JANUARY IN THEATER
JANUARY IN THEATER
Under the Skin: The Pleasures of Discomfort
opens January 5
One of cinema’s particular powers is to shed light on the disconcerting and discomfiting moments that we know to be a part of life but rarely speak of aloud. Under the Skin is a program made up of itchy, aggravating works, films that feature unsettling sexual encounters, performances that don’t petition for viewer sympathy, and all other manner of bad behavior, often withholding overt moral judgement on these events and forcing viewers to arrive at their own conclusions without authorial hand-holding. A series of cinematic irritants and provocations, perfect for the cinephile who likes to squirm in the dark.
Series Includes:
Attenberg - Baal - Benny’s Video - The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
Dancer in the Dark - Dogtooth - The Duke of Burgundy - Enter the Void
Exhibition - Fat Girl - Humanity - Let the Sunshine In
The Piano Teacher - Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom - Shadows in Paradise - The Skin I Live In
Songs From the Second Floor - The Tribe - To Our Loves - Under the Skin
Also Starring... James Coco
opens January 5
A son of Manhattan’s Little Italy, James Emil Coco spent his formative years in the Pelham Bay neighborhood of the Bronx, the rotund, prematurely balding Coco was nobody’s idea of a movie star, but a string of on and off-Broadway successes beginning in the late ’50s and ’60s made Hollywood take notice, and beginning with 1964’s Ensign Pulver, Coco emerged as an MVP-caliber supporting player. Whether playing a pitch perfect Sancho Panza in 1972’s Man of La Mancha, Walter Matthau’s wicked WASP uncle in Elaine May’s 1971 A New Leaf, or an unlikely love interest in Otto Preminger’s May-scripted Such Good Friends of the same year, Coco’s orotund enunciation and crack comic timing elevated any film he appeared in—so join us in celebrating the legacy of this Bronx boy made good.
Series Includes:
A New Leaf - Man of La Mancha - The Muppets Take Manhattan
Murder by Death - Scavenger Hunt - Such Good Friends
Animal Farm: Snakes
opens January 5
Grousing about the new widescreen technology that was transforming the film frame, Fritz Lang famously declared, “Cinemascope is not for men, but for snakes and funerals.” What ol’ Fritz neglected to note, however, is that snakes can make for mighty fine cinema, as evidenced in the latest entry in our ongoing “Animal Farm” series. You can see Indiana Jones hating them, Ice Cube being distraught by their size, Samuel L. Jackson being equally distraught at their presence on a plane, a Kurt Russell-sized Snake with the hiss-like surname Plissken, and much, much more in this loving tribute to our scaly, slithering friends.
Series Includes:
Anaconda - Cobra Verde - Escape From New York
Five Deadly Venoms - The Lair of the White Worm - Raiders of the Lost Ark
Snakes on a Plane - Venom
The Future Looks Bright from Afar
Opens January 5
It seems almost no one is looking forward to a fantastic future of flying cars much anymore, and many would be relieved to know that there’s any kind of future at all in store for us… but as this series shows, such grim prognostications are nothing new. Bringing together a collection of dystopian and speculative science-fiction films that envisage coming times marked by creeping authoritarianism, government surveillance, and technological “advancement” leading to regressions in human self-fulfillment, “The Future Looks Bright from Afar” offers a look at the many ways in which past generations have described the shape of things to come with fear and trembling.
Series Includes:
12 Monkeys - Alphaville - Blade Runner: The Final Cut - Children of Men
Gattaca - Ghost in the Shell - Metropolis - Moon
Robocop: Director‘s Cut - Silent Running - Snow Piercer - Soylent Green
Stalker - THX 1138 - Total Recall
Days of Being Wild: Leslie Cheung
January 5
The appearance of three new restorations of films starring Leslie Cheung provides a welcome premise to look back at the outsized accomplishments of the pop star and actor’s tragically brief life. Born in 1956 in Hong Kong, the city where he would take his own life in 2003, Cheung was both idolized and ridiculed for his androgynous persona and ambiguous sexual orientation, but this didn’t keep him from becoming one of the top stars in a still deeply homophobic industry, booking sold-out arena tours and giving career-highlight performances in films by Wong Kar-wai, Stanley Kwan, and John Woo. More than 20 years gone now, the “King of Cantopop” will never be dethroned.
Series Includes:
Ashes of Time Redux - The Bride with White Hair - Days of Being Wild
Farewell My Concubine - Happy Together - Nomad - Rouge
Jester in the Court: Jean-Pierre Léaud’s Finest Follies
Opens January 5
From portraits of bloated, superannuated aristocracy and bumbling young manhood to blistering—and prototypical—portrayals of a particularly Gallic and flamboyant brand of “himbo”-ism, Nouvelle Vague Golden Boy Jean-Pierre Léaud has been one of cinema’s foremost interpreters of masculine folly, in all its often infuriating charms, since first taking cinemas by storm as François Truffaut’s adolescent alter ego in 1959’s The 400 Blows. In a selection of films highlighting Léaud’s talents as a live wire comic actor, we celebrate this eclectic and electric body of work, and a performer whose onscreen ingenuity knows no bounds.
