“We Come As Friends” IFC Center, opens August 14With a different person behind the camera, “We Come as Friends” could have easily been, with its comic overtones, a George Plimpton-esque “fish out of water scenario,” the goofy outsider looking in. But the Austrian filmmaker Hubert Sauper (“Darwin’s Nightmare), flying into South Sudan in a “tin can” plane that he built himself, descending in barren land like a b-movie spaceship, isn’t alien to the villagers he speaks with. Unfortunately he is strangely, and sorrowfully, familiar, another white face like all the rest — arriving, taking, and leaving.This is part of the appeal and complication of “We Come as Friends,” which sees Sauper interview both indigenous people and exploiters in South Sudan, using his foreignness as a means to get his subjects to open up. And what they reveal is often terrifying. The lingering effects (or blatant continuation) of colonialism have manifested themselves in Western companies tricking people into signing over their land for almost nothing, sucking the resources dry, and leaving the local population to deal with the consequences. The Sudanese leaders are connected, sometimes blatantly, to the largest empires in the world — the first president of South Sudan wears a cowboy hat that, we’re told, was a gift from George W. Bush — while the country is still tense from the never-ending strife between the Muslim and Christian communities.The title of the film becomes clearer, and more deeply depressing. But does Sauper come as a friend? He is still a man with a movie camera who is able to escape as easily as he arrived. There is very little risk, except maybe legal, on his part. So I would stop short of calling what the film is doing “brave,” or any equivalent platitude, and maybe say that its intentions are at least noble. And Sauper’s refusal to resort to the condescension that is commonplace among political documentaries today — the refusal to simplify a complex issue — should be commended. “Willie,” Brooklyn Academy of Music, August 12Parallel to his legendary body of work as a photographer, Danny Lyon made a string of much-less-known documentary films, extensions of his photo-essays. One of the best is “Willie,” a shot-on-video portrait of Willie Jaramillo, who first appeared in earlier films “Llatino” (1971) and “Little Boy” (1977). Lyon and his wife, Nancy Weiss Lyon, lived in Bernalillo, New Mexico, the same town as Jaramillo, and “Willie” finds the once troubled teenager in prison, where they gain access to life behind bars.“Judex,” Spectacle, August 11Louis Feuillade’s silent 1916 serial, shown here in a condensed version, is underappreciated despite its long and deep influence (people might be more familiar with Georges Franju’s 1963 remake). The musician Mira Cook will provide a live score to the rare film, an opportunity that should not be missed. “Metropolitan,” Film Society of Lincoln Center, ongoingWhit Stillman’s debut film, about a group of Ivy-League kids gathering together while home on winter break, is as funny and pointedly critical as when it was first released 25 years ago. But Stillman doesn’t look down on his characters; he gives them depth through detail. The film has recently been restored and is worth seeing during its celebratory run in New York. By the way, when watching “Metropolitan” you might quickly realize that Stillman basically built the template for scores of other independent filmmakers after him (could the line readings in Wes Anderson’s films even exist without Stillman?). But it’s also worth remembering that very few filmmakers as celebrated as Stillman have had as much trouble getting projects off the ground. His last film, “Damsels in Distress” (2011), came 13 years after his previous film, and “The Cosmopolitans,” the television show he made for Amazon last year, never made it past the pilot stage.“The Night of the Hunter,” Anthology Film Archives, August 13, 16One of the most famous one-shot deals in the history of cinema, the actor Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter” comes as part of the ongoing and tremendous “One Film Wonders” series. Robert Mitchum stars as a crazy preacher who terrorizes a group of kids who are in possession of money stolen by their executed father. Mitchum’s tattoos of “love” and “hate” on his fingers have become iconic symbols and the thing that most people know about the film, but Laughton’s expressionist images, some of the greatest use of shadows I’ve ever seen, are what sticks.
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