#WhatToWatchThisWeekend Movies Reviews AvengersEndgame TheWhiteCrow

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND April 26, 2019  - AVENGERS: ENDGAME!!!

This is the big one, the start of the summer movie season – like last year, one week early – but also a singularly movie that is likely to crush pretty much everything still playing in theaters, and that is…

AVENGERS: ENDGAME!!

What’s being promoted as the finale of storylines that have been set-up over ten years of Marvel movies finally hits theaters one year after the fateful ending of Infinity War. Sadly, I won’t be seeing this until early next week, since I’ll be busy attending the Tribeca Film Festival over the weekend. (See more details about that below.)

Still, it’s hard to deny the draw of a sequel to last year’s Avengers: Endgame, which had such an astounding cliffhanger ending that few will want to wait to see this one, mainly to see how the surviving heroes deal with Thanos and get their friends and colleagues back.

I guess that’s all I have to say about the movie (other than my box office analysis at The Beat), until I see it so let’s get straight to the…

LIMITED RELEASES

If you live in New York, I beseech you to go see Pamela Green’s doc BE NATURAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ  (Zeitgeist Films), narrated by Jodi Foster, when it opens in New York on Friday. It will open at the IFC Center in New York plus a few other cities as it slowly expands to other cities. It’s an amazing story about the first-ever female filmmaker who was around during the earliest days of cinema in France.

Ralph Fiennes’ directs and co-stars in THE WHITE CROW (Sony Pictures Classics), an amazing film starring Oleg Ivenko as ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who travelled to Paris with his ballet company, ended up meeting and falling in love with Clara Saint (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and defecting. Fiennes plays Nureyev’s early teacher, but it’s a fairly small role as he allows his younger cast to shine in a terrific story that covers much of Nureyev’s early life before defecting. It’s a fantastic film, regardless of whether you’re into ballet or not. The White Crowopens in New York and L.A. on Friday.

Not quite as amazing (but a movie I had been looking forward to seeing since Toronto last year) is Justin Kelly’s  JT LEROY (Universal Home Entertainment), which stars Kristen Stewart as Savannah Knoop, the young woman who pretended to be author J.T. Leroy, an abused transgender young man, who was duped by actual author Laura Albert (played by Laura Dern) to help fulfill the ruse for the press and other celebrities. Jim Sturgess plays Geoffrey Knoop, Laura’s boyfriend and Savannah’s brother while Diane Kruger plays Eva, a character clearly meant to be Asia Argento, who made The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things based on “Leroy’s” novel. I was very interested in this film, partially because I interviewed Argento for that film without knowing the story until seeing Jeff Feurzeig’s doc Author: The JT Leroy Story. The movie, co-written by Knoop and Kelly from her own book documenting events, is okay, but I feel that the screenplay could have been a lot more interesting if adapted by a better writer, and I’ve generally been mixed about Kelly’s work as a director, as well.  I guess if you’re interested in this story, you can check this out in select cities or On Demand.

Josh Lobo’s thriller I TRAPPED THE DEVIL (IFC Midnight) stars Scott Poythress as Steve, a man who is holding a man hostage in his basement who he believes is the Devil himself. When his brother (AJ Bowen) and wife (Susan Burke) arrive for the Christmas season, they discover Steve’s secret and begin wondering if the man is in fact the Devil.  I liked the movie’s premise more than the execution, as I didn’t think too much about the cast.

Roxanne Benjamin made her directorial debut as part of the horror anthology Southbound. She also had a segment in the XX anthology, and she now makes her feature film debut with BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK (Magnet Releasing). It follows a young woman who is working as a summer employee at a state park, but who takes a wrong turn and ends up in a crime scene with no communication to the outside world. Bravely, she must spend the night in the wilderness protecting the crime scene on her own.


Opening on Wednesday at Film Forum is Carmine Street Guitars (Abramorama), Ron Mann’s documentary about Rick Kelly’s West Village guitar shop that’s been where he and his apprentice Cindy Hulej design and build custom guitars for the musical superstars. Some of the guitarists who pop in and are captured on camera include Charlie Sexton, Marc Ribot, Lenny Kaye and Bill Frisell with a special appearance by Jim Jarmusch. If you’re into music or are a guitar player, you’ll want to check this out.

