Weekend Movie Forecast

In our culture, we put a lot of emphasis on youth. We want our artists to get what it is out of their system at a very early age so they can go off themselves and join the 27 club. If they don't, we secretly think they should have, for the sake of their careers or are immensely impressed that they can still put out things of value in their autumnal years. Well people, prepare to be impressed: Manoel de Oliveira, the oldest living director at the tender age of 102, has just finished his latest film The Strange Case of Angelica, and people are saying it's the best film of his ludicrously long career. The movie follows youngish photographer Isaac, who is hired by a wealthy family to take a picture of their dead bride daughter (they do this in other countries, look it up), when all of a sudden looking through his camera lens she appears to be alive! Of course this haunts little Isaac, as does the dead bride's beauty, and he apparently spends the rest of the movie attempting to get over it.Reviews have been very positive, with A.O. Scott from The Times saying: "But whatever nostalgia might hover around this movie is subverted by its mischievous, inventive and entirely appropriate use of digital special effects. A modern ghost story requires such tools, after all, and Mr. Oliveira deploys them with an elegant and judicious hand."The charm of The Strange Case of Angelica lies in the way it balances this mysticism with a thoroughly secular sense of the business of everyday life. Not that any of the nonsupernatural occurrences that surround Isaac â the Greek-chorus chitchat among his landlady and her friends; the steady work in the fields and olive groves; the rise and fall of empires and economies â are exactly banal. The world as seen through Mr. Oliveiraâs lens is as fresh as if it had just been discovered and as thick with secrets as if it had always existed." — Gothamist

Robert Horan

Published Dec 31, 2010

Modified Dec 31, 2010

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Click on the film stills for more details and reviews of this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: The Strange Case of Angelica, Another Year, Blue Valentine, Biutiful, The Red Chapel, Summer Wars, Hadewijch, The Lollipop Girls in Hard Candy, and Coming to America.