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Let's go Metrograph M4

Brand new art/revival house on the Lower East side. Problem: so L on the ES as to be an awkward reach from my usual Houston, Sixth Avenue, 13th Street stomping grounds. Solution: baptize the place with an exclusive M4--not the first M4 I've done all at the same site, but the first I've planned that way.

It's a lovely venue, at 7 Ludlow, just north of Canal (quickest subway route from Grand Central: Lexington line to Broadway/Lafayette, then Brooklyn-bound F three stops to East Broadway, which exits a little more than a block from the theater). If you have plenty of time and good weather, though, just take the 6 to Canal and meander east through Little Italy and Chinatown. Two screens, one of which has a small balcony; 35mm prints; reserved seating; a staff comprising very young, very pretty people of both traditional genders. Interesting seasonings on the popcorn, which is 6 bucks for a dry quart and staler than you'd think possible, given the theater's brief tenure. On the other hand, 4 bucks gets you a massive box of Whoppers. And like everything else, the concession nook looks terrific.

Hua li shang ban zu (Office)

Met

Speaking of looking terrific, the stars of this film are the sets, particularly the titular headquarters of a global investment firm--an office dominated by (M4 symmetry alert!) a Big Clock.

This is the best Chinese 3D musical I've ever seen. Also the worst, and it seems likelier to maintain that status than the other: unless ill-served by the subtitle translator, the songs are neither smart nor otherwise interesting; the plot is soapily conventional; and even the 3D is pointless: those beautiful sets could have been given depth just as effectively by good cinematography.

High School (1968)

Met

When I saw this was showing, I thought, "Frederick Wiseman classic that I've never seen!" Oddly, I did not think, until the film began and I saw those godawful clothes and hairstyles, "Nineteen sixty-eight? I was fourteen and in high school!"

I've just now learned that the Northeast High School at which Wiseman points his camera is in Philadelphia; I'd have thought somewhere in Ohio--this midwesterner felt a definite midwestern vibe.

Anyone who has ever seen a Wiseman documentary knows what to expect (documentation) and what not to expect (commentary), but of course the filmmaker's wise editing has a commentary edge of its own: you can't come away from this without sensing that Wiseman was on the side of the generational angels: stodgy old crewcuts and matrons enforce rules whose foundations are past practice, while nerdy youngsters try desperately to exercise their budding muscles of independence.

A Space Program

Met

Yes! That's why I make these trips! A team of bricoleurs uses steel and plywood and Tyvek and epoxy to simulate a womanned mission to Mars, and the narrative, too, is bricolage: the filmmakers take everything completely seriously, except when they don't. The film documents a 2012 art installation by Tom Sachs in the Park Avenue Armory wherein an audience was invited to observe the mission; I was too unhip and too far away and too unclued-in to be there, but I'm happy with the film experience. A contender for my long-contemplated festival of brilliantly weird films.

The Big Clock (1948)

Met

Charles Laughton at his most oleaginous is a Rupert Murdoch of mid-twentieth-century media, with a -ways magazine (Newsways, Styleways, Artways) for every taste; Ray Milland is the editor of the leader of the pack, Crimeways. When Laughton's Earl Janoth murders a mistress, Milland's George Stroud is trapped in a wrong-man plot as nonsensical as it is delightful. Elsa Lanchester contributes a wonderful turn as a flighty but calculating artist whose work is sometimes brutalist, sometimes surreal.

But a bookend comment about the Metrograph: clocks are not big here. Showtimes are listed at precise hours, but your 1 p.m. screening might actually get under way at 1:05, 1:08, 1:11--another reason why the venue will probably not appear in the middle of a lot of M4 itineraries. The Big Clock, with a 95-minute runtime, was scheduled to be screened at 7, making me certain of catching the 9:34 train home, and giving me some small hope of the 9:02 and being home & watching the German-England friendly by 11:30.

But about 9:10, manager Alexander Olch came in to tell us that one of the projectors for the theater had blown a bulb, so we would be "going really old school": a pause between reels to load the one remaining functional projector. I have to say there was something gained in stopping every 18 to 20 minutes, typically at a moment of particular suspense (especially the final break, of course), but lost was any hope of getting to New Haven before midnight.

Ah well: a fine day nonetheless, and a vibrant, quirky addition to the Manhattan film world.