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The Cinecultist's Weekly Movie Picks: Artsy Edition
By
Karen Wilson
Published May 4, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Karen Wilson
Published May 4, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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Perhaps you've heard that this little summer movie starring a seldom written about actor is out this weekend: ie. Mission Impossible III with the utterly crazoid, yet infinitely fascinating Tom Cruise. He flies in helicopters! Rides fire engines! Attends screenings of his movie in Harlem! And, he wants your $10.75. Will you be powerless to resist? Here's a few other movie going options this weekend, if you've decided to boycott the work of Suri's papa.
Actor's actor Edward Norton stars with Evan Rachel Wood in the Los Angeles cowboy film Down in the Valley which opens this weekend. Norton plays a man living in the San Fernando Valley who thinks he should be in Monument Valley, and Wood is the young girl who becomes fascinated by his out-dated ideals. Formerly great director Chen Kaige made the most expensive movie in China ever, the mystical martial arts epic The Promise. We've heard not such great things about it from the critics but maybe you're a sucker for wire work and swords. Also, there's a new Austrialian flick with Guy Pearce, that intense young fellow who dabbld in Hollywood cinema. It's called The Proposition and its sent in the gun-totting 1880s outback and was directed by musician Nick Cave.
The movie juggernaut that is the Tribeca Film Festival continues unabated, even after hosting MI:III's premiere at the Ziegfeld on Wednesday. One event we'd like to point out for sheer amusement sake: the premiere on Saturday at noon of the newest Lassie feature film. What's more interesting than the fact that they still make movies starring Lassie, is that according to press releases Gothamist received, the real live Lassie will be on the red carpet! We wonder if the old girl can fetch Tom's dignity from the well where it seems to have fallen. On Saturday, there's also a Family Festival Street Fair put on by TFF on Greenwich Street between Hubert and Duane from 10 am to 6 pm.
Starting last weekend and continuing through May 10, BAM's Cinématek is hosting a series devoted to the films of Japanese director Mikio Naruse. On par with the works of great stylists like Ozu and Mizoguchi, Naruse was Kurosawa's favorite director according to BAM and his films are rarely screened in the U.S. Like Ozu, many of his movies' titles reference the cycles of nature with this weekend's line up including Late Chrysanthemums tonight, Summer Clouds on Friday and Floating Clouds on Saturday. Makes you feel a little meditative and melancholy just hearing the titles, doesn't it?
She may not be a huge star here what with the tepid reception of the Bollywood-lite Bride and Prejudice but Aiswarya Rai is mega in Asia. She has a new film Mistress of Spices playing this weekend at the ImaginAsian theater at 239 E. 59th Street. Rai plays a member of cult which worships spices who is then sent to Oakland, CA to set up a shop. There are various mysterious rules imposed on her and her magical spice powers but needless to say she meets Dylan McDermott and there's probably singing and dancing in there somewhere. Should be a spicy (yet Bollywood chaste) good time.
Gothamist Pick:
Comic book fan or not, folks loved Terry Zwigoff and Dan Clowes 2001 movie Ghost World. Now this daring duo are back with a new collaboration out this weekend, Art School Confidential. In it, Max Minghella (son of director Anthony) stars as a disaffected art student who dreams of being the next artist for the ages. But before his work can be recorded for posterity in Jansen's, he has to get through the pretentious and slightly ridiculous world of art school, populated by social malcontents played by the likes of John Malkovich, Anjelica Huston and Jim Broadbent. Will Jerome be able to win his dream girl (Sophia Myles) and achieve the greatness he desires? Find out at the movies!
Malkovich and Minghella in a still for Art School Confidential
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