Sie FilmCenter

4:50 PM, 9:50 PM

In the same way novels can be better and worse than journalism at processing history, so can movies be better and worse than novels: too unreal, yet too specific. For the movie of Mohsin Hamid's novel, director Mira Nair mounts a sensitive... More »

In the same way novels can be better and worse than journalism at processing history, so can movies be better and worse than novels: too unreal, yet too specific. For the movie of Mohsin Hamid's novel, director Mira Nair mounts a sensitive retrospective procedural of radicalization: Here's how a bright young Pakistani man (Riz Ahmed) goes straight from Princeton into a boutique corporate valuation firm (with Kiefer Sutherland as his sharkish boss), then has a promising meet-cute with an emotionally unavailable American woman (Kate Hudson), then has his priorities rearranged by the fallout of 9/11. He returns to Pakistan as a university lecturer whose ideas may or may not encourage terrorism, drawing attention from a journalist (Liev Schreiber) whose lengthy interview-cum-standoff serves as the film’s narrative frame. At times it’s dense and sluggish, too much like a novel. But there is some exhilaration to be had from Nair's sincere interested in Hudson's character, who is appealing but hung up by grief over a previous relationship. In the richest moment, she offends her new suitor with a naively exploitative art project-- she calls it an expression of love; he says it's defamation-- and he stuns himself with the cruelty of his response. Thus the central arc is a function not just of sadly expected post-9/11 affronts-- the airport strip search, the tire slashing, the colleagues getting nervous about his beard-- but of doomed romance, with a vision of America that's all the more alluring for being so tragically stunted. « Less

1:45 PM, 7:05 PM

A Jesus-and-Mary dynamic becomes psychosexually twisted-- replete with a horrific mother-son handjob-- in Pietà, an intriguing tale of redemption and rebirth from director Kim Ki-duk (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring; Three-Iron) that... More »

A Jesus-and-Mary dynamic becomes psychosexually twisted-- replete with a horrific mother-son handjob-- in Pietà, an intriguing tale of redemption and rebirth from director Kim Ki-duk (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring; Three-Iron) that eventually segues into a more conventional revenge drama. Kang-do (Lee Jung-jin) is a loan shark who cripples deadbeats in order to collect his money via insurance payouts; his life is upended after he's approached by a woman (Cho Min-soo) claiming to be his long-lost mom. This maternal figure soon transforms the thug through her saintly remorse for abandoning Kang-do and her benevolence toward him despite his nasty profession. It's during the first hour, however, that Kim's expertly modulated morality play is most gripping, presenting Kang-do's hand-smashing, leg-breaking brutality for profit as a reflection of a Korean society in which the industrial working class is crushed underfoot by corporate capitalist development. Alas, after establishing a central parent-child relationship rife with wacko biblical undertones, the director finds nowhere to take his story except into standard vengeance territory, a twist that leads to rote suspense that isn't enlivened by the climax's telegraphed ironies. A coda strives to capture a sense of tragically earned transcendence, but the film is far more fascinating when mucking around in hell. « Less

2:40 PM, 7:15 PM, 9:35 PM

2:00 PM, 4:30 PM

7:00 PM