"Having long become a subgenre of its own, war stories viewed through children's eyes have a special place in Italian cinema," writes Fernando F Croce. "From the raw sorrow of Roberto Rossellini's great War Trilogy to the astringent lyricism of the Taviani brothers' The Night of the Shooting Stars, filmmakers have repeatedly returned to kids struggling to hang on to scraps of their innocence amid bombs and bullets as a means of scrutinizing the national traumas of WWII. The Man Who Will Come, which kicks off the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Open Roads series this year, aims to further the tradition. Not without flashes of pensive power, director Giorgio Diritti's meticulous combination of historical tragedy and fairy tale ultimately succumbs to a dutiful worthiness less allied to the volcanic emotions of Italian masters than to the superficial polish of For-Your-Consideration Oscar hopefuls."
The House Next Door has already run two more reviews of films screening in Open Roads. For Joseph Jon Lanthier, Giuseppe Capotondi's The Double Hour, "aside from cribbing its most inventive and cerebral sleight-of-hand from a top-shelf Futurama episode, seems determined to vacuum every last empathetic crumb from its cheap surprises, leaving us with a pitifully uninteresting nihilism infused with the noxious golden light of beer commercials." And Adam Keleman finds Gabriele Salvatores's Happy Family to be "a blundered, disjointed mess, presenting a thin, unsympathetic lead whose humorless whims... supposedly paint him as a somewhat wounded yet curiously imaginative 38-year-old trying to move on from a bitter breakup via the colorful people he scripts."
James van Maanen previews nine of the 15 films in the series, running through next Thursday, and will be adding his takes on the remaining six to that same entry over the next few days.
MORE FESTS AND EVENTS
"The queer cinema aesthetics of Andy Warhol, a bounty of LGBT films from South America and a documentary about yodeling twin lesbians from New Zealand are among the highlights of the 34th edition of Frameline, the oldest and largest festival of its kind in the world." Michael Hawley introduces his preview. June 17 through 27.
Frameline is one of four festivals happening in June that indieWIRE briefly previews (the others are Edinburgh, Los Angeles and Silverdocs) and Bryce Renninger also notes that Outfest, taking place July 8 through 18 in LA, has announced its lineup. Howl, by the way, closes Frameline and opens Outfest and, in the Advocate, filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Freidman remember Allen Ginsberg's longtime partner, Peter Orlovsky, who died on Sunday.
Mike Everleth's got the lineup for the Chicago Underground Film Festival, June 24 through July 1.
The Seattle True Independent Film Festival is problematic in all sorts of ways, argues Paul Constant, who counts them up in the Stranger.
Twitch has launched a new series of interviews with festival programmers. First up is Grady Hendrix of the New York Asian Film Festival, running June 25 through July 8. If you find a more entertaining interview with anyone about anything, anything at all, let's hear about it in the comments below.
TIFF Cinematheque's celebration of its 20th anniversary has been mentioned here before but needs to be mentioned again because the Walrus and the Toronto Star's Geoff Pevere have interviewed programmer James Quandt.
IN OTHER NEWS
Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Nourizad has been sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail and 50 lashes. Reuters reports.
Q'orianka Kilcher, best known for portraying Pocahontas in Terrence Malick's The New World, has been arrested for tying herself to a fence in front of the White House. As USA Today reports, she was protesting a visit by the president of Peru.
"Which are the most inspirational five books about film ever written?" Sight & Sound asked 51 critics and their answers now appear in full online.
Canyon Cinema has redesigned and relaunched its site.
Page through BOMB 112.
For news and tips throughout the day every day, follow The Daily Notebook on Twitter and/or the RSS feed.