With the Oscars happening on March 10, a lot of the late-arriving Best Picture nominees are still on local screens, particularly American Fiction, The Holdovers, Poor Things, and The Zone of Interest. (See my thoughts on all of those titles here.) At the same time, nominees for the increasingly important Best International Feature Film are arriving at our art houses, too, and in fact Perfect Days and Io Capitano are here now. (The Zone of Interest is nominated for both Best International Feature and Best Picture.)
Perfect Days
[Watch the trailer. Currently playing at the Mariemont Theatre.]
Among our greatest living directors, Wim Wenders distinguishes himself for making profound films about both his native Germany’s anguished culture and the fascinating lure of Americana. For instance, his 1984 Paris Texas (written by Sam Shepard) gave Harry Dean Stanton perhaps his greatest role as the loner Travis, who reunites with his son to search for Travis’ missing wife. It’s considered one of the best American movies of that decade. Then, in 1987, he made one of Germany’s best contemporary movies, Wings of Desire, about angels who watch over a divided Berlin. His 2011 experiment with 3D for Pina, about the groundbreaking work of the late German choreographer and dancer Pino Bausch, was an art house hit.
Perfect Days is perhaps his highest profile movie since then. The predominately Japanese language film concerns Tokyo toilet cleaner Hirayama (Koji Yakusho, winner of the Best Actor award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival), who complacently accepts his job since it leaves him free time to enjoy arts and music. (One song he plays is Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.”) The story line bears some resemblance to Jim Jarmusch’s great movie Paterson, but Wenders’ work is being hailed for his mastery with actors, narrative flow, and settings.
“Perfect Days chronicles only a couple of weeks—one easy and placid, the other full of disruption—and slowly, exquisitely hints that the structure of Hirayama’s life enables him to exist in the present, representing a choice that may have come after a long trauma,” Alissa Wilkinson writes in The New York Times. “There are clues in his encounters with family members and strangers and, later, in his rattled response to an unexpected sight.”
Io Capitano
[Watch the trailer. Opens March 1 at the Esquire Theatre.]
Italian for I, Captain or Me, Captain, this is the latest from Italian director and screenwriter Matteo Garrone, whose complex 2009 crime drama Gomorrah won international praise. His new film is the story of a teenage would-be emigre from Senegal named Seydou (played by Seydou Sarr) who takes off with his cousin (Moustapha Fall) to find a better life in Europe. Their efforts to get to Italy turn into an odyssey through Africa’s harsh Maghreb region that involves separation, imprisonment in Libya, and a risky boat journey across the Mediterranean. Garrone based his story on accounts of those who had undertaken similar journeys. The film’s primary language is Wolof, spoken in Senegal.
“Sarr, a musician making his acting debut, gives a wonderfully open-hearted performance,” says NPR’s Justin Chang. “And it rises to a new pitch of emotional intensity in the movie’s closing stretch, when the meaning of the title becomes clear. There’s something poignant about the way Garrone chooses to approach his home country, Italy, through an outsider’s eyes. Seydou’s journey may be long and difficult, but cinema, Io Capitano reminds us, is a medium of thrillingly open borders.”
Sometimes I Think About Dying
[Watch the trailer. Opens March 1 at the Esquire Theatre.]
This low-key drama with comic elements from Rachel Lambert features Daisy Ridley as a lonely young office worker living on the coast of Oregon without a significant other. While its overall reviews, as aggregated by Metacritic, are just fair, the positive ones have been quite interest-piquing. Here’s one from The Washington Post’s Michael O’Sullivan: “As subdued in tone and emotion as the neutral beige and brown ensembles favored by its mousy, office-worker protagonist, Sometimes I Think About Dying is an unconventional love story: one less about the thrill of romance than about the terror—and ultimate release—of connection.”
Daisies
[Watch the trailer. Screens at 7:30 p.m. March 14 at the Esquire Theatre.]
While the Esquire and the Mariemont theaters show new movies, they also increasingly host special repertory screenings of movies—some classics, some cult favorites, some music or art related. Some are sponsored by outside groups like University of Cincinnati’s EU Film Festival, Outer Cinema, Deep Dive with Joe Horine, and more. The best way to keep track is to follow the “Events” page on the theaters’ separate websites.
One especially exciting and historically important film this month is Daisies, sponsored by Covington’s Conveyor Belt Books. Made by Czechoslovakian director Vera Chytilova and released there in 1966 as the Prague Spring movement was building, this film gets a rare theatrical screening. Czechoslovakia as an Iron-Curtain country in the ’60s trying to distance itself from the control of the Soviet Union by embracing homegrown artists who made free-spirited and innovative films. The movement lasted well into 1968, when Russian troops rolled into the country to restore orthodoxy.
Daisies has maintained its high regard since then. Carmen Gray wrote on the Criterion Channel’s website that it’s the “most formally radical and one of the most politically subversive films” of that whole movement.
Ghosts of the Chelsea Hotel (And Other Rock & Roll Stories)
[Watch the trailer. Screens at 7:30 p.m. March 11 at the Woodward Theater, Over the Rhine.]
