At the Movies

Carole Lombard (1908-1942) made her debut as an actress at the age of 12 in Allan Dwan’s A Perfect Crime, in 1921. After finishing junior high school in 1925, she reentered films, but remained an obscure blond bombshell type until she got her big break in 1934, opposite John Barrymore in Howard Hawks’ Twentieth Century, which—along with Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey (1936), opposite William Powell, to whom she was married in 1931 and from who she was divorced in 1933—opens the Bruce Goldstein selection of Lombard classics and clinkers at the Film Forum. Lombard’s career took a very long time to hit its stride, but soared to the heavens once it did.  read more »

The Secrets
Running time 120 minutes
Written by Hadar Galron and Avi Nesher
Directed by Avi Nesher
Starring Ania Bukstein, Michal Shtamler, Rivka Michaeli

Avi Nesher’s the Secrets, from a screenplay (in Hebrew and French, with English subtitles) by Hadar Galron and Avi Nesher, unfolds as an engrossing mixture of voluptuous spirituality and incisive sensuality as it tells the story of two rebellious young Orthodox Jewish girls at a cabala seminary in Safed, where they risk opprobrium, disgrace and banishment by unexpectedly falling in love with each other in the midst of saving the soul of a mysterious French woman, who has left a French prison after having served a multiyear sentence for murdering her lover.  read more »

Lake City
Running time 92 minutes
Written and directed by Hunter Hill and Perry Moore
Starring Sissy Spacek, Troy Garity, Colin Ford, Rebecca Romijn

Hunter Hill and Perry Moore’s Lake City, from their own screenplay, was designed from the outset as a vehicle for veteran Oscar-winning actress Sissy Spacek. It was also consciously and even self-consciously modeled after such “Southern” movies as To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Sling Blade (1996), One False Move (1992), Tender Mercies (1983) and The Last Picture Show (1971). In their joint Director’s Q&A, Mr. Hill and Mr. Moore discuss the genesis of the film: “Lake City burned a hole through us: it was a story we had to tell.  read more »

Stages
Running time 80 minutes
Written by Jalein Laarman and Mijke de Jong
Directed by Mijke de Jong
Starring Elsie de Brauw, Marcel Musters, Stijn Koomen

Mijke de Jong’s Stages, from a screenplay (in Dutch with English subtitles) by Jalein Laarman and Mijke de Jong, manages to be both hyper-stylized in some aspects, and hyper-realistic in others. This is to say that for much of the time, the camera and soundtrack are fixed on the conversations of couples in restaurants and an occasional living room from the waist up so that we almost never see them standing or walking as they talk.  read more »

Slumdog Millionaire
Running time 120 minutes
Written by Simon Beaufoy
Directed by Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan
Starring Dev Patel, Irfan Kahn, Freida Pinto

Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan’s Slumdog Millionaire, from a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy, has received some very mixed reviews for its bizarre mixture of genres and an English-language soundtrack that makes it seem as if Mr. Boyle is introducing both Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and its hideous slums to Western audiences. I disagree with critics who denounce the happy Bollywood-like romantic ending that comes after literally plunging us and its child protagonist into the cesspool of slumdog existence.  read more »

A Christmas Tale
Running Time 150 minutes
Written by Arnaud Desplechin and Emmanuel Bourdieu
Directed by Arnaud Desplechin
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Anne Cosigny, Mathieu Amalric

Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale, from a screenplay (in French with English subtitles) by Arnaud Desplechin and Emmanuel Bourdieu, can best be described as a family epic that culminates in a stormy Christmas reunion, rearranging many of the marital and sibling alignments under the pressure of a medical emergency. Catherine Deneuve plays Junon, the family matriarch, whose diagnosed leukemia prompts a desperate search within the family for a compatible bone marrow donor to treat Junon’s condition.  read more »

Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Running time 72 minutes
Directed by Gini Reticker
Starring Janet Johnson Bryant, Etweda Cooper, Vaiba Flomo, Leyma Gbowee

