Film Reviews & Previews
The Strongest Man is a Miami-set comedy about an anxiety-ridden Cuban-American who fancies himself the strongest man in the world. In a quest to recover his most beloved possession, his golden BMX bicycle, he finds and loses so much more.
The Strongest Man filmmaker and co-stars will introduce and participate in a Q&A after the Saturday, June 27 7:30 PM screening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK20g6CNg-k
A week from Friday we are very pleased to open JIMMY’S HALL, the latest from prolific — 49 turns in the director’s chair and counting, beginning in 1964 — British filmmaker Ken Loach. A drama set in 1921 and based on a shameful episode in Irish history, follows Jimmy Gralton, whose sin was to build a dance hall on a rural crossroads in an Ireland on the brink of Civil War. The Pearse-Connolly Hall was a place where young people could come to learn, to argue, to dream…but above all to dance and have fun. As the hall grew in popularity, its socialist and free-spirited reputation brought it to the attention of the church and politicians who forced Jimmy to flee and the hall to close.
A decade later, at the height of the Depression, Jimmy returns to County Leitrim from the U.S. to look after his mother. He vows to live the quiet life. The hall stands abandoned and empty, and despite the pleas of the local youth, remains shut. But as Jimmy reintegrates into the community and sees the poverty, and growing cultural oppression, the leader and activist within him is stirred. He makes the decision to reopen the hall in the face of what they may bring…
In his Variety review from Cannes, Scott Foundas wrote, “Ken Loach has taken a despicable episode of modern Irish history — the 1933 deportation without trial of one of its own citizens, James Gralton — and made a surprisingly lovely, heartfelt film from it with JIMMY’S HALL.”
We open the exquisite new Italian-French production LA SAPIENZA this Friday at the Royal. Eugène Green’s film begins with a brilliant architect plagued by doubt and loss of inspiration as he embarks on a quest of artistic and spiritual renewal guided by his study of Borromini. His wife, similarly troubled by the crassness of contemporary society, as well as the couple’s listless marriage, decides to accompany him. A chance encounter with adolescent siblings upends the couple’s plans and changes their lives.
This morning the L.A. Times published arts reporter David Ng’s piece about the film, featuring an interview with the filmmaker. Mr. Ng will attend and introduce the 7:10 PM screenings on Friday and Saturday, June 26 and 27. He adds, “Eugene kindly sent me a few humorous words to say before the screenings.”
Here’s the beginning of the Times article:
“Widely regarded as one of the most important architectural achievements of the Baroque era, the Church of Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza in Rome stands out for its bold juxtaposition of geometric shapes, its spiral dome and its resplendent, light-filled interior.
“Though not a large church by European standards, it nonetheless remains the supreme accomplishment of its creator: 17th century Italian architect Francesco Borromini, whose prodigious talents unfortunately brought him more misery than joy. He committed suicide in 1667 at the age of 67.
“Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza still operates as a church and as the home of Rome’s municipal archives. It also plays a key role in “La Sapienza,” opening Friday, a fictional movie that explores how Borromini’s architecture changes the life of a contemporary architect who himself is suffering from an existential crisis.
“The movie’s title refers to Borromini’s church but also evokes the somewhat archaic Italian word used during the Renaissance.
“”When people try to define it, they either say it is ‘knowledge’ or ‘wisdom.’ But for me it’s knowledge that leads to wisdom,” writer-director Eugène Green said.
“The Paris-based filmmaker is a Baroque specialist who once led the French stage company Théâtre de la Sapience. He recalled that as a young student pursuing art history, he dreamed of making a biopic of Borromini, using the real architecture as a backdrop.
“”He’s an artist who didn’t make concessions,” the director said by phone from Paris, in an interview conducted in French. “It’s a mystical architecture. In the context of Roman Baroque architecture, it’s a pared-down style — even the decorative aspects have a purpose in the larger form. I conceived my own artistic work in that manner.”
“Once he began making movies in the late ’90s, Green realized he had no interest in costume dramas.
“”As soon as you put a period costume on an actor, they try to act differently, like they’re in the theater,” he said.”
