OTBKB film critic Pops Corn begins the new year with a review of the Meryl Street/Alec Baldwin "comedy" It's Complicated. Read Pops' best of the decade and best of 2009 columns. His unusual lists provide great suggestions for your Netflix queue.

The storyline of a woman who falls back into an affair with her re-married ex-husband should provide plenty of comedic fodder.  The middle-aged love affair should have been refreshingly adult and the love triangle cast of Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin is irresistible. But It’s Complicated, the new movie from writer-director Nancy Meyers, is rarely funny, often childish and consistently sour with nearly every character being unlikeable.  On the surface, there’s really nothing to like.  So if you, like me, ignore the comments of critics and friends and decide to see it yourself, here’s a guidebook of subtext to ward against brain rot or thinking of your shopping list. 

1.    Characters You Can’t Like – Meyers’ chief concern seems to be to show her characters flaws and neuroses.  This may seem like a bold choice to make a picture about unlikeable people, but truthfully it seems that Meyers just went overboard in demonstrating the flaws and neuroses of the film’s inhabitants.  Based on the wall-to-wall music seemingly programmed by a Clear Channel robot, it’s obvious that the film is simultaneously trying to pander to its audience, so why is every character worse than the next?
2.    Women Don’t Know Their Own Bodies –One comedic conversation in which a gaggle of middle-aged women demonstrate their lack of female anatomy knowledge may send feminists and post-feminists running from the theater.
3.    Millenials Can’t Grow Up – The adult-age children of the Baldwin and Streep characters are unable to comprehend adult emotions (hey, it’s complicated).  Only John Krasinski, as the beau of one of the daughters possesses the emotional depth to comprehend the situation, clearly indicating that either divorce is impossibly hard on kids or that they were raised in a home where emotions are not to be explored.  In one disturbing scene the kids are so freaked at their parents’ relationship complexity that all three of them sleep in the same bed. 

Defining any year in cinema is a difficult task.  And if one’s personal taste is involved, it can be downright impossible.  I’ve rediscovered this truth looking at my 10 favorite films from 2009.  It’s  a diverse collection of ignored and the celebrated films, notable for their range of parental figures, immoral enforcers, fringe dwellers, educational institutions and questions so difficult to answer that they often remain unsolved.  My 2009 favorites, I hope you will discover them as well.

1.    Observe and Report – While Kevin James’ light mall cop movie was a surprise hit in January, a few months later Jody Hill’s irreverent comedy with Seth Rogen as a disturbed mall security guard was only noticed only for its notorious date-rape joke.  But, for me this was a truly unique work.  It aimed to create a new film experience and I walked out of the theater with that incredibly rare feeling that I had actually seen something I’ve never seen before.  An absurd take on Taxi Driver-like delusional hero redemption, it’s outrageous, satiric, funny, makes brilliant use of music on the soundtrack and gleefully breaks all kinds of rules of cinematic technique and storytelling. 
2.    A Serious Man – Trippy yet dramatic, snarky yet sincere, A Serious Man may be my favorite Coen Brothers film.  They brilliantly build the narrative tension around a story of faith and karma, wonderfully open to both atheistic and spiritual interpretations.
3.    Sugar – When telling an American story, baseball makes the perfect backdrop.  This American tale is a subtle meditation on the migratory pattern of a Domican baseball prospect discovering the promised land’s hard truths. 
4.    The Hurt Locker – I wish it didn’t start with a quote that sums up what the film so perfectly captures.  Still, Kathryn Bigelow’s film about war’s corruption of the human soul is a powerful statement and an incredible artistic and technical achievement, anchored by Jeremy Renner’s outstanding performance.
5.    Up – A cinematic journey that is as imaginative as it is heartfelt, this animated Pixar offering is thoroughly delightful.  One early sequence that depicts Carl and Ellie’s life together is the year’s most memorable, reminiscent of Buster Keaton with its warm comedic touch and aesthetic mastery.
6.    Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire – A film that simply does not get a disinterested reaction, Precious pushes all kinds of buttons, yet it’s ultimately a heartfelt tale of inspiration.  Director Lee Daniels’ stylized mayhem was finally applied with perfection.
7.    World’s Greatest Dad – Death’s false honor is explored in Bobcat Goldthwait’s black comedy.  Robin Williams stars as a failed writer father who exploits tragedy to turn his life around.
8.    An Education – A tacked-on ending enraged me, but otherwise Lone Scherfig’s film is smart, endearing and offers no easy answers. 
9.    Antichrist – While the violence, abuse in all forms and talking foxes got all the attention, Lars von Trier’s attack on the senses feels like the Dutch filmmaker’s most personal work.  Where will he go with these demons now exorcised?
10.    Bad Lieutenant – Port of Call: New Orleans – It may be a weak 10th-slot choice, but this B-movie curiosity piece is full of hammy acting, story dead-ends and bizarre moments. Its lack of quality is somehow also its substance

