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Miramax: 25 Years
January 1-summer 2005
On the occasion of Miramax's twenty-fifth anniversary, The Museum of
Modern Art presents a retrospective of fifty significant films that
Miramax and its division, Dimension, produced and distributed over the
past quarter-century. This retrospective will be presented in two
parts: first, from January through March, and then resuming in the
summer. Harvey and Bob Weinstein, two brothers who grew up in Queens,
founded Miramax in 1979, naming the company after their parents, Miriam
and Max.
Headquartered in downtown Manhattan, Miramax has grown substantially
from its modest beginnings through shrewd acquisitions and marketing
policies. Most important, Miramax has encouraged broader support of
independent cinema while making available an extraordinarily rich and
eclectic library of significant works by some of the world's finest
filmmakers. In addition to Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino,
whose sex, lies, and videotape (1989) and Reservoir Dogs (1992),
respectively, helped propel Miramax into a position of prominence
within the industry, the studio has also been associated with such
artists as Denys Arcand, Jane Campion, Chen Kaige, Atom Egoyan, Stephen
Frears, Jim Jarmusch, and Abbas Kiarostami, among many others.
Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film and Media.
Spy Kids.
2001. USA.Written and directed by Robert Rodriguez. With Antonio
Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alan Cumming. A perfect family film that
children find "awesome" and parents can enjoy wholeheartedly. Upon
learning that their parents are secret agents, a brother and sister set
out to rescue them from capture by an army of "Thumb-Thumbs," among
other surreal indignities. 88 min.
Saturday, January 1, 2:30 (T2); Sunday, January 23, 2:00 (T1)
Les Choristes (The Chorus). 2004.
France. Directed by Christophe Barratier. Screenplay by Barratier,
Philippe Lopes-Curval.With Gérard Jugnot, François Berleand, Jacques
Perrin. MoMA kicks off the New Year with Barratier's enormously
successful debut feature, a Miramax release and France's submission for
Best Foreign-Language Feature. In 1949, at a rural dormitory school for
recalcitrant boys, a mild-mannered teacher starts up a choral group to
channel the boys' unruliness into song. In French, English subtitles.
Saturday, January 1, 7:30; Thursday, January 6, 6:00. T1
Chicago. 2002.
USA. Directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall. Screenplay by Bill
Condon, based on the stage musical by Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb.With Renée
Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere. Chicago is one
firecracker of a musical film, bursting from the proscenium into the
ether of cinematic space. The Academy-Award winner for Best Picture in
2002, Chicago both honors and transcends its theatrical roots
and Bob Fosse's original staging—no mean achievement for first-time
director Marshall. 108 min.
Sunday, January 2, 2:00; Thursday, January 13, 5:30. T1
Command Z. 2004.
USA. Directed by Candy Kugel, Vincent Cafarelli. Design by Lee Lozano.
Another charming animated film from New York's Buzzco studio. What if
the "undo" computer command could solve all of life's problems? 5 min.
Strictly Ballroom. 1992. Australia. Written and directed by Baz Luhrmann.With Paul Mercurio, Tara Morice, Bill Hunter. Strictly Ballroom is
as elegantly choreographed as its subject—competitive ballroom
dancing—and wins over its audience from the start. A Cinderella story
and a gentle satire on the rituals of competition, the film follows a
young man who wants to dance to his own steps, and the girl who
reluctantly becomes his partner. The film's striking compositions,
driving pace, and ebullient dance and music coalesce into a
surprisingly satisfying entertainment. 92 min.
Saturday, January 8, 5:00; Wednesday, January 12, 8:00. T1
Reservoir Dogs. 1992. USA.
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.With Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth,
Steve Buscemi. Released by Miramax, Tarantino's first feature is a
pitchblack, brutal existential comedy about a caper gone wrong. Reservoir Dogs so
invigorated the gangster film with its timeshift plotting, explosive
and fluid action, and foul-mouthed yet intelligent dialogue that it
virtually established its own genre. 99 min.
Sunday, January 9, 5:30. T1
Exotica.
1994. Canada. Written and directed by Atom Egoyan. With Arsinee
Khanjian, Bruce Greenwood, Mia Kirshner. Canadian filmmaker Egoyan set
his breakthrough film Exotica in three locations—a strip
club, an opera house, and a pet shop—contending that he wanted to
"structure the film like a striptease, gradually revealing an
emotionally loaded history." 103 min.
