City Cinemas Village East Cinema

Fluid, open-ended documentaries that demand more of an audience than foregone assent or fleeting bouts of passive outrage are rare these days, which is what makes Malik Bendjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man such a gift. In telling the tale of... More »

Fluid, open-ended documentaries that demand more of an audience than foregone assent or fleeting bouts of passive outrage are rare these days, which is what makes Malik Bendjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man such a gift. In telling the tale of Sixto Rodriguez, a Mexican-American balladeer from Detroit who cut a couple of tepidly received LPs in the late '60s, vanished amid hazy rumors of onstage suicide, and subsequently became an Elvis-sized rock god in South Africa, the Swedish filmmaker sidesteps arthritic VH1-style "where are they now" antics in favor of a more equivocal interrogation of celebrity culture. Bendjelloul interviews pertinent Rodriguez-saga parties in standard rock-doc style, including the hilariously combative former Motown bigwig and Sussex Records (Rodriguez's label) founder Clarence Avant, as well as the singer-songwriter’s charming, touchingly loyal grown daughters. It's no huge surprise when Rodriguez himself turns up, still living the same modest existence as before his brush with micro-fame, but it does dispel the impression that Bendjelloul has been punking us. Better still, Rodrigue's casual disinterest in p.r.-blitzing his resurrection and apparent contentment with an ordinary working life lets Searching for Sugar Man hold up a mirror to what we’ve come to expect — and cynically refuse to accept — from artists in an age of pervasive, entitled notoriety. « Less

2:00 PM, 6:00 PM

Opening with a postcard-perfect vista of a Cambodian beach, followed with a sequence that could have been scripted by the Cambodian tourism bureau, Kieran Darcy-Smith's Wish You Were Here seems intent on proving that a "holiday in Cambodia" can... More »

Opening with a postcard-perfect vista of a Cambodian beach, followed with a sequence that could have been scripted by the Cambodian tourism bureau, Kieran Darcy-Smith's Wish You Were Here seems intent on proving that a "holiday in Cambodia" can be more than a dark Dead Kennedys song-- until the film goes just as dark. A picture about lovely faades and the rot within, Wish You Were Here concerns Dave and Alice (Joel Edgerton and Felicity Price), a married Australian couple vacationing with Alice's sister, Steph (Teresa Palmer), and Steph's beau, Jeremy (Antony Starr), a businessman whose success is evident and enigmatic. When Jeremy goes missing a search ensues, continuing after the other three return to Australia. The setup smacks of Hitchcock and Nicolas Roeg, but Darcy-Smith's focus is also trained on the domestic drama that ensues between Dave and Alice, drama that is ratcheted up when Alice learns her sister and Dave slept together during the trip. Unfortunately, that incident is hard to believe, as Dave is depicted as a loving family man and Steph a sweet sister, leaving the viewer with the sense of a major plot contrivance thrown in to expedite Dave and Alice's disintegration. Stories built around a mystery can have a difficult time creating a satisfying answer, and this picture is no exception, with a relatively underwhelming revelation; one wonders what might have been if Darcy-Smith had committed further to the domestic drama, diminishing the film's mystery from its center to its pretext. « Less

12:00 PM, 4:00 PM, 8:00 PM, 10:00 PM

Have you ever seen a killer wave, mate? Well, have you ever seen a killer wave . . . in 3D? This question resounds above all when watching Storm Surfers 3D, Chris Nelius and Justin McMillan's bodacious, x-treme, etc. doc about two Australian bros... More »

Have you ever seen a killer wave, mate? Well, have you ever seen a killer wave . . . in 3D? This question resounds above all when watching Storm Surfers 3D, Chris Nelius and Justin McMillan's bodacious, x-treme, etc. doc about two Australian bros who love to surf. All right, they're not just any two bros-- they're Tom Carroll and Ross Clarke-Jones, surfing legends who spend their time chasing the biggest waves around, with a team that includes a meteorologist and a fleet of jet skis. Yet despite the hoopla about finding "new waves" and exploring "hidden" surfing locations, the principal reason for the film's existence seems to be showing its heroes surfing giant waves in 3D. That 3D is gorgeous, but as wave after wave crashes by without much else happening, you might begin to wonder if Storm Surfers 3D isn't more of a half-hour Discovery Channel documentary padded out to feature length. Gestures are made toward a human story-- the middle-age surfers are made painfully aware of the breakdown of their bodies, as they responsibly (though reluctantly) avoid dangerous waves they would have thrown themselves at 20 years earlier—yet these lines of inquiry are left half-examined. Admittedly, the stunning visuals captivate for much of the picture, but as the novelty wears off, and the beauty turns from stunning to repetitive, the non-surfers in the theater may begin to grow restless. « Less

11:00 AM, 1:10 PM, 3:20 PM, 5:30 PM, 7:40 PM, 9:50 PM

The hook of this R-rated horror film would also work for a superior young-adult novel. A decade from now, the U.S. has mostly solved its crime and unemployment problems with one Hunger Games-style tweak: On one night in March it's perfectly legal... More »

The hook of this R-rated horror film would also work for a superior young-adult novel. A decade from now, the U.S. has mostly solved its crime and unemployment problems with one Hunger Games-style tweak: On one night in March it's perfectly legal for Americans to kill anyone they want to. With the wealthy locked down in their homes, it's the poor who tend to die on purge night, often at the hands of gangs of "hunters" shouting things like "Die, homeless pig!" The movie disapproves of this behavior but lends it ugly credence in the implication that the economy is booming thanks to the elimination of what Paul Ryan would call "the takers." As always in YA, one sensitive kid figures out that all of society is evil or phonies or whatever. In this case it's the excellent Max Burkholder, playing a likable inventor geek holed up with his family to wait out purge night. After some misadventures, he sees a black homeless man (Edwin Hodge) running down the street of their ritzy subdivision. The man screams "Help me!" Gunshots crack in the night. The kid, not up on his Ayn Rand, disables the elaborate security system and invites the man inside. Think Guess Who's Coming to Be a Moral Quandary? Soon, a lynch mob demands the man be surrendered-- or the family be killed. Writer-director James DeMonaco wrings this for some memorably tense scenes, but all this big-idea drama soon gives way to too many scenes of Ethan Hawke dispatching more faceless adversaries than is justifiable in a film committed to reminding us of the horribleness of violence. « Less

11:00 AM, 12:00 PM, 1:00 PM, 2:00 PM, 3:00 PM, 4:00 PM, 5:00 PM, 6:00 PM, 7:00 PM, 8:00 PM, 8:30 PM, 9:00 PM, 10:00 PM, 10:30 PM

11:00 AM, 1:00 PM, 3:00 PM, 5:10 PM, 7:20 PM, 9:45 PM

11:30 AM, 1:45 PM, 4:00 PM, 6:15 PM