If you had the ability and perseverance to do sift through the movies the decade we have just lived through, you may find, like I, that the 00s offered a lot of strong films, particularly by American filmmakers.  Asked by OKTBKB to compile a list of the best of the decade, I can only offer up my personal favorites.  I like to think that many of these films will be long remembered, although some, in fact, have already been positively ignored.  Still, these are the films that spoke the strongest to me over the last 10 years.  There are many more films I’m sure I have yet to discover, but this is the list I am passionate about today.

1.    The Weather Man (Gore Verbinski; 2005) – Critically dismissed and a box office bomb, this study of meaninglessness shocked me with its honest and profoundly sad depiction of how we live our lives today. Brilliantly conceived by screenwriter Steve Conrad, the titular character played by Nicolas Cage is one of the cinema’s most vapid protagonists, a disrespected mini-celeb whose useless existence becomes more and more evident as he balances family problems with a million dollar network job possibility.
2.    Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch; 2001) – Lynch’s techniques, once so secular, are now all over the edges of blockbusters and straight-to-video horror.  But no one does it like the master, probably our greatest living filmmaker.  A meta-mystery, Mullholand Dr. is a bizarre, dreamlike subconscious meditation and a definitive Hollywood satire.
3.    Capturing The Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki; 2003) – In a decade during which the face and status of the documentary changed, none so clearly re-defined my view of documentary filmmaking as Andrew Jarecki’s debut film.  The portrait of an accused pedophile and his family’s spiral amidst the crisis displays formal brilliance and benefits from incredible, powerful archival footage.
4.    Sideways (Alexander Payne; 2004) – Depicting the middle-aged male psyche with painful humor and emotional tenderness, Sideways is a complex character study, superbly performed. Alexander Payne’s film manages to be an entertaining blast and a time capsule of human behavior.
5.    Human Nature (Michel Gondry; 2002) – Months before screenwriter Charlie Kaufman was celebrated for his personal, audacious Adaptation script, this hilarious take on a Brave New World-like scenario was also ignored. One of Kaufman’s strengths is that he shoots for the moon with existential searches and raw exposure of human foibles and failures. Riotously funny and absurd, it is a rare, unique film in many ways, including turning off audiences with excessive leading lady body hair.

Below are some additional 00s favorites, organized by fabricated sub-genres.  I hope you add to your must-see list if you’ve missed them until now:

The Past Reflecting The Present
Far From Heaven
Revolutionary Road

What’s Happening Now?
About Schmidt
Happy-Go-Lucky
House Of Sand And Fog
In The Valley Of Elah
Little Children
Whale Rider

No Escape From Self
Adaptation
Dahmer
A Serious Man

Pure Cinema
The Assassination of Robert Ford By The Coward Jesse James
In The Mood For Love
No Country For Old Men
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
There Will Be Blood

Crowd Pleasers With Depth
Catch Me If You Can
Little Miss Sunshine
Unbreakable

Mindfucks
Apocalypto
Observe And Report
Oldboy
Planet Terror

Crazy Heart

Jeff Bridges anchors the performance vehicle Crazy Heart with a durable turn as the washed-up never-was country singer Bad Blake.  There’s also fun and perfectly character- and narrative-appropriate songs composed by T-Bone Burnett.  But what starts as a loosely-paced character study dissolves into a string of loser redemption sub-genre clichés.  It’s The Wrestler in a Kristofferson mask.

