Classic horror goes 3D at festival
Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick St.at Laight St.
November 18-22
Tickets: $11-$16
646-827-9333
www.nychorrorfest.com
www.tribecacinemas.com
The ninth annual New York City Horror Film Festival will try to scare the wits out of lovers of scary movies during its five-day reign of terror, showering upon audiences such fare as CANNIBALIEN, BLOODNIGHT: THE LEGEND OF MARY HATCHET, EL HOMBRE DE LA BOLSA, THE EMBALMER, BARBEE BUTCHER, HUMANS WITH POTATOS, MASSACRATOR, X-MESS DETRITUS, and ATTACKAZOIDS, DEPLOY!! There are also special screenings of NOSFERATU: ORLOK THE VAMPIRE in 3D and MANIAC, in honor of creator William Lustig, who will be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award, previously given to such horror legends as Roger Corman, Tobe Hooper, and George A. Romero. Things get going with a $10 kickoff party at BLVD on November 18 at 9:00, with live performances by Hayley Griffiths, Witches in Bikinis, M-16, and others, eleven shorts, and an hour of free beer.
The first half of Corneliu Porumboiu’s POLICE, ADJECTIVE is as dreadfully boring as detective Cristi’s (Dragos Bucur) assignment, tailing a student, Victor (Radu Costin), who enjoys a joint with two of his friends every day after school. While Cristi wants to nail the kid’s supplier, the cop’s boss has him on a tight deadline, insisting he arrest Victor if the investigation continues to go nowhere, but Cristi strongly disagrees with putting the teenager away for up to seven years for a crime he believes will soon be abolished by the government. However, the film picks up considerably as Cristi seeks help from various contacts, getting caught up in red tape and public servants who would really rather not be bothered. And when he get called in by the chief (Vlad Ivanov from 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, and 2 DAYS) and gets a long lecture in linguistics, well, you won’t be able to control yourself from laughing out loud. Porumboiu (12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST) keeps the pace very slow and very steady, but hang in there, because the end is a riot. POLICE, ADJECTIVE won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, screened at the New York Film Festival, and is Romania’s official entry for the Foreign Language Film Academy Award. The film is showing at MoMA as part of the “Contenders, 2009,” series, movies that audiences might have missed, that haven’t gotten a theatrical release, or have not opened yet; POLICE, ADJECTIVE will open in New York City on December 23. Other screenings in the series include Kathryn Bigelow’s THE HURT LOCKER on December 1, which will be followed by a discussion with the director, writer Mark Boal, and star Jeremy Renner; Wes Anderson’s just-released FANTASTIC MR. FOX on December 7; Neill Blomkamp’s overpraised DISTRICT 9 on December 17; and Ruben Fleischer’s ZOMBIELAND on December 18.
An official selection of the Brooklyn Film Festival, THE LOCAL is a gritty crime drama set in parts of Brooklyn not usually shown in the movies. Dan Eberle (JailCity) wrote, directed, coedited, and stars in the film, playing Noname, a man searching for a new life, trying to escape from his past. But the streets are all he knows, and soon he is working at the bottom of the ladder for dirtbag drug dealers he could chew up and spit out in his sleep, but he decides it is better to play the game at least for a while as he regains his footing. And soon he’s hired by a detective to rescue the man’s daughter from the gang, but she’s so drugged out she doesn’t know what’s going on. Noname is a charismatic character, his eyes boring through whatever or whoever gets in his way, but Eberle can’t decide whether he’s hero or antihero. One moment Noname is kicking the crap out of people, and the next he is getting the crap kicked out of him, so it’s often difficult to figure out which character is going to show up in the next scene. And the supporting cast, which includes Maya Ferrara, Karl Herlinger, Paul James Vasquez, and Beau Allulli, is never fully developed either, upping the confusion. But there’s still something about Eberle that keeps you watching to the very end.
After playing film festivals around the world, Philippe Diaz’s THE END OF POVERTY? opens a one-week run at Village East, bringing its critical take on the global financial crisis. Speaking with Nobel Prize winners, economists, writers, politicians, researchers, and other experts, Diaz attempts to get at the heart of international poverty – particularly by tugging at the audience’s heartstrings. He intercuts shots of talking heads discussing slavery and colonialism, the World Bank, the free market, the International Monetary Fund, and government bailouts with portraits of men, women, and children living in squalor in Africa, Latin America, the United States, and elsewhere. He supplements the film with a barrage of statistics that, individually, are infuriating but, taken as a whole, get lost in a whirlwind of numbers. Adding to the overkill is Martin Sheen’s over-the-top narration, which piles up yet more information and outrage. But even as the film sometimes feels like a Sally Struthers save-the-children infomercial, its crucial message does manage to pull through and take root – the money is out there, but its incredibly lopsided distribution in a warped system is basically set up to keep the imbalance that has led to such a tragic situation.
Malaysian-born Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang’s WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? is one heck of an existential hoot. When his father dies, Hsiao Kang, who sells watches on the street in Taipei, becomes obsessed with a strange woman who insists on buying Hsiao’s own watch and then leaves for Paris; with Truffaut’s THE 400 BLOWS (Tsai’s “all-time favorite film”); with urinating in whatever is near his bed instead of going to the bathroom; and with changing clocks to Paris time. Meanwhile, his mother is determined to follow ridiculous rituals to bring her husband back, and the woman in Paris goes through a number of bizarre events as well. There is not a single camera movement in the film (except for in the 400 BLOWS film clips); the scenes are shot by Benoît Delhomme in long takes, often lingering before and after any action – when there is any action. The dialogue is spare, ironic, and hysterical. If you like your movies straightforward and linear, then this is not for you. But we loved this riot of a film, so we suggest you give it a shot. And yes, that person sitting on the bench in the cemetery is exactly who you think it is.
“Life is not easy for everyone,” Olga Bowman says about midway through Andrew Jacobs’s spectacular cinéma vérité documentary, FOUR SEASONS LODGE. “But life can be beautiful even when it’s not so easy.” For twenty-five summers, a group of Holocaust survivors, mostly Polish Jews, would meet at the Four Seasons Lodge in the Catskills, where they would talk, dance, argue, eat, hug, discuss their latest aches and pains, and primarily revel in life despite the horrific things they suffered through and witnessed at such concentration camps as Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Jacobs discovered this heartwarming community while researching a series of articles for the New York Times; when he heard that the lodge was being sold and that the 2006 season might be the group’s last, he decided to make a movie about it. Seeking advice from the legendary Albert Maysles, Jacobs actually landed the master documentarian as his chief cameraman, giving FOUR SEASONS LODGE the feel of such classic Maysles brothers’ works as SALESMAN and GREY GARDENS.