Gini Reticker’s Pray the Devil Back to Hell, produced by Abigail Disney, tells the little known story in the West of a small band of Liberian women who formed a church-led Peace Now Movement that eventually toppled ruthless dictator Charles Taylor from power, as well as the Liberian warlords who temporarily succeeded Taylor with a similar brand of brutal tyranny and corrupt exploitation of Liberia’s natural resources. In the process, Liberia gained free elections under the protection of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force, and chose Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first female head of state in modern Africa’s history.  read more »

The Guitar
Running time 95 minutes
Written by Amos Poe
Directed by Amy Redford
Starring Saffron Burrows

Amy Redford’s The Guitar, from a screenplay by Amos Poe, reportedly inspired by a true story, begins on just about the lowest note imaginable, and then eventually soars to the highest note imaginable on the wings of a magical guitar and its ecstatic musical frenzies. And what more do you want in the way of entertainment during these ever ominous times?

Saffron Burrows, as the initially ill-fated Melody “Me” Wilder, is practically the whole show in this strange and often rapturous vehicle of charismatic redemption.  read more »

Eden
Running time 83 minutes
Written by Eugene O’Brien
Directed by Declan Reick
Starring Aidan Kelly, Eileen Walsh, Sarah Greene

Declan Reck’s Eden, from an adaptation by Eugene O’Brien of his play of the same title, reportedly differs from the play, which I have not seen, by eliminating the two lengthy monologues at the core of it, one by a disaffected husband in a failing marriage on the eve of his 10th anniversary, and the other by his disaffected wife. Instead, the husband has been changed to an almost completely inarticulate character in the film, with an embarrassing penchant for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.  read more »

The 40th anniversary presentation of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), from his own screenplay and based on Ira Levin’s horror novel, will play at Film Forum from Friday, Oct. 31, through Thursday, Nov. 6. Showtimes daily are 1:30, 4:10, 7 and 9:35. Mr. Polanski had already established his reputation with his very first film, an incisive thriller titled Knife in the Water (1962), followed by Repulsion (1965), with a revelatory performance by Catherine Deneuve, and The Fearless Vampire Killers (1965), in which a particularly irreverent Jewish vampire scoffs at the Cross and Bible intended to exorcise vampires with a dismissively disdainful gesture and facial expression.  read more »

Synecdoche, New York
Running time 124 minutes
Written and directed by Charlie Kaufman
Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Hope Davis

Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, from his own screenplay, begins with its title as a curious play on words between Schenectady, N.Y., and synecdoche, a word never spoken aloud in formal or conversational speech, but still widely known for the figure of language to which it refers. The film ends in an abyss of total despair over the inevitability of death. What happens in between is often unclear, but what I do understand is the possibility that some viewers will consider the film the worst they have ever seen, while others will judge it to be one of the best of the current crop of attractions.  read more »

One Day You’ll Understand (Plus Tard)
Running time 90 minutes
Written by Maria Jose Sanselme and Amos Gitai
Directed by Amos Gitai
Starring Hippolyte Girardot, Jeanne Moreau, Dominique Blane, Emmanuelle Devos

Amos Gitai’s One Day You’ll Understand (Plus Tard), from a screenplay (in French with English subtitles) by Marie-Jose Sanselme and Amos Gitai, is based on a story by Dan Franck and Jérôme Cléments, derived from Mr. Cléments’ novel. The genesis of the film is explained in the Director’s Statement: “When I was 17, I went to Paris to spend some time with a friend of my father’s. I remember a dinner where a French historian was present.  read more »

I’ve Loved You So Long
Running time 115 minutes
Written and directed by Philippe Claudel
Starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Elsa Zylberstein

Philippe Claudel’s I’ve Loved You So Long, from his own screenplay and dialogues (in French with English subtitles), serves as a dual vehicle for Kristin Scott Thomas as Juliette, whom we see on the first day of her release after spending 15 years in prison for the murder of her 6-year-old son, and Elsa Zylberstein as Juliette’s younger sister, Léa, who was only a teenager when Juliette went to prison and was written off by their parents for her heinous crime.  read more »

