Tag Archives: walter reade theater

SCARY MOVIES 9 — AN EVENING WITH LARRY FESSENDEN: THE LAST WINTER

THE LAST WINTER is first of two scary movies from Larry Fessendens Glass Eye Pix screening at Lincoln Center series

THE LAST WINTER is first of two scary movies from Larry Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix screening at Lincoln Center on November 3

AN EVENING WITH LARRY FESSENDEN: THE LAST WINTER (Larry Fessenden, 2006)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Tuesday, November 3, 7:00
Series continues through November 5
212-875-5050
www.thelastwinter.net
www.filmlinc.org

In Alaska, a company called North is preparing to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with the permission of the U.S. government. North has sent along environmentalist James Hoffman (James LeGros) and his assistant, Elliot Taylor (Jamie Harrold), to ensure that the team, led by the imposing Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman), follows all proper guidelines and agreements. But when strange things start happening — including weird visions, odd disappearances, and brutal deaths — Pollack is determined to move forward, no matter the cost. Written and directed by Larry Fessenden (Habit, Wendigo), who also makes a cameo in the film, The Last Winter is a global-warming horror story in the tradition of John Carpenter’s The Thing, where the small cast of characters never knows just what is waiting for them around every corner — and out on the treacherous, blindingly white landscape that surrounds and engulfs them. The film also stars Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights) as Abby Sellers, a strong-minded woman who has left Pollack for Hoffman; indie stalwart Kevin Corrigan (Walking and Talking) as vehicle expert Motor; Zach Gilford (Friday Night Lights) as young and innocent Maxwell McKinder; Grammy-winning composer and musician Joanne Shenandoah (Skywoman) as Dawn Russell, who prepares the meals and cleans up after everyone; and Pato Hoffmann (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman) as Lee Means, a Native American who has a deep understanding of the land and the spirits. A scary look at an all-too-possible future, The Last Winter is screening on November 3 at 7:00 in the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Scary Movies 9,” appropriately enough, and will be followed by a Q&A with Fessenden, Perlman, and LeGros. “An Evening with Larry Fessenden,” who is celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of his indie film company, Glass Eye Pix, continues at 9:30 with Mickey Keating’s Darling, followed by a Q&A with Keating, Fessenden, and actors Lauren Ashley Carter and Brian Morvant.

NYFF53 SPECIAL EVENTS: HEART OF A DOG

Laurie Anderson meditates on life and death in intimately personal HEART OF A DOG

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: HEART OF A DOG (Laurie Anderson, 2015)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
Thursday, October 8, $15, 6:00
Festival runs through October 11
212-875-5050
www.heartofadogfilm.com
www.filmlinc.org

Multimedia artist Laurie Anderson’s first full-length film in nearly thirty years, Heart of a Dog, is a deeply personal poetic meditation on death, yet it avoids being mournful and melancholy and is instead a wistful tribute to life. Anderson, who directed her concert film, Home of the Brave, in 1986, details the story of her beloved rat terrier, Lolabelle, as the “mall dog” ages, goes blind, and dies. Using clips from home movies, archival footage, animation, and re-creations, Anderson delves into the nature of time, memory, beauty, and the process of grieving, referencing Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, and David Foster Wallace as she narrates the tale in her familiar dramatic voice. The film is also about communication and language, two of her favorite topics, which come to the fore when she describes going to the mountains in Northern California with Lolabelle. “The idea was to take a trip and spend some time with her and do a kind of experiment to see if I could learn to talk with her. Now, I’d heard that rat terriers could understand about five hundred words, and I wanted to see which ones they were.” The story takes a fascinating turn when Anderson recognizes that Lolabelle, who she identifies as a painter, a pianist, and a protector, understands that circling hawks are a threat to her, that the dog is prey to them, a direct reference to Americans’ fear in a post-9/11 world, where armed soldiers are everywhere to guard against terrorist attacks, especially from the sky. Anderson goes back to her past, talking about a horrific childhood accident that almost left her paralyzed and led her to realize “that most adults have no idea what they’re talking about.” She also discusses her awkward relationship with her mother, subversive software, her obsession with JFK, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, ghosts, dreams, and sadness, explaining that her Tibetan teacher, Mingyur Rinpoche, once told her that “you should try to learn how to feel sad without being sad,’” which, Anderson notes, “is actually really hard to do.”

