The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, October 28-November 3
On Tour (2010)
Directed by Mathieu Amalric
Most of Amalric’s work is hard to find in the US. What’s kept On Tour, for which he picked up best director at Cannes, away from these shores is one of the greatest soundtracks of the modern era. Amalric’s selection of rock and soul rhymes with the perpetual insomniac charm of his hero, chain-smoking professional loser Joachim. Amalric plays Joachim as a thrift store beat prince, a man who seems relieved when life knocks him over if only for the brief respite the fall provides from its torments. He’s a manager taking an American burlesque troupe on a tour across Europe, and when he isn’t promising them the moon, he’s failing in every effort to be a better dad, a better boss, a somebody. Amalric’s Francophone 8½ homage gives every ounce of compositional pleasure and honest emotion to its vision of a unified artistic tomorrow. The boozy, depressive journey is the destination and it’s a rare one, not to be missed. Scout Tafoya (October 30, 9:15pm; November 5, 7pm at Anthology Film Archives’s Amalric tribute)