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More than 120 films are set to be screened at seven venues in an around the city during the 20th Philadelphia Film Festival (PFF), a 15-day movie event that runs through Nov. 3. Teeming with buzzworthy titles that are sure to catch the eyes of film buffs who follow the festival circuit, PFF continues to exhibit exciting curatorial excellence under Philadelphia Film Society and PFF executive director J. Andrew Greenblatt and artistic director Michael Lerman.
Culled from top industry launchpads like Sundance and Cannes, this year’s selections include the opening-night film “Like Crazy,” which walked away with Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize and Best Actress award (for newcomer Felicity Jones, who’s scheduled to appear), and “The Descendants,” director Alexander Payne’s long-awaited “Sideways” follow-up that stars George Clooney as a Hawaii landowner struggling with fatherhood. Both movies should be firmly penciled into your festival schedule. Here’s the rundown on six others that will likely play for packed houses:
The Artist
(Director Michel Hazanavicius)
A good candidate for best film of 2011, Hazanavicius’s silent, black and white beauty “The Artist” pours over with humor, heart, nostalgia and timeless cultural commentary. Focusing on a 1920s Hollywood star (Cannes Best Actor winner Jean Dujardin) who becomes rapidly obsolete when the industry makes its shift into talkies, the movie blows a kiss to the biz while speaking to our collective obsession with barreling forward in our technological pursuits. That it exists and is being widely embraced is evidence that newer and faster isn’t always better. That it’s grounded by an endearing and hugely entertaining story doesn’t hurt, either.
7:15 p.m. Oct. 21 at the Prince Music Theater
7:20 p.m. Oct. 27 at the Ritz East
My Week with Marilyn
(Director Simon Curtis)
In “My Week with Marilyn,” the ever-extraordinary Michelle Williams, who’s fast becoming one of the very best actresses in the entire business, takes on a whale of a role that many performers wouldn’t dare attempt: The immortal Marilyn Monroe. Co-starring Eddie Redmayne as an aspiring filmmaker who falls hard for the blonde icon during her first-ever London production, this fact-based movie is a whole lot of comfy garbage, the kind of thing you can see any night on cable. Yet, Williams is so blissfully good in the title role that nobody should dare miss it.
The cliché is to say that the all-but-certain Oscar nominee avoids mimicry and offers an embodiment. But what’s truly incredible is how well-defined of a character emerges from Williams’s vocals and physicality, to the extent that you get lost in it, and no longer feel as though you’re watching either actress, but somebody new.
5 p.m. Oct. 28 at the Prince Music Theater
2:15 p.m. Oct. 29 at the Prince Music Theater
A Dangerous Method
(Director David Cronenberg)
The latest from mind-body maestro Cronenberg, “A Dangerous Method” charts the blossoming of psychoanalysis as we know it, presenting the friendship — and eventual falling out – between Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). It almost never feels as though there’s enough bite to this movie, like Cronenberg is keeping his usual verve at bay to strive for something more prestigious. But it is indeed fascinating to observe characters who are only still in the process of learning what drives them, and whose actions and discoveries will affect the way we assess what drives all of us.
The film’s ferocity is largely reserved for Keira Knightley, who wildly transforms into the Russian patient driving the two doctors apart. Some have criticized the performance for its excess, but it’s raw and arresting.
7:40 p.m. Oct. 22 at the Ritz East
Shame
(Director Steve McQueen)
Though it’s led by what may very well be the finest male performance of 2011 (Fassbender, again, has wrenching talent to burn), the hugely-hyped sex-addiction drama “Shame” turns out to be a bit of a disappointment, with director McQueen failing to reproduce the narrative and compositional brilliance that made his debut feature, “Hunger,” such an unforgettable masterpiece. The film works as a grim valentine to an appetite-ridden New York, and it includes a stirring backstory surrounding two siblings (as Fassbender’s troubled sister, Carey Mulligan is nearly as sensational), but it’s primarily a superficial affair that takes alarmingly obvious and unengaging turns.
7:55 p.m. 10/21 at the Ritz East
Miss Bala
(Director Gerardo Naranjo)
Steadily gaining raves in the tradition of “Maria Full of Grace,” Gerardo Naranjo’s “Miss Bala” (or “Bullet”) is a politically-minded Mexican thriller that tells the tale of beauty queen (Stephanie Sigman) who unwittingly becomes a key figure in a raging street war between druglords and cops, all the while maintaining the ruse that she’s merely a pageant contestant. Sigman gives an effortlessly poignant performance, and Naranjo’s inspired command of pristinely orchestrated long takes is indeed something to see. However, the film amounts to less than it aims to be, winding up more of an interesting formal exercise in the international crime genre than a profound statement on worldly events.
7:35 p.m. Oct. 25 at the Ritz East
Melancholia
(Director Lars von Trier)
Easily one of the best films set to be screened at the festival, von Trier’s apocalyptic opus “Melancholia” is a beautiful, unshakable experience, comprised of breathtaking cinematography and very powerful performances. Cannes Best Actress winner Kirsten Dunst goes to places she never has before in her career, playing a cripplingly depressed bride who gradually finds an odd peace when it’s learned that a massive planet is on an unstoppable collision course with Earth. Also starring a devastating Charlotte Gainsbourg and a surprisingly effective Kiefer Sutherland, “Melancholia” is an incredibly visceral bit of filmmaking, culminating with a final act that rumbles like a storm and leaves you utterly spent. See it, but leave the rest of the day’s schedule open.
2:20 p.m. Oct. 22 at the Prince Music Theater
7:05 p.m. Oct. 23 at the Ritz East
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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