Avoiding over-self-indulgence, Anderson tells this autobiographical “story about a story” with a diverse range of compelling imagery, from lovely scenes of snowy woods and birds in trees to scratched, distorted avante-garde footage and many scenes of rain, as if the camera is gently crying. The soundtrack, primarily Anderson on violin, is mostly elegiac, tinged with heartbreak as she philosophizes about life and death, though it is ultimately an uplifting experience. Anderson dedicates the film “to the magnificent spirit of my husband Lou Reed,” who makes a brief appearance as a doctor and is shown later on the beach, his bare feet in the sand; he also sings “Turning Time Around,” a song from his 2000 album, Ecstasy, over the closing credits, in which the punk godfather, who passed away in 2013 at the age of seventy-one, explains, “My time is your time when you’re in love / and time is what you never have enough of / You can’t see or hold it / It’s exactly like love.” Heart of a Dog is screening October 8 at 6:00 at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the Special Events program at the New York Film Festival, with Anderson, whose stunning immersive multimedia installation “Habeas Corpus” just finished its short run at the Park Avenue Armory, present to talk about the film, which will open theatrically October 21 at Film Forum.

NYFF53 MAIN SLATE: MAGGIE’S PLAN

Greta Gerwig and Ethan Hawke star in New York-set romantic comedy MAGGIE’S PLAN

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: MAGGIE’S PLAN (Rebecca Miller, 2015)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Sunday, October 4, 9:30, and Monday, October 5, 6:00, $25, Alice Tully Hall
Sunday, October 11, 3:00, $20, Walter Reade Theater
New York Film Festival runs through October 11
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org

Rebecca Miller channels her inner Woody Allen and Noah Baumbach with the bittersweet romantic comedy Maggie’s Plan, making its U.S. premiere at the fifty-third New York Film Festival. Greta Gerwig is at her loopy best as Maggie, a thirtysomething college arts administrator who, after failing to maintain any relationship for more than six months, decides to become a single mother by impregnating herself with the sperm of an old classmate, Guy (Travis Fimmel), a Brooklyn hipster trying to become a pickle mogul. (He works for the real Brooklyn Brine Co.) Maggie’s married best buds, former boyfriend Tony (Bill Hader) and Felicia (Maya Rudolph), who have just had a baby themselves, debate her decision, but she is determined to forge ahead. As she prepares for the artificial insemination, which she is performing herself, she grows close with older New School adjunct professor John (Ethan Hawke), a ficto-crypto-anthropologist working on his novel. John has two kids of his own but is feeling overwhelmed by his wife, Georgette (Julianne Moore), a wickedly ambitious educator who has just been offered a lofty position at Columbia. Soon Maggie, John, and Georgette are in the midst of a complicated love triangle that is at times as frustrating to watch as it is endearing.

Ethan Hawke and Julianne Moore play a married couple whose relationship is on thin ice in MAGGIE’S PLAN