A failure at fatherhood and marriage Bridges’ struggling country singer’s second chance appears in the form of Maggie Gyllenhaal.  By the time he utters the line, “My name is Bad and I’m an alcoholic,” your eyes will begin rolling if they’re not buried in your forehead by that point already.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

The tragic passing of Heath Ledger occurred before he had completed work in his final film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, opening Christmas Day.  Director Terry Gilliam has handled the completion of the work in a clever way, having three of Ledger’s most accomplished peers—Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell—play Ledger’s role during three separate sequences taking place within the imaginarium fantasy world.  The concept becomes a touching tribute to an actor whose brief life has left what is certain to be a lasting legacy.

However, it’s one of the only redeeming elements of Doctor Parnassus.  The fantasy film is filmed with great visual audacity, but the film’s only wonder is the kind associated with confusion.  A collection of set pieces, it is not the first time that a Terry Gilliam film has felt to me to be a hodge-podge of randomly juxtaposed sequences and ideas.  Things that work—a black hole of mirror shards, the cinema’s largest pair of stilts—are fleeting and aren’t accompanied with the emotional investment needed in order for these moments to provide any power.  To experience magic, it is necessary to believe.

–Pops Corn

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, a movie that probably has only about 10 screenings left before it is pushed out by bigger year-end fare, has many flaws it cannot be denied, but it gets so many things right and is so rich with honesty that I’m quite surprised by the generally negative reviews. 

Robin Wright Penn nails the title role and doesn’t bring the Oscar-mongering histrionics demanded by the season. She’s subtle, nearly robotic at times, as a trophy wife who believes she may be losing her mind. 

The film has been criticized for covering a lot of the same ground of other films, in other words, stereotyping it as a “chick flick,” a term (predominantly male) critics immediately associate with a lower value assessment. 

But what I found so fascinating and solid about the movie is that it shows characters and scenarios that we may have been seen before, but that same equation unexpectedly produces different results.  What Pippa inherits from her mother (Maria Bello) can only be suppressed so long, particularly as she suppresses everything else in her life, just to serve her husband (Alan Arkin) as his prop.  Director Rebecca Miller makes some unfortunate narrative choices, but also counters a hallucinatory world that bring us into the mind of Pippa and a refusal to make anything (except the voice-over ending) too neat or easy.

In a year that seems to have sparked a lot of thought about women in film—the unique story of Precious, Kathryn Bigelow’s quest to be the first female Best Director, this weekend’s NY  Times alone offered at least three serious women-in-film pieces—The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a strong work that should keep the dialogue going.

–Pops Corn

It is a rare feat for a movie to truly define its time period by depicting the way people live today.  Jason Reitman tries to do so with Up In The Air, but only the strain shows.  Like Reitman’s adaptation of Thank You For Smoking, the film takes the approach of following a charming asshole to humanize contemporary societal ills.  I found the effect in Smoking to be completely tiresome. 

Up In The Air soars intermittently, due primarily to the star wattage of George Clooney, as a constantly-traveling hatchet man, who relishes and excels at his role of firing employees for executives who aren’t comfortable wielding the ax from within.  Clooney makes it easy to root for the villain, especially when his shallow lifestyle is called into question by a brilliant, but green, colleague (Anna Kendrick) assigned to shadow the master.  Along the way, he engages in a soul-less romance with fellow constant traveler Vera Farmigia.  The lessons to be learned are on the itinerary.  There are things the movie gets right like a Vegas convention and the perfectly character-appropriate text flirtation, but these moments, though wonderful, are insignificant.

