Goings On: Rodrigues, Assayas, and More
New York. Having run through the festival circuit for months now, João Pedro Rodrigues’s The Ornithologist now begins its theatrical run on Friday at the IFC Center and the Film Society of Lincoln Center before heading out to select theaters around the country. The Village Voice’s Melissa Anderson notes that “Rodrigues has called The Ornithologist, which follows a lone bird expert in a remote northern part of the country, an ‘adventure film.’ It’s a genre he fantastically destabilizes to encompass martyrdom, transmigration of the soul, and wild revelers cavorting in Mirandese, a nearly extinct language spoken in his country and one of five heard in this invigorating shape-shifter.” All in all, this is one “dynamic, oddly joyful movie.” For more reviews, see Critics Round Up.
A Vision of Resistance: Peter Nestler opens at the Film Society of Lincoln Center today and runs through Wednesday. “Admired by the likes of Jean-Marie Straub and Harun Farocki, Peter Nestler was one of the most important filmmakers to emerge from postwar Germany. . . . A vigorous yet nuanced opponent of fascism, an excavator of lost histories and a masterful formalist whose works are rich with a materiality all their own, Nestler has spent five decades chronicling how things get made, whether in a factory or at the level of ideology.”
Brilliante Mendoza’s Thy Womb (2012) screens at MoMA tomorrow as part of the series A New Golden Age: Contemporary Philippine Cinema.Angeline Gragásin writes that “beyond the stunning local landscapes and show-stopping did-you-see-that?! nature moments—a tortoise lays its midnight eggs, a cow rides upright upon a cruising canoe, a pair of sharks encircles the underwater camera—the film has so much more to offer in the way of simple human rituals that have somehow become almost obsolete, at least for those of us who spend more time on the Internet than IRL.”
Also at Screen Slate, Sonya Redi recommends Vittorio De Sica’s “brilliant and biting comedy” Il Boom (1963), screening through Tuesday at Film Forum, and Dana Reinoos spotlights George A. Romero’s Monkey Shines: An Experiment in Terror (1988), presented tonight and Saturday as part of the Anthology Film Archives series Simian Vérité.
Crispin Hellion Glover will be at the IFC Center on Tuesday and Wednesday to present It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE (2007) and What Is It? (2005) as well as both parts of his Big Slide Show. He’ll be taking part in Q&As, signing books, and giving audiences a sneak preview of his next film.
Ongoing: BAMcinemaFest 2017 and the Bertrand Tavernier retrospective at the Quad.
Los Angeles. “First released in the Summer of 1983, The Man With Two Brains was the third feature-length collaboration between Steve Martin and comedy legend Carl Reiner, following The Jerk (1979) and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982),” writes Tim Lucas for the New Beverly. “Especially with their second film, a technical breakthrough that allowed carefully lighted and staged new material to be seamlessly shuffled with classic film noir footage and stars, Reiner and Martin seemed to be one-upping (and we know how painful that can be) the genre-spoofing territory of Reiner’s former partner, Mel Brooks, while simultaneously inspiring Woody Allen to make one of his own outstanding works, Zelig (1983). As far as movies go, their partnership was arguably the most fertile and rewarding period for both gentlemen.” The Man With Two Brains screens Friday and Saturday with Roger Corman’s X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963).
Pittsburgh. It was while he was attending film school at Howard University that cinematographer Bradford Young (Ain't Them Bodies Saints,Selma, and that as-yet-untitled Han Solo project that was, until yesterday, being directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller) “learned about the work of Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris, the renowned black photographer who shot for the Pittsburgh Courier newspaper, and whose treasure trove of images currently resides” at the Carnegie Museum of Art, notes Brentin Mock. For CityLab, Mock talks with Young about his video installation REkOGNIZE, on view through December 31.
Toronto.Something in the Air: The Cinema of Olivier Assayas, a complete retrospective at TIFF Cinematheque, opens tomorrow and runs through August 20. For the TIFF Review, Brad Deane sketches out a brief biography: “While Assayas grew up surrounded by his father’s friends—members of the French film industry who belonged to the generation derided by the nouvelle vague as the ‘Tradition of Quality’—his teenage world was defined by painting, politics and rock music, the radicalized youth culture that was still going strong in the aftermath of the May ’68 revolts.” And Montreal filmmaker Mark Slutsky: “The 20-year-old Assayas film Irma Vep is one that I’ve spent quite a few years obsessing over.”
London. For frieze, Taiwanese artist Charwei Tsai tells the story behind Hear Her Singing, made in collaboration with Tibetan filmmaker Tsering Tashi Gyalthang and on view at the Southbank Centre through July 2.
And tomorrow, Being Ruby Rich, the series mentioned here several times over the past few days, opens at the Barbican.
San Sebastián. From Friday through October 15, Tabakalera presents The Music of Ramón Raquello and his Orchestra, “the first large scale solo exhibition by Eric Baudelaire in a public institution in Spain.”
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