You may recall that the guys behind the Fortress Music Festival once organized the Lone Star Film Festival and also collaborated with Christopher Kelly on some editions of that event. The gang is back together for Modern Cinema 2019, an event started by Kelly that has now taken the Fortress guys on board, and the films slated for this year’s cinema weekend are as enticing as ever.
The big attraction is Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, an unusually candid autobiographical film starring Antonio Banderas as an Almodóvar-like movie director suffering from various maladies and trying to reckon with his past. Arguably even more star power can be found in Rob Garver’s documentary, What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael, a profile of the highly influential film critic that includes interviews with some of the artists she extolled and lambasted (Quentin Tarantino, Francis Ford Coppola, Ridley Scott, Alec Baldwin).
Seeking a glimpse of the Catholic Church’s inner workings? Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce star in The Two Popes, Fernando Meirelles’ account of the transition from Pope Benedict to Pope Francis. A less dignified power struggle is taken up in The Current War, with a high-powered cast (Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, Tom Holland, Nicholas Hoult) detailing the electrification of the world by Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse. Rounding out the program is Bertrand Bonello’s Zombi Child — that title is not a misprint — that takes the zombie movie back to its Haitian roots.
Modern Cinema runs Fri-Sun at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St, FW. Tickets are $15-59. Call 817-738-9215.
