Staff Picks: Film Forum, Fallout Shelters, and Fermentation

If you recently found yourself wandering West Houston and Sixth, did you notice the soft sounds of film reels spinning and popcorn popping? If you didn’t, then you weren’t listening hard enough, because Film Forum is reopened for business after its renovation hiatus. Among some of the films stretching the legs of the new theaters are (which you can read about ) and a long schedule of films by the French director Jacques Becker. On Saturday night, I saw (), a 1949 comedy of jazz-loving, Bohemian-lite young Parisians. Lucien is in love with Christine and wants to go abroad to make a documentary film; Roger is a brooding, brass-playing musician in love with the actress Therese, who will be starring alongside Christine in a hot new play. When these bright young things aren’t dancing in jazz clubs or having dinner parties, they’re navigating their lives away from the strictures of their bourgeois parents’ generation and forward into a new world after the war. At its heart,  is a wonderful, quick-witted movie about young people, about Paris, about art and love. This was the first film I’d seen by Becker, and I hope to see another. However, if doesn’t pique your interest, I’m