Cinematheque Series Showcases Hodges’ Stylish Crime Films

The American Cinematheque’s Shoot to Kill: The Cool Crimes of Mike Hodges calls attention to one of the most gifted genre directors of the past 30 years, a stylish British filmmaker who recalls Jean-Pierre Melville in his ability to invest tales of crime and deception with unexpected, complex ambiguities. Just when you think Hodges is building to a payoff that will clear everything up, he may leave you to sort things out for yourself.

The long-overdue retrospective commences with “Get Carter,” the hard-edged 1971 thriller that stars Michael Caine as a steely hit man and which established Hodges’ international reputation. It screens Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 9:45 p.m. Hodges will be present for discussions of his pictures throughout the six-day tribute at the Egyptian Theatre.

“Get Carter” will be followed Friday and preceded Saturday by Hodges’ latest and arguably finest film, “Croupier,” a work of compelling aplomb in which Clive Owen is mesmerizing in the title role as a loner who never gambles at the table yet allows himself to be drawn into a dangerous caper by a lush-looking woman (Alex Kingston) who has become a regular at a posh London casino where he works. “Croupier” compounds irony within irony before at last relaxing its grip.

Caine reteamed with Hodges for the 1972 “Pulp,” a cult classic that co-stars Mickey Rooney and Lizabeth Scott. It screens Tuesday at 7 p.m., followed by a pair of terrific early TV movies in their U.S. debuts, “Suspect” (1968) and “Rumour” (1969). The first stars Rachel Kempson (mother of Vanessa, Corin and Lynn Redgrave) as an elegant, wealthy woman living in a handsome 18th century country estate who covers up her husband’s disappearance because she suspects he might be implicated in an unspeakable crime. Kempson is splendid as a woman of privilege determined to stave off scandal. More convoluted and stylish, “Rumour” stars Michael Coles (also one of the cops in “Suspect”) as a pugnacious Fleet Street columnist contacted by a high-priced call girl who fears for her life. In need of money, she tries to sell him compromising photos of herself and a member of Parliament she says is being blackmailed. Coles is drawn into a web of danger and intrigue much like Clive Owen’s croupier; they are men capable of outsmarting themselves. “Rumour’s” finish is at once audacious and tantalizing.

The Hodges series concludes Wednesday at 7 p.m. with the nifty 1974 sci-fi thriller “The Terminal Man” and the 1991 supernatural thriller “Black Rainbow.” For more information, call (323) 466-FILM.

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The Cinematheque’s bimonthly Alternative Screen presents tonight at 7:30 Cass Paley’s “Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes,” a comprehensive two-hour documentary on the late porn star who parlayed a formidable sexual endowment into fame and fortune only to be overtaken by drugs, crime and eventually AIDS. He inspired “Boogie Nights,” but his own life, which began in rural Ohio in 1944 as the son of an alcoholic father and stepson of a brute, was darker and far more complex. From the many people Paley interviews, most significantly Holmes’ long-suffering first wife and his loyal manager, we get the impression that Holmes, who had only a ninth-grade education, believed he had only one sure road to success and became caught up in the mythical image he created on screen to the extent that he let it destroy him. (He is one of the very few porn stars who used his actual name.) His life, sums up Times film critic Kenneth Turan near the end of the film, was “a real American story.” Also screening: Heilman-C’s 30-minute “Self Portrait: Women Loving Women,” an experiment in art and pornography.

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The Asia Pacific Media Center at USC’s Annenberg Center for Communication is presenting Saturday and Sunday an Asian Film Series, which launches a nine-city U.S. tour. The five-film series, to be held in Room 108, George Lucas Instructional Building, 3450 Watt Way, USC, commences Saturday at 4 p.m. with the West Coast premiere of Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s three-hour “Jose Rizal,” about the patriot physician and Renaissance man who inspired the Philippine revolution a century ago.

