 & February 5), Val Guest’s WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH (January 30 & February 1), Robert Wiene’s THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (February 4), and Christy Cabanne’s THEMUMMY’S HAND (February 6).

GLOBAL LENS, 2010: THE SHAFT

The local mine dominates a family’s life in Zhang Chi’s mesmerizing debut

DIXIA DE TIANKONG (THE SHAFT) (Zhang Chi, 2008)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
January 21-27
Tickets: $10, 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
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Not to be confused with Li Yang’s 2003 film, BLIND SHAFT (MANG JING), which was also set in a rural Chinese coal-mining town, THE SHAFT (DIXIA DE TIANKONG) is a beautifully shot, mesmerizingly slow-paced debut feature from writer-director Zhang Chi. The story is told in three sections: In the first, Song Daming (Li Chen) overhears that his girlfriend, Ding Jingshui (Zheng Luoqian), might have slept with the boss to get a promotion, forcing him to reconsider their relationship. In the second, Ding Jingsheng (Huang Xuan), Jingshui’s brother, is a lazy slacker who is not smart enough to go to university, refuses to work in the mine, and instead thinks he could become a pop singer. And in the third, Ding Baogen (Luo Deyuan), Jingsheng and Jingshui’s father, has reached retirement age and is not sure what to do with the rest of his life, as the only thing he knows is the mine. THE SHAFT moves at a snail’s pace, reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch’s STRANGER THAN PARADISE but without any humor, a meditative examination of the decaying social and economic structure in rural China. Cinematographer Liu Shumi’s camera lingers on scenes long after they appear to be over, as characters just stand and stare out at the dim gray and black countryside, occasionally saturated in lush blues and reds; out there somewhere is Beijing, more than a dream away, but the big city doesn’t necessarily hold any answers either. Dialogue is kept to a bare minimum, with no musical soundtrack, just natural sound that often borders on complete silence. THE SHAFT, which is screening at MoMA January 21-27 as part of the Global Lens festival, is an intense, rewarding, uneasy experience from an extremely talented young filmmaker.

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS

Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) makes a devilish deal with Mr. Nick (Tom Waits) in new Terry Gilliam flick

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS (Terry Gilliam, 2009)
www.doctorparnassus.co.uk

Longtime Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam is perhaps the most frustrating filmmaker of the last thirty years. A remarkable talent whose works are often mired in controversy, from going way overbudget to having to deal with severe illness and even death on his sets, Gilliam has made such pure gems as TIME BANDITS (1981), BRAZIL (1985), and THE FISHER KING (1991) as well as such disasters as FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (1998), THE BROTHERS GRIMM (2005), and TIDELAND (2005). His last real success was TWELVE MONKEYS (1995), making it nearly fifteen years since he has made a worthwhile movie. His latest adult fairy tale, THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS, is reminiscent of his 1988 film, THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, a somewhat underrated though hit-or-miss effort that reached lofty heights while flirting with utter ridiculousness. Cowritten by Gilliam and Charles McKeown (who also collaborated on BRAZIL and MUNCHAUSEN), DOCTOR PARNASSUS is built around a Faustian plot in which a monk, Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), who thinks his sect controls the story of the world, makes a deal with Mr. Nick, the devil (Tom Waits), involving Parnassus’s daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole). Valentina is part of the doctor’s traveling sideshow, along with the trusted, all-knowing Percy (Verne Troyer) and assistant Anton (Andrew Garfield), who is in love with Valentina but is unable to express his desire. The ramshackle show offers people the chance to walk through a mirror into their own private fantasy — during which they will eventually face a decision regarding their own potential deal with the devil. When the oddball troupe discovers a man hanging by his neck under a bridge, they welcome the charming, handsome, deeply mysterious stranger (Heath Ledger) into their outfit, but he is hiding a secret that could tear everything apart. PARNASSUS is an up-and-down affair in which a captivating, beautiful scene will be followed by a baffling segment that borders on the incompetent, as if the filmmakers forgot to edit it properly or couldn’t afford more takes to improve it. Fortunately, the last half hour is thrilling, especially how Gilliam and McKeown rework the script to deal with Ledger’s death when several key scenes still needed to be shot.

AVATAR

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has a new world awaiting him in AVATAR

AVATAR (James Cameron, 2009)
www.avatarmovie.com

Canadian-born director James Cameron (THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS, THE ABYSS, and some movie about a big sinking ship) crafts an expensive, high-tech apology to native people the world over in the futuristic adventure thriller AVATAR. Borrowing elements from such films as THE MATRIX, ALIEN, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Star Wars saga, Disney’s animated POCOHANTAS, REIGN OF FIRE, and many a cowboy-and-Indian tale, Cameron propels audiences into 2154, where a team of scientists join up with military troops on Pandora, home to the invaluable mineral unobtainium as well as a native race known alternately as the na’vi, or the People. In the middle of it all is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a wheelchair-bound former Marine who takes the place of his brilliant brother, who was recently murdered. While head researcher Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) thinks bringing Jake on board is a mistake, Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) sees it as an opportunity to make use of Jake’s expert reconnaissance skills, so Jake takes over what would have been his brother’s avatar – a giant creation modeled after the na’vi that humans can operate from a pod while asleep and that gives Jake the opportunity to walk again through this tall blue being. Quaritch secretly promises Jake that he will get him the costly procedure that will give him back the use of his real legs if he infiltrates the na’vi and sends intel back to the colonel as the military prepares an all-out assault on the People, but when Jake falls for the beautiful Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), he undergoes a change of heart. As with most Cameron films, the visual splendor is thwarted by a tired, clichéd script that devolves into complete silliness in the last half hour, spurred on by James Horner’s treacly score and plenty of poorly delivered lines. But AVATAR is still lots of stupid fun, especially if you see it in 3D.