To-do: Week starting Thursday 10th March: Howl, Rango, Frederick Wiseman, Robert Altman, screwball comedies, Uncle Boonmee, Robocop
Week starting Thursday 10th March:
Opening this week:
Howl is the James Franco-starring film exploring both the Six Gallery debut and the 1957 obscenity trial of American poet Allen Ginsberg’s noted poem Howl. Matt Connolly of Reverse Shot summed it up as “leav[ing] one feeling informed but not enlightened, cognizant of artistic gambles but only recalling well-intentioned pieties: I’m Not There as directed by Stanley Kramer.”.
Rango is an animated film about a chameleon stranded in the desert from Gore Verbinski, that some-kind-of-genius who gave us that sublimely excessive piece of Hollywood spectacle, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
Meanwhile…
Renowned documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s Model is a 1980 film about the New York modelling agency Zoli. Screening as part of ACMI’s Fashion Models on Film program on March 12, 13, 14, and 16.
Rooftop Cinema is also apparently getting in on the Fashion Week festivities. They’re showing Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter, his satire of the fashion industry featuring a whole bevy of stars including Marcello Mastroianni(La Dolce Vita) and Sofia Loren.
Melbourne Cinematheque presents the last week of its season of classic screwball comedies. This week’s double bill is My Man Godfrey (1936), about a socialite who hires a derelict to be her family’s butler, only to fall in love with him; and Nothing Sacred (1937) about a disgraced reporter who is sent to interview a woman supposedly dying of radium poisoning. Unaware of her actual good health, he invites her to New York as the guest of the newspaper where she receives a ticker tape parade and the key to the city. At ACMI, March 16.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s masterful Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a cinematic poem concerning a man who in his last days finds himself surrounded by his loved ones including his dead wife and his lost son who has taken the form of a ghost monkey. We reviewed it here. At ACMI March 12-14.
RoboCop is Paul Verhoeven’a brilliantly satirical and absurdly violent film about a cyborg sent to Detroit to clean up crime by a recently privatised police department looking to open up real estate to some aggressive property developers. Screens with Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness at Astor on March 14.
Le quattro volte is a film from Italian director Michelangelo Frammartino that explores the philosophical idea of transmigration - the passing of the soul from human, animal, plant and finally mineral. Perhaps a good accompaniment with Uncle Boonmee. At ACMI until March 15.
Also opening this week:
Kiss Me Again, a sequel to a film about some Italian guy who feels angsty about all the great sex he’s been having; The Company Men, a populist American film starring Ben Affleck (of course) as a white collar worker who is fired and finds the real meaning of life in good, honest blue collar work; The Mechanic, an action film starring Jason Statham that probably won’t offer the homerotic spectacle of the actor topless and wrestling a group of men in a pool of oil like in The Transporter; and The Rite, a maybe interesting-looking film about exorcism.
"Model" (directed by Frederick Wiseman, 1980)
