this week in film and television

FISH TANK

Mia (Katie Jarvis) hopes there's more to life in FISH TANK

FISH TANK (Andrea Arnold, 2009)
BAMcinematek
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Thursday, January 7, 7:00
718-636-4100
www.fishtankmovie.com
www.bam.org

Writer-director Andrea Arnold follows up her brilliant, harrowing feature debut, 2006’s RED ROAD, with the brilliant, highly perceptive, and emotionally gripping FISH TANK. Katie Jarvis, a seventeen-year-old discovered by Arnold while the girl was arguing with her boyfriend on a train station platform, had never acted before and was not a dancer, but Arnold cast her in the lead role of Mia, a fifteen-year-old troubled kid who dreams of becoming a professional hip-hop dancer as her only way out of her drab life. A loner quick to curse and fight, Mia lives with her mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), who loves to drink and party, and her little sister, Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths making her acting debut as well). When her mother starts dating Connor (Michael Fassbender), Mia soon turns to him for help and advice, but their relationship threatens to grow much too close and far too dangerous. Arnold shot the film in chronological order, giving each actor only parts of the script at a time, so virtually every scene of FISH TANK feels fresh and genuine, with natural, believable actions and reactions. While Wareing and Fassbender (HUNGER and 300) are excellent, the film belongs to the remarkable Jarvis, who will break your heart over and over again. BAMcinematek will be hosting an advance screening of FISH TANK on January 7 at 7:00, followed by a Q&A with director Arnold and star Fassbender. The film, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes, opens at the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza on January 15.

NEWFILMMAKERS: WINTER FESTIVAL 2010

8behindwheel

8 BEHIND THE WHEEL (Trace Burroughs, 2009)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
January 5, $6, 6:00
212-505-5181
www.newfilmmakers.com
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

Abstract impressionist artist, animator, and filmmaker Trace Burroughs wrote, directed, and stars in 8 BEHIND THE WHEEL, which is screening on January 5 at 9:00 as part of the NewFilmmakers Winter Festival 2010 at Anthology Film Archives (January 2-6). Burroughs’s appropriately claustrophobic film gets inside the minds of eight drivers as they make their way through the cold, cruel world, either speaking out loud or having their thoughts broadcast to the audience in voice-over narration. Coming from all walks of life, the drivers talk or think to themselves — some reciting their lines a lot better than others — about pizza, weddings, chocolate, sex, drugs, violence, and other topics, but how real are these thoughts, and will they culminate in action? Burroughs (ENDLESS ORGY FOR THE GODDESS OF PERVERSION) mixes up camera shots with different angles so the visuals do not get too boring, adding a jazzy soundtrack and good use of color, especially in interstitials while going from driver to driver, giving audiences the feeling of being behind the wheel themselves, speeding down a barren highway. Also on the January 5 bill are documentaries about the space program, including Kevin Stirling’s ninety-minute MOON BEAT, along with four shorts.

The second annual NewFilmmakers Winter Festival consists of nightly programs of several shorts paired with at least one feature-length film, either narrative or documentary. On Sunday night, Clara Xing’s STAND UP, set in northern China, follows Arin Yoon’s fifty-minute doc AMERICANISM, about education in South Korea, Lin Hsin-Chin’s short WIND AND THE ROCK, and others. On January 4, the main presentation, Benjamin Pollack’s Twilight Zone-esque DARK ROOM THEATER, anchors an evening that also includes Eric Sazer’s A PORTRAIT OF DISCOMFITURE, John Goras’s GHOST TANK, and Garret Anton Harkawik’s CONTEMPT OF LIFE. On January 6, Thomas Hofbauer’s IN THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS closes out the festival following shorts that take place in the subway and Geoffray Barbier’s PARDON US FOR LIVING BUT THE GRAVEYARD IS FULL, which looks at the career of the Fleshtones.

A LOUIS MALLE SAMPLER: SIX CLASSIC WORKS

Laurent and his mother are oh-so-close in French coming-of-age classic

MURMUR OF THE HEART (Louis Malle, 1971)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
70 Lincoln Center Plaza, 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, January 1, 4:00
Saturday, January 2, 9:00
Wednesday, January 6, 9:00
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

Louis Malle’s engaging semiautobiographical coming-of-age drama is about the ultimate mama’s boy. Set in Dijon in 1954 during the French Indochine War, MURMUR OF THE HEART follows fifteen-year-old Laurent Chevalier (Benoît Ferreux) as he investigates his burgeoning sexuality while his Italian mother, Clara (Lea Massari), struggles with her own, cheating on her French gynecologist husband (Daniel Gélin) with a mystery man and flirting madly with just about everyone else. Laurent, who has a heart murmur that requires special treatment, fights with his two older brothers (Fabien Ferreux and Marc Winocourt), has an uncomfortable session with a priest (Michael Lonsdale), tries to make a go of it with a prostitute (Gila von Weitershausen), and experiments with some older local girls, but somehow he always ends up in the loving arms of his very sexy mother. Nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar and the Palme d’Or at Cannes, MURMUR OF THE HEART is a beautiful look at growing up, with a rousing jazz soundtrack featuring music by Charlie Parker, Sidney Bechet, Dizzy Gillespie, and other cool cats. The film is being screened three times as part of Lincoln Center’s Louis Malle Sampler (January 1-7), a six-pack that also includes THE FIRE WITHIN, THE LOVERS, MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, PHANTOM INDIA, and VANYA ON 42nd St.; as an added bonus, Wallace Shawn will participate in a Q&A following the 6:15 screening of MY DINNER WITH ANDRE on January 6.