Series Includes:
Bed and Board - The Death of Louis XIV - Irma Vep
I Hired a Contract Killer - Love on the Run - Made in U.S.A.
The Mother and the Whore - Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes - Stolen Kisses
Metrograph Selects: Ted Gerike
Opens January 13
Select films, chosen specially by Metrograph staff. For the latest iteration of our recurring series, Metrograph’s Head of Digital Ted Gerike picks some of his personal favorites.
“As Metrograph’s only Los Angeles-based employee, I thought I’d lean in and pick a few from the Land of Fruits and Nuts. These are artist films, made by pretty different folks across generations. While they don’t have much in common formally, they share qualities that I find essentially Angeleno: an impulse to make something rather than talk about it, irreverence, and a deep understanding of the apparatuses at work in the construction of images.”—Ted Gerike
Series Includes:
Ed Ruscha’s Premium + Miracle - Sir Drone - Three Shorts by the Yonemoto Brothers
Filmcraft: Nathan Crowley
Opens January 19
Film critics don’t often lavish the attention they give to directors and stars on production designers, but the production designer’s sometimes unheralded art consists of nothing less than building the world of a movie, in the process doing a great deal to create those distinct cinematic environments that one wants to visit again and again and again. In this edition of Filmcraft we present the work and inspirations of renowned production designer Nathan Crowley, whose work has earned him a host of accolades, including six Academy Award nominations (including The Prestige, The Dark Knight, and Dunkirk), five BAFTA nominations, 10 ADG nominations, and an Emmy nod (West World). Metrograph is proud to pay tribute to Crowley, presenting two of his feted collaborations with Christopher Nolan, and two of his personal filmic inspirations.
”The intricate design of The Prestige involved weaving together multiple storylines, set pieces, and locations. Despite a limited budget, the decision was made to film entirely on location in Los Angeles, even though the story was set in London. This approach facilitated the creation of a complex narrative that relied heavily on interweaving sets, allowing audiences to fully immerse themselves in the characters’ transition from friendship to bitter feud. Similar to the way The Good, the Bad and the Ugly utilizes world-building to enhance a personal story, The Prestige relies on its meticulously crafted environment to deepen the audience‘s connection with the characters and their journey.”—Nathan Crowley
Intros and Q&As with Nathan Crowley January 19 and 20
Series Includes:
The Dark Knight - The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
The Parallax View - The Prestige
Fire Over Water: Films of Transcendence
Opens January 26
In Fire Over Water: Films of Transcendence, Metrograph invites audiences to embark on a transformative journey into the realms that extend beyond the ordinary and the known, with a collection of films united by their concern with the universal human quest for transcendence. A selection of new works from both rising talents Phạm Thiên Ân and C.J. ’Fiery‘ Obasi, and the established Kimi Takesue, which depart from traditional boundaries of storytelling, to guide viewers into undiscovered country, delving into the interconnected themes of rebirth, existential anxiety, and the profound human desire to transcend the limits of the mundane, alongside celebrated cinematic explorers like Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Kim Ki-duk.
Series Includes:
Cemetery of Splendour - Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell - Kaili Blues
Onlookers - The Red Turtle - Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... And Spring
Mami Wata
Opens January 27
Drawing from the deep well of West African folklore, Nigerian filmmaker C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s sumptuous, seductive, thrillingly strange black-and-white fable, shot in the rural seaside villages of Benin, focuses on a mother and her daughters—healer Mama Efe (Rita Edochie), the rebellious Zinwe (Uzoamaka Aniunoh), and the loyal Prisca (Evelyne Ily)—caught up in a struggle to find favor in the eyes of the eponymous water goddess. “Manages to distill themes that are at once primal and complex with virtuosic simplicity… a tightly controlled vision that induces a sense of the suddenly, viscerally new.”—The New York Times
Filmcraft: ACE
John S. Fisher & Francesca Sharper In Person
January 26
With this ongoing Metrograph collaborative series, American Cinema Editors (ACE) pairs a great film and a moderated conversation with that film’s editor or other experts in the field, providing a glimpse into one of cinema’s most vital but least understood artistic practices. ACE is dedicated not only to advancing the art and science of the film editing profession, but also to helping the public understand the role of the editor and the impact their contributions have on a motion picture.
Series Includes:
Stamped From the Beginning
Whitney Review Salaon
Ciao! Manhattan
January 27
Editor and writer Whitney Mallett joins Metrograph after the launch of the second issue of The Whitney Review for a screening of John Palmer and David Wiesman‘s Ciao! Manhattan (1972) and talkback with poet Em Brill, inspired by the literary salon tradition.
Series Includes:
Ciao! Manhattan