We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

Readers of Film Comment know that the journal’s writers love sticking up for obscure festival favorites and unjustly forgotten movies. Thanks to the publication’s annual series, locals who don’t make it to Rotterdam or Thessaloniki have the chance to see these treasures for themselves. TONY’s film critics cherry-pick seven primo selections from this year’s edition.

The Chaser

A big winner at last year’s South Korean Oscars, this potboiler centers on a serial killer and the cop-turned-pimp on his trail. So far, so genre. It’s what happens after the fiend is caught, however, that distinguishes director Na Hong-jin’s thriller from every other Asian action pulse-pounder; welcome to a bleak police procedural about precinctual ineptitude and bureaucratic breakdown. Sat 21, Feb 28.—DF

The Hurt Locker

This year’s closing-night entry is special on two counts. First, it marks the welcome return of L.A. auteur Kathryn Bigelow (Strange Days), a director who hasn’t made a feature film since 2002. Second, it’s an Iraq War movie done right for a change: no politicizing; only stoic, Hawksian men of action holding up under pressure. Their job is defusing bombs. In gripping sequence after sequence, the movie approaches the realm of science fiction—that, or a modern-day Wages of Fear. Mar 5. —JR

Jerichow

How many movies can be wrung out of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, you ask? We’re not sure either, but you can officially add one more title to the list. A financially strapped ex-soldier (Benno Fürmann) becomes the third corner of a love triangle involving a Turkish businessman and his hot-to-trot wife. Infidelity, murder and—naturally—money soon lead these three down a well-worn noirish path. German filmmaker Christian Petzold (Yella) knows how to tighten the screws, but it’s his deft jabs at the way capitalism turns everyone into predators that lends the film a particularly bitter bite. Feb 27,
Mar 2.—DF

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains

Finally released on DVD this past September after decades of rare cult screenings and unheard prayers, this legendary 1981 postpunk film has emergent hottie Diane Lane ripping it up as a surly frontwoman. (Also behind the mike: Ray Winstone!) The reference points are female acts like the Slits and Siouxsie Sioux; Courtney Love is a fan too. Break out the heavy mascara and head on over to Lincoln Center. Wed 25.—JR

Revanche
Austria loves a bruised, clinical thriller; just ask Michael Haneke. Götz Spielmann’s Oscar nominee certainly fits the national bill (the title means “revenge”). It’s about a botched bank robbery, a mortally wounded girlfriend and the criminal aftermath of same. But Revanche also represents a clever modulation of the formula, leavened with appealing hints of guilt, redemption, even forgiveness. Don’t worry: It’s also deliciously severe and dark. Tue 24, Feb 28.—JR

The Third Generation
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1979 satire takes radical-chic extremism to task by picking apart a terrorist cell of bored, middle-class Baader-Meinhof wanna-bes. This being a Fassbinder film, you also get the sublimest of pleasures: Hanna Schygulla at her most gorgeous, Bulle Ogier wearing clown makeup while shooting semiautomatics, Udo Kier sporting a wicked Jewfro and intertitles made up of provocative bathroom-stall graffiti. See it. Sat 21, Tue 24.—DF

A Week Alone
Left unsupervised while their parents are vacationing, a group of upper-class teens flirt, hang out poolside and rummage through a neighbor’s empty house. Then a relative of the hired help crashes the party; fancy a little class tension? Argentine filmmaker Celina Murga’s critique of gated-community entitlement mostly watches these kids go about their lazy-summer-day business, which only makes the muted Lord of the Flies–ish ending all the more unsettling. Mar 2, 3.—DF

 

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