With Modern Cinema Festival 2018, the Modern Art Museum brings back Christopher Kelly to program this small but focused event over one weekend to give us all an advance peek at awards season, and the talent he has assembled (including three Best Foreign Film Oscar winners) is mouthwatering.
Iran’s Asghar Farhadi goes Latin American with Everybody Knows, another tangled mystery tale about an Argentinian expat (Penélope Cruz) who returns to her native Spain for her sister’s wedding only to be entangled with her ex-boyfriend (Javier Bardem) and a terrible crime. Germany’s Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck brings his Never Look Away, a drama inspired by the life of artist Gerhard Richter. Poland’s Paweł Pawlikowski films another dreamy black-and-white romance during wartime, entitled Cold War.
The American entries look just as good, with Lucas Hedges starring in Boy Erased, based on Garrard Conley’s memoir about growing up gay and Christian in Texas and having to attend a gay conversion camp in the early 2000s. Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan portray a mid-century couple undergoing a traumatic divorce in Wildlife, a film written and directed by actors Zoe Kazan and Paul Dano. Cameron Yates’ Chef Flynn is a documentary following Flynn McGarry, the food savant who started a supper club at age 12 and now owns his own restaurant despite being too young to drink there. The Oscars will be upon us before we know it, and this festival can give you a jump.
Modern Cinema Festival 2018 runs Fri-Sun at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St, FW. Tickets are $15-79. Call 817-738-9215.