The mismatched mentor-rookie story is a common contrivance, but I swear that Up In The Air takes numerous cues from Bull Durham.  Clooney is Costner, lovable yet a jerk, aging but smoldering, who teaches a future industry star the ropes.  Clooney’s meaningless goal of 10 million air miles is Costner’s minor league homer record.  The carefree sexual relationship with a contemporary (Farmigia is Sarandon) becomes our hero’s first stab at true love.  A scene in which the women explain their ideal husband even mirrors Costner’s “I believe in the soul” speech.

For all my problems with Up In The Air, I’ll admit that it doesn’t offer easy solutions.  Still, it’s hard to feel for the insertions of real downsized people (interviewed in the film and singing a song over the end credits), amidst a steady stream of product placement for big airlines, car rental companies, etc.  Perhaps it’s Reitman’s economic stimulus.  As the award season heats up, I guess I finally have a film to root against.  And while this week’s Golden Globes and I don’t agree on everything, at least I can concur that, based on the film’s Best Dramatic Film nomination, Air is not a comedy.  I, a laugher, did so only once.

–Pops Corn

There are films that just can’t be described without rattling off dozens of clichés.   When I try to tell people that I love James Gray’s We Own The Night, for example, they inevitably ask, “What’s it about?”

What follows is a description that sounds like every movie ever made and me backpedaling to characterize the film and make it more than its contrivances.  Describing Brothers, this process will not be repeated.

If you’ve seen the trailer, the plot synopsis won’t confuse you.  Loser brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is released from prison just as winner brother Sam (Tobey Maguire) is deployed in Afghanistan to fight terrorism. He is reported killed in action.  Tommy takes over as surrogate father to Sam’s kids and potentially husband and lover to Sam’s beautiful wife (Natalie Portman).  Sam, his death erroneously reported, returns home considerably damaged to find his reformed brother is new favorite.  Sam rampages.

The Afghanistan footage, where Sam is kept captive and must commit grave atrocities that betray his values and his country, is completely out of step with the rest of the film. This could have provided an opportunity for tonal exercise, seeing how much the audience could take of two films in a completely different style.  However, the combat and captive scenes ring far too false. Director Jim Sheridan is much better at handling the tender side of the family drama, as his background with films like In America would suggest.  The film also suffers from a seemingly tacked-on “everybody’s fine” ending (the alternate ending theory seems to be a theme in this year’s Oscar-mongering crop).  An actor’s workshop of sorts, Sheridan does get some solid performances, notable is Sam Shepard, as the emotionally disconnected, tough-love patriarch.  But at its best, the movie is only able to rise above some of its many clichés.

–Pops Corn

In an era overgrown with remakes, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans is a treasure.  Werner Herzog, now best known for Grizzly Man, directed the film, based on Abel Ferrara’s 1992 original, starring Harvey Kietel.  The location has changed to the bayou and the lieutenant’s badge is now on Nicolas Cage, but the general story is the same—drugged out, gambling addict scumbag is put in charge of solving a pious murder case.  Whereas Catholic guilt and redemption were themes of the original, Herzog is more concerned with personal redemption, often at the risk of others.  It’s nonsensical, full of hallucinations and dead-end scenes.  Even a couple of happy endings..  A b-movie to its marrow, right down to the Zalman King-like title,it’s seedy and psychotic, hilarious yet brutal, a scuzzy blast

The cast is a dream team of scene chompers and low budget character actor gods—Brad Dourif, Vondie Curtis Hall, Jennifer Coolidge, Irma P. Hall, Val Kilmer—none paid to underplay.  Michael Shannon and Cage practically have a twitch-off in one scene and even Herzog himself—never one to turn down the volume–gets to ham it up on an voice mail message.  Supporting cast honors may go to Shea Whigham (Fast and Furious, tons of TV credits) for his role as prostitute Eva Mendes’ client, a connected sleaze who speaks mostly in “oohs”. The last laugh of course belongs to Cage.  Literally.  He laughs maniacally and frequently, right down to the final shot.  As the addictive bastard who routinely hangs outside of nightclub to bust kids whose drugs he can swipe, he takes the role wonderfully beyond the edge of sanity.  Cage’s outrageousness recalls his work in Vampire’s Kiss.  And just as Cage devoured a cockroach in that film to channel a deeper reality (?),seeing the credit “Alligator and iguana footage shot by Werner Herzog” is somehow supposed to certify the ballsy depths he is willing to go.  Like the film, the gator close-ups are extreme.

