The films featured in this second round-up leave me only a smidge more enthused than the last three titles from this year’s New Directors/New Films slate that I’ve seen. Not even the lovely and amazing Hiam Abbass could save something as plodding and under-done as Every Day is a Holiday and when that lady can’t save your movie, hoo boy, you’re sunk. It’s equally dispiriting to note that Ben Wheately’s Down Terrace, which is being not completely inaccurately sold as a British tragic-comedy along the lines of The Sopranos, is the best film I’ve seen this year. Heck, even Night Catches Us, a humdrum historical melodrama about growing up black in a post-Black Panthers Philadelphia suburb, has its moments. Just not enough of them to earn more than faint-hearted praise.

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The Bounty Hunter: Gerard Butler plays yet another boorish guy that talks with his crotch in this “romantic” comedy co-starring Jennifer Aniston as a fugitive that Butler’s titular bounty hunter brings back to justice. Sparks don’t fly.

City Island: Andy Garcia leads the cast of this indie domestic comedy about the family ties and the secrets that hold a family together.

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Forget the multiple deaths in the first 20 minutes of Justified, FX’s new drama starring Timothy Olyphant (pictured) as a U.S. Marshall: The real terror for Olyphant’s Raylan Givens is the reality of going back home.

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If FX’s Archer is a deliberate throwback to the stylish and cool cartoons like The Pink Panther, then Comedy Central’s new Ugly Americans owes a clear debt to shows like Ren and Stimpy: deliberate gross-out gags abound, drawn, along with everything else, in a palette of earth tones. But Ugly Americans has a sweetness to it that Ren and Stimpy always lacked.

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Film reviews have been pouring in from Austin since last week at the annual South by Southwest Festival (SXSW). Sadly, I don’t have the money to trek to the Lone Star state (donations are welcome). To celebrate the festival from afar, let’s live vicariously through some reviews of films set in or about New York or just filmed by New Yorkers.

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“Why did she use two different reds?” Jujubee asks, regarding Morgan’s lipstick message. “Because she’s deep,” Raven says. “And her lipstick ran out.” Meanwhile, Sahara is still a little shaken from being in the bottom two twice. But Miss Bitch feels great. She thinks Tatianna probably holds grudges, though. Shit girl, you know it.

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Every year, the Film Society at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art put on their annual New Directors/New Films program. And ever year I’m not sure what to do with it. It’s strange because as a cinephile, you’d think that a program that sells itself with the promise of new talent would be automatically of interest. And yet, somehow most of the titles just don’t have a sense of urgency to be viewed unless they’ve already been hyped (this year, the 500-pound gorilla is clearly Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth) or are from people that aren’t entirely new (remember when Paul Auster’s horrid The Inner Life of Martin Frost was vetted out at ND/NF 2007? I sure do!).

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When it was announced that veteran film critic Todd McCarthy was fired from Variety, and that they would pick up the slack with freelancers, it wasn't only other film writers who were incensed. A lot of industry folk thought it was a bizarre move, since most industry news can be found immediately for free (Variety content is behind a paywall). Patrick Goldstein wrote about it in the Los Angeles Times, also referencing the treatment of our own Armond White by publicists and the studios. Now McCarthy has officially joined the New York Film Festival selection committee, according to a press release issued from the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

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Bong Joon-ho’s Mother plays out like a South Korean version of The Headless Womanexcept, unlike Lucrecia Martel’s portrait of bourgeois discombobulation, Bong’s film serves as a brief incidental history of why his titular mama winds up searching desperately for a way to no longer be responsible for her son. Granted, being a Bong Joon-ho film, Mother is more of a narratively grounded melodrama than Martel’s film thinly veiled extended allegory disguised as a character study. Then again, Mother is also Bong’s most pointed social critique. Look out, Lee Chang-dong: Bong Joon-ho’s moving in your turf.

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French Kissers: Riad Sattouf’s tale of adolescent sexual incompetence is a highlight of the Film Society at Lincoln Center (FSLC)’s annual “Rendezouvs with French Cinema” program, which will be held this year at the IFC Center and FSLC’s Walter Reade theater. Sattouf will appear on Saturday at the Bam Cinemathek’s special screening of French Kissers for a post-screening Q&A session. Read my brief round-up of it and other “Rendezvous” titles for CityArts here. 

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