It's not the greatest place to see a movie, but I have to hand MVP props this weekend to the Clearview Cinema 100 Twin in White Plains, which is opening both the outstanding and chilly rural-Missouri drama Winter's Bone [deep-focus review] and the lovely maybe-she's-a-mermaid film, Ondine. Winter's Bone is a tense, well-written adaptation of a novel by Daniel Woodrell set in rural Missouri, where the film is actually shot. It's a measure of how low multiplex standards have sunk over the last 20 years or so that this is now considered an "arthouse" film. It's terrific and highly accessible. It's rated R for "some drug material, language and violent content."



For those who find the plain intensity of Winter's Bone to be unpalatable, there's always Ondine, directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, The Good Thief), which stars Colin Farrell as a fisherman who feels his luck may be taking a turn for the better when he scoops a woman up in his fishing net. That's right, a beautiful young woman. She says her name is Ondine, and Farrell and his daughter start to suspect that she may be a selkie — a mythological figure that's part beautiful woman and part seal — and they each fall in love with her, in their own way. But who's that shady-looking guy lurking around the village? The story is a bit thin, but the film itself is sexy and gorgeous, shot in blues and greens and splashes of yellow by the great Christopher Doyle, Wong Kar-wai's erstwhile cinematographer. It's rated PG-13 (edited from an original R) for "some violence, sensuality and brief strong language."

The Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville and Clearview Bronxville Cinemas are both showing  the high-profile and well-reviewed celebrity documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, from the directors of The Devil Came on Horseback and The Trials of Darryl Hunt. In The New York Times, Manohla Dargis calls it "convulsively funny" and Ebert says it's "the portrait of a woman who will not accept defeat, who will not slow down, who must prove herself over and again." I'm too young to remember anything about Rivers in her prime other than her guest-hosting gigs on The Tonight Show, followed by her ugly descent into punchline/punching bag territory on the red carpet; I assume this film will provide an education on this woman at the top of her game — in other words, why people over the age of 40 care about her. The film is rated R for "language and sexual humor." I bet!

The Burns Center is also opening the romantic melodrama I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton. From behind its paywall, Variety hails "a stunning achievement" and Boxoffice Magazine says it "recalls the best of Douglas Sirk." But it comes in for criticism from other writers for contrivance. It's rated R for "sexuality and nudity." And, for some reason, the Burns now has the Michael Douglas vehicle Solitary Man, which is already playing just down the road at the All Westchester Saw Mill Multiplex and elsewhere. At any rate, the Burns is a much better venue.

Not much new this week. In fact, unless I'm reading the listings wrong, there's nothing new in the Westchester specialty theatrical market this week. Everybody go see Toy Story 3D, I guess. It's supposed to be good! And cross your fingers that Winter's Bone [deep-focus review] gets a decent local engagement soon. It's very good.


The locally shot Handsome Harry, which made the festival rounds last year, is playing Sunday as part of the Visiting Filmmakers Series at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill. Bette Gordon and unspecified cast members will be in attendance.

Somewhat long-in-the-tooth documentary Babies, which had a run in several area theaters earlier this year, is making a return to the Pelham Picture House, so if you missed your big-screen dose of infant-cute, don't miss this second chance. And the prestige pick for the weekend is probably Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Italian director Elio Petri's most famous film, which screens at the Burns Film Center on Friday and Sunday.

Not a whole lot of action this week, unless you count the (reputedly quite good) horror film Splice, which is opening in relatively wide release, so I won't break it down here. In limited release news, the Clearview Cinema 100 Twin in White Plains opens Mademoiselle Chambon and Solitary Man. Chambon is about a romantic relationship between a married man and his son's schoolteacher. It's been generally well reviewed, and the French tend to do this stuff better than anyone, but a look at the trailer should give you an idea of whether it's for you. Director Stéphane Brizé's previous films were not widely distributed here, though the stars Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain (pictured, above) are quite well-known internationally. The reviews have been, generally, very good.

With new retread releases like Shrek 4, Sex and the City 2, and videogame translation Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time moving the summer wannabe-blockbuster season along, it's a good weekend to patronize your local arthouse. Unfortunately, pickins are as slim as you might expect.

The Clearview Cinema 100 Twin in White Plains bows Holy Rollers and Women Without Men. Holy Rollers is the awkward-looking drug thriller about Hasidic Jews who were recruited as drug mules running routes from Europe to the U.S. in the late 1990s. Jesse Eisenberg stars, and has received generally warm reviews in his role, but the critical verdict seems to be that the script is too bland to convey much about the culture it seeks to depict.