After drawing crowds last month to its special screenings of The Sweat East, the Woodward has a busy March calendar. The highlight is a screening of this new documentary featuring numerous people who lived or partied (or both) at New York City’s infamous Chelsea Hotel. In the movie, some recount their good times as well as the ghosts they experienced.
Built in the late 19th Century, the Chelsea long has been a home to artists and bohemians, including musicians Patti Smith, Syd Vicious, Richard Barone, and Leonard Cohen as well as such writers as Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller, Jack Kerouac, and enough others to fill the rest of this column’s space. The film was written and directed by Danny Garcia.
Stop Making Sense
[Watch the trailer. Screens at 7:30 p.m. March 18 at the Woodward Theater.]
The Woodward is also doing an encore screening of the recently restored classic 1984 film capturing a Talking Heads concert at the “Burning Down the House” peak of their popularity. This film was first screened at the Woodward in November. “It was very crowded and a lot of fun! It sounds great through our new PA,” Woodward owner Chris Varias says via email. “I could see it turning into our Rocky Horror of sorts, once people get a taste of how fun an environment the Woodward provides for this particular film.”
The Mariemont also has a screening of Stop Making Sense planned for 5 p.m. March 24, and the Esquire will show it at 7:30 p.m. April 3.
Who Can See Forever: A Portrait of Iron & Wine
[Watch the trailer. Screens at 7:30 p.m. March 25 at the Woodward Theater.]
The Woodward’s third music film of the month is about the life and career of the thoughtful singer and songwriter Sam Beane of the band Iron & Wine. It includes 19 songs he performs at a North Carolina ballroom.
Oscar Shorts
[Screens March 1-3 and 8-9 at the Garfield Theatre, downtown.]
Cincinnati World Cinema once again screens the year’s best live action, documentary, and animation films nominated for Oscars, with separate programs for each category. The nominees in all categories are reportedly quite strong this year.
The Hunter
[Watch the trailer. Screens at 7 p.m. March 27 at the Garfield Theatre.]
Willem Dafoe is an extraordinary actor who’s capable of showing kindness, anguish, and anger with great depth. And he’s made so many movies since his first breakthrough Oscar-nominated role in 1986’s Platoon that it’s hard to keep track. Cincinnati World Cinema is presenting him in this 2011 “under-exposed independent studio gem from Australia.” He plays a mercenary in Tasmania, stalking a rare tiger that many thought extinct. Frances O’Connor and Sam Neill are in supporting roles, but this is first and foremost a Dafoe showcase.
Cinema Revival: A Festival of Film Restoration
One of my favorite annual regional film festivals is at the Wexner Center for the Arts on Ohio State University’s campus. Now in its 10th year, it welcomes in March with some excellent rediscovered and restored movies. March 1 brings back an important film by an American woman, Nancy Savoca’s 1993 Household Saints, a drama about three generations of Italian American women “trying to balance tradition, modernity, and Faith,” according to the Wexner. This screens at 7 p.m. and is preceded at 5 p.m. by a new documentary about the making of Household Saints. Savoca will be present for the 7 p.m. debut of her restored film.
Of the remaining eight movies and one panel discussion scheduled through March 4, two look especially interesting.
At 7 p.m. March 2, there will be what is being billed as a “Restoration World Premier” of Charles Burnett’s “lost” 1999 romantic comedy The Annihilation of Fish, starring James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave as an interracial middle-aged couple (he’s Fish, she’s Poinsettia) exploring a relationship. Filmmaker Burnett will be present for the screening. His 1978 Killer of Sheep, which intimately depicts Black life in L.A.’s Watts section, has come to be regarded as a landmark in American filmmaking.
And at 4:15 p.m. on March 3 you can see a restored version of British director Michael Powell’s viciously murderous yet artistically ambitious Peeping Tom from 1960. Focusing on a shiveringly creepy man who not only kills women but films their dying panic, it’s one of the most shocking movies ever made—up there with Psycho and Night of the Living Dead. Incredibly, director Powell had been a luminary of British film until this, having made such warm, humane, and accomplished movies as Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes. But British critics turned on him once Peeping Tom came out, and it took years, even decades, for the still-uncomfortable film to be accepted as a horror classic.
Robot Dreams
[Watch the trailer. Screens at 6 p.m. March 6 at Speed Art Museum, Louisville.]
Another of the region’s important museum-connected cinematheques has a promising March schedule. What really stands out to me is this film, which scored one of the biggest upset nominations of this year Oscars—it’s up for Best Animated Feature, even though it’s so far mainly been screened theatrically in the U.S. at film festivals. Director Pablo Berger based the story about a dog and a robot on a graphic novel by Sara Varon, and it’s set in 1980s New York. It has no dialogue, but there is music. “Beautiful, unexpected and tender,” says director Guillermo del Toro.
Incidentally, Berger previously made 2012’s Blancanieves, an invigorating silent movie that updated the Snow White story and opened the 2013 Mindbenders Film Series at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. I’m proud to say that was my festival, and I’m glad to see Berger has gone on to even better things.
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