film comment selects



The Film Society of Lincoln Center has three important film series in a row early every year: first the most searching and unusual one, Film Comment Selects (this year February 18-28), then the often charming but more cnventional FSLC-UniFrance series Rendez-Vous with French Cinema (February 28-March 10 this year), and finally NewDirectors/NewFilms (March 20- 31, 2013), which promotes and introduces important new filmmakers to American audiences. The Rendez-Vous and New Dierctors press screenings tend to overlap the Film Comment Selects public screenings (and FCS has no press screenings), so I can't see them all. But I will try to see some of them. I'll give the slate of New Directors/New Films later; it's always the last to be announced.

More detailed descriptions of the FCS selections are found on the Filmlinc (FSLC) site here. Having just seen Ben Wheatley's Kill List I'm interested in seeing his new comedy one, Sightseers. I remember being introduced to the talented Ezra Miller in Antonio Campos' afterschool at the 2008 New York Film Festival and I'd like to see Campos' new one, Simon Killer. I wouldn't mind seeing the Kiyoshi Kurosawa. I'd see anything with Toni Servillo and Isabelle Huppert in it, I guess (Bellocchio's Dormant Beauty, which may or may not be any good). Not sure of the others, but it depends on the schedule. There could be hidden treasures here.


Brady Corbet in Simon Killer

Simon Killer
Antonio Campos, 2012, 105 mins
Opening night, and New York premiere
Monday, February 18. 8:15 pm
A chilling death dance plays out in Paris between a troubled, possibly unhinged American graduate (Brady Corbet) and a French prostitute (Mati Diop). Debuted at Sundance.

The We and the I
Michel Gondry, 2012, 103 mins
Thursday, February 28, 8:30 pm
Michel Gondry’s delightful and wholly unexpected lo-fi experiment is a mobile kammerspiel set entirely on a crowded bus wending its way through the Bronx as it takes its high-school student passengers home on the last day of school.

3
Pablo Stoll, 2012, 119 mins
Wednesday, February 27, 4:30 pm
A middle-aged dentist with a quietly unraveling life makes repeated and poignantly ineffectual efforts to renew his relationship with his ex-wife and adolescent daughter in this low-key and unexpected melancomédie from the co-director of Whisky.

A Borrowed Life
Wu Nien-jen, 1994, 167 mins
Sunday, February 24, 2:00 pm
A deeply-felt, epic father-and-son drama chronicling the tumultuous life and times of a provincial mining-town family in the 1950s. One of New Taiwanese Cinema’s masterpieces.

Call Girl
Mikael Marcimain, 2012, 140 mins[/b]
Wednesday, February 20, 9:00 pm
Thursday, February 21, 3:30 pm
Based on a true story, and subject of a major controversy in Sweden last year, this inevitably semi-lurid but never exploitative drama is about the corruption of a 14-year-old girl lured into a prostitution ring catering to the political establishment in the 1970s.


Servillo and others in Dormant Beauty

Dormant Beauty
Marco Bellocchio, 2012, 115 mins
Friday, February 22, 4:00 pm
Sunday, February 24, 5:15 pm
A compelling drama in which four interrelated characters struggle with the moral impasses and compromises of modern life. With Isabelle Huppert and Toni Servillo.
Wednesday, February 20. 6:30 pm

Electra Glide in Blue
James William Guercio, 1973, 114 mins
Saturday, February 23, 9:45 pm
Record producer James William Guercio’s first and last film is a visually extravagant, behaviorally loopy story of an Arizona motorcycle cop named “Big” John Wintergreen (Robert Blake) who aspires to be a big-shot Los Angeles detective.

From the Life of the Marionettes
Ingmar Bergman. 1980. 104 mins
Tuesday, February 19, 6:30 pm
Bergman’s rarely-screened study investigates the underlying emotional and psychological causes that lead a middle class business executive to murder a prostitute.

Gebo and the Shadow
Manoel De Oliveira, 2012, 95 mins
Monday, February 18, 6:00 pm
Tuesday, February 19, 4:30 pm
An impoverished civil servant faces a desperate family crisis in this nighttime kammerspiel starring Michael Lonsdale, Claudia Cardinale Jeanne Moreau and Oliveira axiom Leonor Silveira.

Here Comes the Devil
Adrián García Bogliano, 2012, 97 mins
In this creepy low-fi indie, two children return to their parents after disappearing in the wilds, unharmed but not quite themselves. Once home, strange things start happening…
Friday, February 22, 10:15 pm

Howard Zieff: Hearts of the West + Slither
Howard Zieff | | 199 mins
Thursday, February 21. 6:30 pm
Howard Zieff’s underrated 1975 comedy about the early days of Hollywood western filmmaking Hearts of the West, starring Jeff Bridges and Alan Arkin, on a double bill with his 1973 caper comedy Slither, in which James Caan demonstrates his comedic chops.

In the Fog
Sergei Loznitza, 2012, 128 mins
Sunday, February 24, 7:45 pm
Tuesday, February 26, 4:00 pm
This quietly spellbinding and masterfully directed follow-up to My Joy is a gritty behind-enemy-lines drama in which an alleged Nazi collaborator faces execution by partisans.

Miss Lovely
Ashim Ahluwalia, 2012, 110 mins
Tuesday, February 19, 9:00 pm
Wednesday, February 20, 4:00 pm
A delirious tale of filmmaking, love, betrayal and crime set in the sleazy demi-monde of gangster-controlled Bollywood exploitation film production.

Motorway
Soi Cheang | 2012 | 89 mins
Saturday, February 23, 1:00 pm
Tuesday, February 26. 6:30 pm
In this kinetic, fuel-injected thriller, a secret high-speed-pursuit unit of the Hong Kong Police called the Stealth Riders battle with underworld getaway drivers through the city’s nocturnal maze of streets and highways.

Nights with Theodore
Sébastien Betbeder, 2012, 67 mins
Friday, February 22, 6:30 pm
Thursday, February 28. 4:45 pm
A romantic connection blossoms between two young Parisians over the course of a succession of dreamlike nocturnal visits to the singular, beguiling Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.

Penance
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2012, 278 mins
Monday, February 18, 1:00 pm
After a four-year hiatus, Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns with this five-part, made-for-television psychological drama/murder mystery that tests viewer endurance, and truly rewards it.

Sightseers
Ben Wheatley, 2012, 89 mins
Thursday, February 28, 6:30 pm
A country caravan tour spins horribly out of control when a very English couple embark on a romantic getaway that gradually escalates into all-out killing spree in this blackly funny new outing from rising indie star Ben Wheatley (Kill List, Down Terrace).

Stemple Pass
James Benning. 2012, 121 mins
Saturday, February 23, 3:00 pm
Images: four landscape shots containing a replica of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s cabin, one per season. Sound: the filmmaker’s readings from Kaczynski’s texts and diary.

Wish You Were Here
Kieran Darcy-Smith | 2012 | 89 mins
Kieran Darcy-Smith’s feature debut is a calmly devastating exploration of how one misjudged moment in life has the potential to cause everything to fall to pieces.
Saturday, February 23, 7:45 pm

White Epilepsy
Philippe Grandrieux | 2013 | 68 mins
Friday, February 22, 8:30 pm
Grandrieux pushes the limits of the visible and sheds all vestiges of narrative to enter a state of total immersion that’s at once disembodied yet deeply physical, metaphysical yet grounded in the primordial reality of the body.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.