Screen Machine

To-do: Week starting Thursday 2nd June: Kelly Reichardt retrospective, Julia’s Eyes, Here I Am, X-Men: First Class, Fassbinder retrospective, The Holy Mountain, L’Atalante, The Trial

Week starting Thursday 2nd June

New releases opening this week:

Meek’s Cutoff is the latest film from Kelly Reichardt, the distinctive American director of Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy. The first period piece for Reichardt, this film follows a group of American settlers and their strained dependence on a Native American as they search for water in the Oregonian desert. Showing exclusively at ACMI until June 19. Check out Brad Nguyen’s review here.

Julia’s Eyes is a Spanish horror film about a woman who finds herself tormented by an unseen stranger as she slowly loses her sight.

Cane Toads: The Conquest is a documentary about Australia’s most reviled introduced species. Showing in 3D.

Here I Am is a tear-jerking drama about an aboriginal woman who struggles to get her life back on track after being released from jail. Is that Kasey Chambers I hear on the trailer? Is it wrong to judge a film on that alone? Let’s try our hardest not to.

X-Men: First Class is a regular X-Men film but with a sexier cast. It’s directed by Matt Vaughn who directed the lame Kick-Ass and the pretty okay Stardust.

Special seasons:

ACMI presents Focus on Kelly Reichardt, a retrospective of the works of an American independent director who has made only a handful of films but has developed a big reputation for films such as Wendy and Lucy (2008) starring Michelle Williams and Old Joy (2006) starring Will Oldham a.k.a. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and featuring a soundtrack by Yo La Tengo. The season also features Reichardt’s earlier work such as her debut River of Grass (1993) and the Super-8 featurette Ode (1999). At ACMI until June 19.

The Melbourne Cinematheque presents Totally, Tenderly, Tragically: The Films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, a retrospective of the iconoclastic German director. The 3-week season begins with the famous Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1973) a reworking of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, and Fox and His Friends (1975) about an unemployed carnival worker who finds himself ensnared in the romantic power play of a group of upper-class socialites & entrepreneurs after winning the lottery. At ACMI each Wednesday, June 8-22.

Jazz on Film is a program of films at ACMI curated for the Melbourne International Jazz Festival. Should probably highlight Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain (June 11) the bizarre cult film scored by free jazz artist Don Cherry. Full program here. At ACMI, June 4-13.

Old films:

L’Atalante is Jean Vigo’s acclaimed 1934 film about a sea captain who takes as a wife a woman he hardly knows. It screens with Orson Welles’ The Trial (1963) an adaptation of the Kafka novel about a man in a nameless country arrested for a crime that is never explained to him. At the Astor, June 5.

Crumb is a documentary directed by Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World, Art School Confidential) about the provocative comic artist Robert Crumb who created Fritz the Cat and illustrated a number of American Splendor editions. At ACMI, June 3 & 10.

Scarface is Brian De Palma’s 1983 ultra violent remake of the 1932 Howard Hawks movie. This stars Al Pacino in a career-defining role of a cuban refugee who, upon arrival in America, climbs to the top of the drug cartels during the cocaine boom of the 1980s. At the Astor, June 6.

Other new releases opening this week:

A Little Bit of Heaven stars Kate Hudson as a career woman who gets cancer and learns that what she really needs to be happy is a man and then she marries Gael Garcia Bernal who thankfully has a large penis according to the trailer and feminism is set back twenty years. The End.

Ready is a Bollywood film whose trailer, like many Bollywood trailers, is not interested in giving us any hint of the film’s plot. Rather, it tells us that there is dancing, fighting and a pretty girl. Sold?

Star-crossed lovers in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" at ACMI