–Pops Corn

According to Claude Scales over at Brooklyn Heights blog: Friday, December 4, from 7 to 9 p.m., the Brooklyn Film and Arts Festival, in conjunction with the Brooklyn Historical Society, will present a Brooklyn-themed documentary film festival, Brooklyn Back in the Day. The festival will be held at BHS, located at 128 Pierrepont Street (corner of Clinton).

According to BHS:

The films in Brooklyn Back in the Day depict the
transformations and challenges faced by Brooklyn residents in the late
1960s and early 1970’s. This screening has been curated by Aziz Rahman,
director of the Brooklyn Film & Arts Festival and will feature
special guest speaker Professor Joe Dorinson, Long Island University.

The films include: “The Boys of 2nd Street Park”, “The Cities;
Dilemma in Black and White,” “The Romeows” and the short vintage films
“Brooklyn Vintage Trolleys on the Streets of Brooklyn”, “Heel and Toe
Artists Hoof it to Coney Island” and “War on the Roof”.

The  same night I saw Precious I saw The Missing Person, a movie whose lack of publicity is the polar opposite of the Oprah-Tyler Perry machine behind Precious.  I was one of six lone men in the audience—the total audience—until a pair of women entered just as the theater went dark.  Their appearance surprised me until their opening credit cheer for editor Mollie Goldstein explained it.

Seeing The Missing Person right after Precious rendered it somewhat forgettable, but it is a solid indie noir update with more on its mind than just recalling Bogie.  The film follows a P.I. who takes a job tracking a man.  While on the trail, he puts together the puzzle of why they are both there. The shadow of 9/11, like WWII’s shadow over classic period noir, hangs over the film and ultimately it recalls Gone Baby Gone as the lead discovers that the right thing is murky, so you can’t always do it.

Michael Shannon plays the lead.  I could watch him in anything.  And when I looked back after his outstanding Oscar-nominated work in Revolutionary Road, I realized that I have seen him in everything over the years.  He sinks his teeth into the investigator role here.  Drained of color, the photography also turned me on to the film.  Some of the darkest images I’ve ever seen, not in tone nor production design.  Just actual light.  In one sequence, a close-up of Shannon hardly even picks up on the whites of his eyes.  It was a calculated risk and one that surely hurt distribution, but as me, five other loaners, the editor and her friend know, one worth checking out.

Call me Switzerland.  Call me a flip-flopper.  While I love Precious, I’ve been fascinated by the backlash and even appreciated the coverage.  Armond White’s front cover (!) slam in the New York Press is already somewhat legendary, and with White being the Pres of the NY Film Critics’ Circle, this will cost it some pre-Oscar award-gobbling.  The Times’ A.O. Scott compared Precious to The Blind Side, and while not a hatchet job, it only invokes negative comments from  his peers. Even Moviefone got in on the hate.  The backlash against Precious has been as swift as it comes. Opening weekend even.

I love White’s perceptive piece and Scott’s is just as compelling. Both prove that Precious is a film you react to.  In some cases you’re dared to.  Is it a film about the black experience for white people?  Does it enforce stereotypes?  Is the constant dread too thick?  It is a film that gets you talking and seeing it with an audience makes for a great moviegoing experience.

