BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD
Odeon: March 14
An extraordinary and affecting movie that will stay in the memory for a long time. Faced with both her hot-tempered father’s fading health and melting ice caps that flood her ramshackle bayou community and unleash ancient aurochs, six-year-old Hushpuppy must learn the ways of courage and love. ‘Sometimes miraculous films come into being, made by people you’ve never heard of, starring unknown faces, blindsiding you with creative genius …’ (Roger Ebert). ‘It’s hard not to see Beasts as an expression of post-affluent America. And here’s the surprise: the grinding Great Recession may never offer up a movie as happy, or as inspired by poetry and dream, as this one’ (New Yorker). ‘Maybe the best way to describe Beasts of the Southern Wild is faux-k art. Even Hushpuppy’s name suggests an author more interested in the folk- and foodways of a culture-with-a-capital-C than the people who comprise it. Too often, she and her peers are presented as curios to be exhibited rather than as fully realized—if resolutely un-mythic—human beings’ (Washington Post).
HITCHCOCK
Fulgor: March 14 – 20
An amazingly cavalier recounting of the story behind the creation of Hitchcock’s masterpiece Psycho, which plays loose with almost any facts anyone could care to assemble. The empty cliché that behind every great man there is a strong woman is full blown here to embarrassing effect (what is Helen Mirren doing in this mess?). Anthony Hopkins never gets past being himself, with Hitchcockian prosthetics. Feeble and disturbingly unilluminating. Others may beg to differ. ‘This is one of the best movies of 2012. With rich performances, a riveting and articulate screenplay, meticulous direction and enough grounded emotional intensity to keep your pulse pounding, Hitchcock grabs you by the lapels like a suspense classic by Hitch himself—a knockout from start to finish’ (New York Observer). ‘Hitchcock for dummies: brisk, jolly, well-played but oversimplified’ (Empire). ‘This is all a long way of saying that the best way to better understand the man who made those and dozens of other movies is simply to see them. There’s no case to be made for a mangy shortcut like Hitchcock. It’s all surface and formula’ (Boston Globe).
TEA WITH MUSSOLINI
British Institute: March 20, 8 pm
‘Tea With Mussolini belongs to an old-fashioned tradition of escapist moviemaking in which star turns, romance and melodrama are swirled together with pretty scenery and a dash of camp into a confection that used to be called “a woman’s picture.” If it isn’t believable for a second, on its own glamorous terms it isn’t half-bad’ (New York Times). ‘Franco Zeffirelli’s autobiographical, World War II, Tuscan drama is edged with (uncharacteristic) irony and artistic reserve, turning what is essentially an old-fashioned, faintly twee exercise in nostalgia into an amusing historical entertainment’ (Time Out). ‘Franco Zeffirelli’s motives for creating Tea With Mussolini may have been decent ones, and this film has a talented cast of actors and is set in one of most beautiful and historic places in the world, among great and timeless works of art. Despite all that, it comes off as a sentimental and trite piece of work’ (World Socialist Web Site).
