After last week's huge box office take for X-Men, you know that we're in it: the bang-up summer blockbuster season. However, even with all of this energy of over the top new releases in the air there's still some amazing old movies screening this weekend too. So you better get a watchin'.
Not content to sit back and let her ex-husband get all of the real relationship/on screen relationship press, Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn take to the screens this week with their comedy, The Break Up. In case you haven't seen one of the 7 zillion trailers clogging TV right now, Aniston and Vaughn play a cohabiting couple who break up but can't bear to get rid of their condo. Will the flick be as good as the scene in the classic marital discord comedy the War of the Roses where Kathleen Turner tosses Michael Douglas out of the attic they're fighting over? Only a trip to the cineplex will let you know for sure.
In other new releases of the blowing-things-up persuasion, check out the action packed District B-13 and Typhoon. District B-13 is set in futuristic Paris where gangs run rampant and no one knows who is working for whom in this complex underworld. A film by Korean director, Kwak Kyung-Taek Typhoon tells the story of two men, intrigue, North versus South Korea, pirates, nuclear missiles and other such dramatic thriller things.
Also for more of the small, indie drama-minded Coastlines with Timothy Olyphant, Josh Brolin and Sarah Wynter about Delta shrimpers and a young man returning home to his sleepy hamlet after a stretch in jail. Maybe bring a cup of gumbo with you into the theater for the full effect?
Before there was any performance by Vincent D'Onofrio or characters like Hannibal Lector, Peter Lorre cornered the market on despicable men you couldn't help but feel sympathetic towards. His master performance in Fritz Lang's creepy but beautiful, M about a serial killer with a taste for young girls is unspooling at MoMA on Saturday at 6:15 pm as part of their "To Save and Protect" series. Curator Mark-Paul Meyer from the Netherlands Filmmuseum will be on hand to introduce the picture.
We hear from our friends at Film Forum and those who've witnessed the lines at the West Village theater that Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows has been selling out like crazy. The film is in its final weeks so we recommend trying to head down there to see what all the hubbub is about. A story about intrigue during the French Resistance, Melville is a genius with the stylish French gangster film, such as Le Samouraï, Le Cercle Rouge and Bob le Flambeur. Here he takes his own experiences in the underground and uses his visual expertise in noir to make a film which is only now getting release in the States. And of course because it's Film Forum, they've acquired a brand new 35 mm print. Lovely stuff.
Gothamist Pick:
Starting this weekend and running through July 8, the Museum of the Moving Image will be running a comprehensive retrospective on the brilliant, late director Stanley Kubrick. This weekend they kick of the festivities with a brand new 70 mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Chief Curator David Schwartz will be lecturing on Kubrick, his themes of sexuality and violence and his lasting impressions on cinema this Saturday at 1:30, followed by screenings of 2001 at 3:00 pm and 6:30 pm. When the movie first came out the thing to do was to attend it high: not that AMMI will be checking your pupils at the door to make sure you have imbibed before sitting through the extensive footage of monkeys, monoliths and talking computers.