Changeling
Running time 140 minutes
Written by J. Michael Stracynski
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Amy Ryan, Jeffrey Donovan

Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, from a screenplay by J. Michael Straczynski, takes place in a prodigiously painstaking re-creation of period Los Angeles from 1928 to 1935. To see a trolley car clanging along past neatly spaced Model T-shaped vehicles in Los Angeles is to feel oneself floating back into the dear, dead past. And the flapper costumes for the women in the picture, along with the mandatory hats worn by men until J.F.K. disabused them of the habit at his inauguration in 1961, completes the illusion.  read more »

W.
Running time 131 minutes
Written by Stanley Weiser
Directed by Oliver Stone
Starring Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, Richard Dreyfuss, Jeffrey Wright

Oliver Stone’s W., from a screenplay by Stanley Weiser, arrives at a strange time in our nation’s history, when even Iraq and Afghanistan have been pushed off the front pages and away from the TV talking heads by our current doomsday financial crisis. Of course, Mr. Stone, Mr. Weiser and their array of gifted collaborators had no way of knowing before they finished work on their production that the darkest days of the Bush presidency would soon dawn with what now seems like a Herbert Hooverian plunge into the abyss of a worldwide economic collapse.  read more »

Happy Go Lucky
Running time 118 minutes
Written and directed by Mike Leigh
Starring Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman

Mike Leigh’s Happy Go Lucky, from his own screenplay, emerged as one of the exquisite surprises of the recently concluded 46th New York Film Festival. What makes this especially revelatory is that Mr. Leigh’s career has tended to be more somber than cheerful in its depiction of British lower-middle-class life. Not that Happy Go Lucky is entirely escapist entertainment. Far from it. The darker side of life intrudes periodically, but our marvelously merry 30-year-old unmarried London elementary school teacher, nicknamed Poppy for Pauline, and played brilliantly by Sally Hawkins, is my pick this week for a best-actress Oscar.  read more »

Rachel Getting Married
Running time 113 minutes
Written by Jenny Lumet
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Starring Anne Hathaway, Debra Winger, Bill Irwin

Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, from a screenplay by Jenny Lumet, is said to have been inspired by Robert Altman’s satirically free-wheeling A Wedding (1978), and probably by Ms. Lumet’s own experiences in an interracial family. As far as I’m concerned, weddings in movies tend to be guilty until proven innocent or even intelligent. Ever since the old Production Code was scrapped to allow last-minute mischief at the altar, as in Mike Nichols’ The Graduate (1967) and P.  read more »

Lola Montès
Running time 110 minutes
Written by Annette Wademant, Max Ophüls and Jacques Natanson
Directed by Max Ophüls
Starring Martine Carol, Peter Ustinov

Max Ophüls’ Lola Montès, from a screenplay (in French, German and English with English subtitles) by Annette Wademant, Max Ophüls and Jacques Natanson, is based (at least in the opening credits) on a novel by Cécil Saint-Laurent. But since no such novel exists, the credit is apparently erroneous, though Saint-Laurent (1919-2000) wrote the books from which several sex-kitten vehicles were derived for Martine Carol (1920-1967), the then very bankable star of Lola Montès.

