Every week, Richard Brody picks classic film, modern film, independent film, foreign film, and documentary for online viewing.
The corridor
Photo of Everett
Great movies this year
edition of “new Directors/new films” at moma and the film society of Lincoln
Center, bring to mind other great features. The cult first
the film began with Orson Welles “citizen Kane”, and it’s hell
modernity—the first generations of filmmakers had a long prehistory
continuous and rapid production that has allowed over the years on set
maturation. For Jerry Lewis, that maturation took place on the stage and in
movies directed by others, in particular, the comedic genius Frank Tashlin.
When Lewis made his first film, “the receptionist,” he was
thirty-four, and he reached deep into his own cinematic prehistory to the
make it: he played almost the entire film in pantomime, turning himself
in silent Comedy star in the heart of the bustling and garrulous Comedy
landscape—lobby and corridors at the Fontainebleau hotel in
Miami beach, where Lewis portrays the titular form whose employee
life is unhappy bellowing of the head and impossible tasks.
Radical-democratic vision of Lewis, focused on passion for internal
the lives of ordinary people who face daily frustrations, with bruised dignity,
enhanced by its dual role in the film, portraying himself
star arriving at the hotel, in a cameo bold irony. It
the first striking feature of comedic virtuosity and, as such, is
the ideal test for those who claim to soften the taste to person Lewis:
he dispels the image of the familiar overgrown child of his movies
Dean Martin and replaces it with an instant figure of history
the image of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton—the company he belongs to.
“Buttons” available to stream on Google
Play
Amazon
and other services.
“A New Leaf”
Photo of Everett
Great ambitions and great achievements often strain at the boundaries
Of the Convention, and that’s how it was for Elaine may with her first feature,
“New leaf,” released in 1971. Like Lewis, may have achieved
fame in the Comedy of the partnership; it was in improv duet with Mike
Nichols, who became a famous Director in the mid-sixties. Maybe they are waiting for
a few years to make her directorial debut, which, if not
to achieve success in the work of Nichols, turned out to be more original
also influential, at least on the right filmmakers. It
bright colors version of what is too casually called a black Comedy
a Comedy about the murder. Walter Matthau plays the heir-head by the name of Henry
Graham, a middle-aged new York dandy, who is already a great happiness
and to spare yourself the misery, humiliation, or job, to marry
rich in a hurry. He finds a purpose: a rich woman named Henrietta
Lowell, susceptible to accidents, socially awkward, painfully lonely,
selflessly distracted woman with a huge long island estate. In
courteous, meticulous, Henry was a simple plan: to marry Henriette, to end
with her and live on her money. And sweep her off her feet, he
no, while planning the murder, Henry finds that his relationship
with Henrietta, however, adds some meaning in his life, but preparing
himself to kill her, no matter what. That might mean Comedy
from the monster in three hours or so antic depravity waiting
their romantic redemption; the Studio forced a much shorter cut in may
the case ended in court, and she lost (allegedly because the judge
liked the version that he was shown). Not only it comes with time, so
they say she also passed the budget; from the very beginning of his creative
the vision was overwhelming, and even if the only version that exists
shorter one, a hundred two minutes, the vastness of may
imagination and the depth of its inspiration to fully look into this
raucously, grimly, but the ecstatic Rhapsody of a mismatch made in heaven.
“New leaf” is available for streaming on
Amazon
Voodoo and
Other services.
“Frownland”
YouTube
One of the best and most important films of the century
“Frownland,” since 2007, the first Ronald Bronstein (and only)
feature only be available for streaming, which is good news:
standing among almost all current modern
independent film landscape, it nourishes them all, or at least
the strongest of them. Bronstein, working with a meager budget (which he met
working as a projectionist), shot a young man named Keith Sontag
who is choking to the point of furious agitation (plays
cousin Director, Dore Mann) as he suffers the Assembly complex
humiliation in his romantic life, his relationship with offensive
the neighbor and his cultlike work door-to-door seller discount
coupons. In moments of crisis, he swings between frantically digressive
confessions and almost aphasia verbal freeze, and his life
it would seem, continually crossing from crisis to crisis, from rejection to
the rejection of punishment in rage. Bronstein offers a cinematic
the nightmare of surreal intensity, which is built of course
and painfully real set of details; from his directorial
self-refraction in despair Kate, careful naturalism of the work
and money to its combination of speed and personal mannerism in Mann
enthusiastically, recklessly bold presence, “Frownland” wrenches in addition to barriers,
conventions and habits and explosions, the way in cinema of the future. It was the influence more than a decade ago, during his first
screenings, and it is still.
“Frownland” is available to stream on the channel criterion in
FilmStruck.
Victoria
Photos from big world pictures / Everett
One of the most striking first features in recent years is “Victoria”
the Bulgarian Director Maya Vitkova, which took place at sundance in
2014. It is wryly comedic, but deeply sentimental story about the end of the
Communism and the fall of the “iron curtain”, experienced three
generations of women in one family. A young woman named Boryana
educated and strongly hostile to the Communist dictatorship, refuses
to have a child with her husband, a doctor, until they are moved on
West. But she becomes pregnant, however, and her newborn daughter
Vic, there is one feature—she was born without a belly button. It
the differences are enough to win her a special place as a protégé of
the country’s dictator, Todor Zhivkov (who is the ancient character
movie); sudden, Boryana—mother-a Communist true believer too
considers itself the mother of the true believer. Vitkova fills the film with
strange details of everyday life under a repressive regime and a lot of it
different kinds of corruption and compromise; in “Victoria”
coming-of-age story, and emotionally committed domestic drama
life, love and hatred, between parents and children,
inescapably social and public aspects of the life of a couple and
reflection, progress, and the irony of history as intimate
experience.
“Victoria” is available to stream on
Kanopy, Google
Play and
Other services.
“Joyce at 34”
Photo By Tom Cole
Personal documentary by Joyce Chopra’s “Joyce at 34”
the intimacy and cinematic self-determination. It starts with hopper
in late pregnancy, continues with scenes Chopra birth
her daughter and welcoming a newborn home with her late husband, Tom
Cole, And then contemplating her new conflicts as a mother and
Director. She looks at her old high school friends and finds them
the choice today; she’s starting a new job in the movie and brings her own mother
to her house to care for six-week-old baby; and she interviews
the mother on the choice of the Director. Meanwhile, Chopra also discusses
her mother’s life and her extended family history in order to place her own
the path to the future. (A notable reunion of the mother Chopra, a retired
the teacher, her former colleagues, all women, highlights one
the release of generation as listening to someone else’s.) Cole says frankly
about new trouble in their marriage as a result of efforts Chopra in
to protect her working time; Chopra, whose voice for introspection provides
the dramatic core of the film, discusses her working relationship with her
artistic collaborator, Claudia Weill, who is the operator of the film
and who fills this passionate work of introspection with a resonant
the element of melodrama that heralds Weil first, a fictional
feature, “friend.”
“Joyce at 34” is available to stream on
Amazon.
Sourse: newyorker.com
