Weekly Movie Guide

Festivus for the rest of us: Gothamist discussed CMJ week a couple days ago, and there's more than enough music to keep everyone occupied. Let's not forget, however, that CMJ has its own film component as well. CMJ Filmfest also started yesterday with a great selection of features including the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line (DGA Theater today at 5:15 PM) and Martin Scorsese's new Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home (Loew's State Theater at Virgin Megastore tomorrow at 3 PM). Tonight at 7 PM at the Brooklyn Lyceum (227 4th Ave.) you can also catch a selection of shorts.

Below are freebie, another edition of "Midnight Movie Smackdown," the rest of the new releases and a day-by-day of revivals and events:

Why not? It's free: Rolling Stone or Entertainment Weekly might anoint any number of current ingenues as the latest "It" girl (we've been voting for Rachel McAdams since the Mean Girls/The Notebook double-whammy of performances), but in the silent era, the term was basically created to describe Clara Bow. Monday at Barbés in Park Slope, recover from your CMJ experience with 1925's The Plastic Age, a romantic comedy featuring Bow as a prohibition-era co-ed who proves distracting to her academic and athletic all-star boyfriend.

Midnight Movie Smackdown: Following the current mash-up craze, what wouldn't we give to see Brian Jonestown Massacre figurehead Anton Newcombe go mano-a-mano with Joe Pesci's Tommy De Vito. Tommy: "You know Anton, you're a fuckin' mumbling stuttering little prick. You know that?" Anton: "You fucking broke my sitar, motherfucker!" That would rock. In the meantime, you can revisit Goodfellas at the Landmark Sunshine and last year's rock doc DiG! at the IFC Center. Both screen on Friday and Saturday at midnight.

So, what else is new?

• Thumbsucker: Indie buzz galore has followed this film around for months, and for good reason as noted video director Mike Mills makes the jump to features. A coming-of-age drama based on Walter Kirn's novel. (Opens Friday)

• Lord of War: Gothamist finds Andrew Niccol to be a better writer than writer-director. (The Truman Show yes; S1m0ne, not so much.) Nicolas Cage, Ethan Hawke and Jared Leto in an international arms dealer action-adventure flick from Niccol? Well, we're intrigued. (Opens Friday)

• Just Like Heaven: Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon present a becoming romantic duo, and director Mark Waters has shown an affinity for smart comedy with Mean Girls and even the remake of Freaky Friday. So why does the trailer for this romantic comedy between people from opposite sides of the death-divide leave us cold. (Opens Friday)

• Tim Burton's Corpse Bride: Speaking of romance between the living and the dead, Gothamist had a chance to see Burton's new stop-motion animated feature on Tuesday, and we were a bit disappointed. For a feature that runs a brisk 76-minutes, it felt much longer. While it's a visually beautiful picture, the story is a bit too simple with an overly predictable resolution and imagery no different than anything else Burton has done throughout his career. Oh, life is colorless and oppressive? The afterlife, colorful and a big party? Check. One part Beetlejuice, one part Nightmare Before Christmas, and not much else, Corpse Bride isn't bad, but it certainly is disappointing. (Opens Friday)

• Proof: Only three more weeks of the Miramax distribution firesale. This week's entry, a film with much promise and pedigree, but one which also has been sitting on the shelf for a bit. Gwyneth Paltrow, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anthony Hopkins star in the adaptation of David Auburn's 2000 Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

• The Weeping Meadow: The first in a planned trilogy from Greek master filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos, this film poetically relates the Greek experience between the two World Wars through the personal stories of one unconventional family created, at least in part, by circumstance. (Now playing at Lincoln Plaza)

• Chain: Director Jem Cohen was nominated for the Independent Spirit Awards "Truer Than Fiction" prize for his 2000 documentary Benjamin Smoke. Earlier this year, he won the Spirits' "Someone to Watch" award for his narrative feature debut Chain. And now, as Yoda might say, watch it we can. (Now playing at IFC Center)

• Separate Lies: Julian Fellowes won a screenwriting Oscar for Gosford Park and has been incredibly busy ever since. Now for his directorial debut he brings us a stellar cast (Tom Wilkerson, Emily Watson, Rupert Everett) in this British domestic love-triangle drama. (Opens Friday at The Paris and Loews Village VII)

• One Bright Shining Moment: A documentary about the failed 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern who ran on a platform of ending the Vietnam War. Nixon trounced him. But then came Watergate. Ah, the good ol' simple days. (Opens Friday at Quad Cinema)

• Cry_Wolf: Some high schoolers start internet rumors about a serial killer and, doing so comes back to haunt them when their fake murders suddenly become real. So what. Three words describe the only reason to see this movie: Jon Bon Jovi! (Opens Friday)