Two remarkable first films screen Sunday, Lu Xuechang’s “The Making of Steel,” at noon, and Kwangmo Lee’s “Spring in My Hometown,” at 4:30 p.m. (In between, “Death on a Full Moon Day,” about civil war-torn Sri Lanka, screens at 2:30 p.m.) When Tian Zhuangzhang was blacklisted for his powerful indictment of Cultural Revolution excesses, “The Blue Kite,” he encouraged younger filmmaker Lu Xuechang to take over “The Making of Steel,” which takes its title from a Russian novel in which a young man’s iron will is forged in adversity, as is this film’s hero. He’s Zhouqing (Zhu Hongmao), whom we meet as a boy in 1976 and who retains his courage and decency despite dire circumstances. Forced to quit high school and go to work handling rail cargo, he meets a fatherly train conductor (played by Tian) who subsequently donates bone marrow when Zhouqing’s foot is injured when he’s struck by a truck. Zhouqing becomes successful enough as a rock guitarist to take a three-year sojourn in East Berlin, returning to Beijing in the late ‘80s to a society that is becoming as affluent as it is corrupt while limiting freedom of expression. As Zhouqing searches for the conductor, whom he never sees again, he plunges into an odyssey that seethes with youthful rage and fury. “The Making of Steel,” not surprisingly, is banned in China.

Kwangmo Lee’s “Spring in My Hometown” is an understated masterpiece that traces a year of life in a beautiful village during which time the Korean War ends and life under armistice begins. It centers on two boys, Sung Min (Sung Ki Ahn), whose family prospers as that of his best friend, Chang Hee (Ok Sook Song), disintegrates. While the war causes divisiveness, the key issue is an unseen American military base that has a pervasive corrupting influence on some of the villagers. It has been Lee’s inspired decision to have his superb cinematographer Hyungkoo Kim keep his camera stationary, placing it almost entirely for mid-length and long shots. Such distancing charges the film’s images with compassion, and the physical and moral landscapes become one during the unfolding of a complex tale. Information: (213) 743-1939.

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The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Paul Morrissey retrospective continues Friday at 7:30 p.m. with his provocative Andy Warhol collaborations “My Hustler” (1965) and “Lonesome Cowboys” (1967), and Saturday brings (at 7:30 p.m.) Morrissey’s never-released “Forty Deuce” (1982), followed by his “Beethoven’s Nephew” (1985). There’s no sex or violence depicted in the savagely humorous “Forty Deuce,” but this shrewd, split-screen adaptation of Alan Browne’s Off-Broadway play has some of the most brutal, raw dialogue ever recorded. A group of male hustlers--the film’s title is slang for Manhattan’s 42nd Street--try to sell a 12-year-old boy, never mind that he’s dead from an overdose, to a bitchy, middle-aged Upper East Side gay man (Orson Bean). “Beethoven’s Nephew” is a witty commentary on the often wildly contradictory relationship between life and art in which Morrissey reveals the tragicomic absurdity of Beethoven’s obsession with his cynical, petulant nephew Karl that nevertheless inspired the composer’s greatest music. Information: (323) 857-6177.

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The Aussie Adventures series at the Grande Four-Plex, 345 S. Figueroa St., downtown Los Angeles, concludes with “Lilian’s Story,” which opens a one-week run Friday. Ruth Cracknell dazzles as a woman who emerges from 40 years in a mental institution sustained by her love of Shakespeare and a life-embracing spirit. That she was wrongly committed by a sexually abusive father is all too believable. Unfortunately, the story is too implausibly presented to work as either straightforward drama or as a fable of survival. (213) 617-0268.

Among the offerings Saturday at the Midnight Special Bookstore, 1318 Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica, as part of its Documental series at 7 p.m. is Steven Laff’s “The Gift,” a tremendously moving plea for more people to ensure that, in the event of unexpected death, their organs are available for saving the lives of others. Naomi Uman’s “Leche,” in the 9 p.m. program, a beautiful and evocative portrait of life on a Mexican rancho. (310) 393-2923.