While many titans of 20th century literature have listed into irrelevance (or, perhaps worse, read-it-in-high-school ubiquity), the legend of James Baldwin has only grown in stature. Black, gay and scorchingly articulate, James Baldwin’s words have only become more resonant into the 21st century. To celebrate the author’s centennial on Friday, The Brattle Theatre has lined up a weekend’s worth of cinematic tributes. The centerpiece of the program, which runs Friday through Sunday, is a brand-new 4k restoration of Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley’s 1982 documentary “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” in which the filmmakers follow Baldwin on a tour of the American South, revisiting landmarks of the civil rights movement. Screening Friday and Sunday is Barry Jenkins’ “If Beale Street Could Talk” (2018), adapted from Baldwin’s 1974 novel of the same name. Rounding out the series is Raoul Peck’s documentary “I Am Not Your Negro” (2017), which augments one of Baldwin’s unfinished manuscripts (here read by Samuel L. Jackson) with archival footage of Baldwin himself. While it is perhaps dispiriting that so many of Baldwin’s protests against American institutions remain so damningly relevant, we are fortunate to still have his words to help make sense of it all.
Though too willfully offbeat and strange to be a proper household name, Don Hertzfeldt is perhaps our most beloved and influential living animator not named Hayao. Hertzfeldt’s breakout film, the Oscar-nominated 2000 short “Rejected,” was one of the Internet’s very first videos, and set the tone for much of the absurdist “Internet humor” of the following two decades. His masterpiece, however, might just be “World of Tomorrow,” which screens at The Brattle this weekend. Released in three installments (so far) between 2015 and 2020, “World of Tomorrow” retains the irreverent humor and distinctive stick-figure style of “Rejected,” but maps them onto an achingly sad (and all too recognizable) vision of an oppressively technology-centric future. The result is at once funny, surprising and undeniably poignant, and one of the most wildly original works of science fiction in recent memory. The Brattle will be screening all installments as a single feature Friday through Sunday, along with a new Hertzfeldt short titled simply “ME.”
Bust out your battle vest and channel your inner Beavis: Saturday, the Somerville Theatre presents The Metallica Film Festival, an all-day triple feature of the influential thrash band’s greatest concert videos. The festivities begin at noon with “Cliff ’Em All” (1987), which compiles nearly all known footage of original bassist Cliff Burton, who died at 24 the previous year in a tour bus accident. The party continues with “Cunning Stunts” (1998), the band’s first hi-def concert video, shot in Fort Worth during the “Load”/“Re-Load” tour. The program ends with a true rarity: 2009’s “Orgullo, Pasion y Gloria: Tres Noches En La Ciudad de Mexico,” a double-DVD released exclusively in Latin American markets and almost never seen in the states. At more than six and a half hours (with intermissions between sets), this festival requires an all-day commitment to headbanging, but you’ll get to see one of the greatest metal bands of all time across the breadth of its career – and, as the song goes, nothing else matters.
When Donald Sutherland died last month at 88, it shone a light on one of the most idiosyncratic and rewarding filmographies of the New Hollywood era; with his laid-back demeanor but piercing stare, Sutherland’s presence was unique even among his ’70s antihero contemporaries. Nowhere is this more true than in Alan J. Pakula’s great paranoid thriller “Klute” (1971), which screens as the Midnight Special this Saturday at the Somerville. “Klute” is best remembered for Jane Fonda’s iconic performance as strong-willed sex worker Bree Daniel, rightly hailed as one of the greatest protagonists in one of cinema’s greatest decades. Don’t sleep, however, on Sutherland’s take on the title role, a character who could have been a by-the-numbers movie gumshoe but in Sutherland’s hands becomes something far more intriguing and ineffable. Together, Fonda and Sutherland make “Klute” one of the most beguiling and unforgettable masterpieces of pure New York cool.
The Harvard Film Archive is still out of commission for the summer, but its collaboration with The Brattle continues on Sunday with one of the true landmarks of world cinema. Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” (1975) made headlines in 2022 when it topped Sight and Sound Magazine’s decennial Critics’ Poll, dethroning the likes of “Citizen Kane” and “Vertigo.” It is, to say the least, a challenging work: a meticulously paced, oft-silent look at the minutiae of the titular homemaker’s daily routine, which unfolds in near-real time over the course of almost three and a half hours. Despite taking place almost entirely inside Jeanne’s cramped residence, it’s one of those films that demands to be seen on the big screen, where it can demand your undivided attention and pull you fully under its hypnotic sway. “Jeanne Dielman” will screen on 35 mm with a special introduction courtesy of the HFA.
There are great movie years and then there was 1999, a year that gave us a bumper crop of critically acclaimed indies and popularly beloved blockbusters alike. This month, the Landmark Kendall Square Cinema kicks off a weekly tribute series to the innumerable classics that this year celebrate their 25th anniversary (though it falls outside the purview of this publication, I would be remiss if I did not mention that the Coolidge Corner Theatre is running a 1999 series of its own; that there is no overlap between the two theaters’ programs speaks to the magnitude of the year’s cinematic offerings). The Kendall’s series begins Tuesday with Lana and Lily Wachowski’s modern sci-fi classic “The Matrix,” one of the most monumental films from a year full of them. So much has been written about “The Matrix” in the past quarter-century – about its aesthetic influence, its groundbreaking special effects, its queer and sociopolitical subtext – that there’s scarcely more that I can add. Instead, I will just confirm that its tale of cyber-dystopia and not-really-reality can officially be ranked among the greatest and most elemental fantasies Hollywood has given us, right up there with “King Kong” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It is also, quite simply, cool as all hell, and as eye-popping as the day it was released. After all these years, “The Matrix” still has what it takes to make you say, “Whoa.”
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
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