Thursday, January 20, 6:15; Sunday, January 30, 2:00. T1
Dead Man.
1996. USA. Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. With Johnny Depp, Gary
Farmer, Lance Henriksen. Jarmusch filmed this singular Western in
hypnotic black and white, choosing landscapes that are more arboreal
than plain. Depp's reluctant antihero, Bill Blake, and his enigmatic
Native American guide Nobody, played by Farmer, escape civilization and
narrative development as they traverse a frontier as much metaphysical
as it is geographic. 114 min.
Sunday, January 23, 5:00 (T1); Monday, January 24, 8:15 (T2)
Il Postino (The Postman).
1994. Italy/France. Directed by Michael Radford.With Philippe Noiret,
Massimo Troisi, Maria Grazia Cucinotta. While in exile on a Neapolitan
island, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda received so much mail that the
local postmaster hired a fisherman's son, Mario, to deliver it to him.
When the reclusive Neruda learned that Mario was pining for a woman in
the village, he helped him by composing the words to woo her. Radford
tells this moving story, based on true events, simply and gracefully.
In Italian, English subtitles. 113 min.
Monday, January 24, 5:00 (T2); Thursday, January 27, 8:30 (T1)
Heavenly Creatures.
1994. New Zealand. Directed by Peter Jackson. Screenplay by Jackson,
Frances Walsh.With Kate Winslet, Melanie Lynsky. Before Jackson turned
his attention to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, he did a dry run, as it were, with the rather diabolical creatures of Borovnia in Heavenly Creatures.
Jackson established an international reputation with this vivid
melodrama, drawn from the trial transcripts of the real-life murder in
1954 of Honora Parker by her teenage daughter and her daughter's best
friend in Christchurch, New Zealand. 99 min.
Monday, January 24, 8:30 (T1); Thursday, January 27, 8:00 (T2)
Farewell, My Concubine. 1993. China/Hong Kong. Directed by Chen Kaige.With Leslie Cheung, Gong Li, Zhang Fengyi. Chen's austere debuts Yellow Earth (1984) and The Big Parade (1986) premiered in the New Directors/New Films festival. Farewell, My Concubine spans
a dramatic half-century of modern Chinese history, from the Japanese
occupation through civil war, the Communist regime, and Mao's Cultural
Revolution. One national organization, the Peking Opera, survived all
these, and Farewell, My Concubine traces the five-decadelong relationship between two of its male apprentices. In Cantonese, English subtitles. 155 min.
Wednesday, January 26, 6:00 (T1); Friday, January 28, 7:45 (T2)
Les Invasions barbares (The Barbarian Invasions).
2003. Canada. Written and directed by Denys Arcand.With Rémy Girard,
Stéphane Rousseau, Marie-Josée Croze. The first film from Canada to win
an Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, The Barbarian Invasions is
a bracing, sharply observed and bittersweet comedy of friendship,
filial relationships, public health, and terminal illness. In this
sequel to his Decline of the American Empire, Arcand imagines
the first film's garrulous and passionate intellectual liberals
gathering twenty years later at the hospital bedside of one of their
own—a randy and outspoken teacher whose estranged son is determined to
see his father die with grace. In French, English subtitles. 99 min.
Thursday, January 27, 5:30 (T2); Saturday, January 29, 2:00 (T1)
Princess Mononoke.
1997. Japan. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki.With the voices of Gillian
Anderson, Billy Crudup, Claire Danes. Miyazaki's lush and fantastic
animes use a subtle blend of hand-drawn cels and computer-generated
images to create an extraordinarily vivid and imaginative universe
populated by amazing landscapes, people, creatures, and, well, things.
In English. 133 min.
Friday, January 28, 5:00 (T2); Saturday, January 29, 8:00 (T1)
Shall We Dance?
Japan. 1996. Directed by Masayuki Suo. With Koji Yakusho, Tamiyo
Kusakari, Naoto Takenaka. "In a country where even married couples do
not hold hands in public, ballroom dancing has long been regarded as
corrupt. Until now.With one graceful swoop, writer-director Suo has
made a film that thoroughly captivated Japan and turned a vice into
social virtue. Shall We Dance? is about the liberating power of dance and what happens to one commuter who gets off before his stop" (New Directors/New Films festival, 1997). In Japanese, English subtitles. 118 min.
