Kevin Spacey stars as the iconic Shakespearean king at BAM in final production of the Bridge Project (photo by Manuel Harlan)
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through March 4, $30-$135
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Three years ago, BAM began the Bridge Project, a partnership with Sam Mendes’s Neal Street Productions and the Old Vic, headed by Kevin Spacey, staging The Winter’s Tale and Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of The Cherry Orchard in 2009 and The Tempest and As You Like It in 2010. After taking last year off, the project concludes with Richard III, directed by Mendes and starring Spacey as the iconic Shakespearean king notably played previously by such stalwarts as Laurence Olivier, Ian McKellen, John Barrymore, Kenneth Branagh, Alec Guinness, Ian Holm, and Al Pacino. As part of the initiative, the three-hour play, which runs at BAM’s Harvey Theater through March 4, features a cast of both American and British actors, including Simon Lee Phillips, Hannah Stokely, Jack Ellis, Gemma Jones, Stephen Lee Anderson, Katherine Manners, and others bridging the Atlantic.
For nearly thirty years, Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki (Leningrad Cowboys Go America, The Man Without a Past) has been making existential deadpan black comedies that are often as funny as they are dark and depressing. Has there ever been a film as bleak as 1990’s The Match Factory Girl, in which a young woman (Kati Outinen) suffers malady after malady, tragedy after tragedy, embarrassment after embarrassment, her expression never changing? In his latest film, the thoroughly engaging Le Havre, Kaurismäki moves the setting to a small port town in France, where shoeshine man Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a self-described former Bohemian, worries about his seriously ill wife (Outinen) while trying to help a young African boy (Blondin Miguel), who was smuggled into the country illegally on board a container ship, steer clear of the police, especially intrepid detective Monet (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), who never says no to a snifter of Calvados. Adding elements of French gangster and WWII Resistance films with Godardian undercurrents — he even casts Jean-Pierre Léaud in a small but pivotal role — Kaurismäki wryly examines how individuals as well as governments deal with illegal immigrants, something that has taken on more importance than ever amid the growing international economic crisis and fears of terrorism. Through it all, Marcel remains steadfast and stalwart, quietly and humbly going about his business, deadpan every step of the way. Wouter Zoon’s set design runs the gamut from stark grays to bursts of color, while longtime Kaurismäki cinematographer Timo Salminen shoots scene after scene with a beautiful simplicity. Winner of a Fipresci critics award at Cannes this year and Finland’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Le Havre is another marvelously unusual, charmingly offbeat tale from a master of the form. A selection of this year’s New York Film Festival, Le Havre opens October 21 at Lincoln Plaza and the IFC Center, which is also hosting a Kaurismäki festival on weekends through December 18, showing nine of the director’s works; up next is The Match Factory Girl (October 28-30), followed by Leningrad Cowboys Go America (November 11-13), Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (November 18-20), and The Man Without a Past (November 24-27).
Just as Kirk has his Khan, Spock gets his Nero in J. J. Abrams’s immensely entertaining time-traveling Star Trek movie. Abrams (Lost) goes back to the very beginning, with the tumultuous birth of one James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine), whose father was a legendary member of Star Fleet. Soon he winds up aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, surrounded by a crew that includes a logical Vulcan named Spock (Zachary Quinto); Uhura (Zoe Saldana), a hot language specialist; Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban), a goofy doctor; seventeen-year-old helmsman Pavel Chekov (Anton Yelchin); engineer extraordinaire Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg); and rookie pilot and swordsman Hikaru Sulu (John Cho). In this sort-of Star Trek Babies tale, the young cadets are suddenly thrust into action with Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood), on a mission that involves evil villain Nero (Eric Bana), a rogue Romulan with an ax to grind. Star Trek fans will love all the little homages to the series and the previous films, with both obvious and obscure references every step of the way as we learn how this famous crew first met one another and developed their extremely familiar relationships. Star Trek is screening July 21 in Tompkins Square Park as part of the EPIX Movie Free for All series, hosted by manic comedian Gilbert Gottfried and will include giveaways of an iPad, a Flip video camera, and five four-pack admission tickets to the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History.