Lincoln Center Film Society Presents Film Comment Selects By: Ellis Nassour
Film Society of Lincoln Center (FSLC)’s 14th edition of their Film Comment magazine’s "essential and eclectic feast" of cinephilia, Film Comment Selects, is February 17-27 at FSLC’s Walter Reade Theatre. The 22 selections are handpicked by the magazine’s editors, and include award winners and "discoveries" that have played the festival circuit. There’ll be a definite international flavor with films from Australia, Austria, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, the Philippines, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Film Comment editor-in-chief Gavin Smith says, "It’s a privilege to share with art-film devotees and genre fanatics six films in 35mm from the 70s, 80s, and 90s that we’ve dreamed of seeing on the big screen. They’re every bit as thrilling as the new discoveries from all over the world. It’ll also be an opportunity to see nine long-unseen films. We guarantee there’s something for everyone."
The opening night attraction is Hong Sang-soo’s Our Sunhi, the 15th feature from the South Korean master and winner of the Director’s Prize at the Locarno Film Festival [also screening on February 20]. Art house film lovers will be excited to see acclaimed director Bernardo Bertolucci’s first Italian-language feature in 32 years, Me and You, which screens on closing night.
In between there’ll be the premiere of Sweden’s Lasse Hallström’s The Hypnotist, an engrossing, chilly Nordic noir about a psychologist who uses hypnotism to help solve a horrific crime, which marks the return of the two-time Oscar-nominated director [My Life as a Dog, The Cider House Rules] to his native tongue for the first time in 25 years.
Another highlight, screening February 23, is Jane Campion and Garth Davis’ seven-episode (screening back-to-back, with intermission) TV series Top of the Lake, which just snagged a Golden Globe for Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men) and her break-out portrayal of a detective returning to her bleak rural New Zealand hometown to spend time with her dying mother and who’s recruited to investigate the statutory rape of a 12-year-old. New Zealand native Campion is one of four women nominated for the Best Director Oscar and to receive the Cannes Palme d’Or for The Piano, for which she won the Best Screenplay Oscar. The series has been described as "Twin Peaks crossed with The Killing" and "the toughest, wildest picture Jane Campion has ever made."
The series will also offer Jeremy Irons, Patricia Hodge [Brit TV’s Rumpole of the Bailey; The Elephant Man, Naked Civil Servant], and Sir Ben Kingsley in the 1983 adaptation of Pinter’s Betrayal; the rarely-screened 1983 Raúl Ruiz masterpiece City of Pirates; and a "Healthcare Mayhem" Film Comment Double Feature: Blake Edwards’s The Carey Treatment, starring James Coburn, and The Hospital, written by Paddy Chayevsky and headlining George C. Scott and Diana Rigg.
Tickets $ for the Film Comment Selects series are $13 for the general public, Film Comment subscribers $10, $9 for students/seniors, and $8 for FSLC members, and go on sale at the Reade box office and at www.FilmLinc.com to FSLC members January 28 and to the public on January 30.FSLC is offering a three-film package for $30 public, $24 for students/seniors, and $21 for FSLC members. Follow FSLC @filmlinc on Twitter. Visit www.FilmLinc.com for full schedule and additional information.
