Critic’s movie picks 2008
Janus Film Festival
Sept. 16-Nov. 13Tivoli Theatre, 4050 Pennsylvania Ave.
The Tivoli Theatre is screening a fourth edition of the Janus Film Festival, featuring new 35mm prints of classic foreign films distributed by Janus Films over five decades.
The lineup:
•“Lola” (Sept. 16): In Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1981 black comedy, a principled building commissioner (Armin Mueller-Stahl) in postwar Germany falls for his landlady’s daughter (Barbara Sukowa) — who moonlights at the local bordello.
•“The Flowers of St. Francis” (Sept. 23): Neorealist master Roberto Rossellini wrote and directed this 1950 collection of vignettes about St. Francis of Assisi.
•“Sanjuro” (Sept. 30): This little-seen Akira Kurosawa comedy from 1962 finds Toshiro Mifune playing a samurai who helps his clansmen save an uncle framed and imprisoned by a corrupt official.
•“The Loves of a Blonde” (Oct. 7): Seduced and abandoned by a touring musician, a Czech girl leaves her small town to look for her lover in the big city. Milos Forman directed this 1965 release.
•“Playtime” (Oct. 14): In Jacques Tati’s 1967 comedy, the befuddled Mr. Heulot becomes lost in a maze of modern architecture.
•“Au Revoir Les Enfants” (Oct. 21): In Louis Malle’s haunting drama from 1987, French boys in a Catholic boarding school try to ignore the Nazi occupation — until the priest in charge allows a Jewish youth to take refuge among them.
•“Ugetsu” (Oct. 28): In feudal Japan two peasants — one motivated by greed, the other by the desire to be a warrior — venture to the big city, only to lose themselves in its pleasures and promises. Kenji Mizoguchi directs. From 1953.
•“Divorce Italian Style” (Nov. 7-13): In this black comedy, husband Marcello Mastroianni is forbidden to divorce his wife so he can marry his gorgeous 16-year-old cousin. So what are his other options?
KIFF
Sept. 19-25
Glenwood Arts Theatre, 9575 Metcalf, Overland Park
With the merging of FilmFest-Kansas City and the Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee into a single event in April, the Kansas International Film Festival now rules the local fall movie landscape.
More than 50 films in a variety of categories will be featured in this eighth KIFF.
“We have some really strong narrative films,” said founder Ben Meade, “but by and large the documentaries are much more impressive. With the closing down of several regional festivals this year, we’re seeing better documentaries than ever before.”
Meade said that the documentary film has in some ways supplanted TV news and the daily paper as a source of information.
“Now when people — especially young people — want to learn about something, they watch a documentary about that subject. It’s been a major shift in the last few years.”
Meade says he can foresee KIFF mutating into an all-documentary festival.
“Here’s why I like documentaries: They’re not studio driven. They’re inexpensive to make. And there’s a plethora of topics just waiting to be covered.
“And unlike the makers of studio films, documentary makers are happy to come to a festival in Kansas City to show off their movies.”
For more info, see www.kansasfilm.com, and look for the roundup in Preview later this month.
Janus Film Festival
KIFF
| Robert W. Butler, The Star
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