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FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS

8/30/2016

The French film Marguerite (Arts Fuse review) was a fictionalized account of the career of the famously bad opera singer Florence Foster Jenkins, who died in 1946. She became a cult figure with significant record sales, including a a best-selling recording of her one and only Carnegie Hall concert. The scathing critical response to that final performance may have accelerated her death from a heart attack, yet her recordings continue to sell with an fan base that included the late David Bowie. The story of this fabulous eccentric has now inspired a glossy Hollywood comedy.
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INDIGNATION

8/30/2016

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James Schamus has produced some of the best American art films of the past few decades, working with directors Todd Solondz, Edward Burns, Todd Haynes, Cindy Sherman and, most significantly, Ang Lee. To write and direct his first film without big stars and to base it on a Philip Roth novella is a risky undertaking. Schamus’ Indignation proves that he has learned his lessons well. The film makes the most of the book’s first-person narration through neatly composed close-ups and is well steeped in authentic fifties ambiance (hues of brown and tan, sweater vests, and wood-paneled libraries). Set in 1951, the film’s cast does a fine job of conveying Roth’s wryly critical vision of a conformist decade bedeviled by confused attitudes about sexuality.
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