Winter Calendar 2009
For individual series pages, click on the links below:
| Sunday: Ozu | Monday: Brakhage | Tuesday: SSA |
| Wednesday: Coen Brothers | Thursday 1st: Americanarama! | Thursday 2nd: 42nd St. Forever |
| Weekend Calendar |
Monday, January 5 • 7:00 PM • 93m
Brakhage: Films from 1952–1957
Stan Brakhage, 1958–62 • Nine films charting Brakhage’s rapid artistic development. Interim, Brakhage’s first film, was made when he was only 19 years old, and is a collaboration with then–neophyte composer James Tenney. The Wonder Ring, commissioned by Joseph Cornell, discovers hidden poetry within an elevated train. Desistfilm was named by Willard Maas as “the best film in the 1950s.” Reflections on Black recovers the lost vision of a blind man as he experiences modern urban life. Also in the program: The Way to Shadow Garden, In Between, Nightcats, Daybreak, Whiteye, and Loving. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Tuesday, January 6 • 7:00 PM • 129min 
To Kill a Mockingbird
Robert Mulligan, 1962 • Whether out of nostalgia for Hollywood’s golden past or antipathy toward its cultural hegemony, admirers and detractors alike have tended to reduce this adaptation of Harper Lee’s classic novel to the status of a staid prestige picture. But this view overlooks the understated grace director Robert Mulligan brings to the material, which, in clumsier hands, might easily have turned patriarchal and preachy. As is, the picture emanates a gentler sort of paternalism in the enigmatic silences of Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch, the sad cadences of Elmer Bernstein’s score, and the clarity of Mulligan’s supple mise–en–scène. 35mm
Wednesday, January 7 • 7:00 & 9:30 PM • 98 min
Fargo
Joel & Ethan Coen, 1996 • Widely considered to be the Coens’ best film, the black comedy Fargo tells the twisted tale of a hare–brained kidnapping scheme gone harer–brained: man kidnaps wife to get ransom from father–in–law, but shit hits fan and people die. William H. Macy joins Coen regulars Frances McDormand and Steve Buscemi in a stellar cast of outcasts, all of whom manage to stereotype a Minnesota accent with impressive verve and consistency. Though only a couple minutes of the film take place in the title city, there’s still plenty of snow, and plenty of blood; the memorable climax involves a foot protruding from a wood chipper. 35mm
Thursday, January 8 • 7:00 PM • 113min
Meet Me in St. Louis
Vincente Minnelli, 1944 • Vincente Minnelli created an enduring classic in this charming musical about a middle–class family waiting a year for the opening of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. The four Smith daughters must contend with their romantic longings, as well as their father’s unexpected transfer to New York before the fair has arrived. Some of Judy Garland’s most memorable performances are found here, including “The Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The film’s popularity created a surge in nostalgic Americana films following the war. 35mm
Thursday, January 8 • 9:30 PM • 94min
The Candy Snatchers
Geurdon Trueblood, 1973 • Three hippies kidnap 14 year old Candy and bury her alive in a makeshift grave with only a tube to breathe through. Their goal is to extort money from Candy’s millionaire father, but their plans don’t go well. Not only does Candy’s father have a few tricks up his sleeve, but the ill–prepared kidnappers also have to deal with an unusual witness to their crime – a mute, autistic 6–year–old boy. Amazing for both its violent and psychosexual excess, and complete with its own theme song, The Candy Snatchers defines early 70s exploitation like nothing else. 35mm
Friday, January 9 • 7:00, 9:00 & 11:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, January 11 • 3:00 PM • 96min
Burn After Reading
Joel & Ethan Coen, 2008 • When Brad Pritt protested his character’s uncanny idiocy, the Coens insisted that he was perfect for the part. Once again, the brothers’ flair for savage wit brings a familial cast to maddening senselessness. Spousal intrigue smolders between a foul-mouthed John Malkovich and his wife (Tilda Swinton) before a foolish and excitable gym rat (Pitt) and coworker (Frances McDormand) attempt to blackmail the ex–CIA agent. Then glint–in–his–eye George Clooney seduces both leading ladies before espionage and infidelity come to a hatchet–y end. 35mm
Saturday, January 10 • 7:00 & 9:00 • Matinee Sunday, January 11 • 1:00 PM • 96min
Vicky Christina Barcelona
Woody Allen, 2008 • After working successfully with her in Scoop and Matchpoint, Woody Allen couldn’t help but bring back Scarlet Johansson for yet another story of European drama and passion. Javier Bardem plays artist and seducer Juan Antonio, who steps into the lives of two Americans spending the summer in Barcelona: the reserved and practical Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and the sexually liberated Cristina (Johansson). Enter one ravishingly beautiful, but unstable ex–wife (Penelope Cruz), and hilarity and trauma dance around as the cast weaves an increasingly complicated romantic web. 35mm
Sunday, January 11 • 7:00 PM • 100min
Walk Cheerfully
Yasujiro Ozu, 1930 • Showing the greater diversity of genre in Ozu’s early works than in his later domestic dramas, Walk Cheerfully tells of petty thief Kenji, who falls for an honest woman and decides to give up a life of crime. His girlfriend (playing the femme fatale) tries to win him back, but does not succeed. The film draws its inspirations from Hollywood silent films of a variety of genres, including film noir, drama and romance. Cinematically, this film differs from most of Ozu’s later work in its fast paced action, moving camera work and rapid editing. But we do see traces of the “traditional Ozu,” including his famous tatami shot. 35mm - not available on DVD. Silent with piano accompaniment by David Drazin.