Women Without Men, on the other hand, is an Iranian film set during the 1953 coup that put the Shah back in power. Reviewers have complained about a certain clunkiness to the narrative, but even detractors laud the film's style and mood.



That's it for new stuff, as far as I can tell, although Nicole Holofcener's widely lauded Please Give, starring the generally awesome Catherine Keener as well as Amanda Peet (The Whole Nine Yards) and Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), opened while I was on vacation. (Please Give's sole detractor at its Metacritic page is that long-running fuddy-duddy Rex Reed, who whines, "Where do they come up with the money to finance a movie this boring?") It continues at the Burns Film Center in Pleasantville next to the Oscar-winning Argentinian mystery The Secret in Their Eyes. The Burns center also wraps up its Out at the Movies LGBT series this weekend, and while I'm not qualified to even comment on anything yet to screen (the Ozon film showed while I was out of town), you can check out the roster here.

Finally, if you missed the highly acclaimed A Prophet in its run at the Pelham Picture House, it's playing this weekend at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill. Happy moviegoing, wherever you decide to spend your moviegoing money this week!

As usual, the programmers at the Burns Film Center have you covered. Today, they open another one of the best movies of the year, the Banksy street-art documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop [deep-focus review]. This one's a little tricky, and it's probably best to try to know as little as possible about what it actually depicts before you go in. Suffice it to say it presents a compact visual history of the post-graffiti street art movement, including much vérité footage shot by an odd Frenchman, Thierry Guetta, who ingratiated himself with some of the top artists working in the form, including the reclusive Banksy himself. It's both highly entertaining and utterly fascinating, raising a jillion good questions about the nature of art.

The Burns Center's annual Dance on Camera series kicks off tonight, too, with a screening of Dancing Across Borders, a documentary on Cambodian ballet dancer Sokvannara Sar plus a reception. Tickets are $17 but probably worth it — Sar, director Anne Bass, dance critic Mindy Aloff, and Olga Kostritzky will all be in attendance for a Q&A after the feature. Ruedi Gerber's documentary on choreographer Anna Halprin, Breath Made Visible, shows on Saturday and Sunday, and they're rolling out Seven Brides for Seven Brothers on Saturday. Here's the complete Dance on Camera schedule.

Let's see ... what else?

The Oscar-winning The Secret in Their Eyes expands from the Burns for an engagement just a few miles away at the All-Westchester Multiplex in Hawthorne, which also opens the well-titled documentary Babies. The latter is also opening at the AMC Loews Port Chester as well as at the Clearview Bronxville Cinemas, where the new Michael Caine film, Harry Brown, is also starting a run. The concert film Phish 3D gets post-midnight screenings tonight and tomorrow night at the Cinema de Lux in White Plains.

As of Friday morning, showtimes at the Clearview Cinema 100 in White Plains were unavailable at the usual places online (including the movietickets.com page linked from Clearview's official web site), and a phone call resulted in a busy signal. Whether this is a bad sign for the future of the Clearview Cinema 100, I can't say. (Update: A drive by the theater revealed both Babies and Harry Brown on the marquee, though movietickets.com claims some posh Metropolitan Opera thing is running instead of the latter.)

Finally, the sometimes-arty Pelham Picture House cries "Uncle!" and programs Iron Man 2, along with every other theater on the freaking planet.

This is your chance: the awesome historical melodrama Vincere [deep-focus review], about the mistress Benito Mussolini denied (and the ravages Mussolini committed against the psychic history of the 20th centuy), opens Friday at the Burns Film Center. Well worth seeing on a big screen, not least because of the massive central performance by Giovanna Mezzogiorno. A consistent fierceness of imagery and tone seals the deal. Don't miss it.

Also opening at the Burns Center on Friday is The Secret in Their Eyes, from Argentinian director Juan José Campanella. Critical reaction ran the gamut, including raves by David Denby in The New Yorker ("combines the utmost in romanticism with the utmost in realism") and Manohla Dargis in The New York Times ("An attractive, messy drama riddled with violence and edged with comedy") as well as takedowns by the likes of  Keith Uhlich in Time Out New York ("About as deep as a kiddie pool") and Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe ("It has the high, slightly nauseating stink of perfume on garbage"). It's the Academy Award-winner for best foreign language film, so it's probably skippable. Rule of thumb.

The Burns is giving an odd little half-engagement to Mid-August Lunch [official website], written and directed by Gianni Di Gregorio, who also stars. It shows at early matinees on the weekend, then sticks around on a now-you-see-it-now-you-don't schedule through May 6, pops back onto the screen May 9, and then returns June 28 for one last hurrah. Hmm. Critical consensus seems to be that it's slight, but the good kind of slight.