Miller, the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller, is a novelist and writer-director who has previously made such films as The Ballad of Jack and Rose, which starred her husband, Daniel Day-Lewis, and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. Inspired by an unpublished novel by Karen Rinaldi, Maggie’s Plan is likely to be Miller’s most popular film, despite the clichéd setup that threatens to be annoyingly obvious and mundane but usually manages to bring out something fresh and charming. The tale evokes such films as Allen’s Manhattan and Baumbach’s Frances Ha, with mumblecore breakout star Gerwig (Nights and Weekends, Hannah Takes the Stairs) again playing a quirky character who seems to live in her own candy-colored fantasy land. Miller even uses cinematographer Sam Levy, who photographed such other Gerwig films as Frances Ha and Mistress America, to shoot Maggie’s Plan. Hawke is in good form as a man caught between two worlds, Hader and Rudolph provide cynical comic relief, and it’s impossible to take your eyes off Gerwig, who once again displays her mesmerizing natural talent, but Moore nearly steals the show as the sensationally dressed and coiffed Georgette, an unrelenting force with a to-die-for Danish-Teutonic accent and an attitude to boot. Maggie’s Plan is screening twice at Alice Tully Hall, first on October 4 at 9:30 with Miller, Gerwig, Moore, Hawke, Rudolph, and Fimmel in person, followed on October 5 at 6:00 with Miller present to talk about the film. In addition, an encore screening has been added on October 11 at 3:00.

NYFF53 REVIVALS: A TOUCH OF ZEN

King Hu’s A TOUCH OF ZEN is a trippy journey toward enlightenment

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: A TOUCH OF ZEN (King Hu, 1969)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Monday, October 5, 9:00
Festival runs through October 11
212-875-5610
www.filmlinc.org

Watching King Hu’s 1969 wuxia classic, A Touch of Zen, brings us back to the days of couching out with Kung Fu Theater on rainy Saturday afternoons. The highly influential three-hour epic features an impossible-to-figure-out plot, a goofy romance, wicked-cool weaponry, an awesome Buddhist monk, a bloody massacre, and action scenes that clearly involve the overuse of trampolines. Still, it’s great fun, even if it is way too long. (The film, which was initially shown in two parts, earned a special technical prize at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival.) Shih Jun stars as Ku Shen Chai, a local calligrapher and scholar who is extremely curious when the mysterious Ouyang Nin (Tin Peng) suddenly show up in town. It turns out that Ouyang is after Miss Yang (Hsu Feng) to exact “justice” for the corrupt Eunuch Wei, who is out to kill her entire family. Hu (Come Drink with Me, Dragon Gate Inn) fills the film with long, poetic establishing shots of fields and the fort, using herky-jerky camera movements (that might or might not have been done on purpose) and throwing in an ultra-trippy psychedelic mountain scene that is about as 1960s as it gets. A Touch of Zen is ostensibly about Ku’s journey toward enlightenment, but it’s also about so much more, although we’re not completely sure what that is. The film is screening on October 5 at 9:00 as part of the fifty-third New York Film Festival’s Revivals sidebar, which continues through October 11 with Akira Kurosawa’s Ran and Manoel de Oliveira’s Visit, or Memories and Confessions.

NYFF53 REVIVALS: RAN

The Fool (Peter) sticks by Hidetaro (Tatsuya Nakadai) as the aging lord descends into madness in Kurosawa masterpiece RAN

RAN (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Friday, October 2, 9:00, and Sunday, October 11, 7:30
Festival runs through October 11
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org

Inspired by the story of feudal lord Mori Motonari and Shakespeare’s King Lear, Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is an epic masterpiece about the decline and fall of the Ichimonji clan. Aging Lord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) is ready to hand over his land and leadership to his three sons, Taro (Akira Terao), Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu), and Saburo (Daisuke Ryû). But jealousy, misunderstandings, and outright deceit and treachery result in Saburo’s banishment and a violent power struggle between the weak eldest, Taro, and the warrior Jiro. Hidetaro soon finds himself rejected by his children and wandering the vast, empty landscape with his wise, sarcastic fool, Kyoami (Peter), as the once-proud king descends into madness. Dressed in white robes and with wild white hair, Nakadai (The Human Condition, Harakiri), in his early fifties at the time, portrays Hidetaro, one of the great characters of cinema history, with an unforgettable, Noh-like precision. Kurosawa, cinematographers Asakazu Nakai, Takao Saitô, and Masaharu Ueda, and Oscar-winning costume designer Emi Wada bathe the film in lush greens, brash blues, and bold reds and yellows that marvelously offset the white Hidetaro. Kurosawa shoots the first dazzling battle scene in an elongated period of near silence, with only Tôru Takemitsu’s classically based score playing on the soundtrack, turning the film into a thrilling, blood-drenched opera. Ran is a spectacular achievement, the last great major work by one of the twentieth century’s most important and influential filmmakers. Ran, which opened the 1985 New York Film Festival, is screening October 2 at 9:00 and October 11 at 7:30 in the Revivals section of the fifty-third New York Film Festival, which is showing such other revivals as King Hu’s A Touch of Zen and Manoel de Oliveira’s Visit, or Memories and Confessions.

