“Phoenix,” directed by Christian Petzold, IFC Center, ongoingEvery Christian Petzold film deserves to be an event. The German filmmaker, who despite a cult following among cinephiles has never achieved the recognition in the United States he deserves, is back in theaters one again with “Phoenix,” a post-war reimagining of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” Nina Hoss stars as Nelly, a former nightclub singer who survived a concentration camp and is now in a precarious situation. When we’re introduced to her she is sitting in the passenger seat of her friend Lene’s car, her face badly damaged by a bullet wound and wrapped in bandages. After reconstructive surgery her face looks different, but she is determined to become the person she once was.The first thing she needs to do is find her husband, Johnny. Lene has admitted to Nelly that it was Johnny who turned her in to the Nazis, but she refuses to believe it. Combing the bombed-out streets of Berlin, Nelly finds her husband working tables at a nightclub filled with foreign soldiers. They meet eyes and he doesn’t recognize her, but says that she bears a striking resemblance to his former wife who died in the camps. Hypnotized by shock and love, she allows him to concoct a plan to use her to “play” his wife in order to get access to the money she left behind, holding on to her secret in the hopes that the couple can start anew.Like in his previous film “Barbara” (also starring Hoss and one of the best movies of the last decade), Petzold is a master at excavating history through tense, morally complicated drama. Each composition, each movement of the camera, is stitched together to quietly build tension toward the visually arresting final scene, a single shot that knocks the wind out of the viewer.“Phoenix” was co-written by the filmmaker and artist Harun Farocki, who died in 2014. Farocki was a mentor of Petzold, and Farocki mentioned the story on which “Phoenix” is loosely based — French novelist Hubert Monteilhet’s “Return From the Ashes” — in an essay he wrote on Hitchock’s “Vertigo,” which Petzold read and kept in the back of his mind as possible source material for a film. “Correction Please, or How We Got into Pictures,” directed by Noël Burch, Light Industry, July 28Here is how essential this screening is: before a few days ago, I had not even realized this film existed. It’s so rare that, to my knowledge, it has not screened in New York in at least a few decades. Noël Burch is best known for his writing (the long out-of-print “Theory of Film Practice” is his most well known book), and has worked on films before, most notably with Thom Anderson on “Red Hollywood” (1996). This might be the last time you’ll ever get to see this, so really, is there any reason to skip it?“May God Forgive Me,” directed by Tito Davidson, MoMA, July 29Have you not been able to check out any of the screenings in the Museum of Modern Art’s incredible “Mexico at Midnight” series? Well, this week is your last chance, and the noir from filmmaker Tito Davidson (who made the curiously wacky Lana Turner film “The Big Vehicle” in 1969) is certainly one to be discovered.“Blank Generation,” directed by Ulli Lommel, Brooklyn Academy of Music, July 30“Blank Generation” is essentially a vehicle for punk icon Richard Hell, who stars in the film and performs with his post-Television band the Voidoids. I would not say, by most standards, that the film is good — and the blame can be placed squarely on Euro-hack director Ulli Lommel, who began his career as an actor in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films and has made mostly unwatchable schlock ever since. But there are other reasons to watch. Mostly, it’s for the period footage of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, never looking more like a warzone, and a phoning-it-in cameo by Andy Warhol.“I Am Chris Farley,” directed by Brent Hodge, Derik Murray, AMC Empire 25, opens July 31Pretty standard stuff here in this documentary, produced by the premium cable channel Showtime. Some of it should have been left on the cutting room floor — basically, every time Dan Aykroyd opens his mouth — but for the most part it’s a sad story of depression and addiction and a reminder that Farley, for all his problems, made some of the most hilarious sketch comedy of all time. If you’re not prepared to watch something groundbreaking, but interested in a solid 90 minutes in a cold movie theater on an abysmally hot day laughing over and over again, then I can’t recommend this more.
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