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Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
Running time 83 minutes
Directed by Andrea Kalin
Starring  Mohammed “Mo” Amer, Bryant “Preacher” Moss, Azhar Usman

Andrea Kalin’s Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert, from comedy material written and performed by Mohammed “Mo” Amer, Bryant “Preacher” Moss and Azhar Usman, strives to be both timely and funny as it confronts the problems of American Muslims in America after 9/11. It is certainly timely in this election year, in which one of the presidential candidates is being smeared by the use of his middle name, Hussein, though he is a Christian. One shudders to think what would happen if he, like the three comedians on display here, were a practicing Muslim.  read more »

Ashes of Time Redux
Running time 93 minutes
Written and directed ByWong Kar-wai
Starring Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu-wai

Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time Redux, from his own screenplay (in Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles), is based on the novel by Louis Cha. It combines a martial-arts background with a fatalistic meditation in the foreground on lost loves and the vagaries of memories. One feels the passionate intensity of the filmmaker in every strand of his luminously intricate narrative. In a year in which Max Ophüls’ 1995 Lola Montès is being revived for the third time at the New York Film Festival, and rereleased at Film Forum, Wong Kar-wai suddenly strikes me the Asian Max Ophüls, and I can think of no higher praise.  read more »

Miracle at St. Anna
160 Minutes
Written by James McBride
Directed by Spike Lee
Starring John Turturro, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Matteo Sciabordi, John Leguizamo

Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna, from a screenplay by James McBride (in English, Italian, German and Spanish, with English subtitles), is based on Mr. McBride’s heavily researched novel. Before launching into my very mixed review of Mr. Lee’s 20th feature film in an over-20-year largely self-promoted career in the industry, I must note that Mr. Lee once insulted me on an ABC Nightline panel after I had expressed my reservations about what I perceived as the excessive artiness of some of his projects.  read more »

The Class (Entre Les Murs)
128 minutes
Written by François Bégaudeau
Directed by Laurent Cantet
Starring François Bégaudeau, Franck Keita, Esmeralda Ouertani

Laurent Cantet’s The Class (Entre les Murs), from a screenplay by François Bégaudeau (in French with English subtitles), based on his book, is the opening-night film of the 46th New York Film Festival, an honor it richly deserves. Indeed, The Class ranks among the best classroom movies I have ever seen, and these include Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel) and Alf Sjoberg’s Torment (Hets), from a screenplay by Ingmar Bergman. I mention these classic clashes between youth and authority because in a much subtler and more nuanced way, The Class is disturbingly contemporary in its reflection of a spreading anti-intellectualism among the youth around the world, and not just among the youth.  read more »

The splendid David Lean retrospective concludes at the Film Forum with six of his late-career super-productions. If, as with early Fellini and late Fellini, I prefer early Lean to late Lean, I am sure that many readers will disagree with me, as they often do.

On Friday and Saturday, Sept. 19 and 20, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), with Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Donald Wolfit and Arthur Kennedy, screens at 2 and 7.

And on Sunday and Monday, Sept. 21 and 22, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), with William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa, James Donald and Andre Morell, will be shown.  read more »

Moving Midway
Running time 95 minutes
Written and directed by Godfrey Cheshire

Godfrey Cheshire’s Moving Midway, from his own screenplay, provides a profound meditation on the paradoxes of race in America through a discovery of his own Southern family’s hitherto hidden secrets. Mr. Cheshire, a transplanted Northern film critic, was impelled to make the film when he learned that a North Carolina relative named Charlie Hinton was planning to move an 1848 plantation house known as Midway from its commercially overrun community outside of Raleigh, N.C., to an empty field some miles away.

But the film was shaped also by a second discovery, that of the existence in New York of another Hinton, Robert, an African-American professor of African studies at New York University, from a letter printed in The New York Times and signed “Robert Hinton.  read more »

Hounddog
Running time 93 minutes
Written and directed by Deborah Kampmeier
Starring Dakota Fanning, Robin Wright Penn, David Morse

Deborah Kampmeier’s Hounddog, from her own screenplay, has survived a disastrous screening of a rough cut at 2007’s Sundance Film Festival to open next week in New York. As Julie Bloom described this high-wire act in the Arts and Leisure section of the Sept. 14 Sunday New York Times, “It was known as the ‘Dakota Fanning rape movie’ [at Sundance]. The press screening for Hounddog elicited actual boos, not to mention eviscerating reviews. Even before that, evangelical groups protested the film after someone involved in its early financing alleged publicly and erroneously that Ms.  read more »