First there’s the required racial breakdown of the audience.  Mine was about 80% white, 20% black.  Reactions varied throughout the film and at the end I overheard priceless stuff.  “I thought I would I cry more,” complained half of the couple who were the only other end credit stayers.  Meanwhile, wailing emanated from the women’s room, as one audience member couldn’t pull it together.  Myself, I came out of the movie thinking about my own parenting and what my life’s achievements have been.  The power of the film definitely resonated for me.  It’s a movie that challenges audiences to think about race and to face ugliness.  Not just the violent, dismal portrayal of poverty, but also the ugliness of our cultural beliefs.  The use of fried chicken and McDonald’s, game show footage, Precious’ white-obsessed fantasies, all add up to an experience that can be uncomfortable and is sparking impassioned debate.  And the pitch of the film—typical for director Lee Daniels—is very, very high.  It crossed a few lines for me with certain clichés and choices, but it’s designed to push those buttons; not being numb to them is a good sign.

–Pops Corn

 

The Good Soldier,
a powerful documentary directed by two Park Slope filmmakers, Lexy
Lovell and Michael Uys (DGA, Los Angeles Film Critics, and Peabody
Award winners for Riding the Rails), is being called "incendiary," and
"affecting" 

The film follows the journeys of five combat
veterans from different generations of American wars as they sign up,
go into battle, and eventually change their minds about what it means
to be a good soldier. The film opens on November 11 (Armistice Veterans
Day) at 7PM at the Village East Cinema, 2nd Ave at 12th Street in Manhattan. 212-529-6799

Here's what Jason Albert of the Onion has to say:

"It's
hard to imagine watching a more affecting movie than The Good Soldier
… because it may be as affecting a movie as I've ever seen. It took
one seemingly simple question—What makes a good soldier?—and reduced
the answer to its essence. That being, the ability to kill other human
beings. Using the voices of veterans from WWII, Vietnam, the Gulf War,
and Iraq, each gave this exact same answer, and they all spoke not only
of their guilt and regret, but also of how at some point during their
time in the military they needed to kill. Their reasons were different,
but the training that gave them the skills and permission was not. I
found it both hard to watch and hard to turn away from, and I know I'll
never look at the words ‘collateral damage' in the same way again.
Really powerful stuff."

Music by JJ Grey and Mofro, CSNY, Nine
Inch Nails, Big Bill Broonzy, Edwin Starr, Carly Comando, Muslimgauze,
and Jimmie Lunceford.

The Good Soldier, a powerful documentary directed by two Park Slope filmmakers, Lexy Lovell and Michael Uys (DGA, Los Angeles Film Critics, and Peabody Award winners for Riding the Rails), is being called "incendiary," and "affecting" 

The film follows the journeys of five combat veterans from different generations of American wars as they sign up, go into battle, and eventually change their minds about what it means to be a good soldier. The film opens on November 11 (Armistice Veterans Day) at 7PM at the Village East Cinema, 2nd Ave at 12th Street in Manhattan. 212-529-6799

Here's what Jason Albert of the Onion has to say:

"It's hard to imagine watching a more affecting movie than The Good Soldier … because it may be as affecting a movie as I've ever seen. It took one seemingly simple question—What makes a good soldier?—and reduced the answer to its essence. That being, the ability to kill other human beings. Using the voices of veterans from WWII, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and Iraq, each gave this exact same answer, and they all spoke not only of their guilt and regret, but also of how at some point during their time in the military they needed to kill. Their reasons were different, but the training that gave them the skills and permission was not. I found it both hard to watch and hard to turn away from, and I know I'll never look at the words ‘collateral damage' in the same way again. Really powerful stuff."

Music by JJ Grey and Mofro, CSNY, Nine Inch Nails, Big Bill Broonzy, Edwin Starr, Carly Comando, Muslimgauze, and Jimmie Lunceford.

The Third Annual Red Hook International Film Festival will be dedicated to Robert Guskind, the legendary blogger who created the much missed blog Gowanus Lounge. Guskind died in February.

The
festival's opening film will be Blue Barn Picture's special tribute to
Guskind.  According to festival planners, "the entire festival is dedicated to Robert Guskind, to The Gowanus Lounge,
and to local storytelling."