Maia Wechsler’s doc If the Dancer Dances (Monument Releasing) goes into the dance studio of Stephen Petronio as they try to breathe new life into Merce Cunningham’s 1968 piece “RainForest.” The movie is being released in conjunction with Cunningham’s centennial, opening Friday in New York at the Quadand in L.A. at the Laemmle Music Hall.

A Thousand Thoughts

LOCAL FESTIVALS

The big festival starting on Wednesday is the17thAnnual TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL, which kicks off on Wednesday with Life, Animated director Roger Ross Williams’ new documentary The Apollo, which is having it World premiere AT the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Other special events held at the Beacon Theater, also far north of Tribeca, include the 35thAnniversary of This is Spinal Tap and 40th Anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, a special talk between Tribeca co-founder Robert De Niro and his longtime director Martin Scorsese, as well as special concerts/talks following docs about the Wu Tang Clan (Wu Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men) and Phish frontman Trey Anastasio (Between Me and My Mind).  

I’m not sure why, but I tend to gravitate more to the docs at Tribeca than the narratives, maybe because there have been maybe a dozen narratives at the festival that I truly loved. On the other hand, the festival has become renowned for so many amazing docs, and this year, there are goods ones about Stones bassist Bill Wyman (The Quiet One), Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation, Maiden (about the first all-woman around-the-world sailing team), another one about movie sound (Making Waves) and one about a Ohio factory that shuts down but then is resuscitated by a Chinese company that offers the community new hope (American Factory). I’m also looking forward to seeing the doc Other Music, about New York’s indie record store which recently shut its doors. Add to that other music docs like Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice and Mystify: Michael Hutchence, and there’s quite a bit that I’m going to want to check out. 

Some of the narratives that I’m interested include The Kill Team, starring Nat Wolff and Alexander Skarsgard, and Kevin McMullin’s Low Tide, which has its World Premiere. Also, soon-to-be-released movies like Mary (American Psycho) Harron’s Charlie Says, starring Mat Smith as Charles Manson, and Joe Berlinger’s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, starring Zac Efron as Ted Bundy, will screen at Tribeca before their respective releases on May 10.

Hopefully, I’ll find some more hidden gems as the festival progresses.

Up in Toronto, Canada, one of my favorite cities, this year’s Hot Docs begins on Thursday. As the name might imply, this is a documentary film festival with an amazing array of docs, many getting their world premieres. I’m a little busy with Tribeca to go through all that is being offered, but if you live in Toronto, then you should be able to find some interesting subjects covered.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

Metrograph Pictures’ second release is a restored rerelease of Djibril Diop Mambety’s Hyenas (1992), a comic adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play “The Visit” about a rich woman who is visiting a small African village with enough money to back the man running for mayor of the town. Instead, she reveals that he got her pregnant and abandoned her with child, leading her to a life of misery before coming into money. She offers a bounty to kill the man who did this to her, and the village needs to decide whether they like the mayoral candidate, a popular shopkeeper, as much as they need the money being offered. It’s a pretty fascinating film, beautifully shot, and it’s nice to see the Metrograph reviving it through their distribution arm. On top of that, the retrospective of Brazilian filmmaker Nelson Pereira Dos Santos continues through Sunday, including a few repeat showings. Late Nites at Metrograph  offers Gaspar Noe’s recent Climax, as well as Evangelion 1.0 and Evangelion 2.0for the Anime fans.  Playtime: Family Matinees ends the month with a classic Kurt Russell Disney movie, The Barefoot Executive  (1971).