This Friday we’ll be opening the comedy that killed at Sundance earlier this year, THE OVERNIGHT, at our Pasadena, Claremont and Encino theaters (planning a July 3 opening in NoHo as well). In an attempt to acclimate to L.A., a young couple (Taylor Schilling and Adam Scott) spends an increasingly bizarre evening with the parents (Judith Godrèche and Jason Schwartzman) of their son’s new friend. In Rolling Stone Peter Travers called it “an indecently hot and hilarious sex comedy with quartet of playfully scrappy actors who couldn’t be better suited to their roles or more eager to rouse our prurient interest.” Below is a featurette in which, amusingly, the actors, one a native Angeleno, another a Frenchwoman, talk about how their real-life experiences of polite society in our city always remain exceedingly polite (read: dinner at 5:30; good-night at 8). But that would have made for a boring movie.
Harley-Davidson, leather, tattooed biceps: Ron “Stray Dog” Hall looks like an authentic tough guy. A Vietnam veteran, he runs a trailer park in rural Missouri with his wife, Alicia, who recently immigrated from Mexico. Gradually, a layered image comes into focus of a man struggling to come to terms with his combat experience. When Alicia’s teenage sons arrive, the film reveals a tender portrait of an America outside the mainstream. STRAY DOG is a powerful look at the veteran experience, a surprising love story, and a fresh exploration of what it takes to survive in the hardscrabble heartland.
We are pleased to open STRAY DOG at the Music Hall on Friday, July 24. Filmmaker Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone) will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:20 PM screenings on Friday and Saturday, the 24th and 25th.
REVENGE OF THE MEKONS is playing today through Thursday at the Playhouse and tonight only at the Royal! The L.A. Times just posted this feature story about the band and the film.
“Born in art school at Leeds University in 1977, the Mekons long ago conceded that fame and fortune were outside their grasp, and it kind of shows. The band’s fan site, while kept current, is run by a guy named Nobby and looks like it was coded in 1996.
“Unlike university peers Gang of Four, the Mekons are seldom cited as an influence by hipster punks. There hasn’t been a “Mekons revival.” Their fans are aging with them, and the rest of the world doesn’t seem to care.
“Such creativity in the face of ambivalence is a central theme of “Revenge of the Mekons,” the aptly titled and engrossing documentary by filmmaker Joe Angio. The film traces the rises, falls and plateaus of the self-described British “fundamentalist punk rock art project,” whose eight current members are a mix of visual artists, writers, singers, gallery owners and field-recorders and are spread across three continents in Southern California, Chicago, rural England, London and Siberia. (Multi-instrumentalist Lu Edmonds is married to a Siberian.)
“The film is having a brief run at the Playhouse in Pasadena, with additional screenings at the NoHo 7 on Monday and the Royal on Tuesday.”
Read the rest of the Times piece here.
IN STEREO is about David and Brenda, who are perfect for each other, and everyone knows it except David and Brenda. After they break up, due to mutual immaturity, they voyage through a romantic purgatory that shakes both of them to their core, until they realize what’s apparent, and work out a design for being together that they refuse to call “being together.” A sharply observed, dark comedy about the complexity of modern relationships, IN STEREO is a humorous look into the lives of confused 30-somethings trying to figure it all out.
IN STEREO writer-director Mel Rodriguez III will participate in a Q&A after the 7:20 screening at the Music Hall on Friday, July 3rd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvYDs84hnms
Through a clever mix of stop motion animation and interviews, THE WANTED 18 recreates an astonishing true story: the Israeli army’s pursuit of 18 cows, whose independent milk production on a Palestinian collective farm was declared “a threat to the national security of the state of Israel.”
We’ll be hosting Q&A’s after the 7:40 PM screenings of THE WANTED 18 at the NoHo this Friday and Saturday, June 19 and 20 and after the 5:30 show on Sunday, June 21:
June 19: Ina Fichman, Producer of THE WANTED 18; Salam Al-Marayati, President of Muslim Public Affairs Council; Suhad Babaa, Executive Director of Just Vision;
June 20: Ina Fichman, Producer of THE WANTED 18; Suhad Babaa, Executive Director of Just Vision;
June 21: Suhad Babaa, Executive Director of Just Vision.