
Kind of a sparse week, but still some quite notable things to come, including a Dreyer double feature on Sunday night on TCM. Speaking of TCM, their star of the month this month is Doris Day, with a five-day tribute going on all week. I’m not a huge Doris Day fan, and I couldn’t pick out very many of her movies I felt like wholeheartedly recommending (though I’ve seen most of them), but if you are a fan definitely check out TCM’s whole schedule. They’re playing five or six of her movies a night all week.
Monday, April 2
6:00am – Sundance – Police, Adjective
Part of the Romanian New Wave of slow-burn dramas and crime films, this one looks like an interesting take on the police procedural, though it garnered some mixed reviews during its run on the festival circuit.
2009 Romania. Director: Corneliu Proumboiu. Starring: Dragos Bucur, Vlad Ivanov, Irina Saulescu.
(repeats at 3:00pm)
7:00am – IFC – Curse of the Golden Flower
One of the weaker entries in Zhang Yimou’s series of historical martial-arts-on-wires films, but it still has its moments – and the production design, as usual, is flawlessly beautiful. Definitely worth a watch if you’re a fan of the style.
2006 China. Director: Zhang Yimou. Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Gong Li, Jay Chou, Ye Liu.
(repeats at 1:25pm)
9:35am – IFC – Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is likely my all-time favorite book or very close to it, and it’s a book that you’d never expect could be made into a good film. It depends an awful lot on stream of consciousness, internal monologue and memory, and a subjective experience of time – all stylistic and narrative elements that don’t translate well to film. However, this 1997 version of the novel with Vanessa Redgrave perfectly cast as the older Clarissa Dalloway and Natascha McElhone as flashback-Clarissa comes about as close as I think is cinematically possible. It doesn’t come close to matching the book for me, but it is a solid film and captures a lot of Woolf’s spirit.
1997 USA/UK. Director: Marleen Gorris. Starring: Vanessa Redgrave, Natascha McElhone, Michael Kitchen, Alan Cox, Sarah Badel, Lena Headey, John Standing.
(repeats at 3:55pm)
3:00am (3rd) – IFC – The Dreamers
Bernardo Bertolucci’s love letter to the French New Wave, with American Michael Pitt heading to Paris just in time to join the ’68 Cinematheque riots, becoming friends and eventually lovers with a siblings Louis Garrel and Eva Green, a pair of fellow cinephiles. Bertolucci draws on Band of Outsiders and Jules and Jim especially, as well as the history of the era and his own sensibilities. It loses me personally a bit in the eroticism of the second half, but the first part is fantastic.
2003 France/UK/Italy. Director: Bernardo Bertolucci. Starring: Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel, Eva Green.





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