“Smooth Talk,” Brooklyn Academy of Music, July 23This 1985 adaptation of the Joyce Carol Oates’s short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” stars Laura Dern as 15-year-old Connie Wyatt who, like many kids that age, feels completely alienated from her family. Most of her energy is focused on hanging out with her two friends at the mall, where they apply their makeup in the bathroom away from parental eyes and cruise the escalators looking for cute boys. Soon enough, Connie and one of the girls begin to visit a local burger joint that is populated by high-school graduates. Wanting to attract older boys and discovering that she is capable, Connie wins the attention of an unwanted suitor (Treat Williams). Or so it seems.Directed by Joyce Chopra, the ending of the film is a little less ambiguous than the original story but no less frightening an allegory of temptation and sexual awakening. “Smooth Talk” was Chopra’s first fiction film, but she had previously made the short documentary “Joyce at 34” (1972) and had worked with pioneering documentarian Ricky Leacock on “Happy Mother’s Day” (1964). She would later go on to direct “The Lemon Sisters” (1989) and continues to work on documentaries, mostly for television.“Smooth Talk,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival, will screen as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s “Indie 80s” series, which stretches through August 27.“Heat and Sunlight,” Brooklyn Academy of Music, July 20Rob Nilsson directs and stars in “Heat and Sunlight” as Mel, a tortured artist haunted by his time photographing starving children in Biafra almost a decade prior. “The stuff you used to shoot used to tell an obvious, important, responsible story,” Mel’s friend tells him, commenting on his latest photographs. His new work has taken a radical turn toward the abstract and erotic, literally and emotionally focused on his relationship with Carmen (Consuelo Faust), a dancer who he suspects has begun an affair with a colleague. The film, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1988 Sundance Film Festival, is another selection from the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s “Indie 80s” series.“Look of Silence,” Landmark Sunshine Cinema, ongoingJoshua Oppenheimer’s documentary, the sequel to the much-talked-about “The Act of Killing,” sees the filmmaker return to Indonesia, the site of his previous film. Once again focused on the anti-communist purge of 1965-66, this time Oppenheimer tells the story from the point-of-view of the victims, following around the local optician Adi as he revisits the killers, now old men and many of whom remain in local power. “Both films show that we have no choice but to deal with the past,” Oppenheimer recently said in an interview with Modern Painters.“Brand X,” Anthology Film Archives, July 23The artist Wynn Chamberlain’s underground satire from 1969 has more in common with the anarchic work of Robert Downey Sr. than Andy Warhol, even if many of the latter’s superstars — Taylor Mead, Ultra Violet, Candy Darling — have significant roles in the film, which for many years was thought to be lost. Constructed (a very loose term for how this film is put together) out of various sketches lambasting popular television and advertising, Chamberlin reportedly didn’t even own a copy of the film until New Line, the original distributors, returned their print to him in 2007. Since then it has screened at the New Museum in New York, among other institutions, and arrives in theaters this week as part of the indispensible “One Film Wonders” series at Anthology Film Archives. You never know when this is going to screen again, so it’s truly something not to miss.“Ant-Man,” major theaters everywhere, ongoingDon’t be fooled by its overbearing marketing or blockbuster branding — this is one of the few comic-book movies that understands its own limitations and uses them to its advantage. “Ant-Man” knows how ridiculous it is, and how ridiculous all comic book movies can be, and because of this it manages to be better than all the other similar fare flooding multiplexes across the country.
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