Carole Lombard (1908-1942) made her debut as an actress at the age of 12 in Allan Dwan’s A Perfect Crime, in 1921. After finishing junior high school in 1925, she reentered films, but remained an obscure blond bombshell type until she got her big break in 1934, opposite John Barrymore in Howard Hawks’ Twentieth Century, which—along with Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey (1936), opposite William Powell, to whom she was married in 1931 and from who she was divorced in 1933—opens the Bruce Goldstein selection of Lombard classics and clinkers at the Film Forum. Lombard’s career took a very long time to hit its stride, but soared to the heavens once it did.  read more »

The Secrets
Running time 120 minutes
Written by Hadar Galron and Avi Nesher
Directed by Avi Nesher
Starring Ania Bukstein, Michal Shtamler, Rivka Michaeli

Avi Nesher’s the Secrets, from a screenplay (in Hebrew and French, with English subtitles) by Hadar Galron and Avi Nesher, unfolds as an engrossing mixture of voluptuous spirituality and incisive sensuality as it tells the story of two rebellious young Orthodox Jewish girls at a cabala seminary in Safed, where they risk opprobrium, disgrace and banishment by unexpectedly falling in love with each other in the midst of saving the soul of a mysterious French woman, who has left a French prison after having served a multiyear sentence for murdering her lover.  read more »

Lake City
Running time 92 minutes
Written and directed by Hunter Hill and Perry Moore
Starring Sissy Spacek, Troy Garity, Colin Ford, Rebecca Romijn

Hunter Hill and Perry Moore’s Lake City, from their own screenplay, was designed from the outset as a vehicle for veteran Oscar-winning actress Sissy Spacek. It was also consciously and even self-consciously modeled after such “Southern” movies as To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Sling Blade (1996), One False Move (1992), Tender Mercies (1983) and The Last Picture Show (1971). In their joint Director’s Q&A, Mr. Hill and Mr. Moore discuss the genesis of the film: “Lake City burned a hole through us: it was a story we had to tell.  read more »

Stages
Running time 80 minutes
Written by Jalein Laarman and Mijke de Jong
Directed by Mijke de Jong
Starring Elsie de Brauw, Marcel Musters, Stijn Koomen

Mijke de Jong’s Stages, from a screenplay (in Dutch with English subtitles) by Jalein Laarman and Mijke de Jong, manages to be both hyper-stylized in some aspects, and hyper-realistic in others. This is to say that for much of the time, the camera and soundtrack are fixed on the conversations of couples in restaurants and an occasional living room from the waist up so that we almost never see them standing or walking as they talk.  read more »

Slumdog Millionaire
Running time 120 minutes
Written by Simon Beaufoy
Directed by Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan
Starring Dev Patel, Irfan Kahn, Freida Pinto

Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan’s Slumdog Millionaire, from a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy, has received some very mixed reviews for its bizarre mixture of genres and an English-language soundtrack that makes it seem as if Mr. Boyle is introducing both Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and its hideous slums to Western audiences. I disagree with critics who denounce the happy Bollywood-like romantic ending that comes after literally plunging us and its child protagonist into the cesspool of slumdog existence.  read more »

A Christmas Tale
Running Time 150 minutes
Written by Arnaud Desplechin and Emmanuel Bourdieu
Directed by Arnaud Desplechin
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Anne Cosigny, Mathieu Amalric

Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale, from a screenplay (in French with English subtitles) by Arnaud Desplechin and Emmanuel Bourdieu, can best be described as a family epic that culminates in a stormy Christmas reunion, rearranging many of the marital and sibling alignments under the pressure of a medical emergency. Catherine Deneuve plays Junon, the family matriarch, whose diagnosed leukemia prompts a desperate search within the family for a compatible bone marrow donor to treat Junon’s condition.  read more »

Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Running time 72 minutes
Directed by Gini Reticker
Starring Janet Johnson Bryant, Etweda Cooper, Vaiba Flomo, Leyma Gbowee

Gini Reticker’s Pray the Devil Back to Hell, produced by Abigail Disney, tells the little known story in the West of a small band of Liberian women who formed a church-led Peace Now Movement that eventually toppled ruthless dictator Charles Taylor from power, as well as the Liberian warlords who temporarily succeeded Taylor with a similar brand of brutal tyranny and corrupt exploitation of Liberia’s natural resources. In the process, Liberia gained free elections under the protection of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force, and chose Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first female head of state in modern Africa’s history.  read more »

The Guitar
Running time 95 minutes
Written by Amos Poe
Directed by Amy Redford
Starring Saffron Burrows

Amy Redford’s The Guitar, from a screenplay by Amos Poe, reportedly inspired by a true story, begins on just about the lowest note imaginable, and then eventually soars to the highest note imaginable on the wings of a magical guitar and its ecstatic musical frenzies. And what more do you want in the way of entertainment during these ever ominous times?

Saffron Burrows, as the initially ill-fated Melody “Me” Wilder, is practically the whole show in this strange and often rapturous vehicle of charismatic redemption.  read more »

Eden
Running time 83 minutes
Written by Eugene O’Brien
Directed by Declan Reick
Starring Aidan Kelly, Eileen Walsh, Sarah Greene

Declan Reck’s Eden, from an adaptation by Eugene O’Brien of his play of the same title, reportedly differs from the play, which I have not seen, by eliminating the two lengthy monologues at the core of it, one by a disaffected husband in a failing marriage on the eve of his 10th anniversary, and the other by his disaffected wife. Instead, the husband has been changed to an almost completely inarticulate character in the film, with an embarrassing penchant for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.  read more »

The 40th anniversary presentation of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), from his own screenplay and based on Ira Levin’s horror novel, will play at Film Forum from Friday, Oct. 31, through Thursday, Nov. 6. Showtimes daily are 1:30, 4:10, 7 and 9:35. Mr. Polanski had already established his reputation with his very first film, an incisive thriller titled Knife in the Water (1962), followed by Repulsion (1965), with a revelatory performance by Catherine Deneuve, and The Fearless Vampire Killers (1965), in which a particularly irreverent Jewish vampire scoffs at the Cross and Bible intended to exorcise vampires with a dismissively disdainful gesture and facial expression.  read more »