P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
MoMA's Affiliation with P.S.1
Visiting P.S.1
Every year there are films that resonate far beyond a theatrical release (if they manage to find their way to a commercial screen at all) or film festival appearance. Their significance can be attributed to a variety of factors, from structure to subject matter to language, but these films are united in their lasting impact on the cinematic art form. For this new ongoing series, the Department of Film combs through major studio releases and the top film festivals in the world, selecting influential, innovative films made in the last twelve months that we believe will stand the test of time. Whether bound for awards glory or destined to become a cult classic, each of these films is a contender for lasting historical significance—and any true cinephile will want to catch them on the big screen. Additional screenings will be listed in the coming weeks.
Organized by the Department of Film.
The exhibition is supported by BNP Paribas.
Related Film Screenings
Upcoming
The Age of Stupid
2009. Great Britain. Directed by Franny Armstrong. With Pete Postlethwaite. This enormously ambitious drama/documentary/animation hybrid from the director of McLibel and the producer of the Academy Award–winning One Day In September stars Oscar nominee Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching "archive" footage from 2008 and asking, "Why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?" 92 min.
The Hurt Locker
2009.
USA.
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow.
In the summer of 2004, Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) of Bravo Company are at the volatile center of the Iraq war—part of a small unit specifically trained to handle the bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that account for more than half of American military fatalities and have killed thousands of Iraqis.
When Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) cheerfully takes over the team, Sanborn and Eldridge are shocked by his apparent recklessness and disregard for military protocol and basic safety measures. And yet, in the fog of war, appearances are never reliable for long. Is James really a swaggering cowboy who lives for the moments when the margin of error is zero, or is he a consummate professional who has honed his esoteric craft to high-wire precision? As the fiery chaos of Baghdad threatens to engulf them, the men struggle to understand and contain their mercurial new leader long enough for them to make it home. They have only thirty-eight days left in their tour, but with each new mission comes another deadly encounter, and as James blurs the line between bravery and bravado, it seems like only a matter of time before disaster strikes.
One of the most acclaimed films of 2009, The Hurt Locker could only really exist on its own terms, as a work of cinema, in a post–G. W. Bush world; that administration's politicization of the war in Iraq would not have allowed for a full and open appreciation of Bigelow’s exhilarating film.
131 min.
(500) Days of Summer
2009. USA. Directed by Marc Webb. Screenplay by Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber. With Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel. This inventive romantic comedy combines the whimsy of Amélie (2001) with the melancholy matter-of-factness of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) as it examines and dissects a relationship from end to beginning to middle—and back. Injecting a bittersweet freshness into an often cloying genre, the film speaks to the cynic, the optimist, and the realist in all of us. 95 min.
Fantastic Mr. Fox
2009. USA. Directed by Wes Anderson. Screenplay by Anderson, Noah Baumbach. Based on the novel by Roald Dahl. With voices by George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray. First published in 1970, Dahl’s novel tells the story of the crafty Mr. Fox's struggle against three farmers who vow to shoot, starve, or dig the Fox family off their land. But being a fox means being cunning and wily, so Mr. Fox is well equipped to outsmart the cantankerous farmers and fleece them of their chickens and apples. Anderson's film utilizes stop-motion animation, a technique dating to the late nineteenth century that requires the frame-by-frame manipulation of an object—in this case two- to eighteen-inch-tall puppets—to make them appear to move. A painstaking process to say the least, stop-motion provides the animators—in this case, Ian MacKinnon and Peter Saunders, whose credits also include Tim Burton's Corpse Bride—with a limitless capacity for expression. Anderson calls Mr. Fox “sort of heroic and slightly vain,” and although he created new characters and scenes in order to flesh out the screen adaptation, the tone of the narrative remains as cheeky, sharp, and sardonic as Dahl’s original. 88 min.
District 9
2009. New Zealand. Directed by Neill Blomkamp. Screenplay by Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell. With Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, David James, Vanessa Haywood. A debut film that is both a hoot and a holler. The hoot comes from the brilliant premise of aliens in (of all places) Soweto, the assuredness of its fluid and tense direction, and the subversive comedy that abounds throughout (without once smirking or patronizing narrative’s genre roots). The holler comes from the surprises the cast and crew deliver to the audience from the first frame to last. Courtesy Tristar. 111 min.
Inglourious Basterds
2009. USA/Germany. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. With Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Melanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl. Tarantino’s intricate WWII fantasy film moves beyond perverse revenge fable, thanks in large part to the tour-de-force performances of Fassbender, Laurent, and, especially Waltz, who reinvents the cinematic Nazi villain. This characteristically well scripted multilingual melange of pulp and propaganda howls at history and provides the best climax a nitrate-film-lover could imagine! In English, German, French; English subtitles. 152 min.
Zombieland
2009. USA. Directed by Ruben Fleischer. If “Nut up or shut up” becomes the catchphrase of 2009, we'll have Zombieland to thank. One third horror movie, one third comedy, and one third satire—it's a dreadfully successful formula that proves grossly appealing to audiences. When a virus turns most Americans into shuffling, decaying, black-ooze-spewing zombies, four survivors band together for a harrowing cross-country road trip. Columbus (Eisenberg), the movie’s neurotic narrator, first joins up with macho zombie-slayer Tallahassee (Harrelson). Tallahassee is a special breed of dawdling good ole’ boy, but when it comes time to fight off the marauding zombies who stand between him and his beloved Twinkies, he dispatches scores of the hobbling undead using whatever is on-hand, from a car door to a banjo to a pickaxe. When they encounter the con-artist sisters Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), the foursome, convinced there is a zombie-free zone in a Southern California amusement park, hits the road to find sanctuary. Get ready for rotting body parts, zombie clowns, unidentifiable bodily seepage, creepy calliope music, and a hilarious, terror-inducing thrill ride. 88 min.
Past
Drag Me to Hell
2009. USA. Sam Raimi. 99 min.
Tyson
2008. USA. James Toback. 90 min.
Valentino: The Last Emperor
2008. USA. Matt Tyrnauer. 96 min.
The Age of Stupid
2009. Great Britain. Franny Armstrong. 92 min.
Politist, adj (Police, Adjective)
2009. Romania. Corneliu Porumboiu. 115 min.