• Piggie: Alison Bagnall's only other credit is co-writer of Buffalo '66. Consider that when deciding whether or not to check-out her debut feature. We'll stay out of any Gallo arguments for the time being. (Now playing at Two Boots Pioneer)

• Human Error: We'll always thank Robert M. Young for 1988's wonderful Dominick and Eugene, a similar but better film than Oscar-winner Rain Man. But what's he done for us lately? Well, after several years basically M.I.A., he gives us a bizarre corporate satire that showed at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival but is only now getting a single-theater release. (Opens Friday at Landmark Sunshine)

• Also open/opening: Finding Eléazar (Quad Cinema), The Future of Food (Film Forum), Garcon Stupide (Angelika), Hard Goodbyes: My Father (Village East), HellBent, Human Error (Landmark Sunshine), The Thing About My Folks, Venom.

A quick day-by-day

Tonight
If Just Like Heaven doesn't seem like your cup of tea but you're in the mood for a little Witherspoon, you can relive her starmaking performance as Tracy Flick in the great Election tonight at 8 PM at the Loews 34th Street. And it's free y'all. Sign-up here. Passes are first come, first serve.

Friday
Cary Grant. Ingrid Bergman. Alfred Hitchcock. Notorious. If those seven words don't make you want to head out to BAM, all the more reason you need to. Fridays screenings kick-off a BAMcinématek series called Notorious Duo: Hitchcock & Cary Grant. Arguably one of his best films, Notorious is a WWII spy drama that perfectly represents why Hitch is still considered the all-time master of suspense.
Also opening at Film Forum today for a two week run is the 1964 I Am Cuba, a dramatization of the Cuban revolution that is known for its breathtaking and inventive cinematography. So many shots created such a how'd-they-do-that stir that Brazilian filmmaker Vicente Ferraz attempts to solve that question in a new documentary called I Am Cuba: The Siberian Mammoth. Film Forum is showing the documentary as well.

Saturday
Competing with CMJ this weekend is RESFEST 2005 which rolls into town at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center today through Sunday. Shorts galore and feature docs Infamy and Just For Kicks are worthy of your attention, but most exciting to us is the Saturday at 8 PM "Beck Retrospective" featuring 17 music videos. Beck has always worked with innovative and cutting-edge video directors, and this evening will feature everything from the song that made him famous "Loser" to the Michel Gondry-directed "Deadweight" and Spike Jonze's "Guess I'm Doing Fine" to his four most recent videos for "E-Pro," "Ghettochip Malfunction (Hell Yes)," "Gameboy/Homeboy" and "Girl."

Also, don't miss a final, best-of edition of this year's Rooftop Films series on top of the Automotive High School in Williamsburg. Live music at 8:30, shorts at 9, and free PBR from 11-12 at Matchless (557 Manhattan Ave.)

Sunday
The Museum of Moving Image in Astoria continues it's complete Billy Wilder series with three more of our favorite director's films. Kiss Me, Stupid and The Seven Year Itch (featuring the famous Marilyn Monroe, billowing dress over a subway grate scene) are fun, but not to miss is the Sunday at 4 PM screening of The Lost Weekend which remains possibly the best film about one man's descent into addiction and alcoholism.

Monday
The new horror offerings don't do it for you? Head down to Cinema Classics/Rififi for the Metropol free Horror screenings at 10 PM. This week's offering: the third entry in George A. Romero's zombie saga, Day of the Dead. It's free (well, with one drink minimum), and this is the 1985 original, not the inevitable remake.

Tuesday
Makor film presents Speak Out: I Had an Abortion with a post-screening Q&A with filmmakers Jennifer Baumgardner and Gillian Aldrich. This documentary features 11 women ranging in age from 21 to 85 talk describing their individual personal experiences of having an abortion. With a new Chief Justice on his way to confirmation and another Supreme Court nomination on the horizon, are we about to see many more films dealing with this subject?

Wednesday
Probably the most intriguing entry of all for the entire week, and we have no idea what will actually be shown. As part of their regular "Personal Archive"/guest curator series, Anthology Film Archives presents "Mondo Kim's Employee Picks -- Live!" So you know how sometimes you might go to Kim's Video on St. Marks and ask about that obscure south asian title nobody's heard of but the guy behind the counter? Right. That's what will be showing. Or, to steal from AFA's site: "Presiding over this treasure trove is Mr. Kim's handpicked cadre of elite cinephiles, who will, for one night only, take over the Courthouse Theater with their selection of deeply disturbed offerings. This program promises to re-define the expression 'odds and ends'."