Every week, Richard Brody picks classic film, modern film, independent film, foreign film, and documentary for online viewing.
“The Young Lovers”
Photo of Everett
Many minor actors have turned to directing Hollywood films, when the role was insufficient, but several major stars did in that time, her career on the screen is still thriving. The one who did so in the heyday of the era of greatest artistic effect of IDA Lupino, who formed an independent company, in the late forties and turned to the guide by default, when the Director she hired got sick during filming. The first film that it aims at the design, “lovers”, and.to.. “Fear not,” from 1949, is an intimate melodrama about the life and agony of the artist. Sally Forrest, actress who was also an accomplished dancer, plays Carol Williams, a dancer who is romantically involved with her dance partner, guy Richards (Keefe Brasselle). As well as their career takes off, Carol contracts polio, is paralyzed and may never walk—let alone dance—again. Meanwhile, the guy puts his dancing career on hold, and also the romantic temptation female colleague in her new office work. Lupino looks at the medical side of Carol’s anguish, her paralysis, and her rehabilitation, with documented specifics, but she films the story of Carol’s confrontation with his new and unfamiliar identity—not a dancer, whose romantic dreams are shattered as well with a resonant cinematic subjectivity, marked by the echo of internal monologues and sharp visuals. Lupino, who made just a few features, was one of the most boldly original, psychologically acute of Directors of the era.
“Young fans thread” on Amazon.
“Harlem Nights”
Photos from Paramount / everett
It’s amazing and it’s a shame that Eddie Murphy was only directed one film to date, the excellent and unusual “Harlem nights” in 1989. It is just a story from the thirties, which combines the rich loam of history of the city yelled with a kind of wild Comedy of the sort that Murphy has already delivered abundantly on the screen. Murphy also wrote a believable story about a longtime nightclub operator named sugar ray (Richard Pryor), who took impulsive an orphan who Matures in his right hand, nicknamed quick (Murphy). The film has many extravagant, colorful performers (including Della Reese and REDD Fox) and the story has some shocking twists Yulu, but Comedy Dead souls, the film is filled with random and painful violence, with violent threats and thin double crosses and deadly misunderstandings and clever evasions. This is the story of stormy, a rich, storied past, which tempers any nostalgic with a genuine vision of mortal danger.
Stream “Harlem nights” on Amazon, vudu and other services.
“The sun don’t Shine”
YouTube
Amy Seimetz was already one of the leading Actresses of American independent cinema (in such films as “Alexander the last” and “five”), when she wrote and directed “ain’t no sunshine” in 2012, one of the most visible elements on any level of the budget, lovers on the run genre. The couple, Crystal and Leo, played by Kate Lyn Sheil and Kentucker Audley; she is the victim of a violent man she killed, and they go to Florida with a body in the trunk. Both crystal and Leo are unstable, but their emotional lurches and appears to be strengthening and deepening the sense of guilt, blood and fear of capture. They’re heading to a friend’s house Leo, his ex-lover, and the Crystal is seized with jealousy; their relationships both tender and brutal, tense, and restless, and criminal history, to disrupt it by force, out from under their relationship and threatens to wrench them apart. Seimetz is directing with a mixture in the place of precision and fury of subjectivity, echoing voice and a distorted vision of what it looks like on ultra-low budget and hands-on production, Lupino direction to “fear Not” and its subsequent movies (in particular “outrage”). It’s a modernist twist on the classic genre, which updates a subject and a style to match the moods and methods of independent cinema.
Stream “ain’t no sunshine” on Amazon, vudu and other services.
“Change”
Photo of Everett
No wonder Jacques Tati, the famous music hall closer to direct himself in a movie Comedy based on his stage work. What is surprising is that, in doing so, he proved that he’s not just showcaser his statement, but boldly original master of cinematic form and grandly visionary critic of contemporary life. At the peak of their career and one of the greatest films ever made is his 1967 Comedy “playtime,” which the ancient dystopia takes place in our days. This is the story of a modern city of glass and steel rises, and its impingement on and even replace the classic romantic dreams. To understand his tremendous vision, Tati reason, at great cost, is reduced, but still large-scale model of the modern international style of the city. (He had to purchase it to be used as permanent; it was wrong and it ruined it.) Comedy “playtime”, Tati especially in his famous role as Monsieur Hulot, with his cloak and umbrella, making his way through the bureaucratic maze of newfangled office buildings and cold changed the streets, observing the manifestations of tempting, but not working to technological development and even find romance, as smitten and torn a new architectural outlines—until, against riotous sports in high-tech new restaurant, architecture and things to self-destruct and leave for a night of anarchy in the morning and regret in its Wake.
Stream “game” on Amazon and the channel criterion in FilmStruck.
“Party girl”
YouTube
Actor Samuel theis teamed up with Directors Marie amachoukeli and Claire Burger to make a film about her mother, Angelique Litzenburger, who plays the role based on her own life in the documentary-feature film “party girl” in 2014. Angelica, who lives in a town in Lorraine, works as a waitress in a strip Club on the border with Germany; then, one of her regular customers, Michel (Joseph bour), proposes marriage, and she is struggling with her own fears and the weight of her burdensome, painful life. As part of the process, she’s raising their four children together, including TEIs. “Party girl” is considerate, loving, passionate, yet unflinching look at hard living and tumultuous relationship, life is not short of money, but it is full of harsh, cruel and sensitive emotional ties and endless tug painful disconnections. Litzenburger, playing herself, is a force of nature, a fierce performer who conveys all the depth of her experience in fleeting gestures, furtive glances, and simple tone; the film can be made, but its depiction of modern Europe, away from the spotlight of official culture, appearing as if from rich soil of history, but still in the shadows, has a strong documentary on.
Stream “party girl” on Vudu, Google play, and YouTube.
Sourse: newyorker.com