The
Red Hook Film Festival takes place on October 3rd and 4th at the
Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition screening room at 499 Van Brunt
Street.  The screenings begin at 1pm on Saturday Oct. 3rd, with "Robert Guskind: 1958-2009" by Blue Barn Pictures, followed by a special 10th anniversary screening of the seminal Brooklyn documentary "Lavendar Lake: Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal" directed by Alison Prete.

The
rest of the weekend will feature short film gems from neighborhoods
around Brooklyn, including pieces about a Bushwick tailor, rooftop
farms in Greenpoint, the Atlantic Yards boondoggle, Coney Island's lost
roller coaster, Williamsburg industry, and a whole program of films
about Red Hook!

The screening schedule can be seen online at www.redhookfilmfest.com and at www.myspace.com/redhookfilmfestival

web: www.redhookfilmfest.com
myspace: www.myspace.com/redhookfilmfestival
facebook: www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=165019430983

Nursery University is a feature documentary that is described by the filmakers "a film which reveals the oddly competitive, yet often
humorous, world of nursery school admissions." The film will be at Cobble Hill Cinema on May 1, 2009. For more information go to the film's website.

Ah, yes. A subject close to home to many in Park Slope.

Coming up tomorrow, Saturday March 14 at 7:15pm
at Anthology Film Archives in the East Village, NYC

 Anthology Film Archives is thrilled to present a special sneak-preview of the new film by Angelica and Tony Torn, a Coney Island-set drama featuring a special appearance by the filmmakers’ father, Rip. A chance encounter with her childhood sweetheart leads Virginia (Angelica Torn) to discover hidden truths about her boyfriend and her neighborhood that she has chosen to ignore.

Over the last explosive weekend of the summer she must decide whether to abandon everything she’s ever known to the wolf-pack of developers buying up and tearing down the Coney Island boardwalk, or to sacrifice herself to the world that’s been created for her. Angelica Torn’s luminescent performance beautifully carries the film, which casts a beguiling spell in the manner of Alan Rudolph’s early work.
(2008, 103 minutes, video.

 With Angelica Torn, Federico Castelluccio, Luke Zarzecki, Will Patton and Tony Torn.)
Directions: Anthology is at 32 Second Ave. at 2nd St. Subway: F or V to 2nd Ave; 6 to Bleecker.
Tickets: $9 general; $8 Essential Cinema (free for members); $7 for students, seniors, & children (12 & under); $6 AFA members.

Three nights this week. Three silent films at the World Financial Center. Sponsored by WNYC's New Sounds Live with John Schaefer He was on 2008's Park Slope 100.

Sounds of the Surreal –
Tuesday, February 10th at 7PM
The Golem -Wednesday,
February 11th at 7PM
Man With A Movie Camera
– Thursday, February 12th at 7PM

World Financial Center
220 Vesey Street
Battery Park City Directions
Admission FREE

» New Sounds Live
2008-2009 Concert Season

The
long-awaited annual winter film series returns to the World Financial
Center featuring classic silent films set to innovative and energetic
scores by Gary
Lucas, the BQE Ensemble, and The Cinematic Orchestra.

Each
night, starting at 7PM, experience a different film and its inventive new music
score.

On
Tuesday night, Feb. 10, Gary Lucas performs ghostly improvisational solo guitar
for three surrealist films: "Entr’acte", "Ballet
Mecanique", and "The Cameraman’s Revenge."

Wednesday
evening, Feb. 11, the BQE Project’s palette of exotic instruments from
Middle Eastern drums to mandolin accompanies “The Golem.”

And on
Thursday night, Feb. 12, the Cinematic Orchestra’s moody,
electronica-tinged jazz-funk follows "Man with a Movie Camera." And
it's all FREE!

All performances will be taped for later
broadcast on New Sounds, airs 11pm-midnight every night on WNYC 93.9 FM (these
will probably air March or April).