NYFF53 MAIN SLATE: THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

Roy Dupuis plays a heroic woodsman in Guy Maddin and Evan Johnsons unpredictably strange and wonderful homage to early cinema, THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

Roy Dupuis plays a heroic woodsman in Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s unpredictably strange and wonderful homage to lost early cinema, THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM (Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson, 2015)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Monday, September 28, 9:00, and Tuesday, September 29, 8:30
Festival runs through October 11
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org
theforbiddenroom-film.com

Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s The Forbidden Room is a deliriously mesmerizing epic tone poem, a crafty, complex avant-garde ode to cinema as memory, and memory as cinema. An homage to the lost films of the silent era, it is the illegitimate child of Bill Morrison and David Lynch, of Jack Smith and Kenneth Anger, of D. W. Griffith and Josef von Sternberg. The impossible-to-describe narrative jumps from genre to genre, from submarine thriller to Western adventure to murder yarn, from romantic melodrama and crime story to war movie and horror tale, complete with cannibals, vampires, poisoned leotards, “valcano” eruptions, caged lunatics, butt obsession, squid theft, explosive jelly, a fantastical mustache, and skeletal insurance defrauders. Intertitles that often fade away too soon to decipher help propel the plot, contain lines from John Ashbery and the Bible, and blast out such words as “Deliverer of Doom,” “Diablesa!” and “Trapped!” Text in intricate fonts announces each new character and actor, including Maddin regular Louis Negin as the Sacrifice Organizer, Slimane Dazi as shed-sleeper and pillow-hugger Baron Pappenheim, Lewis Furey as the Skull-Faced Man, and Roy Dupuis as a “mysterious woodsman” determined to rescue captured amnesiac Margot (Clara Furey) from the evil clutches of the Red Wolves. Also involved in the bizarre festivities are Udo Kier, Geraldine Chaplin, Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Rampling, and Maria de Medeiros.

Although shot digitally, the film explores photographic emulsion and time-ravaged nitrate while treating celluloid as an art object unto itself, looking like Maddin (Tales from the Gimli Hospital, My Winnipeg) and Johnson stomped on, burned, tore up, and put back together the nonexistent physical filmstrip. Thus, major kudos are also due Maddin’s longtime editor, John Gurdebeke, and music composers Galen Johnson, Jason Staczek, and Maddin himself for keeping it all moving forward so beautifully. The film was photographed by Benjamin Kasulke and Stéphanie Anne Weber Biron in alternating scenes of black-and-white, lurid, muted color, and sepia tones that offer constant surprises. The Forbidden Room might be about the magic of the movies, but it is also about myth and ritual, dreams and fantasy as it explores storytelling as psychodrama. Oh, and it’s also about taking baths, as Marv (Negin) so eagerly explains throughout the film. But most of all, The Forbidden Room is great fun, a truly unpredictable and original work of art that is a treat for cinephiles and moviegoers everywhere. The Forbidden Room is screening at the New York Film Festival on September 28 at 9:00 and September 29 at 8:30, with Maddin and Johnson in person at the Walter Reade Theater. In addition, their thirty-one-minute documentary short, Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton, a behind-the-scenes account of the making of Paul Gross’s Afghanistan war movie, Hyena Road, is being shown both days (12 noon – 6:00; 8:30 – 11:00) for free at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Amphitheater across the street.

