Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde are looking forward to a day of free screenings at the New York Film Festival
NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Amsterdam & Columbus Aves.
Friday, September 25, free,
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org
In conjunction with the twenty-fifth anniversary of preservation specialists the Film Foundation and the Fox centennial, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is featuring free screenings of six restored classics on September 25 as part of the fifty-third New York Film Festival. It’s quite an eclectic lineup, beginning at 1:30 in the Howard Gilman Theater with John Ford’s 1939 Revolutionary War drama, Drums Along the Mohawk, his first Technicolor work, starring Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert. Stanley Donen’s Two for the Road, a bittersweet romance with Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn, is being shown at 3:30 in the Francesca Beale Theater. At 3:30 (HGT), Robert De Niro s stalks Jerry Lewis in one of Martin Scorsese’s true masterpieces, The King of Comedy. At 6:00 (FBT), Elia Kazan’s depression-era drama Wild River, with Montgomery Clift and Lee Remick, will get a rare screening. At 6:30 (HGT), Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde star in John M. Stahl’s 1945 melodrama, Leave Her to Heaven. And the free day wraps up at 9:00 (FBT) with All That Jazz, Bob Fosse’s semiautobiographical tale highlighted by an electrifying performance by Roy Scheider. In addition, there will be sneak previews of some of the Convergence installations that are part of the festival, which runs September 25 to October 11.
Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and a selection of the New York Film Festival, Climates is a beautifully elegiac look at a desperate relationship set in modern-day Turkey. The film opens with Isa (writer-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan) and Bahar (Ebru Ceylan, Nuri’s real-life wife) visiting desert ruins. As he walks among ancient pillars, taking photos, she watches him from a distance; the silence is deafening. Later, on a beach, they agree to part ways; while he heads back into the arms of Serap (Nazan Kesal), a friend’s lover, she takes a job on a faraway television program, set in the bitter cold and snow. But Isa still can’t get the younger Bahar out of his mind. Climates features long scenes of little dialogue, with cinematographer Gökhan Tiryaki alternating extreme close-ups with gorgeous, nearly empty landscapes, shot in HD digital video, with a haunting piano-based score. Ceylan’s follow-up to Distant, which won the 2003 Jury Grand Prix at Cannes, Climates is a wrenching, challenging tale that will leave audiences emotionally exhausted. Climates is being shown at MoMA on October 30 at 7:30 and November 5 at 4:00 as part of the “Filmmaker in Focus” look at Ceylan, who will introduce the the October 30 screening with actor Mehmet Eryilmaz. The week-long festival runs October 29 to November 5 and also includes Ceylan’s latest film, Kis uykusu (Winter Sleep), in addition to 2011’s Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia), 2008’s Üç maymun (Three Monkeys), 2002s Uzak (Distant), 1999’s Mayis sikintisi (Clouds of May), and 1997’s Kasaba (The Small Town).
Winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders is a sweet little gem of a movie, focusing on a German-Italian family that finds itself at a critical crossroads. Set in Rohrwacher’s (Corpo celeste) hometown in the countryside between Umbria-Lazio and Tuscany, the film follows the travails of a beekeeping family led by the gangly Wolfgang (Sam Louwyck), a grumpy ne’er-do-well from one of the Germanic countries who is trying to live some kind of back-to-the-land life away from authorities in an undeveloped backwater. His allegiance to old-fashioned tradition includes overworking his four young daughters while his wife, Angelica (Alba Rohrwacher, the director’s older sister), keeps at a distance and live-in friend Cocò (Sabine Timoteo) keeps stirring up the pot. At the center of it all is twelve-year-old Gelsomina (first-time actress Maria Alexandra Lungu, who was discovered in a catechism class), an exceptional beekeeper who wants her father to allow the family to participate in a television contest, Countryside Wonders, that could earn them much-needed money. But her father prefers taking care of things himself — though not very well, particularly when he acquires a camel for no apparent reason. Suspicious of the government and contemporary society, Wolfgang likes living in relative isolation; inviting strangers into their world could reveal the illegal working conditions, not to mention abuse of child labor laws. But Gelsomina is determined to improve their existence, starting with the competition, which is hosted by the beguiling, fairy-tale-like Milly Catena (Monica Bellucci in a marvelous white head piece, partially poking fun at her own sex-symbol image).
Josh and Benny Safdie’s Heaven Knows What is a harrowing tale about addiction and obsession, but it turns out that its back story is much more compelling than what shows up onscreen. Josh was researching a film about the Diamond District when he came upon Arielle Holmes, a nineteen-year-old temp assistant. He was determined to find out more about her and shortly discovered that she was a homeless junkie with a wild, unpredictable druggie boyfriend, Ilya. Josh and Benny, who had previous collaborated on such indie features as The Pleasure of Being Robbed and Daddy Longlegs and the documentary Lenny Cooke, commissioned Holmes to write her story, and she quickly delivered 150 pages that ultimately inspired the film, in which Holmes plays Harley, a young heroin addict living on the streets of New York City, spanging money (begging for spare change) for her next fix while in a combative relationship with Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones). Harley has done something to alienate Ilya, and she says she will kill herself to prove her love and devotion. He tells her to go ahead and do it, so she slits one of her wrists and is rushed to the hospital. That sets the stage for the rest of the lurid and sordid narrative, as Haley bounces between the cruel Ilya and her drug dealer, the far more easygoing and mellow Mike (real-life street legend Buddy Duress in his acting debut); she is also followed around by Skully (rapper Necro), who wants to save her from herself but is clearly in no position to do so.
Shortly after meeting Ron “Stray Dog” Hall at the Biker Church in Branson, Missouri, writer-director Debra Granik (Down to the Bone) cast the Vietnam vet as Thump Milton in her second feature, the Oscar-nominated Winter’s Bone. Upon learning more about him, she soon decided that he would be a great subject for a documentary, so she took to the road, following him across the country in the engaging and revealing Stray Dog. Nearly always dressed in black, including his treasured leather jacket covered in medals and patches — when he puts it in a suitcase for a trip, it’s a ritual like he’s folding the American flag — Hall is a wonderfully grizzled old man with a fluffy white beard. At home, he is learning Spanish online so he can communicate better with his new wife, Alicia, a Mexican immigrant, and her two sons (who still live across the border). He visits with his teenage granddaughter, who is making some questionable decisions about her future. In Missouri, he owns and operates the At Ease RV Park, where he gives breaks to fellow vets who can’t always afford to pay the rent. And when he goes on the road, participating in the Run for the Wall, joining up with thousands of other bikers heading for the annual service at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, he stops along the way at other ceremonies honoring soldiers who have gone missing, are POWs, or were killed in action in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other wars.