The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, January 25-31
The Forest For the Trees (2003)
Directed by Maren Ade
The origins of discomfort and awkwardness in Maren Ade’s Everyone Else and Toni Erdmann can be traced back to her breezily brutal debut. After moving to a new German province, bright-eyed biology teacher Melanie (Eva Löbau) encounters an onslaught of indifference, casual aggression, and outright isolation from both her colleagues and students. Ill-equipped for such survival-of-the-fittest gauntlets, she forces herself into social and work situations hoping to blend in. But predators of all ages can smell fear and she never stands a chance. The closing moments present her “fight” giving way to “flight” in particularly tragic fashion. Glenn Heath, Jr. (January 31, 7pm at the Alamo Drafthouse)