To-do: Week starting Thursday 12th November: The Messenger, Winter’s Bone, The American, Fred Astaire, American: The Bill Hicks Story
New releases this week: The Messenger, a film whose synopsis – about the soldiers who have to deliver news of killed soldiers to their next of kin – is not so interesting but whose director is notable for being one of the co-writers of Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There. Winter’s Bone, the Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning film about how surprisingly tough it is to be 17 and live in an impoverished family with an incapacitated mother and a fugitive meth-making father who’s put the family home up as his bail bond. The American, which might be Anton Corbijn’s remake of Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control but with zero irony.
On Wednesday, Cinematheque is screening Vietnam War documentaries: First, a compilation of Australian docos about anti-war protests followed by The 17th Parallel: The People’s War, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan’s 1968 document of the communities living under relentless US bombing raids in the border lands of North and South Vietnam. At ACMI.
At the Astor: On Friday, Exit Through the Gift Shop screens with Animal Kingdom. Sunday’s matinee is a Fred Astaire double bill: Flying Fown to Rio (1934) and Roberta (1935). Sunday night is eighties kitsch night with 1987’s He-Man adaptation Masters of the Universe starring Dolph Lundgren and 1988’s Willow directed by Ron Howard. On Monday they’re screening the first 2 Alien movies directed by Ridley Scott and James Cameron respectively.
At ACMI: American: The Bill Hicks Story, a documentary about the controversial comedian showing at ACMI through to November 23. Plus, the Festival of Jewish Cinema is screening at ACMI through to November 29.
Other new releases this week: Anything For Her, a film that proves that the French can make silly high-concept movies just as well as the Americans (it’s about a school teacher’s ingenious plan to help his wife escape from prison); Wild Target, a film that proves that English wit is not always all it’s cracked up to be (it’s a slapstick crime comedy starring Bill Nighy as an assassin; This Way of Life, a documentary that proves that New Zealand is an Edenic pastoral wonderland; and Machete, a film that proves that you’ll have to wait a bit longer for the Lindsay Lohan comeback.