Lakeview Terrace
Running time 110 minutes
Written by David Loughery and Howard Korder
Directed by Neil LaBute
Starring Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson

Neil LaBute’s Lakeview Terrace, from a screenplay by David Loughery and Howard Korder, based on the story by Mr. Loughery, explores our interracial malaise at a time when we are facing the ultimate test of our true feelings on the tangled issues involved. Not that Lakeview Terrace is predominantly concerned with how whites perceive blacks. For once, the shoe is on the other foot when a mixed-race couple, Patrick Wilson’s grocery-store-chain consultant, Chris Mattson, and his African-American wife, Kerry Washington’s Lisa, move into a secluded Southern California community right next door to Samuel Jackson’s widowed LAPD officer, Abel Turner, who has two small children.  read more »

And now for some good movies. Film Forum, in association with the British Film Institute, is launching a long overdue two-week, 16-film retrospective, Sept. 12 to Sept. 25, of David Lean’s lushly directed, written, and acted works. If you like British acting, as I always have, you’re in for a nonstop treat. The series begins with two of Lean’s Charles Dickens classics on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 12 and 13: Great Expectations (1946), with John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Bernard Miles, Francis L. Sullivan, Finaly Currie, Martita Hunt, Anthony Wager, Jean Simmons, Alec Guinness, Ivor Barnard, Freda Jackson, Torin Thatcher, Eileen Erskine, and Hay Petrie, at 1, 5:25, and 9:50; and Oliver Twist (1948), with Alec Guinness, Robert Newton, John Howard Davies, Kay Walsh, Francis L.  read more »

The Women
Running time 114 minutes
Written and directed by Diane English
Starring Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing

Diane English’s The Women, from her own screenplay, is supposedly based on George Cukor’s 1939 adaptation by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin of Clare Boothe Luce’s 1936 Broadway play. Both the 1936 play and the 1939 movie were funny in a bitchy, misogynist way. Luce was said to have loathed New York society women, and enjoyed ridiculing their fetishes and foibles. Ms. English’s strongly feminist take on the material divests the comedy of all its humor. Actually, Ms.  read more »

Burn After Reading
Running time 96 minutes
Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton

Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading, from their own screenplay, strikes me as one of the most willfully awful movies I’ve ever seen. What makes it even worse is that every one of the “name” performances—George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton—seem determined to best each other in projecting the idiocy of their caricatured middle-aged losers. Yet the early scenes are not intended for middle-aged audiences, but, rather, for teenage viewers and listeners who can be expected to howl with laughter at every gratuitous use of the F and S four-letter words.  read more »

August Evening
Running time 127 minutes
Written and directed by Chris Eska
Starring Pedro Castaneda, Veronica Loren, Abel Becerra

Chris Eska’s August Evening, from his own screenplay (in English and Spanish with English subtitles), was reportedly filmed for what is described in the production notes as an ultra-low budget of under $40,000. The 32-year-old Mr. Eska has already won for this, his debut feature film, the 2008 Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award, given to a feature film with a budget of under $500,000; the Best Film Awards at the Los Angeles and Woodstock Film Festivals; and the Best Ensemble Award from the Los Angeles Film Festival.  read more »

A Secret
Running time 105 minutes
Written by Claude Miller and Natalie Carter
Directed by Claude Miller
Starring Cécile De France, Patrick Bruel, Ludivine Sagnier, Mathieu Amalric

Claude Miller’s A Secret, from a screenplay by Mr. Miller and Natalie Carter, based on Philippe Grimbert’s autobiographical novel Un Secret, retitled in its English translation Memory, a Novel, transcends the perhaps perceived banality of still another film about the Holocaust with a marvelously nuanced narrative floating through time with memorable characters who never beg for our pity. Yet it touches on the ultimate horror of this insane period in world history by focusing not so much on the toll taken of the dead, but on the toll taken of the living survivors wracked with their life-blighting guilt.  read more »

