Flickers of Dance
Lincoln Center’s annual Dance on Camera Festival is a must-see
By Susan Reiter
Now in its 40th year, Dance on Camera is at a new level of maturity. The annual event at the Walter Reade Theater that once fit into a three-day weekend has expanded to fill five days, Jan. 27–31, and within its brief duration has its own opening night, centerpiece and closing night films. Read more
Thug Cinema
Guy Ritchie’s dastardly Sherlock Holmes reboot
By Armond White
Guy Ritchie’s calculations in his sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows are so low-down they’re almost diabolical. He has retooled the famous fictional detective character with no respect for either Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary creation or the ticket-buying audience. Against tradition (previous incarnations of Holmes emphasized mystery and deduction), Ritche panders to the current, degraded taste for blatancy and violence. Read more
The 21st Annual New York Jewish Film Festival
January marks the beginning of a new film festival season—and what better way to kick it off than with the 21st annual New York Jewish Film Festival, Jan. 11–26? Presented in partnership with The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the festival promises to provide a diverse global perspective on the Jewish experience with 35 features and shorts from 11 countries, many of which will be followed by post-screening Q&As with filmmakers and special guests in attendance. Read more
Armond White’s Film Capsules
50/50—The buddy comedy genre faces cancer. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is helped through crisis by Seth Rogen. Decent emotions get cheated of depth by blithe, nonspiritual approach. Dir. Jonathan Levine.
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Free Movie Tickets for UWS
According to a heads up from Council Member Gale Brewer’s office, Upper West Side residents can score free tickets to see the forthcoming film “New Year’s Eve” in early December. The Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting has coordinated the free ticket offer to compensate the neighborhood for the inconveniences caused by the movie’s filming there. The picturesque brownstone lined streets have always beckoned Hollywood – last month the same offer came from the movie “Tower Heist,” and literary buffs might be hoping to get a similar deal when the Jonathan Safran Foer novel turned Tom Hanks film “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” comes to theaters – so it’s nice for the studios to acknowledge that the film crews blocking streets and taking up precious parking spots interrupt the day-to-day goings on of the Upper West Side. Read more
Story reigns supreme in The Hedgehog
By Ed Koch
The Hedgehog (+)
I truly enjoyed this film from beginning to end. It has a slow rhythm, and although nothing very exciting happens until the very end, it is totally absorbing.
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Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
Serge Gainsbourg is rescued from the hipsters by a new biopic
By Armond White
Graphic artist Joann Sfar makes a bold directorial debut with Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life by bringing his own artistic personality to bear upon this tribute to Serge Gainsbourg, the French recording artist/roué who has become a hipster icon. For Sfar, Gainsbourg (born Lucien Ginsberg) is foremost an icon of French Jewish identity. One of the first of the film’s many animated sequences is “THE JEW AND FRANCE” poster announcing Sfar’s underlying theme, as in his graphic novel The Rabbi’s Cat. This immediately distinguishes Gainsbourg as a work of powerful, personal imagination.
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Ruining Paul Rudd
Our Idiot Brother is The Small Lebowski
By Armond White
Count Our Idiot Brother among Paul Rudd’s poor choices—a select group of dumb to unbearable films including The Shape of Things, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Dinner for Schmucks that waste the actor’s estimable gifts. Rudd’s commitment to playing off-center characters who combine nerdiness with idiosyncratic charm has made him a new kind of romantic comedian. He takes the Cary Grant mantel into the post-feminist era, where masculinity shades easily into non-aggressive, quasi-gay traits—the hallmarks of Rudd’s best characterizations in I Love You Man, Role Models, Diggers and Clueless.
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Pass the Popcorn—Viewers Will Flip Over Apes
By Ed Koch
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (+)
This movie is a prequel to Planet of the Apes, which was such a success back in 1968. “Rise” in the title of the new film refers to how it came to be that human civilization perished and apes—actually chimps—took control of the earth. The story is played straight by its central character, Will Rodman (James Franco), a scientist working at a chemical company, Gen-Sys, on an experimental drug that will hopefully be used to reverse and cure Alzheimer’s.
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Nim a Keeper, Horrible Bosses, Simply Awful
By Ed Koch
Project Nim (+)
This is a fascinating documentary about a family with seven children raising a chimp in the 1970s.
Dr. Herbert Terrace, associated with Columbia University, called on Stephanie LaFarge to mother a baby chimp named Nim on the fifth day of its life. Stephanie, a sort of flower child in attitude, was delighted to do so. The project was a scientific experiment to hopefully teach sign language to the chimp, enabling it to communicate with humans. It worked. The chimp was also taught to stand on and use a toilet bowl.
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