Film
New England theaters, and especially Boston’s, have compiled a fantastic lineup of programs for October, a classically-great month for films (especially if horror is your thing).
In “Drive,” director Nicolas Winding Refn crafts a cool, tight and stylish film that gets away with a lot. He managed to make a movie that works as some kind of bizarre but wonderful Michael Mann/Jean-Pierre Melville/Quentin Tarantino mash-up, helmed by star Ryan Gosling, who described it as a “violent John Hughes movie.”
Despite its serious script and premise, “Contagion” is somehow able to retain a subtle element of “fun,” an admirable feat for a movie in which scores of people die in nearly every scene.
What drives serious writing about film? “When Movies Mattered” suggests an answer: it helps for a critic to take a side, not as consumer advocate, hipster crank, or box office predictor, but as a passionate advocate for standards, often taking on the role of separating overpraised films from the unfairly neglected.
The Hedghog’s steady, slow pacing—so rare in any film today—captures the rhythms of haut bourgeois life in Paris and draws out the nuances of how people change and are changed by relationships everywhere. The Hedgehog (Le herisson). Directed by Mona Achache. At the Kendall Square Cinema, West Newton Cinema, and other screens throughout New England.…
The film is many things. It is a testament to the restaurant, immortalizing it on celluloid. It’s also a requiem for the restaurant, which you see as it is closing. It’s a manifesto for culinary invention. It’s a tribute to chef Ferran Adrià and what he has wrought, how he has transformed thinking about food. Screens at the MFA tonight through December 30.
The beginning of a not-bad fall film season in New England, with some Woody Allen classics, an Iranian melodrama among the youth set, an appearance by a legendary Japanese experimental film maker, and a couple of high-grade action flicks.
Thought to be lost, the only existing print of NATHAN THE WISE was discovered in Moscow in 1996. The Coolidge Corner Theater is screening a tinted and beautifully restored version of the film, with an original score by Aaron Trant performed live by the After Quartet.
Narrative holes and esoteric tendencies aside, SENNA is remarkable for its feat of compiling what must have been hundreds if not thousands of hours of Formula One footage. The film is surprisingly cinematic and has a vintage, if not sometimes grainy, appearance.
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