I've been busy this week, but a quick spin through online listings hasn't revealed anything else of note opening or expanding this week on the Westchester circuit.

The Burns Film Center has Woody Allen's very funny Love and Death (1975) [IMDb] (pictured, above) at 5:30 p.m. on Monday and Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid (1972) [IMDb] at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday as part of the "World of Jewish Comedy" subset of its ongoing Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

Also at the Burns, also at 7:30 on Tuesday night, Robert Klein shows up to show a work-in-progress film that he narrates and appears in about a Catskill mountain resort that played a crucial role in American stand-up comedy. He'll be interviewed by Stefan Kanfer, who wrote A Summer World: The Attempt to Build a Jewish Eden in the Catskills, from the Days of the Ghetto to the Rise and Decline of the Borscht Belt. Tickets are $20.

Finally, Fred Coe's A Thousand Clowns (1965) [IMDb] closes out the "World of Jewish Comedy" series at the Burns on 5:15 p.m. on Thursday.

Farther south, the Pelham Picture House has a one-off screening of The Good Heart (Kári, 2009) [IMDb] scheduled for Thursday night at 7 p.m. Brian Cox and Paul Dano star. The film opens on Friday in limited release.

At the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College, Harlan Jacobson's Talk Cinema has a 7 p.m. screening April 27. Tix are $20. And in Mamaroneck, Marshall Fine's Film Club opens April 28 at the Emelin Theatre. It runs for six Wednesdays, and tickets are available only by $120 subscription. (It looks like the Tuesday-night option has been canceled.)

Update 04/24/10 : The Ellen Kuras event listed below slated for Sunday at the Burns Center has been canceled. Oh, Westchester County — why can't we have nice things?



Another week goes by as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Greenberg hog more than their share of screens in Westchester's more adventurously programmed theaters. Still, there are a few new engagements to note.

Director James Ivory's latest film — and his first following the death of his longtime collaborator Ismail Merchant — the tepidly reviewed City of Your Final Destination [review: The Village Voice], starring Anthony Hopkins (pictured, top), opens Friday at the Clearview Cinema 100 Twin.

Also Friday, the highly acclaimed Jacques Audiard prison film A Prophet [review: Time Out New York] opens at the Pelham Picture House. It's more than two and a half hours long, so make sure to leave ample room in your schedule.

If you missed it on its initial run, Michael Haneke's Palme d'Or-winning The White Ribbon [review: Salon.com] shows Saturday night at 8 pm and Sunday night at 7:30 at the Paramount Center for the Arts.

Also of interest: ace director/DP Ellen Kuras (He Got Game, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) talks cinematography at the Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, starting at 3:30 p.m. Tix are $25.

Finally, limited-release title The Joneses expands to the Clearview Bronxville Cinemas.

What's up with Wednesdays? Why does it happen that two stone classics get screened opposite one another on the same day? This Wednesday, April 21, the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill screens Stage Door (Gregory La Cava, 1937) [IMDb], a backstage drama starring Katharine Hepburn in her breakout performance alongside Ginger Rogers and Adolphe Menjou. That's a safe bet, for sure, but just a few miles south on Route 9 the Tarrytown Music Hall closes out its German Film Pioneers series with a showing of Pandora's Box (G.W. Pabst, 1929) [IMDb], with its legendary performance by Louise Brooks, perhaps the most iconic of silent film actors.

Meanwhile, the Westchester Jewish Film Festival continues at the Burns Film Center in Pleasantville. But Hepburn and Brooks on the Hudson are the real draws this week.

The Westchester Jewish Film Festival continues this weekend at the Burns Center in Pleasantville. I haven't seen any of the movies included, but I'll go out on a limb and say my pick is Ajami (2009; pictured above), nominated for the Academy Award as Best Foreign-Language Film and described by some critics as an Arab-Israeli variant on Paul Haggis' Crash. (Except, you know, not lousy.) Noel Murray's review for the A.V. Club has me interested.

Coming up Sunday night at 7:15 is a screening of the wonderful Marx Brothers film Duck Soup (1933) at the Burns (also part of the Jewish fest), but you'll have to choose between that and a 6 p.m. Tarrytown Music Hall screening of a 35mm print of the 2001 restoration of The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) — a film made using silhouette marionettes cut out of cardboard and lead that's notable for being a) perhaps the first feature-length animated film and b) directed by a woman, Lotte Reiniger — as part of the Music Hall's German Film Pioneers series. Both films are available on DVD, but I'd wager Prince Achmed is substantially more difficult to see on a proper screen. You'll have another easy shot at Duck Soup someday — maybe at the Burns. (Keep an eye on the "Movies for Kids (and their Families)" series and I'll wager it'll come around again before too long.)