It’s not exactly a “slim pickings” type of month of April. Beyond our Top 3 Critics’ Picks, there are a handful of A & B Grade items worth pointing towards. In the docu sphere, NYC docu-lovers can get their fix this week with Errol Morris’ taking on a presidential wannabe with The Unknown Known (RADiUS-TWC, April 2nd) and Dan Geller & Dayna Goldfine’s The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (Zeitgeist Films, April 4th) which played at Telluride appears to work splendidly with archival material. Adding to the plethora of choices this upcoming weekend, you could easily add American low-budget indie Chris Eska’s The Retrieval (Variance Films, April 2nd) which and heavyweight auteur items such as the extremely well-received alien amongst us portrait in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (A24, April 4th) and LVT’s fruitful psycho-sexual dealings in Nymphomaniac: Volume II (Magnolia Pictures, April 4th) while later in the month we find David Gordon Green’s Joe (Roadside Attractions, April 11th) and Steven Knight’s Locke (A24, April 25th). Among our top 3 items, we have a pair of Cannes-preemed titles and a docu that played like gangbusters at Locarno and TIFF. Here are this month’s Top 3 Critics’ Picks!:
Only Lovers Left Alive – Jim Jarmusch
Limited Release – April 11th
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Awards & Fests: Cannes, TIFF, NYFF, BFI London, Sitges, Sundance, SXSW
What the critic’s are saying?: Despite not picking up any awards at the Cannes Film Festival, the Main Comp entry might be among our most beloved love stories for film years ending in ’13-’14. Placing high among our Cannes Critics Panel grid which includes Time Out Magazine’s David Calhoun, we agree with his assessment that “something magical and magnetic about this world of mature, know-it-all, ultra-cool vampires that Jarmusch creates and somehow it never seems at all silly.” I’m thinking this is arguably Jarmusch’s best since Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), although I personally have a soft spot for Broken Flowers (2005), but THR’s Todd McCarthy goes farther back in the Jarmusch timeline, calling the “addictive mood and tone piece” Jarmusch’s “best work in many years, probably since 1995’s Dead Man“. Comparably, I’m thinking that Dead Man is a slow-burner deluxe but IndieWIRE’s Eric Kohn suggests that it may not be too far off citing the filmmaker’s “patient, philosophical indulgences and the wooden exteriors of his characters’ lives, the movie rewards with a savvy emotional payoff about moving forward even when the motivation to do so has gone.”
Our number 2 Critics’ Pick of the month:
