Calendar: Week 11

June 8

The Counterfieters
Stefan Ruzowitzky, 2007 - 100 min.

Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, The Counterfeiters is an intense examination of the lengths people go to in order to survive under extreme circumstances. Salomon Sorowitsch, counterfeiter extraordinaire, is torn away from his debauched lifestyle in Berlin when arrested and sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp. There he sees his fellow prisoners suffer from the brutal horrors of Nazism, but uses his skills to get special treatment. He eventually oversees the largest counterfeiting operation in history. In German with English subtitles. 35mm.

My Blueberry Nights
Wong Kar-Wai, 2007 - 111 min.

In Wong’s first American feature, Norah Jones becomes the director’s vehicle for sightseeing across the country and making cozy rest stops with a cast that seems designed to martial all that’s best in today’s acting talent in one fell swoop, as if to make up for not having arrived on the continent sooner. Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman, and David Strathairn all make cameos in the film, but the force and effect of each player’s presence is to plunge us deeper into the intricate latticework of emotional and sexual tensions that defines all of Wong’s films. 35mm.