THE CHASER

The chase is on in South Korean thriller loosely based on the exploits of a real-life serial killer

THE CHASER (CHUGYEOGJA) (Na Hong-jin, 2008)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
December 30 – January 5
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

A huge hit in South Korea, Na Hong-jin’s THE CHASER is a tense, gripping thriller that is both extremely violent and deeply emotional. Kim Yun-suk stars as Jung-ho, a disgraced former cop now working as a pimp. Angry that several of his high-class prostitutes have left him, he demands that Kim Min-ji (Seo Young-hee) take on a client even though she is feeling ill. Soon after, he uncovers evidence that leads him to believe that the client he just sent Min-ji to is selling off his girls, so he sets out to find her, but he winds up caught in the middle of what could be a gruesome serial-killer case as he is continually thwarted by the mysterious john and would-be killer, Young-min (Ha Jung-woo). With Min-ji missing, Jung-ho tries to use his policing skills — he gets little help from the local cops, a group of lazy bunglers more interested in protecting the mayor of Seoul from another feces attack — to track her down while also suddenly feeling responsible for the young daughter (Kim Yoo-jeong) he didn’t know she had. Loosely based on the exploits of real-life serial killer Yoo Young-cheol, THE CHASER, which is being remade in English by Warner Bros., does a good job of getting inside the head of a troubled man whose world is unraveling before his eyes and might not be able to stop it.

OLD PARTNER

Choi and his loyal ox face the twilight of their years together in OLD PARTNER (Photo courtesy of Schcalo Media Group)

OLD PARTNER (Lee Chung-ryoul, 2008)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
December 30 – January 5
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

“Woe is me . . . Life is miserable,” complains seventy-six-year-old Lee Sam-soon as her husband, seventy-nine-year-old Choi Won-kyun, lets her go on about her hunched-over body, lack of teeth, and overall ill health. All Choi cares about is his beloved loyal ox, who has been with him for nearly thirty years. South Korean filmmaker Lee Chung-ryoul documents the final year of the loving, sometimes harsh relationship between Choi and his ox in the deeply heartwarming and thoroughly heartbreaking OLD PARTNER. As science and technology pass him by, Choi continues to farm his fields with his aging and ailing ox, who is turning forty, somewhat of a miracle as the life span of the breed is generally between twelve and twenty-four years. Choi refuses to spray insecticides, preferring to jeopardize his crop rather than his animal. And he often leaves his constantly chattering wife to work the fields alone as he goes off to find fresh fodder to feed the ox, whose own aches and pains echo those of Choi. Even Choi and Lee’s nine children, none of whom have any interest in the farm, want their father to get rid of the ox, but he merely ignores them, responding only to the ox’s bell and not his family’s questions and concerns. Named Best Documentary at the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea, OLD PARTNER is a warm, tender, beautiful little film about life and death and relationships, with a strong emotional resonance that will stay with you for a long time.

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND: SOLARIS

The original SOLARIS is back by popular demand at Lincoln Center

SOLARIS (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
70 Lincoln Center Plaza, 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Thursday, December 31, 1:00 & 6:30
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

Natalya Bondarchuk and Donatus Banionis star in the Russian 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, in which something strange is going on in outer space that is unexplainable to both the characters in the film and the people in the audience. Banionis plays Chris Kelvin, who is sent to the Solaris space station to decide whether to put an end to the solaristics project that Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky) complicated twenty years before. What he discovers is one death, two possibly insane men, and his supposedly dead wife (Bondarchuk). Ambiguity reigns supreme in this gorgeously shot (in color and black and white) and scored film that, while technically sci-fi, is really about the human conscience, another gem from master Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky (IVAN’S CHILDHOOD, ANDREI RUBLEV, NOSTALGHIA). See it whether or not you checked out Steven Soderbergh’s underrated remake with George Clooney and Natascha McElhone. The original SOLARIS is screening on New Year’s Eve at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Back by Popular Demand series, highlighting works that appeared earlier in 2009 and deserve another go-round, including Orson Welles’s MACBETH (December 29, 1:30), Marco Amenta’s THE SICILIAN GIRL (December 29, 6:15), Kathryn Bigelow’s THE HURT LOCKER (December 30, 3:30), and Martin Provost’s SÉRAPHINE (December 30, 8:10 and December 31, 4:15).

THE ART OF STOP-MOTION

“The Mayor,” pastel and pencil on board, on view and for sale at Animazing Gallery in SoHo

Animazing Gallery
54 Greene St. at Broome St.
Through December 31
Admission: free
212-226-7374
www.animazing.com

In addition to visiting the Tim Burton film program and exhibition retrospective at MoMA, completists and collectors still have one last chance to make their way to the Animazing Gallery in SoHo, which is displaying – and selling – storyboards, props, and other paraphernalia from THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, CORALINE, and CORPSE BRIDE. Also on view through December 31 is a handful of select pieces from this fall’s “Sendak in SoHo” exhibition, which featured select published and conceptual illustrations from the children’s classic WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE.