The two most chilling films I’ve seen so far in Toronto are both documentaries: Dror Moreh’s The Gatekeepers and Alex Gibney’s Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God .” I’ll be writing more about Gibney’s film in the coming days, but I got a chance to briefly interview Moreh at a dinner Sony Pictures Classics threw at Creme Brasserie in the Yorkville District of Toronto, and I want to share his comments. The Gatekeepers is remarkable because Moreh managed to get six former leaders of Israel’s security agency Shin Bet to go on camera for the first time and talk about the sometimes very dark things they’ve done to protect their homeland from terrorism since the Six-Day War of 1967. The men talk about torture, about cultivating informants and about collateral damage: the calculations that go into deciding whether to take out a terrorist at the risk of also killing innocents. They also talk, in very level-headed terms, of the spineless nature of the political leaders to whom they report. What really resonated with me is that Moreh never loses sight of the fact that, despite the life-and-death decisions these men made over the course of their careers, they are just men. (Indeed, one of the men looked unsettlingly like my father.) And in addition to pulling the curtain back on what goes into the bloody sausage-making process of Mid-East politics, these former Shin Bet leaders talk quite eloquently about the toll their work took on their psyches and their souls. What I didn’t expect is for the men that Moreh interviewed to agree so readily that peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is possible, even if they didn’t all agree on how it should be accomplished. It’s easy to make the assumption that the men who do the kind of work that these former Shin Bet leaders did are hawks by nature — and committed to maintaining conflict in order to insure that their work remains in demand. But I left the screening of The Gatekeepers that I saw convinced that these six former Shin Bet leaders wanted an end to the conflict, see it in Israel’s grasp and, yet, are disgusted that their superiors are doing little to move in that direction. At the Sony Pictures Classics party, I asked Moreh why the six former Shin Bet leaders had given him such unprecedented acccess, and he told me: “I think they came because they are concerned like me. They see that Israel is going on a path that can lead only to a bitter result,” he explained. “Each has a different point of view, but they are all worried.” When I asked him if he could see an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Moreh replied: “Peace is possible. The problem in Israel is that we lack leadership. Never ever in the history of this country has there been such a good and understanding leadership on the Palestinian side, and Israel does everything in its power to avoid conversation. Everything,” Moreh said with a wince as Pierce Brosnan, Aaron Paul and Zac Efron roamed the crowd. The Gatekeepers director added: “I’m wondering, when [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu says ‘two-state solution,’ with whom does he want to speak? Does he want to speak with Hamas? With Iran? [Former Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin said there’s a small window of opportunity [for peace.] It is closing,” Moreh said before adding: “The day that [former Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon got the second stroke,” which left him unable to perform his duties and paved the way for Netanyahu’s return to the prime minister’s eat, “was the worst day in Israel’s history after the assassination of Rabin” in 1995. When I asked Moreh if there was anyone he would like to see lead Israel, he replied: “There is no leadership that I can see now that can do what needs to be done.” Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
I slid into a booth at the Four Seasons recently to chat with Rebel Wilson , the comedienne and rising scene-stealer of this week’s Bachelorette and the upcoming toe-tapper Pitch Perfect , smitten with her work in Bridesmaids , in which she turned a brief turn as Kristen Wiig’s terrible British roommate into one of the more indelible comic Hollywood debuts in recent memory. Over the course of our conversation about everything — her dog show past, her law degree, gangsta rap , reality TV, her Bring It On obsession, WWII-era international relations, and why she considered The Grove her “happy place” when she moved from her native Australia to L.A. two years ago — I realized that Rebel Wilson is, indeed, the most interesting woman in Hollywood. She’s so naturally funny she gets laughs even when playing the straight woman, as she does in Leslye Headland ‘s R-rated Bachelorette (in limited release today) opposite the bad-girl trifecta of Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, and Isla Fisher. In a wicked reversal of fortune it’s Wilson’s former freak/chubby bride-to-be Becky who’s eclipsed her cooler and prettier friends in life — and, even as they inadvertently threaten to ruin her wedding, Becky’s naive loyalty underscores the point: Mean girls finish last. Wilson’s knack for memorable characters, honed by years in Australian TV and a stranger-than-fiction upbringing (“I try to do it take the tragic things in my life and make them into comedy”) led her to October’s college a capella comedy Pitch Perfect , in which she plays as a confident Aussie student who calls herself “Fat Amy.” “In the script the character is called ‘Fat Amy,’ so it’s really hard to send it to actresses,” joked producer Elizabeth Banks. “Rebel recognized what an iconic character Fat Amy would be.” Next she appears in Chris Colfer’s coming-of-age debut Struck By Lightning and Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain . Wilson’s also set to write, produce, and star in her own ABC sitcom, Super Fun Night , working with Conan O’Brien. “It’s about three girls who live in New York,” she explained. “They’re just very nerdy and they really don’t have a social life … they used to have a thing called Friday Night Fun Night where they stayed indoors and watched DVDs and ate pizza. Super Fun Night is their new concept as they try to become more cool and popular. It’s kind of based on me.” It really feels like you’re in the midst of a big moment in your career, with Bachelorette and Pitch Perfect coming out… Ahh! It has been pretty good. When I came to America I thought, wouldn’t it be awesome to get into one movie? And then I get cast in Bridesmaids as my first job here and it’s such a huge movie. Even though sometimes to me it doesn’t feel fast, because I have been here two years now, I’ve done eight movies in that time so there are days and weeks where to me it doesn’t feel fast at all. But all my agents, who represent super famous people, are like, ‘Rebel, this is, like, really fast!’ [Laughs] And it has turned out like the dream — I couldn’t have even dreamt that things would go this well. I don’t know how often you look at your own Wikipedia page or Google yourself, but your bio is the stuff of legend. Is it? I guess my life is interesting. Tell me this is all true: Your parents were dog showers? Yes. Like Best in Show ? Exactly like Best In Show . Beagles. And it was so embarrassing, but what I try to do is take the tragic things in my life and make them into comedy. I used to hate the dog show — it was so boring and it was so dorky, but now I look back on it fondly. Every weekend we’d go to the dog shows and show the dogs, but now I’m like, I guess it was an interesting environment to grow up in… it was a weird, competitive environment of this group of people who loved dogs and they’d wear weird outfits and go to weird places out in the country to do these dog shows. [Laughs] But it was an interesting upbringing. More interesting than most. It wasn’t like I was a child actor who got pimped out by their mother to do commercials. You also have the coolest name ever. Did you always love it? Oh, thank you — but not always. I went to a Christian high school so I went under my middle name. I don’t think they would have accepted me in the school — ‘This is Rebel ’… so I have two middle names, Melanie Elizabeth, and I went under those. But Rebel’s way cooler. Another true fact: Your siblings were on The Amazing Race ? Yes! The first ever Australian series, which is exactly the same as the American one. And they came in last! My sister was on the show five days and vomited five times on camera. It was pretty funny because my family, we love reality shows like The Amazing Race and Survivor , and so when they had the opportunity to go on we were like, ‘Yay, you’re probably going to win!’ And we thought up all of this strategy, but they came in last. They said doing it is so different from watching it on TV. It’s so hard. They get no sleep, no food, it was a really hard experience. [Laughs] So your real life is almost stranger than fiction. Did you always want to end up here in Hollywood? As a kid I never thought I’d be an actress. Never, ever, ever, no way. I was really shy — bordering on social disorder shy — and I was really academic. Really good at math, I had weird abilities, so everyone thought I’d be a lawyer because I did really good at school. Did you want to be a lawyer? Well, I actually have a law degree. I’ve done that at the same time as acting, which was really hard — I should have quit, but then it took a lot of work to get into that law school after high school so I was like, I may as well do it on the side. So I’d often be filming or doing plays and sometimes I’d have to miss my law exams because I was in a show in Australia, but they said ok, you can come back next week and do the exam, which was cool. I’m like, ‘Um, I’m filming this movie with Nicolas Cage — I kind of can’t come to the exam…’ But I literally had to attend 80% of the classes to get my law degree, so it was really hard. Often I’d fly into law school because I’d be in another state, and have to fly in for a day of law school. It was difficult. Has that law degree come in handy in your show biz career? When I first started, I did negotiate a lot of my own contracts. People look at me and they see my funny, stupid characters and they have no idea. Sometimes when I say yeah, I could practice as a lawyer if I wanted to, people are like, “What? Who’d want you as a lawyer?” I would totally hire you as my lawyer . I’d be good. I’d crack good jokes, I’d be all friendly with the judge. I think it could work. How did Bachelorette come to you? Another girl, Casey Wilson, was actually cast as the bride but she was on a TV show so she couldn’t come to New York and film it. They had all this amazing cast in place already, Kirsten [Dunst] and Lizzy [Caplan] and Isla [Fisher] and James Marsden, and they were looking for a girl to play the bride. Obviously I think they wanted a girl who was bigger, for the “Pig Face” stuff to work, and I read the script and it wasn’t an easy fit, because normally I play the wacky character and not the straight girl. This could kind of be a challenge because Becky has to be the more grounded straight character. It’s a fun reversal, to see you playing it straight and Kirsten, Lizzy, and Isla running with the jokes. Yeah! And yet sometimes I think because of my delivery I get a few laughs in the film, but I’m not playing for laughs. It’s not like I’m in a studio comedy where I’m putting all my improvised jokes in. This was based on a play, and it gets very serious in parts. These are real quality actors in this! So I just try to play it quite genuinely. Theirs is a much different tone to your character; Becky is clearly aware a lot of the time that these girlfriends of hers are real bitches and kind of terrible. They are mean to her, sometimes! But she’s the fourth wheel in a group of four girls, so she does think they’re cooler than her and wants to hang out with them. But at the point of the movie where the movie starts, she’s got this amazing fiancé and she’s going to have a really good life, and those girls who were probably way cooler than her in high school, the tables have turned — little Becky is now on top of the heap! The mean girls get a comeuppance. Yeah — I always think in real life, eventually they do. If you are really mean and super bitchy eventually that’s going to come back to haunt you. It’s tempting to juxtapose your work in Bachelorette with your performance in Bridesmaids . Two wedding movies! I was actually in another wedding movie, called A Few Best Men , that comes out in the U.K. this month. With Xavier Samuel, of Twilight fame. Yeah, of Twilight fame! He’s very cute, and a really nice guy. And Olivia Newton-John played my mother! In that one I played the sister of the bride. But in Bridesmaids I had nothing to do with the wedding. I was really curious — I think I only had four scenes in Bridesmaids and I was wondering if that would be enough to make an impact. I remember Jonah Hill was in one scene in 40-Year-Old Virgin , and that was enough for people to go, “Oh my god, who is that guy, he’s super hilarious!” But people adored [ Bridesmaids ] because it was so great and I booked five movies straight off the back of that as soon as it came out. That was the first time I ever saw you and I remember watching your scenes thinking, is this girl for real? So clearly it was an effective turn. [Laughs] That’s what happened in Australia! My very first character I was famous for was this Greek drug-dealing gangster girl, and people thought I was that girl. People were scared that there was a girl like that out on the streets! I try to play things convincingly, so I tried to be the British girl that was really annoying and a bit psycho, and try to annoy Kristen Wiig. What was your experience working in Bachelorette with folks like Kirsten, who’s not necessarily known for comedy? I mean, Bring It On was hilarious. Oh my god, I stand corrected. Bring It On was hilarious. Have you seen the musical? I was going to go with Kiki [Kirsten Dunst] to see Bring It On: The Musical , but she was busy. I bought tickets and everything, but my sister went instead. I didn’t get to go because I said if Kiki’s not going, I’m not going. I think that is the way to see Bring It On: The Musical — sitting next to Kirsten Dunst. Yes! I called up and bought the tickets and said to the guy, “It’s actually for me and for an actress, Kirsten Dunst… who was in the original Bring It On . We are coming to see the musical.” And he’s like, “She’s not in the musical. She was in the movie.” I’m like, yeah, I know. I was trying to say this is a big deal, you’ve got the original Torrance coming into this show, but it backfired. [Laughs] Was it tempting as a Bring It On fan to quote that movie constantly to Kirsten on set? I harassed her every day. I was like, “Remember when you did this bit, and that bit…” and I asked her all the questions. I’m fascinated by that movie, I just thought it was so good. I don’t watch many movies twice because I have a really good memory so to watch movies again is really boring to me, but Bring It On I’ve seen five or six times and I just love it. One time I was walking in Los Feliz and I saw the girl who plays Missy, Eliza [Dushku], and I didn’t know what to say! I was like, oh my god, what do I do? I should have gone up to her and said, “Remember that bit where you were auditioning for the Toros and they didn’t think you were good and you did the backflips?” [Laughs] I’m the biggest dork.
The feature documentary had a limited roll out in Texas and other locations in mid-July, but after expanding to additional screens in the lead-up to the Republican convention, it has reaped more than $10.5 million to date at the box office. (The doc is second only, so far, to Katy Perry: Part of Me , which has earned in excess of $25.3 million domestically, as the top non-fiction film of the year.) Those box-office numbers could get a boost now that the anti-Obama doc has scored a high-power endorsement from conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The embattled News Corp. chairman gave 2016: Obama’s America his thumbs up via Twitter, even as questions arise about the veracity of the film’s assertions. Murdoch said via a Tweet : Just saw 2016. Truly scary if no answer. Every voter should see and decide for self what future they want for America. Obama’s America is based on Dinesh D’Souza’s 2010 New York Times -best selling book The Roots of Obama’s Rage . D’Souza and John Sullivan co-directed and co-wrote the film, and the filmmakers said that Murdoch asked for a screener of the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter . In part, the film scrutinizes Obama’s Kenyan-born father and his alleged anti-colonialist views. (What is now Kenya gained independence from Great Britain in 1964). The elder Obama’s views, according to D’Souza, explain why President Obama rejects “American Exceptionalism” and why the author-filmmaker believes he is aiming to “re-shape America” by reducing the U.S.’s overall global reach and influence. According to the AP, 2016: Obama’s America also asserts the president’s views were reinforced by his upbringing in Hawaii, which was effectively annexed by the U.S. after the overthrow of its monarchy in the 1890s. Obama’s father left his family when Barack was just 2 years old and visited only once when the future president was was 10, the AP reports , but D’Souza’s film argues that this absence actually reinforced the son’s ties to his father, who died in a car accident when Obama fils was in college. D’Souza interviews NYU psychologist Paul Vitz who studies the impact of absent fathers. Vitz says the void meant that “he has the tension between the Americanism and his Africanism. He himself is an intersection of major political forces in his own psychology.” 2016 also delves into a host of issues ranging from the Federal Deficit to Obama’s supposed “weirdly sympathetic” leanings to Muslim jihadists. While the debt has grown by $16 trillion under Obama, the film fails to mention the 2008 global financial crisis that preceded it under his predecessor, George W. Bush. And it does not mention his order to kill Osama Bin Laden in May 2011. [ Have you seen 2016: Obama’s America? Tell us what you think… ] [Sources: A.P. , THR ]
Teen Mom 2 star Jenelle Evans has been through a lot lately, but hey, she can at least take solace in a nice new and improved pair of fake breasts. That appears to be what she’s conveying here, anyway. Unlike the Jenelle Evans nude before/after pics Kieffer Delp allegedly leaked, these aren’t rated NC-17, but are 100 percent Jenelle approved. Just look at that smile on her face. Yayyyyy boobs! It has been a turbulent week, even by Jenelle standards, but it doesn’t seem to be fazing her. She posted the pic writing, “Cute outfit today J.” If you don’t say so yourself. At the very least, that rack is a welcome distraction from J’s ongoing drama with Kieffer and/or Gary Head, or her mom Barbara saying she made a porno , or her sister Ashleigh calling her evil, or her random beef with Snooki , or her legal problems. It’s the little things. Or not so little in this case.
The indomitable bike messenger played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Premium Rush is named Wilee, as in Wile E. Coyote, the less successful half of Looney Tunes’ eternal desert chase duo. A few minutes into the movie, however, it becomes clear he’s more like the Road Runner: Wiry and whippet thin, Wilee darts through Manhattan traffic on his fixed gear bike — chain lock wrapped around his waist — thumbing his nose at the NYPD and evading the dogged pursuit of corrupt detective Bobby Monday ( Michael Shannon ). No Chamois Ass is he. Though Wilee is introduced via a spectacular slow-motion crash set to the sunny opening strains of The Who’s “Baba O’Riley,” he carries himself through most of the film with a cartoonish sense of imperviousness that could be interpreted as a death wish even before he gets entangled with dirty cops and Chinese gangsters. A favorite trick of the film — directed by David Koepp ( Secret Window , Stir of Echoes ) from a screenplay he wrote with John Kamps— has Wilee mentally projecting different paths through tight situations until he susses out the one that doesn’t leave him smeared on the sidewalk. It’s a device that underscores the character’s precarious vulnerability as he jockeys with all of the heavy metal vehicles careening through the streets of New York. This fuels the chase sequences with excitement and a looming sense of consequence. It’s a good thing too, since the bulk of the film consists of one kind of heart-pounding pursuit or another. Premium Rush is a half-entertaining, half-exasperating movie — one that sells you on the notion of New York bike messengers as great fodder for cinema but then doesn’t know how to build a feature around them. It barely has enough forward motion to make it through its 91-minute run time and spins its wheels — pun totally intended — with sequences (like one in an impound lot) that feel like blatant filler. Premium Rush bobs and weaves stylistically using backward jumps in time to fill in plot details and cuts to a Google Maps-style city grid that establishes the locations of the characters — but ultimately there’s only so much you can do on a bike. The movie tends to get muddled and laggy when the characters hop off their two-wheelers to actually talk, because they’re not good at talking. This is the kind of film in which you constantly find yourself thinking that a particular bit of trouble could have been avoided by characters either coming clean about their problems or yelling for help when the bad guys roll their way. Wilee turns out to be a Columbia Law School grad who chooses to ride all day rather than take the bar exam because, he explains in voiceover, “I can’t work in an office.” (The crushing student loans he has to be shouldering apparently aren’t burdening his free spirit.) He’s got a fellow messenger girlfriend named Vanessa (Dania Ramirez) and a professional and romantic rival in the muscular Manny (Wolé Parks), who dares to have gears on his bike. The main action in Premium Rush takes place from around 5pm to 7pm, as Wilee heads uptown to his alma mater to pick up a package from Vanessa’s roommate Nima (Jamie Chung) that Bobby is very anxious to intercept. What’s in the package isn’t worth going into — it’s a means for the film to travel to a number of distinctly New York locations. Premium Rush depicts the city as vibrant and lived-in, from the dive bar where bike messengers gather (to watch an extremely intimate live show by the band Sleigh Bells) to a plant-lined street in the flower district, to the back-room Chinatown gambling den where wry bookies and hoods watch the impulsive Bobby dig himself a deep hole playing pai gow. Shannon has a great time chewing the scenery as the off-the-rails detective, and Gordon-Levitt continues to prove that he’s an intriguingly unconventional action hero, albeit one who comes across as a little smug in this movie. That said, he brings a sweaty substantiality to the scenes of Wilee diving through traffic against a light or hitching a ride on a cab. Like seasoned Manhattan cyclists, Gordon-Levitt rides as if his bike is an extension of his body. While the film’s pop psychologizing about Wilee’s choice of wheels would make even the most devoted of fixie fanatics roll their eyes — he doesn’t want to stop, and he can’t, because he doesn’t believe in brakes — there’s definite romance to be found here in the whirling of spokes, the communing of man and machine, and the crazy freedom of cutting through a dense urban landscape like sleek fish easily navigating the currents of a stream. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Or is she the Michele Bachmann of beurre ? The more I see of October’s Midwestern comedy Butter , the more I’m totally going to watch it and also maybe start etching masterworks out of breakfast foods. Watch the latest trailer for the Jennifer Garner-Olivia Wilde-Rob Corddry ensemble indie and see if you’re as charmed by the tale of an orphan, a housewife, a stripper, and various other quirky personalities going head-to-head in a butter-carving contest. If only Nutella had a bit more hold… Butter is directed by British helmer Jim Field Smith ( She’s Out Of My League , Episodes ) from the Black List script by Jason Micallef and co-stars Ty Burrell, Ashley Greene, Hugh Jackman, Alicia Silverstone, and 12-year-old Yara Shahidi. It hits theaters in limited release on October 5. [via Yahoo ]
It’s time to ruin prom for a whole new generation of teenagers! EW.com has posted an exclusive photo of a blood-soaked Chloe Moretz f rom Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce’s remake of Carrie . Moretz gave me a serious case of deja vu when I saw the photo of her as the title character of Stephen King’s classic 1974 horror novel about an alienated teen with telekinetic powers and a seriously wacko mother. Sissy Spacek, who played the original Carrie White was fantastic in the role, but she was also in her mid 20s at the time. At 15, Moretz seems more age-appropriate to play the role of a high schooler. Julianne Moore plays Carrie’s mom in a role that Piper Laurie played in the original film.. EW reports that Moore intends for her portrayal to retain some humanity. “This woman has clearly had a psychotic break, perhaps several,” Moore tells the publication. “But what’s sad about it for me is that she’s clearly sick and here’s this poor child in the thrall of this person who is seriously ill.” Peirce is reportedly modernizing the story for her remake, which will be released in March 2013, so it’s unclear whether Moretz comes to be bathed in blood for the same reasons that Spacek did: a cruel high-school prank that results in Carrie unleashing her telekinetic powers and ensuring that there will be no one in her class left alive to sign her year book. The good news: she also destroyed the gym. Moretz told EW that she was under some pressure while shooting the scene: ”We only have, like, four chances to get it right,” she said. “Because that stuff stains your hair.” Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
It looks like Salma Hayek is off the hook… for an insulting gaffe she never made in the first place! In a recent cover story for the German edition of Vogue , the actress is asked about her role in Oliver Stone’s Savages and was originally quoted as saying: “I am proud to have been involved in this film with all these great actors. Honestly, I hardly had any memories of what it is to be Mexican. My life is completely different now.” It’s true that Hayek is married to French gazillionaire Francois-Henri Pinault , but Hispanic blog Guanabee doesn’t see that as an excuse for ignoring her heritage. “What did Salma mean by basically saying she forgot what it’s like to be a Mexican woman?” the site asked in response to Hayek. “That she’s too French and rich for our blood?” Not at all, says the star’s rep. He contacted E! News and explained that the “whole thing has been lost in translation. Salma is not disparaging Mexico in any way.” Translated, this is Hayek’s full quote: “I am proud to be in this movie with all these great actors. The truth is that I almost have to try and remember what it’s like to be Mexican. My life is different now. You cannot make yourself represent something. You have to be an individual, by being the best you can be.”
Jenelle Evans has been embroiled in naked photo scandals left and right, but says recent reports that she filmed a pornographic film are entirely untrue. The source of that rumor? None other than her mom Barbara. The oft-troubled Teen Mom 2 star has been BLASTING her family members in an intense Twitter battle after Babs claimed Jenelle “filmed a porno.” Jenelle slammed the report , tweeting: “This isn’t true. There isn’t a porno of me but this is what my mom said. I can’t stop crying. She hates me…” She shared the text from her mother that read: “Don’t worry. Ashleigh has the video of the porno with 3 other guys with a one night 🙂 stand with Roy Paterson before he went to jail.” No word on who Roy Paterson is, whether or not be boned the train wreck or if he’s responsible for the Jenelle Evans nude pic leak(s). Ashleigh Evans Wilson is Jenelle’s sister … who she is currently embroiled in a bitter fight with. Jenelle branded her mom and sister as “psycho.” Ashleigh told Star that Jenelle Evans, who is angling to regain custody of son Jace from Barbara , is “evil”. So, that about brings us up to date.
Actress Nicole Kidman and retiring Film Society of Lincoln Center Program Director Richard Peña will receive gala tributes at the upcoming 50th New York Film Festival. Kidman stars in Cannes world premiere The Paperboy , which has also joined the NYFF lineup. Kidman’s tribute will take place Wednesday October 3rd, while the gala in Peña’s honor will take place Wednesday, October 10th. Peña has been the Program Director at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and director of the New York Film Festival since 1988. “It is very fitting that we celebrate the 50th birthday of the New York Film Festival by honoring the man who has guided the festival’s artistic vision for the last 25 years,” said FSLC’s executive director Rose Kuo. “Richard Peña helped us discover directors like Pedro Almodovar, Abbas Kiarostami, Olivier Assayas, Lars von Trier and Hou Hsiao-hsiien, making an indelible contribution to film culture in New York City and around the world. We hope that his friends and colleagues will join us fora special evening to celibate his achievements.” The 50th New York Film Festival will open with the world premiere of Ang Lee’s Life of Pi . The 50th New York Film Festival main-slate: AMOUR (2012) 127min Director: Michael Haneke Country: Austria/France/Germany The universally acclaimed winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, AMOUR is arguably Michael Haneke’s crowning achievement to date, a portrait of a couple dealing with the ravages of old age that is as compassionate as it is merciless. The great veteran French actors Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva are staggering as Georges and Anne, long-married music teachers living out their final years surrounded by the comforts of books and music in their warm Paris apartment. After Anne suffers a stroke, Georges attends to her with firmness shot through with love. The underlying unease, as well as some abrupt surprises, are hardly unexpected from Haneke, who challenges the viewer to confront the experience of his characters as directly as he does. But he rewards the effort with a film that is all the more moving for its complete avoidance of sentimentality. An unquestionable masterpiece. A Sony Pictures Classics release. ARAF – SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN (2012) 124min Director: Yeşim Ustaoğlu Country: Turkey/France/Germany The title refers as much to the film’s main location—a tiny Turkish town comprised of no more than a few houses and a large motorway rest stop where the locals work impossibly long hours—as it does to adolescence, the way station where the child transforms into an adult. What seems at first like a piece of low-key realism comes into dramatic focus when an adolescent girl begins an obsessive sexual relationship with a middle-aged trucker, fueling the fury of the teen-aged boy who hoped to marry her. Yesim Ustaoglu, whose debut feature JOURNEY TO THE SUN is one of the treasures of the New Turkish cinema, is not only a visual poet of her country’s harshly beautiful landscapes; she also depicts with great empathy and uncompromising honesty the heart’s desires and the body’s needs. BARBARA (2012) 105min Director: Christian Petzold Country: Germany Set in 1980, Christian Petzold’s latest masterfully controlled, absorbing work centers around a doctor—played by the incomparable Nina Hoss, in her fifth film with the director—exiled to a small town from East Berlin as punishment for applying for an exit visa from the GDR. Planning to flee for Denmark with her boyfriend, Barbara remains icy and withdrawn around her colleagues, particularly with the lead physician (the excellent Ronald Zehrfeld), who is hiding a secret of his own. With her patients, however, the guarded doctor is kind, warm, and protective, even risking her own safety for one of her charges. This subtle, perfectly calibrated Cold War thriller expertly details the costs of telling and withholding the truth. Winner of the SIlver Bear for Best Director at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. An Adopt Films Release. BEYOND THE HILLS (După dealuri) (2012) 150min Director: Cristian Mungiu Country: Romania This harrowing, visually stunning new film from director Cristian Mungiu (4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS) unfolds in and around a remote monastery where pious young women toil dutifully under the ever-watchful eye of an austere priest known as Papa (the excellent Valeriu Andriuta). As the film opens, Alina (Cristina Flutur) arrives to visit her friend Voichita (Cosmina Stratan), one of the nuns in training. As children, the two women lived together in an orphanage where the tough, short-tempered Alina served as a protector for her more delicate friend. Now, Alina wants Voichita to leave her cloistered life and return with her to Germany, but as the fateful hour draws near, Voichita seems disinclined to go, and so Alina stays on for a while, which is when the real trouble begins. Inspired by a case of alleged demonic possession that occurred in Romania’s Moldova region in 2005, BEYOND THE HILLS is not a supernatural film but rather an all too believable portrait of dogma at odds with personal liberty in a society still emerging from the shadow of Communism. For their remarkable lead performances, screen newcomers Flutur and Stratan shared the Best Actress prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where Mungiu also received the Best Screenplay award. A Sundance Selects release. BWAKAW (2012) 110min Director: Jun Robles Lana Country: Philippines BWAKAW is the film you hope for at any festival, a work by an unknown director that comes out of nowhere to captivate and enthrall with its emotional truth, high humor and sage assessment of the human condition. Filipino cinema great Eddie Garcia gives a career-capping performance as Rene, a 70-plus single gent in a quiet provincial town who, having alienated almost everyone with his caustic comments, is resigned to seeing out his days alone, save for the company of his loyal canine companion (whose name gives the movie its title). Rene has his secrets but is disinclined to share them until he befriends a brawny tricycle taxi driver. Employing frequent outrageous humor, director Jun Robles Lana elegantly captures the quality of everyday life in this backwater while crafting a superior character study of a man who has allowed most of life to pass him by until an emotional jolt emboldens him to go where he’s never dared venture before. CAESAR MUST DIE (Cesare deve morire) (2012) 76min Directors: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani Country: Italy Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (Padre Padrone, The Night of the Shooting Stars) triumphantly reasserted their eminence among modern Italian directors by winning the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival with CAESAR MUST DIE. The sight of inmates putting on a play in prison is not entirely new, but beginning with the brilliant opening scenes of convicts with wildly differing accents and backgrounds auditioning for the immortal roles of Brutus, Anthony, Cassius and, most impressively and menacingly, the title character in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, this approach resonates in ways that both Pirandello and Brecht would have appreciated. The play’s director must not only help guide these amateurs in their performances, but is also forced to police real-life rivalries and rages that threaten to derail the production before it can ever be seen. Vital, provocative and entirely engaging, CAESAR marks a wonderful late-career triumph for this still-formidable brother act. An Adopt Films release. CAMILLE REWINDS (Camille redouble) (2012) 110min Director: Noémie Lvovsky Country: France Noémie Lvovsky’s ebullient twist on the comedy of remarriage transposes Frances Ford Coppola’s PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED to present day France, which means that when the titular Camille—who’s in the throes of divorcing her husband of 25 years—passes out drunk, she wakes up as a high school senior in the mid-1980s (leg warmers, “Walking on Sunshine” on the turntable, and no cell phones in sight.) Lvovsky is hilarious and touchingly vulnerable as Camille. Hard as she tries to avoid the classmate (Samir Guesmi) who she knows will become her first love, her husband, and the father of her daughter, and who will ditch her after she turns 40, she nevertheless winds up in his arms. Her double take, just before their lips meet for a first kiss the second time around, is indescribably delicious. In the tiny role of a watchmaker who may have set Camille’s time travel in motion, New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud is perfect. THE DEAD MAN AND BEING HAPPY (El muerto y ser feliz) (2012) 94min Director: Javier Rebello Country: Spain/Argentina For his third feature, the gifted Spanish director Javier Rebollo (WOMAN WITHOUT PIANO) has decamped to Argentina and created a literate, screwball road movie that Borges surely would have loved. The “dead man” of the title is Santos (veteran Spanish screen star José Sacristán), a cancer-stricken hired killer who flees his Buenos Aires hospital bed and sets off on one last assignment. It is a journey that takes him through an interior Argentina rarely glimpsed in movies, from the Cordoba resort town of La Cumbrecita (with its disproportionate—and disconcerting—population of elderly Germans) to the northern province of Santiago del Estero. Along the way, Santos finds himself joined by Alejandra (the wonderful Roxana Blanco), an attractive middle-aged woman who impulsively jumps into his vintage Ford Falcon at a gas station and soon thwarts him from his intended path. At one point, our curious couple stops off at a decrepit beach town described by one of the film’s dueling voice-over narrators as “a strange mix of paradise and apocalypse”—which, as it happens, also perfectly sums up Rebollo’s playful and unexpectedly moving reverie on love, death and the open highway. FILL THE VOID (Lemale et ha’halal) (2012) 90min Director: Rama Burshtein Country: Israel With her first dramatic feature, writer-director Rama Burshtein has created a work that is very likely unprecedented: a woman’s view of Tel Aviv’s ultra-orthodox Hasidic community from the inside. Typically, a story about a devout 18-year-old Israeli being pressured to marry the husband of her late sister, would include the option of the woman declaring her independence in the modern fashion. Such a choice is not even on the table in this cloistered, intimately rendered world where religious law, tradition and the rabbis’ word are absolute. A graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem and Hassidic herself, Burshtein startlingly brings to life a world known to few in this provocative, undeniably talented debut from a most unlikely source. WORLD PREMIERE FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED (2012) 78min Director: Alan Berliner Country: USA Sometime in the new millennium, Edwin Honig—the distinguished poet, translator, critic and university professor—began showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease, which gradually but inexorably brought on the loss of his memory, command of language and relation to the past. Filmmaker Alan Berliner—for whom Honig was a cousin, a friend and a mentor—documented their meetings over five years; his new film chronicles the steady decline of Honig’s mind and body, but also the strength and stamina of his spirit, as well as his innate charm and wonderfully playful way with words and sounds. Occasional moments of lucidity offer an insight as to the ways in which Honig attempts to make sense out of what is happening to him. FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED is an unflinching essay on the fragility of being human, and a stark reminder of the profound role that memory plays in all of our lives. An HBO Documentary Films release. WORLD PREMIERE FLIGHT (2012) 138min Director: Robert Zemeckis Country: USA Triumphantly returning to live-action filmmaking for the first time since Cast Away 12 years ago, Robert Zemeckis teams with Denzel Washington on the tense and edgy thriller FLIGHT. In a brilliant, heart-stopping sequence, pilot Whip Whitacker (Washington), after an all-nighter of booze, sex and drugs, boldly guides a crippled airliner to a crash landing that nearly all the passengers survive. Although he is acclaimed as a hero, the legal, moral and ethical aspects of Whip’s behavior before and after the accident are much more ambiguous than initially meet the public eye. A study of addiction far more complex than the norm, FLIGHT is a compelling drama anchored by a great performance from one of our most distinguished actors. John Goodman, Don Cheadle, Melissa Leo and Kelly Reilly offer vibrant supporting turns in what is certain to be one of the most talked-about movies of the season. A Paramount Pictures release. FRANCES HA (2012) 86min Director: Noah Baumbach Country: USA Reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard’s celebration of the mystery and vulnerability of his muse Anna Karina in BANDE Á PART, Noah Baumbach’s love poem to Greta Gerwig is an effervescent, seeming effortless comedy about a young woman taking the first shaky, post-Ivy League steps in what will become her real life. Gerwig, who also co-wrote the script, proves herself far more articulate and funny than any of her former Mumblecore colleagues. Her Frances arrives in New York determined to become a post-modern dancer despite the fact that she’s constantly falling over her feet or putting one of them in her mouth. The movie is lightning-in-a-bottle–deft, sophisticated, and, in its myriad shades of digital gray, radiantly beautiful in a brand new way. THE GATEKEEPERS (Shomerei Ha’saf) (2012) 90min Director: Dror Moreh Country: Israel Since its stunning military victory in 1967, Israel has hoped to transform its battlefield success into the basis for long-lasting peace. Simply put, this hasn’t happened: 45 years later, violence continues unabated while the mistrust between both sides increases daily. In what can only be called an historic achievement, filmmaker Dror Moreh has brought together six former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel’s Secret Service, who reflect on their successes and failures to maintain security while responding to the shifting politics and imperatives of the “peace process.” Each man weighs in on topics ranging from preemptive strikes to confronting terrorists both Palestinian and Israeli; their thoughts and responses are candid, well-informed and rarely short of remarkable. An insider’s guide—and what insiders!—to five decades of Israeli history, THE GATEKEEPERS will surely be one of the most widely and hotly discussed films of the year. A Sony Pictures Classics release. GINGER AND ROSA (2012) 89min Director: Sally Potter Country: UK In 1962 London, two teenage girls, best friends since they were toddlers, are driven apart by a scandalous betrayal. Making her NYFF debut, writer-director Sally Potter (ORLANDO, ND/NF 1993) has crafted an intimate, riveting coming-of-age story—one made all the more powerful by a revelatory performance by Elle Fanning as the bright, anxious Ginger, increasingly affected by both the misery of her parents (deftly played by Alessandro Nivola and Christina Hendricks) and the era’s all-too-real fears of nuclear destruction. As her private dramas unfold against the backdrop of broader historical terrors, Ginger proves to be one of cinema’s most fascinating and formidable young heroines. Talented newcomer Alice Englert, the daughter of filmmaker Jane Campion, makes her impressive feature film debut as the troubled Rosa. HERE AND THERE (Aquí y Allá) (2012) 110min Director: Antonio Mendez Esparza Country: Spain/USA/Mexico Pedro returns home to a small mountain village in Guerrero, Mexico after years of working in the U.S. His daughters feel more distant that he imagined, but his wife Teresa is delighted he’s back. With the money he’s earned he can create a better life for his family, and maybe even start the band with his cousins he’s dreamed about for years. But work back home remains scarce, and the temptation of heading back north of the border remains as strong as ever. Antonio Mendez Esparza has made a most remarkable debut; rarely, if ever, has a film about US/Mexican border experience felt so fresh or authentic. Using non-professionals, Mendez Esparza gets remarkably nuanced performances that gives a richness of nuance and detail to each of his characters that goes way beyond cliché and stereotype. Winner of the Grand Prize at this year’s Critics Week in Cannes. HOLY MOTORS (2012) 115min Director: Leos Carax Country: France This unclassifiable, expansive movie from Leos Carax (Lovers on the Bridge)—his first feature in 13 years—operates on the exhilarating logic of dreams and emotions. After a prologue in which Carax himself, clad in pajamas, walks through a corridor that leads to a theater full of silent spectators, HOLY MOTORS segues to actor Denis Lavant, Carax’s longtime collaborator, playing a mysterious man named Oscar who inhabits 11 different characters over the course of a single day. This shape-shifter is shuttled from appointment to appointment in Paris in a white-stretch limo driven by the soignée Edith Scob (EYES WITHOUT A FACE); not on the itinerary is an unplanned reunion with Kylie Minogue. To summarize the film any further would be to take away some of its magic; the most accurate précis comes from its own creator, who aptly described HOLY MOTORS after its world premiere in Cannes as “a film about a man and the experience of being alive.” An Indomina release. HYDE PARK ON HUDSON (2012) 95min Director: Roger Michell Country: UK Bill Murray provides a career-topping performance as President Franklin D. Roosevelt in this captivating, winningly acted comedy-drama that pulls back the curtain on the complicated domestic arrangements at FDR’s beautiful New York country estate. Told from the perspective of Roosevelt’s little-known sixth cousin Margaret “Daisy” Suckley (Laura Linney), a member of the president’s intimate inner circle of women, HYDE PARK ON HUDSON revolves around the royal visit of King George VI (yes, him again!) to the United States on the eve of World War II. In a film both buoyantly comic and inescapably serious, screenwriter Richard Nelson and director Roger Michell (NOTTING HILL, VENUS) subtly examine the tricky dynamics of the chief executive’s relationships with his wife, mother and devoted female staff while also taking stock of his ego, shrewd manipulations and consummate ability to win people’s favor and confidence—most notably in the case of the insecure young king. It’s an entrancing peek at a time when the personal secrets of our leaders were well and truly kept. A Focus Features release. KINSHASA KIDS (2012) 85min Director: Marc-Henri Wajnberg Country: Belgium/France Perhaps the most ebullient “musical” you’ll see this year, Marc-Henri Wajnberg’s singular documentary/fiction hybrid follows a group of street kids—kicked out of their homes for being “witch children”—in the titular Congolese capital. These ever-resourceful youngsters decide to form a band and team up with Bebson, an eccentric impresario and one-time recording star; he’s just one of many unforgettable adults who, whether as informal instructors, fellow musicians, or menacing pursuers, impact the lives of these indefatigable tykes. Completely devoid of sentimentality and condescension, KINSASHA KIDS celebrates and honors both the resilience of its young protagonists and the chaotic city in which they live. THE LAST TIME I SAW MACAO (A Última Vez Que Vi Macau) (2012) 82min Director: João Pedro Rodrigues Country: Portugal/France This stunning amalgam of playful film noir and Chris Marker–like cine-essay from João Pedro Rodrigues (TO DIE LIKE A MAN, NYFF 2009) and João Rui Guerra da Mata explores the psychic pull of the titular former Portuguese colony. After a spectacular opening scene, in which actress Cindy Scrash lip-synchs, as tigers pace behind her, to Jane Russell’s “You Kill Me”—from Josef von Sternberg’s MACAO (1952), a key reference here—the film shifts to da Mata’s off-screen recollections of growing up in this gambling haven in the South China Sea. He’s come back to Macao to help a friend who later vanishes—a mystery that begets not only poetic ruminations on time, place, and memory but also magnificent compositions of flora, fauna, and cityscapes. Rodrigues will also have his work presented during NYFF’s soon-to-be-announced Views From the Avant-Garde schedule. LEVIATHAN (2012) 87min Directors: Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel Country: USA Having previously immersed us into the worlds of Montana sheep herding and Queens auto salvaging, respectively, NYFF alumni Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Sweetgrass) and Véréna Paravel (Foreign Parts) team for another singular anthropological excavation, this time set inside one of the world’s most dangerous professions: the commercial fishing industry. Taking to the high seas of the North Atlantic—Herman Melville territory—the filmmakers capture this harsh, unforgiving world in all of its visceral, haunting, cosmic detail, using an arsenal of cameras that pass freely from film crew to ship crew, and swoop from below sea level to literal bird’s-eye views. The result is a hallucinatory sensory experience quite unlike any other. To paraphrase Francis Coppola describing his Apocalypse Now, LEVIATHAN isn’t a movie about commercial fishing; it is commercial fishing. WORLD PREMIERE LIFE OF PI (2012) Director: Ang Lee Country: USA Based on the book that has sold more than seven million copies and spent years on the bestseller list, Academy Award winner Lee’s LIFE OF PI takes place over three continents, two oceans, many years, and a wide world of imagination. Lee’s vision, coupled with game-changing technological breakthroughs, has turned a story long thought un-filmable into a totally original cinematic event and the first truly international all-audience motion picture. LIFE OF PI follows a young man who survives a disaster at sea and is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While marooned on a lifeboat, he forms an amazing and unexpected connection with the ship¹s only other survivor…a fearsome Bengal tiger. A Twentieth Century Fox release. LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE (2012) 109min Director: Abbas Kiarostami Country: Japan/Iran/France Fresh from the triumph of his Tuscany-set CERTIFIED COPY (NYFF 2010), master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami travels even further afield from his native Iran for this mysteriously beautiful romantic drama filmed entirely in Japan. LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE revolves around the brief encounter between an elderly professor (the wonderful 81-year-old stage actor Tadashi Okuno, here playing his first leading role in a film) and a sociology student (Rin Takanashi) who moonlights as a high-end escort. Dispatched to the old man by her boss—one of the professor’s former students—the young woman finds her latest client less interested in sex than in cooking her soup, talking, and playing old Ella Fitzgerald records (like the one that gives the film its allusive title). Eventually, night gives way to day and a tense standoff with the student’s insanely jealous boyfriend (Ryō Kase); but as usual in Kiarostami, nothing is quite as it appears on the surface. Are these characters—who conjure in one another the specters of regret and roads not taken—meeting by chance, or is it fate? Is this love, or merely something like it? A Sundance Selects release. LINES OF WELLINGTON (Linhas de Wellington) (2012) 151min Director: Valeria Sarmiento Country: France/Portugal After conquering Spain, Napoleon Bonaparte sent a powerful army to invade Portugal in 1810. The French plowed through the resistance mounted against them until, as they approached Lisbon, they were met by a combined British and Portuguese army under the command of the Viscount Wellington. That’s the general historical outline for Valeria Sarmiento’s extraordinarily intimate epic of the Peninsular War. Along the way, we witness love affairs and treachery, noble action and selfish cruelty, from the highest social echelons to the most humble quarters. Prepared by the late Raul Ruiz from a screenplay by Carlos Saboga (Mysteries of Lisbon), LINES OF WELLINGTON was completed by Sarmiento—Ruiz’s longtime editor as well as his widow—who has created a revealing portrait of life during what has been called one of the first examples of “total war.” The all-star cast includes Catherine Deneuve, Mathieu Amalric, Elsa Zylberstein, Marisa Paredes, and John Malkovich as Wellington. MEMORIES LOOK AT ME (Ji Yi Wang Zhe Wo) (2012) 91min Director: Song Fang Country: China Song Fang’s remarkable directorial debut, in which she travels from Beijing to Nanjing for a visit with her family (many of whom play themselves), gracefully expounds on several poignant topics: how an adult child’s relationship with her parents changes as they grow older, and how to negotiate one’s place as a single woman in a world of married couples. Song, who many will remember for her wonderful performance as the nanny and aspiring filmmaker in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon (NYFF 2007), perfectly captures the rhythms of brief sojourns home, trips filled with reunions (both joyful and heart-wrenching), reminiscences, and moments of feeling painfully out of place. Winner of the Best First Feature prize at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. NIGHT ACROSS THE STREET (La Noche de enfrente) (2012) 107min Director: Raul Ruiz Country: France/Chile In August 2011, the cinema sadly lost one of its most magical artists, director Raul Ruiz—but, happily, not before he left us with one final masterpiece. Returning to his native Chile, Ruiz introduces us here to Don Celso, a bespectacled office worker heading into retirement. After an evening’s poetry class, Celso starts to narrate several tales from his childhood to his teacher, guiding the audience both within and outside the film through various levels of reality that mix the private and the public, the historical and the mythic, the here and the beyond. The journey is, of course, full of Ruizian flights of visual and verbal wit, where resonances between words and images form connections that at times defy traditional storytelling. NIGHT ACROSS THE STREET is both a moving meditation on one man’s mortality as well as an insightful summation of an artist’s brilliant career. A Cinema Guild release. Ruiz will also have his work presented during NYFF’s soon-to-be-announced Views From the Avant-Garde schedule. NO (2012) 110min Director: Pablo Larrain Country: Chile/USA/Mexico In 1988, in an effort to extend and legitimize its rule, the Pinochet military junta announced it would hold a plebiscite to get the people’s permission to stay in power. Despite being given 15 minutes a day to plead its case on television, the anti-Pinochet opposition was divided and without a clear message. Enter Rene Saavedra (an excellent Gael Garcia Bernal), an ad man who, after a career pushing soft drinks and soap, sets out to sell Chileans on democracy and freedom. Winner of the top prize in this year’s Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, NO is little short of a miracle: shooting on U-matic video tape to give the film the look of the Eighties, filmmaker Pablo Larrain (TONY MANERO, POST MORTEM) has created a smart, funny and totally engrossing political thriller with a powerful resonance for our times. A Sony Pictures Classics release. WORLD PREMIERE NOT FADE AWAY (2012) 112min Director: David Chase Country: USA The time is the 1960s, on the cusp of the summer of love. The place, suburban New Jersey. The music, 100 percent pure rock and roll. For his feature filmmaking debut, The Sopranos creator David Chase has crafted a wise, tender and richly atmospheric portrait of a group of friends trying to do what so many awkward suburban kids of the time dreamed of doing: form their own rock band. And these guys are good, fronted by a preternaturally gifted singer-songwriter (terrific newcomer John Magaro) who’s a dead ringer for the young Bob Dylan, even if dad (James Gandolfini) doesn’t take kindly to seeing junior strut around in long hair and Cuban heels. Masterfully capturing the era’s conflicting attitudes and ideologies, all set to a killer soundtrack produced by the legendary Steven Van Zandt, NOT FADE AWAY just might be the best coming-of-age movie since Barry Levinson’s Diner—and one of the best rock movies ever. A Paramount Vantage release. OUR CHILDREN (À perdre la raison) (2012) 111min Director: Joachim Lafosse Country: Belgium How does it happen that a vibrant, capable young woman loses her sense of self-worth and ends up destroying what she most loves? Belgian director Joachim Lafosse structures an all too familiar contemporary story that was headline news in Europe as a classical tragedy. Émilie Dequenne more than fulfills the promise of her award-winning performance in the Dardenne brothers’ Rosetta with this portrait of a young school teacher who marries a Moroccan immigrant (Tahar Rahim) and has four children with him, while gradually becoming aware of how much he is in thrall to his mentor, a domineering doctor (Niels Arestrup). Rahim and Arestrup reprise their father/son relationship from Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet but with an even more corrupt twist. Lafosse’s direction of this perverse narrative of patriarchal power and female oppression is like steel wrapped in silk. PASSION (2012) 94min Director: Brian De palma Country: USA Brian De Palma exhibits great panache and a diabolical mastery of frequent, small surprises in his first fiction feature since his magical comedy-of-coincidences, FEMME FATALE. With tongue planted in cheek, or maybe not—it’s up to you to decide—De Palma turns French director Alain Corneau’s 2010 LOVE CRIME into a far more droll, erotic tale of female competition. Noomi Rapace more than matches her performance in the original GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO as the assistant to an unscrupulous advertising honcho (Rachel McAdams), who steals her ideas and acts as if it’s all good sport. It’s great fun until De Palma zeros in on the fury in Rapace’s eyes. The De Palma trademarks are all present and deployed with coolly calculated abandon: a brilliant use of split screen; a confusion of identical twins; dreams within dreams; and shoes to die for. SOMETHING IN THE AIR (Après Mai) (2012) 122min Director: Olivier Assayas Country: France In the months after the heady weeks of May ’68, a group of young people search for a way to continue the revolution believed to be just beginning. For Gilles (newcomer Clément Mettayer), this means having to balance his political commitments with his desire to explore painting and filmmaking; for his girlfriend Christine (GOODBYE, FIRST LOVE star Lola Créton), this means throwing herself wholeheartedly into the task of organizing. Olivier Assayas (CARLOS, SUMMER HOURS) here describes the sentimental education of a generation that was too young to have been on the barricades; he brilliantly captures its explorations of new lifestyles, the arguments about strategies and tactics, and above all its music, a constant presence that becomes something like the artistic unconscious of an era. The period details are perfect, but what makes this film so special is the sense it conveys of history as lived experience. A Sundance Selects release. TABU (2012) 118min Director: Miguel Gomes Country: Portugal The ghosts of F.W. Murnau, Luis Buñuel, Joseph Cornell and Jack Smith hover above Miguel Gomes’s third feature—an exquisite, absurdist entry in the canon of surrealist cinema. Shot in ephemeral black-and-white celluloid, TABU is movie-as-dream—an evocation of irrational desires, extravagant coincidences, and cheesy nostalgia that nevertheless is grounded in serious feeling and beliefs, even anti-colonialist politics. There is a story, which is delightful to follow and in which the cart comes before the horse: the first half is set in contemporary Lisbon, the second, involving two of the same characters, in a Portuguese colony in the early 1960s. “Be My Baby” belted in Portuguese, a wandering crocodile, and a passionate, ill-advised coupling seen through gently moving mosquito netting make for addled movie magic. The winner of the Alfred Bauer Prize (for a work of particular innovation) and FIPRESCI (International Film Critics) award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. An Adopt Films release. YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET (Vous n’avez encore rien vu) (2012) 115min Director: Alain Resnais Country: France From its impish title to its vibrant formal experimentation, YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET proves that, at age 90, master French filmmaker Alain Resnais (HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, WILD GRASS) is indeed still full of surprises. Based on two works by the playwright Jean Anouilh, the film opens with a who’s-who of French acting royalty (including Mathieu Amalric, Michel Piccoli and frequent Resnais muse Sabine Azéma) being summoned to the reading of a late playwright’s last will and testament. Upon their arrival, the playwright (Denis Podalydès) appears on a TV screen from beyond the grave and asks his erstwhile collaborators to evaluate a recording of an experimental theater company performing his Eurydice—a play they themselves all appeared in over the years. But as the video unspools, something curious happens: instead of watching passively, these seasoned thespians begin acting out the text alongside their youthful avatars, looking back into the past rather like mythic Orpheus himself. Gorgeously shot by cinematographer Eric Gautier on stylized sets that recall the French poetic realism of the 1930s, YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET is an alternately wry and wistful valentine to actors and the art of performance from a director long fascinated by the intersection of life, theater and cinema.
