I'll follow the sun

No Manhattan trip this 3-day weekend, but at least a home double feature--of a pair of excellent films of whose existence I was unaware 2 weeks ago.

Im Juli (In July)

(2001)

I didn't know Fatih Akin had directed a feature before Head-On (2004) until a friend said that she had a Netflix disc of this. I asked for a report, and when she said that she thought it might be her favorite of his films and asked whether I'd like to take the disc and then drop it in the mail, . . . I first thought, no, already have full cinematic plate . . . until I remembered that the weekend was a triple.

It might not be my favorite of Akin's films, but it certainly is the sweetest, the happiest of them I've seen--and provides a context for the kind of wacky Soul Kitchen, which seemed to come from a completely different place from Head-On and The Edge of Heaven. Nerd student-teacher Daniel (Akin regular Moritz Bleibtreu) goes on a quest for love, not realizing that he has already found it in his own back yard (and seriously, the ideal woman [Idil Üner], the scary woman [Branka Katic], and the right woman [Christiane Paul] are as striking a female trio as you'll see outside of a representation of the Graces).

Not only a sweet love story but also a beautiful travelogue, shot on location in Hamburg, Budapest, and Istanbul.

X: The Unheard Music

(1985)

God, look at that date: it's a quarter of a century old. Found this while trolling for the still-unavailable-on-disc The Decline of Western Civilization. I guess it really was shown in theaters--here's a Janet Maslin review of its opening at the Waverly (now the IFC)--but I don't recall its showing up in Champaign. Janet doesn't seem to have dug the music much, but for someone who thought in 1982 and still thinks today that X was the best American punk band by far, this film--part documentary, part concert film, part music video, part polemical tract, and every moment visually and aurally fascinating--goes into the pantheon of rock & roll movies.