The Summer’s Best Art Films

No one thinks of the summer as a time for going to movie theaters and thinking deep thoughts. Yet sometimes the best of the smaller art films are released over the hot months to give them time to build word of mouth, as the French thriller Tell No One has in becoming the biggest art-house hit of the season. Stephen Holden of the New York Times has compiled a list of the best films of the summer that you may need to remember come Oscar time, and you can watch the trailers and clips for them right here on Fancast.

Elegy [watch trailers & clips]
Ben Kingsley has played some strange roles of late, but critics are lauding his layered and typically brilliant performance in Isabel Coixet’s Elegy, where he plays Professor David Kepesh, an aging cultural critic who takes his pleasures with his female students, while never letting anyone get truly close to him. That is, until he poised and perfect Consuela Castillo (Penelope Cruz) enters his classroom and becomes more than just an object of lust, but one of obsession, until his jealousy unravels all that passed between them. Until years pass, and Consuela returns to his life with an urgent question she can only ask of him.

Tell No One [watch the trailer]
François Cluzet is Alexandre Beck, a pediatrician trying to put his life back together after his wife Margot (the captivating Marie-Josée Croze from The Diving Bell and The Butterfly) was murdered by a serial killer. Eight years after the event, however, he suddenly finds himself the prime suspect in two more murders on the same day he gets a mysterious e-mail featuring live footage of someone who could very well be Margot, alive and well, with the message to “tell no one.” When his sister’s lover (Kristin Scott Thomas) provides him with a high-end attorney (Nathalie Baye) to help keep him out of jail, Beck’s life quickly spirals out of control, until he has to flee the authorities (Francois Berleand) in order to find out just what the hell is happening to him.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona [watch trailers & clips]
Woody Allen just doesn’t stop working, and his latest film is this scandalous little tale about two girlfriends vacationing in Spain (Vicky is Rebecca Hall, Cristina is Scarlett Johansson) who find themselves both tempted by a painter/lothario named Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), who wants them both at the same time. Exotic locales like Barcelona can be seductive, although they’re both unaware that he’s got a rather crazy ex-wife (Penelope Cruz) with a few things to say about how Juan lives his life.

A Girl Cut In Two [watch the trailer]
Claude Chabrol’s darkly comic suspense thriller stars renowned young French actress Ludivine Sagnier as Gabrielle Deniege, a television weather forecaster who finds herself torn between two men; the vastly older and perverse writer Charles Saint-Denis (Berleand) and passionate and wealthy suitor Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel), who openly desires her and despises him. As it becomes apparent that Charles is still happily married and Paul is unstable and potentially dangerous, Gabrielle may find herself cut in more pieces than two.

The Edge of Heaven [watch the trailer]
Born in Germany and yet of Turkish descent, Fatih Akin has drawn on his unique heritage to craft a story combining both of these facets of himself. A Turkish widower takes in a prostitute who is sending all of her money to fund her daughter’s college studies. When she dies, the man’s son, a German professor, moves to seek out her daughter only to discover that she’s a political activist who has fled the country, seeking political asylum in Germany. Complications abound, yet deep emotional relationships are forged.

Frozen River [watch the trailer]
A somber film from director Courtney Hunt, starring Melissa Leo as a single mother in desperate need of money after her husband vanishes with all their savings. She eventually teams up with a destitute Mohawk woman named Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham) and they find an income stream in smuggling illegal immigrants across the U.S./Canadian border in upstate New York.

The Last Mistress [watch trailers]
Catherine Breillat is a controversial French director, known for her brutally frank and fierce depiction of female sexuality. Asia Argento is a fearless actress who knows no boundaries. Argento is La Vellini, a feral and mysterious woman who has been carrying on a tempestuous relationship with Ryno de Marigny (Fu-ad Aît Aattou) for years, only to eventually learn he’s suddenly gotten engaged to a virginal Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida). La Vellini, however, has no intention of giving up easily.

Man on Wire [watch the trailer]
James Marsh’s documentary about Philippe Petit’s insanely dangerous and illegal 1974 tightrope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, detailing the prepwork and skullduggery involved as if it were a bank robbery.

Trumbo [watch the trailer]
Peter Askin put together a documentary about screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted from Hollywood during the McCarthy era Communist witch hunt in the 1950s. His writings are given life in this film by a variety of actors, including Liam Neeson, Danny Glover, Donald Sutherland and Michael Douglas.