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Day of Wrath (Vredens Dag) (1943), from a screenplay by Dreyer, Paul Knudsen and Mogens Scot-Hansen, is being shown in a new 35mm print from New Digital Restoration in a special one-week run at IFC Center from Aug. 29 to Sept. 4. The film was shot in Nazi-occupied Denmark in the midst of World War II, and Dreyer fled Denmark shortly after the film was released. Hence, Day of Wrath was subsequently analyzed in some quarters as Dreyer’s allegory on the oppressive German occupation of Denmark. Be that as it may, it remains today a fierce attack on 17th-century religious intolerance and witch-hunting.  read more »

A Girl Cut in Two (Li Fille Coupee en Deux)
Running time 115 minutes
Written by Claude Chabrol and Cécile Maistre
Directed by Claude Chabrol
Starring Ludivine Sagnier, François Berléand, Benoit Magimel

Claude Chabrol’s A Girl Cut in Two (Li Fille Coupée en Deux), from a screenplay by Mr. Chabrol and Cécile Maistre, is the 51st film of Mr. Chabrol’s illustrious career, which began on an unusually high note with Le Beau Berge in 1958. Mr. Chabrol, now 78, once remarked that when confronted with the endless palaver about the French New Wave, of which he was one of the charter members from Cahiers du Cinema: “There are no Waves, New or otherwise, there is only the ocean.  read more »

My Mexican Shivah
Running time 98 minutes
Written by Alejandro Springall and Jorge Goldenberg
Directed by Alejandro Springall
Starring Sergio Kleiner, Blanca Guerra, Raquel Pankowsky, Sharon Zundel

Alejandro Springall’s My Mexican Shivah, from a screenplay by Jorge Goldenberg and Mr. Springall, based on a story by Ilan Stavans, is another of the recent examples of the Jewish Diaspora absorbed in the preservation of its identity and its rituals in countries around the world. As its title indicates, My Mexican Shivah is all about the seven-day mourning period after the death of a loved one. In this instance, grandfather Moishe (Sergio Kleiner), a patriarchal community’s life of the party, drops dead after cavorting to the noisy rhythms of a mariachi band.  read more »

I Served the King of England
Running time 120 minutes
Written and directed by Jiri Menzel
Starring Olrich Kaiser, Ivan Bamev, Julia Jentsch

Jiri Menzel’s I Served the King of England, from his own screenplay, based on the novel by Bonumil Hrabal, has been honored as the Czech Republic’s official selection for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. But despite the grim, Holocaustal period in which the film is set, it is mostly bubbly and ebullient in its stylistic execution. The story begins on a physically absurdist note as a markedly short convict, Jan Dite (Olrich Kaiser), is led out of prison by a much larger guard after being released from 15 years of penal servitude for having collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.  read more »

THE ROMANCE OF ASTREA AND CELADON
Running time 109 minutes
Written and directed Eric Rohmer
Starring Andy Gillet, Stephanie Crayencour

Eric Rohmer’s The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon), from his own screenplay, is based on Honoré d’Urfé’s 17th-century novel, which itself is set in fifth-century Gaul; it is a pastoral romance involving the shepherds of the Forez plain. This is Mr. Rohmer’s most recent, and reportedly final, film. Actually, it is amazing that Mr. Rohmer, now nearing 90, has remained active and moderately bankable this long in a career that spans more than half a century, from Journal d’un scelerat in 1950 to L’Anglaise et le Duc (The Lady and the Duke) in 2001 and Triple Agent in 2004.  read more »

