The Wolfpack
Mr. and Mrs. Angulo were a hippie couple with a countercultural agenda. They kept their six boys and one girl isolated from the world in their Manhattan public housing high-rise, home-schooled and vaguely apprehensive about government conspiracies. But from father’s huge VHS-DVD library the sons began studying and reenacting films with homemade costumes and sets. Crystal Moselle’s Sundance-award winning documentary peers non-judgmentally into a strange subculture of articulate, imaginative teens whose concept of the world was constructed from the movies.
Clutter
After dad died, mom (Carol Kane), vowing to “never let anything disappear from our lives again,” clings to her children and a growing heap of possessions filling their home. Clutter is an oddly endearing comedy of family dysfunction. Protagonist Charlie (Joshua Leonard), a failing filmmaker and ineffectual GenXer, is the most sensible member of the family. Aside from mom, he contends with his sisters, the petty criminal Lisa (Natasha Lyonne) and the painfully shy Penny (Halley Feiffer).
In the Courtyard
Antoine (Gustave Kervern) is an aging pop star who, afflicted with insomnia and sick of it all, walks off stage during showtime and quits. He has trouble finding work—his temp agency tells him his sulky demeanor is “bad for team spirit”—but manages to get hired as a janitor in an apartment building. Most everyone Antoine encounters in this charming French comedy of contemporary manners is also out of whack. Hard-working Catherine Deneuve co-stars.
The Seven Five
The Seven Five
In the 1970s and ’80s, New York was beyond gritty with many neighborhoods descending into a war zone of crack and corruption. Brooklyn’s 75th Precinct was among the worst. As shown in the compelling documentary The Seven Five, many cops began stealing from criminals, sheltered by the blue shield of silence. One cop, Mike Dowd, ran a criminal racket out the precinct station. The Seven Five is composed of new interviews and footage from Dowd’s trial.