RICHARD LESTER — THE RUNNING JUMPING POP CINEMA ICONOCLAST: A HARD DAY’S NIGHT

The Fab Four are on the run in A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, screening at Lincoln Center as part of Richard Lester retrospective

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (Richard Lester, 1964)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Saturday, August 8, 1:00
Festival runs August 7-13
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org
www.thebeatles.com

The Beatles are invading America again with the fiftieth anniversary restoration of their debut film, the deliriously funny anarchic comedy A Hard Day’s Night. Initially released on July 6, 1964, in the UK, AHDN turned out to be much more than just a promotional piece advertising the Fab Four and their music. Instead, it quickly became a huge critical and popular success, a highly influential work that presaged Monty Python and MTV while also honoring the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, and the French New Wave. Directed by Richard Lester, who had previously made the eleven-minute The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film with Peter Sellers and would go on to make A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Petulia, and The Three Musketeers, the madcap romp opens with the first chord of the title track as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr are running down a narrow street, being chased by rabid fans, but they’re coming toward the camera, welcoming viewers into their crazy world. (George’s fall was unscripted but left in the scene.) As the song blasts over the soundtrack, Lester introduces the major characters: the four moptops, who are clearly having a ball, led by John’s infectious smile, in addition to Paul’s “very clean” grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell, who played a dirty old man in the British series Steptoe and Son, the inspiration for Sanford and Son) and the band’s much-put-upon manager, Norm (Norman Rossington). Lester and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Repulsion, Star Wars) also establish the pace and look of the film, a frantic black-and-white frolic shot in a cinema-vérité style that is like a mockumentary taking off from where François Truffaut’s 400 Blows ends. The boys eventually make it onto a train, which is taking them back to their hometown of Liverpool, where they are scheduled to appear on a television show helmed by a hapless director (Victor Spinetti, who would star in Help as well) who essentially represents all those people who are dubious about the Beatles and the sea change going on in the music industry. Norm and road manager Shake (John Junkin) have the virtually impossible task of ensuring that John, Paul, George, and Ringo make it to the show on time, but there is no containing the energetic enthusiasm and contagious curiosity the quartet has for experiencing everything their success has to offer — while also sticking their tongues out at class structure, societal trends, and the culture of celebrity itself.

Lester and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Alun Owen develop each individual Beatle’s unique character through press interviews, solo sojourns (the underappreciated Ringo goes off on a kind of vision quest; George is mistaken by a fashion fop for a model), and an endless stream of spoken and visual one-liners. (John sniffs a Coke bottle; a reporter asks George, “What do you call your hairstyle?” to which the Quiet One replies, “Arthur.”) Oh, the music is rather good too, featuring such songs as “I Should Have Known Better,” “All My Loving,” “If I Fell,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You,” “This Boy,” and “She Loves You.” The working name for the film was Beatlemania, but it was eventually changed to A Hard Day’s Night, based on a Ringo malapropism, forcing John and Paul to quickly write the title track. No mere exploitation flick, A Hard Day’s Night is one of the funniest, most influential films ever made, capturing a critical moment in pop-culture history and unleashing four extraordinary gentlemen on an unsuspecting world. Don’t you dare miss this glorious eighty-five-minute explosion of sheer, unadulterated joy. The restoration, courtesy of Janus Films, is screening August 8 at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center tribute series “Richard Lester: The Running Jumping Pop Cinema Iconoclast” and will be preceded by The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film. The festival runs August 7-13 and consists of most of the now-eighty-three-year-old Philadelphia native’s films, including Robin and Marian, The Bed Sitting Room, Juggernaut, Cuba, The Royal Flash, and the above-mentioned titles. “Growing up, I always thought of Richard Lester as one of the 1960s’ most typically English filmmakers — not just because of his irreverent and absurd sense of humor and his feel for English life but also for the affectionate way he sent up familiar icons from the Beatles to the Three Musketeers to even Superman,” Film Comment editor and FSLC senior programmer Gavin Smith said in reference to the series. “Imagine my surprise when I first learned he was actually an expat Yank. Regardless, he’s still a great English filmmaker!”