Repertory

A weekly roundup of what else is showing around town.

by Matt Prigge

(1999) (Shown on film): Julie Taymor (Frida, Across the Universe) made a deranged and promising film debut with this phantasmagoric take on Shakespeare’s first tragedy—a nasty revenge saga with elements that would pop up, more refined, in the likes of King Lear, Richard III and Macbeth. Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange and Alan Cumming scream and pose in Taymor’s aggressively time-warped vision of ancient Rome and, if nothing else, get your attention. B+ Thurs., May 1, 7pm.

The city’s premier female-centric film and music festival, Black Lily moves into its second year, with four fairly packed days of film fare to go along with its music side. Screening solely at International House this year, the fest boasts wares that come to us solely from women directors on all manner of subjects, and from places as far off as India, Poland, Sweden, Ireland and Jordan. The big nab is Tia Lessin’s Trouble the Water, an account of an aspiring rap artist and her husband trapped in Katrina- dominated New Orleans that scored the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance. Karen Gehres’ Begging Naked, the fest’s opening feature, takes the form of a confessional by a teen prostitute in Giuliani’s New York to an artist. New Year Baby follows an American-raised Cambodian as she tracks down her parents, whom she just discovered weren’t killed in the Khmer Rouge as she had thought. The Dutch Over the Hill confronts the preoccupation with young anemic female bodies. Africa Unite, from Stephanie Black, trails three generations of Bob Marley’s family traveling to Ethiopia to put on a mega-concert. Producer and historian Pearl Bowser arranged African American on the Band Stand, a cavalcade of clips featuring jazz’s grand dames, while Leila Khaled: Hijacker documents the world’s first female hijacker, from Palestine. All that, and gobs of shorts as well. Consult the site for the full schedule. Thurs., May 1-Sun., May 4, various times.

(1993) (Shown on film): Remember when Kenneth Branagh actually was the next Laurence Olivier, only more fun? Relive the halcyon days with this faithfully represented trifle, boasting all manner of goings-on at an estate. B+ Wed., April 30, 7pm.

(1999) (Shown on film): See Ambler Theater. B+ Wed., May 7, 7pm.

(1939) (Shown on DVD): The most famous adaptation of the most adapted of the Sherlock Holmes ventures kicks off a month of the detective at the Colonial. Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce do the rites as the morphine addict and his dim assistant, respectively, over a fairly inaccurate rendering of the tale. (Not reviewed.) Sun., May 4, 2pm.

(2006) (Shown on video): A cult-worthy ’60s psych-folk outfit probably best known for appearing on the Easy Rider soundtrack, the Holy Modal Rounders get their own doc, which reveals among other things that though they never had the success of their colleagues, they did have enough clout to score no less than Sam Sheppard as their drummer for a spell. Filmmaker Paul Lovelace will be present for the screening. (Not reviewed.) Mon., May 5, 7pm.

(2006) (Shown on film): A big hit in France, Lisa Alessandrin’s rom-com closes out the ’07-’08 Jewish Film Festival. Like the recent Lebanese pic Caramel, Gorgeous! cribs the Sex and the City template—group of friends balancing various problems—for a cinematically underrepresented group. This time it’s Sephardic Jewish women, though by all accounts it’s more fizz than depth. (Not reviewed.) Sat., May 3, 8:30pm; Sun., May 4, 2pm; Mon., May 5, 7pm.

(1989) (Shown on film): Not long after I-House books a welter of Thai master Apichatpong Weerasethakul films comes this retro on another of today’s cinephilic sensations: Portuguese super-minimalist Pedro Costa. Next week you can catch the Philadelphia premiere of his biggest film, the stripped-down slum epic Colossal Youth. Till then, don’t even think of ignoring his first two films (see below), which find the future video-camera-wielder shooting in some of the lushest 35 mm you’ve ever seen. Borrowing the stark blacks and milky whites of Jacques Tourneur and Night of the Hunter, The Blood, Costa’s precocious feature debut, is a genre overhaul about two brothers and a young girl who form a makeshift family unit after the former’s father walks out on them. Not that you can ever be totally sure what happens. Most of the big plot developments are truncated or outright elided, giving the film the feeling that it’s hovering between dream and living nightmare. Preceding The Blood will be a sort of sneak preview of the minimalism to come: Costa’s 2005 short Ne Change Rien, in which French actress/chanteuse Jeanne Balibar (recently of The Duchess of Langeais) croons three songs in three static black-and-white video shots with varying degrees of both closeness to its subject and visual clarity. B+ Tues., May 6, 7pm.

(1994) (Shown on film): Costa graduated to a name international cast (Isaach De Bankolé and Edith Scob) with his second feature, in which a young nurse gets stuck in a small Portuguese village after finding the home of a comatose worker injured at his Lisbon job. More on this—and the director’s four other features and plenty of shorts—next week. (Not reviewed.) Wed., May 7, 7pm.

(2005) (Shown on DVD): With a plot detailing the romance between a neo-Nazi (Jeremy Renner) and a black woman who thinks she can channel Hitler’s spirit (Gabrielle Union), there’s only one way for Van Fischer’s indie to go but up. Luckily this festival fave—a hit at both Tribecca and Slamdance—goes far higher than expected. With refreshingly tiny exceptions, Fischer’s not out to make big honking points on racial relations in America so much as to loosely follow its characters, who drag the story in some unexpected directions. Renner, terrific in the likes of Dahmer and The Assassination of Jesse James et al., in particular gives a disarmingly charming performance, always reminding us that his (mostly good-natured) energy is simply misdirected. Fischer more or less follows Renner’s lead, which guides the film even through some of its rockier third-act patches. With Cary Elwes, Sally Kirkland, Ethan Suplee and far too little of onetime Manson portrayer Steve Railsback. B- Fri., May 2, 7pm.

(2006) (Shown on DVD): Jack Black is fat. Mexicans are inherently funny. Repeat for 91 minutes. C+ Mon., May 5, 7:30pm.

(Shown on DVD): Irit Reinheimer and Konnie Chameides doc examines the many outside of mainstream Judaism. (Not reviewed.) Sat., May 3, 7:30pm.