Listen Up Philip

April 1, 2015 · Knoxville Museum of Art · 6:30 p.m.

Alex Ross Perry’s third feature heralds the arrival of a bold new voice in American movies. Even more than in his critically lauded The Color Wheel, Perry draws on literary models (mainly Philip Roth and William Gaddis) to achieve a brazen mixture of bitter humor and unexpected pathos. In this sly, very funny portrait of artistic egomania, Jason Schwartzman stars as Philip Lewis Friedman, a precocious literary star anticipating the publication of his second novel.

Philip is a caustic narcissist, but the film, shot with tremendous agility on Super-16mm by Sean Price Williams, leaves his orbit frequently, lingering on the perspectives of his long-suffering photographer girlfriend, Ashley, (Elisabeth Moss) and his hero, the Roth-like literary lion Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce), who himself considers Philip a major talent. A film about callow ambition, Listen Up Philip is itself remarkably poised, a knowing, rueful account of how pain and insecurity transfigure themselves as anger but also as art. A Tribeca Film release. — New York Film Festival description

Melville

Directed by James M. Johnston

Marcus is dealing with some shit. He wonders through his day distracted and quiet, acting out at strangers, withdrawn from his wife, and unable to sleep. Whatever it is, he just can’t talk about it. Then he runs into an old friend who reminds him of the days when he never had a problem expressing anything. — SxSW description