Friday, January 28, 6:00 (T1); Saturday, January 29, 2:30 (T2)
Chunghing Samlam (Chungking Express).
1994. Hong Kong. Written and directed by Wong Kar-wai.With Tony Leung,
Faye Wang.Wong, who became one of Hong Kong's most celebrated directors
after making In the Mood for Love in 2000, made his New York debut nine years earlier with Days of Being Wild, introduced in MoMA's New Directors/New Films festival. He then made Chungking Express in
fewer than three months. Largely shot with a handheld camera by his
longtime cinematographer Christopher Doyle, with additional photography
by Lau Wai-Keung, Chungking Express is a lively two-part film about love and crime in the big city. In Cantonese, English subtitles. 103 min.
Saturday, January 29, 5:00 (T1); Sunday, January 30, 5:00 (T2)
Through the Olive Trees. 1994.
Iran. Written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami. With Hossein
Rezai,Mohamad Ali Keshavarz. Kiarostami's cinema interrogates reality.
A director, played by an actor, returns to a village damaged in an
earthquake to make And Life Goes On..., which is actually a Kiarostami film about two children who appeared in an even earlier feature, Where Is the Friend's Home? In Farsi, English subtitles. 103 min.
Wednesday, February 2, 6:00. T1; Saturday, February 5, 5:30. T2
Holy Smoke. 1999.
USA. Directed by Jane Campion. Screenplay by Anne Campion, Jane
Campion. With Kate Winslet, Harvey Keitel. In this perfervid melodrama,
a young woman finds happiness with a guru and his disciples. Her family
hires an "exit counselor"—a cocky older man—to deprogram her. The
sensuous film follows what happens as two strong characters humiliate,
manipulate, and perhaps love each other.
114 min.
Wednesday, February 2, 8:15. T1; Thursday, February 3, 5:30. T2
Jackie Brown. 1997. USA. Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Screenplay by Tarantino, based on Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch.
With Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster. Tarantino's third
film, about a canny older woman who must best some really tough guys or
die, demonstrates the filmmaker's savoring of character. The
ingeniously plotted feature sports much crackling dialogue, but is also
rich in what is unspoken, keeping everyone onscreen and in the audience
guessing. 154 min.
Thursday, February 3, 8:30. T1; Saturday, February 5, 8:00. T2
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. 1989. France/The Netherlands. Directed by Peter Greenaway. With Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren. In an upscale
modish restaurant, run by a cook for whom presentation is critical, a
thief dines nightly with his wife. Bored with her husband's logorrhea,
the wife takes another customer as her lover. Revenge is served warm
and on a plate. 126 min.
Friday, February 4, 6:00; Sunday, February 6, 5:00. T1
My Left Foot. 1989.
Great Britain. Directed by Jim Sheridan. Screenplay by Shane
Connaughton, Sheridan. With Daniel Day-Lewis, Brenda Fricker, Fiona
Shaw. Sheridan's first feature was nominated for five Academy Awards,
including Best Picture and Best Director, and won two. Best Actor went
to Day-Lewis as Christy Brown, the brilliant, angry Dublin writer and
painter born with cerebral palsy, and Best Supporting Actress went to
Fricker as his supportive mother who holds her working-class family
together. 98 min. Friday, February 4, 8:30. T1; Wednesday, February 9, 5:30. T2
Ju Dou. 1990.
China/Japan. Directed by Zhang Yimou, Yang Fengliang. Screenplay by Liu
Heng. With Gong Li, Li Baotian, Li Wei. Zhang began his career as a
cameraman. In this lush, sensual melodrama his enthusiasm for the
gorgeous image, dramatic frame, and rhythm of narrative enticement is
harnessed to a story of passion, betrayal, and death set in the Chinese
countryside during the 1920s. In Mandarin, English subtitles. 95 min.
Saturday, February 5, 8:15; Wednesday, February 16, 8:00. T1
Paris Is Burning. 1991.
USA. Directed by Jennie Livingston. With Pepper Labeija, Willi Ninja,
Octavia Saint Laurent. An intimate nonfictional account of a
spectacular piece of New York social history: voguing, with its balls
and glorious competitions. Livingston films young African-American and
Hispanic gay men who embrace and mimic the culture that excludes them.
78 min.
Monday, February 7, 5:30. T2 |