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Weds. afternoon is a screening of Melville’s 1956 film Bob Le Flambeur, while a double feature of Sydney Pollack’s The Yakuza  (1974) and John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow II  (1987) runs Weds. and Thursday. The Extended Version of Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee  (1965), starring Charlton Heston, screens on Friday and Saturday, followed by the double feature of Peter Sellers’ 1966 film After the Fox and Elaine May’s The Hearbreak Kid on Sunday and Monday. Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight and the 1983 comedy Doctor Detroit are the Friday and Saturday midnight movies, respectably. This weekend’s KIDEE MATINEE is Lord and Miller’s animated Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, while Monday’s matinee is David Fincher’s Fight Club.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

The “Trilogies” series continues this weekend with Andrzej Wajda’s “War Trilogy” (A Generation, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds) on Wednesday, Jean Cocteau’s “Orphic Trilogy” (Blood of a Poet, Orpheus and Testament of Orpheus) on Thursday. Ingmar Bergman’s “God and Man Trilogy” (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light and The Silence) screens on Friday, and then Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy begins on Friday then continues on Saturday, April 27, and the third part on May 4. (Trust me, this is not an easy series to watch in one sitting.) Also, Marcel Pagnol’s “Marseilles Trilogy” will screen on Sunday. Film Forum Jr. shows Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955), which is also part of Ray’s “Apu Trilogy” for the “Trilogies” series. See how that works?

BAM CINEMATEK (NYC):

BAM is killing it this week with a number of releases including a restored rerelease of Nina Menkes’ 1991 film Queen of Diamond with Menkes present for a QnA on Friday night and a panel on Saturday night. Set in Vegas, it deals with a disaffected blackjack dealer who drifts through a series of encounters. On Wednesday, BAM’s “Screen Epiphanies” series continues with Vanity Faircritic K. Austin Collins presenting Brian De Palma’s thriller Femme Fatale, starring Rebecca Romjin. Lastly, on Sunday, the “Beyond the Canon” series continues with a double feature of Charles Lane’s Sidewalk Stories  (1989) with Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid (1921).

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

The Egyptian gets in on Aero’s Classic Movie ClownsThursday with a Marx Brothers double feature of A Night at the Opera (1935) and A Day at the Races  (1937) with authors Robert Bader and Josh Frank signing their book. Friday sees a Stanley Donen tribute with a screening of Singin’ in the Rain  (1952), plus there will be an encore screening of the 7-hour War and Peace  (1967) on Sunday and Disney’s Mary Poppins (1964) on Sunday with a panel in conjunction with the Art Directors Guild Film Society.

AERO  (LA):

A new series called “Cowboys and Samurai” begins this week, and it’s little surprise that most of the samurai movies are from Akira Kurosawa. It begins on Thursday with a double feature of Rashomon (1950)and High Noon, then continues Friday with The Searchers (1956) and The Hidden Fortress (1958) and Seven Samurai (1954) and The Wild Bunch  (1969) on Saturday. Sunday’s double feature is Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) and the 1962 film Harakiri (1962) (not directed by Kurosawa!). Sunday is also a rescheduled screening of the musical Annie (1982), as part of the Albert Finney remembrance.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Waverly Midnights: Parental Guidance  continues with Poltergeist  (1982), Weekend Classics: Love Mom and Dad screens Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid  (1921), while Late Night Favorites: Spring shows Jodorowsky’s El Topo (1970).

MOMA (NYC):

Modern Matinees: B is for Bacall will show 1956’s Written on the Windon Weds, How to Marry a Millionaire  (1953) Thursday and then end the series on Friday with a reshowing of Vincent Minelli’s Designing Woman  (1957).

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

The museum’s See it Big! Action series continues with two screenings of William Friedkin’s The French Connection 1971) on Friday and Saturday, Bullitt  (1968) on Saturday and George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road on Sunday. There will also be a showing of William Lustig’s 1980 horror film Maniacwith Lustig in attendance as part of its Disreputable Cinema series. This weekend is the first I’ve ever wished I lived out in Astoria, Queens.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Wild Things: The Ferocious Films of Nelly Kaplan ends Thursday, but I don’t have any information for the weekend as of yet.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

This Friday’s midnight movie is John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), also starring Kurt Russell.

That’s it for this week. Next week: Four new wide releases that aren’t Avengers: Endgame!