(Richard Fleischer, UK 1971, 111 min.)

In a frighteningly real performance, Richard Attenborough plays the notorious British serial killer John Christie, who murdered at least six women in his Notting Hill flat during the 1940s and 1950s. An equally powerful John Hurt plays Timothy Evans, Christie’s neighbor, and perhaps his ultimate victim. The rigorous but unflashy direction by Richard Fleischer makes for a gripping tale of true crime that puts it in a league with Compulsion and The Boston Strangler, Fleischer’s other masterworks of the genre.

RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH: TWO GREAT PORTRAITS IN VILLAINY

Before he became well known as an Oscar-winning producer/director of such gargantuan historical epics as Gandhi, Cry Freedom, and Chaplin or for his portrayal of the kindly grandfather who is founder of Jurassic Park, Richard Attenborough was first recognized as one of the most versatile actors in postwar British cinema. Sort of a Philip Seymour Hoffman of his era, Attenborough’s medium physical stature, unconventional looks, and immense talent allowed him to easily shuttle between character roles and leading man assignments. Always eager to tackle a juicy role, and seemingly unconcerned with developing a restrictive “star” persona, Attenborough’s two most striking film performances are distinct portraits in murderous villainy, separated by 24 years.

1947’s Brighton Rock, based on an early bestseller by Graham Greene, was Attenborough’s breakthrough film. He plays Pinkie Brown, a vicious but charismatic thug in a pre-war England resort town. who manipulates women and kills off his rivals, while he grapples with his own salvation, the primary existential dilemma in Greene’s literary canon.

After he became a filmmaker himself, Attenborough was asked to play the notorious British real-life serial killer John Christie in American director Richard Fleischer’s terrifying 1971 crime drama 10 Rillington Place. Christie murdered at least six women in his Notting Hill flat during the 1940s and 1950s and the rigorous, but unflashy direction helps put the film in a league with Compulsion and The Boston Strangler, Fleischer’s other masterworks of the genre.

But the real driving force in both of these spellbinders, which will be showing in newly restored 35mm prints in the Dryden Theatre, is Attenborough’s focused and precise renderings of deeply troubled men. Whether the character is fictional or based on a real person, his masterful technique humanizes Pinkie and Christie, which has the effect of making them all the more frighteningly real.

—Jim Healy, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Motion Picture Department

(Kathryn Bigelow, US 1991, 122 min.)

FBI Agent Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) goes undercover to stop a ring of surfing, adrenaline-junkie bank robbers led by the charismatic Bodhi (the late Patrick Swayze in one of his signature roles). One of the exemplary action films of its era, Point Break is also another pointed critique of machismo from the very talented director Kathryn Bigelow.

(LA MUJER SIN CABEZA, Lucrecia Martel, Argentina 2008, 87 min., Spanish/subtitles)

In the intriguing and surreal new film from the much-heralded director of The Holy Girl and La Cienaga, Maria Onetto plays an upper-class woman whose perfect life may be a dream or whose nightmare accident (was that a child her car hit? a dog? or nothing?) may indicate that her entire existence lacks reality. “[This] droll, enigmatic fable about bourgeois discombobulation … has the comic timing of Samuel Beckett, the composition and color sense of William Eggleston, and the very peculiar paranoid atmosphere of Lucrecia Martel. See for yourself.” (Stuart Klawans, The Nation)

(Joe Berlinger, US 2009, 100 min.)

This exciting and inspiring new film documents the compelling, real-life David vs. Goliath struggle of 30,000 plaintiffs from five indigenous Ecuadoran tribes to find justice from Chevron, one of the world’s largest oil producers. Crude tracks the ongoing 16-year battle between the corporate behemoth and those Ecuadoran communities poisoned by the dumping of toxic waste in the Amazon. The story focuses on the charismatic lawyers and activists who have doggedly pursued the case against all the forces a corporation can bring into courts of law.

(Robert Siegel, US 2009, 86 min.)

Comedian Patton Oswalt stars as Paul, a Staten Island parking garage attendant and devoted New York Giants fan who spends much of his free time calling into a trash-talking radio sports show. Spotting his favorite player in his neighborhood, Paul and his buddy Sal (Kevin Corrigan) follow/stalk the athlete to a fateful meeting at a Manhattan strip club that sets off an unexpected chain of events. This funny and fascinating character study of a typically ignored kind of contemporary American marks the directorial debut of writer Robert Siegel, co-founder of The Onion. In Big Fan, Siegel combines the obsessive fandom of The King of Comedy (screening February 3) with the attention to local culture found in his screenplay for The Wrestler. Siegel will introduce his film and answer questions following the screening.