“Celine and Julie Go Boating” (1974), Jacques Rivette, Film Society of Lincoln Center, December 19, 4:45pmJacques Rivette’s most intriguing puzzle film gets more interesting the more times you watch it. Celine (Juliet Berto) and Julie (Dominique Labourier) meet in a park rather haphazardly, when Celine drops her scarf and Julie picks it up and follows her, in an effort to return it. This opening of the film is a mostly-silent cat-and-mouse chase — you forget the purpose of the chase after a while, except for the thrill of pursuit — that maps out the narrative trajectory of the rest of the film. “Celine and Julie” moves in constant circles, with the two new friends first sharing an apartment, and then merging and switching their identities and personalities — Celine meets with a man Julie is in love with and, dressed up as her friend, tells him to go away, for example. Soon they arrive at a house that, inside its walls, contains its own separate narrative that Celine and Julie can enter and attempt to navigate and change at their own will. Is it all a dream? Does it matter? Watch it and become enchanted. I’m not sure I can recommend a movie more than this one.“Lost Highway” (1997), David Lynch, Film Society of Lincoln Center, December 18, 6:30pmThis might be the most underappreciated film David Lynch ever made, and also one of his trickiest. Which I guess may explain its reception among his larger body of work. Following the success of the television series “Twin Peaks” and then the critical beat down over its follow-up feature film, “Fire Walk With Me,” Lynch made what become the first of three feature films in a row set in Los Angeles and that would signal his continued burrowing, deeper and deeper, into bifurcated narratives that double-back on themselves. This shattered hall of mirrors, about a jazz saxophonist who continues to receive video tapes shot from inside his own home, and may have killed his wife without even realizing it, can never be put fully together. Once you’ve seen the film, go ahead and read Dennis Lim’s excellent new book, “David Lynch: The Man From Another Place,” the most clear-headed and thorough analysis of Lynch’s work to date.“Pierrot le fou” (1965), Jean-Luc Godard, Film Forum, December 18-24Godard’s first truly great film — an opinion that I’m sure a lot of people will scoff at — is getting a short run at Film Forum. Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina (Godard’s early muses, one a surrogate and the other his actual wife), in a pre-“Bonnie and Clyde” lovers-on-the-run explosion of pop-art bravado and formal hijinks, it signaled both the end of Godard’s early string of films and the beginning of the many shifting detours his work would take in the following decades.“The Look of Silence,” Joshua Oppenheimer, Museum of Modern Art, December 17, 8pm, This devastating and hardheaded film, the follow-up to Oppenheimer’s equally well-received “The Act of Killing” (2012), is screening once again as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s “The Contenders 2015” series, which showcases films that, as the title of the series suggests, will be contending for awards this year.“Chi-Raq,” Spike Lee, Brooklyn Academy of Music, through December 17Do you have a free night this week? Want to stay away from people running around the streets buying gifts for other people that they will most likely stick in a drawer and never think about again? Head on over to Brooklyn, where actual human beings live in New York City, and check out Spike Lee’s “Chi-Raq” at BAM. Added bonus: You’ll be watching the movie in Spike’s neighborhood (his production office is around the corner) and only a few more blocks away from where they shot his iconic film “Do the Right Thing” (1989). Also, are you really going to see “Star Wars” like every other clown in this country?
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