Dateline: 3/23/01

An office worker fights dirty in The Foul King

The 30th New Directors/New Films Festival opens today at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. For the next two weeks, movies from promising new filmmakers are showing to sold-out audiences, courtesy of The Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA. Although only three of the films showing have an American distributor, it's reasonable to hope that many more will get picked up. Last year, the Festival premiered such excellent films as Jesus' Son, Suzho River, Shower, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Ratcatcher, and The Sound and the Fury.

My favorite this year was the Swedish thriller Before the Storm, a dark tale about the sudden eruption of violence into suburban domestic life. Nine Queens is an intriguing con film in the best Mamet tradition, while the crime-plus-food comedy Dinner Rush, though entertaining, felt only half-cooked. The documentary Hybrid with the less-than-thrilling subject of corn failed to do anything exciting with its topic and wound up, well, less-than-thrilling.

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Elsewhere on the Web • Official Site • MoMA • Film Society of Lincoln Center

Other promising entries are a film version of Herman Melville's Bartleby with Crispin Glover in the title role, and a Korean film from the world of wrestling, The Foul King.

Here is the complete linup for this year's New Directors festival. Find previews and reviews for all movies by following the links below:

• Bartleby
• The Cashier Wants to Go to the Seaside
• The Day I Became a Woman
• The Foul King
• La Faute a Voltaire
• On Common Ground
• Face
• Confusion of Genders
• Lift
• Before the Storm
• Nine Queens
• Peppermint Candy
• Dinner Rush
• Wojaczek
• I Prefer the Sound of the Sea
• Hybrid
• No Place to Go
• Durian Durian
• Roland's Pass
• L.I.E.
• Clouds of May
• Hole in the Sky