Bruce Goldstein has programmed a fantastic five weeks of French film noir and thrillers, spanning 1937 to 2000, and playing from now through Sept. 11 at Film Forum. The series has already begun, but it’s not too late to catch Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge (1970), with Alain Delon, Yves Montand and Gian Maria Volonte, on Friday, Aug. 15, and Saturday the 16th at 1, 3:50, 6:40 and 9:30. Jacques Becker’s Touchez pas au Grisbi (1954), with Jean Gabin, Rene Dary, Lino Ventur and Jeanne Moreau, screens on Sunday the 17th at 2:55, 6:35 and 10:15, and Monday the 18th at 2:55; Melville’s Bob Le Flambeur (1955), with Roger Duchesne and Isabelle Corey, plays Sunday at 1, 4:40 and 8:20, and Monday at 1 and 4:40.  read more »

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA
Running time 96 minutes
Written and directed by Woody Allen
Starring Penélope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem

Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, from his own screenplay, is close to his 40th feature film in an almost 40-year career that began in earnest in 1969 with Take the Money and Run, and has proceeded through the years with more ups and downs, more ins and outs, more breakthroughs and breakups, and more hits and flops than that of any other director I can think of, from any period in film history. Now in his 70s, he has managed to astound me by coming up with one of the most felicitously written, edited, acted and directed romantic comedies of his entire career.  read more »

SIXTY SIX
Running time 93 minutes
Written by Peter Straughan and Bridget O’Connor
Directed by Paul Weiland
Starring Greg Sulkin, Eddie Marsan, Helena Bonham Carter, Ben Newton

Paul Weiland’s Sixty Six, from a screenplay by Peter Straughan and Bridget O’Connor, based on a story by Mr. Weiland, reminds me of a Brazilian film I saw not so long ago. That film climaxed with Brazil’s victory in the World Cup competition just as Sixty Six commemorates the year that England won the coveted international soccer title. I must say that the Brazilian movie on the subject had a more interesting political subtext than Sixty Six, which has been subtitled in the production notes as A True…ish Story, and is reportedly patterned after Mr.  read more »

ELEGY
Running time 108 minutes
Written by Nicholas Meyer
Directed by Isabel Coixet
Starring Penélope Cruz, Ben Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, Peter Sarsgaard

Isabel Coixet’s Elegy, from the screenplay by Nicholas Meyer, based on the short novel The Dying Animal by Philip Roth, enters a metaphysical region between life and death that few films have ever dared to explore. Ms. Coixet and Mr. Meyer have managed to capture much of the bittersweet humor of Mr. Roth’s brilliant confrontation of old age, his own included. The director and the scenarist are aided in no small measure by a very accomplished cast headed by Ben Kingsley as David Kepesh, Mr.  read more »

FROZEN RIVER
Running time 97 minutes
Written and DIRECTED BY Courtney Hunt
Starring Melissa Leo, Misty Upham

Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River, from her own screenplay, plays out as one of the strongest feminist statements I have ever seen onscreen. Her two major characters, Ray (Melissa Leo), an abandoned trailer-park wife with two children, and Lila (Misty Upham), a similarly abandoned wife, whose mother-in-law has “stolen” her baby son, join forces in an alien-smuggling partnership across the frozen ice of the St. Lawrence River. Their alliance, formed out of desperate economic hardship, has a very rocky beginning, as Ray accuses Lila of stealing her husband’s car, which has been parked outside a Mohawk Reservation Bingo Hall with cash prizes.  read more »

In Search of a Midnight Kiss
Running Time 90 minutes
Written and DIRECTED BY Alex Holdridge
Starring Scoot McNairy, Sara Simmonds, Katie Luong, Brian Matthew McGuire

Alex Holdridge’s In Search of a Midnight Kiss, from his own screenplay, regards démodé downtown Los Angeles with the same fiercely lyrical affection Woody Allen has lavished on Manhattan over the decades. This alone would make the film strikingly original, but in addition, its tempestuous love story, with its heartbreaking complications, is well served by a cast of comparative unknowns. This talented assemblage is headed by Scoot McNairy as Wilson, the director’s alter ego, and Sara Simmonds as Vivian, the salty-tongued blind date who leads Wilson on a wild frolic across the well-worn streets of a part of Los Angeles that has known better days and years and decades.  read more »