Monday, January 12 • 7:00 PM • 93min
Brakhage: Films from 1958–1962
Stan Brakhage, 1958–62 • Six of Brakhage’s most influential and greatest films. Anticipation of the Night is a moving exploration of mortality within a world suffused with a tragic and indifferent beauty. Window Water Baby Moving is at once a document of his daughter’s birth and a testament to the generative powers of light and love. Blue Moses grapples with the conflicts between how the camera and the eye perceive. Sirius Remembered is a loving and gruesome tribute to his beloved pet dog, left to decay over the course of three seasons. As Sirius rots, Brakhage never flinches. Also in program: The Dead, Thigh Line Lyre Triangular. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Tuesday, January 13 • 7:00 PM • 66min
Man’s Castle
Frank Borzage, 1933 • In this luminous melodrama set in a New York shantytown, macho blue–collar guy Spencer Tracy reluctantly takes in homeless, waif–like Loretta Young. Gradually, and much to his surprise, he finds himself falling deeply in love with her. With a plot that centers on unwed pregnancy and premarital shacking up, this film could not have been made just a year later, when the Hays production code was firmly in place. But what is most memorable here is the contrast between the harshness and squalor of the Depression–era setting, and the sublimity of Borzage’s magical, almost fairy tale–like romanticism. 35mm - not available on DVD.
Wednesday, January 14 • 7:00 & 9:00 PM • 94min
Raising Arizona
Joel & Ethan Coen, 1987 • It’s not completely accurate that older Coen films are weirder than newer ones… but it’s pretty close to true. And this one, by many accounts, is the weirdest of all. Arizona refers, here, not only to the state, where the movie does in fact take place, but also to furniture tycoon Nathan Arizona, who’s the one doing the raising… of a bunch of very odd babies. Classic Coen tropes established here crop up in future features. But while kidnapping, pomade, fucked up police officers, and a penchant for clever names have become common Coen fare, only in Arizona can one find babies raging up and down staircases! DVD.
Thursday, January 15 • 7:00 PM • 84min
The Kid Brother
Ted Wilde, 1927 • Harold Lloyd drew upon his Nebraska upbringing to play Harold Hickory, the runt in a family of strong men led by his father, the sheriff of the small town of Hickoryville. A traveling medicine show arrives and Harold finds himself in love with the carnival’s owner, Mary Powers. His father is wrongfully accused of stealing town money, actually purloined by the strongman Sandoni. It’s up to young Harold’s brains to save the day. Today, the film is regarded as one of Lloyd’s best and features some of his most memorable sequences, particularly a scene where he climbs a tree to catch a glimpse of his beloved Mary. 35mm Silent with piano accompaniment by David Drazin.
Thursday, January 15 • 9:00 PM • 80min
Blue Summer
Chuck Vincent, 1973 • Former art house filmmaker and playwright Chuck Vincent directed this whimsical softcore–sex filled road movie. Two high school best friends named Gene and Tracy decide to spend the last week of summer together and embark on a road trip with the intent of having sex with as many women as possible. However, they soon find themselves face to face with thieving hitchhikers, small town hicks, a swindling preacher, and a stalker motorcyclist. Chock full of homoerotic undertones and a terrific early ’70s bubblegum score, Blue Summer is sure to wash away winter doldrums. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Friday, January 16 • 6:15, 9:00 & 11:45 PM • Matinee Sunday, January 18 • 3:30 PM • 129min
W.
Oliver Stone, 2008 • The third presidential biopic from the director of JFK and Nixon is the first to hit theaters while its subject is still alive, much less in office. As Stone’s George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) wrangles with his father’s legacy and tries to carve out his own, he veers towards wry caricature rather than brooding historical figure – a reflection of how this Presidency has at times felt like the stuff of satire. Richard Dreyfuss plays a Dick Cheney who could scare the smile off of the Mona Lisa. 35mm
Saturday, January 17 • 6:30 & 9:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, January 18 • 1:00 PM • 120min
I Served the King of England
Jiri Menzel, 2006 • Menzel’s worked little since the Czech New Wave’s height, when he won an Oscar for another Bohumil Hrabal adaption, Closely Watched Trains. But he’s not rusty. Aged protagonist Jan Dite tells the tale in flashback, as WWII-era Dite attempts to achieve his greatest dream – to become a millionaire. His ravenous appetites provide fodder for a fairy tale–like coming of age story, even as Nazism’s ascendancy acts as backdrop (sometimes foregrounded, as when Dite works in a hotel turned Hitler Youth breeding center). I Served… is as dark as it is heedless, as funny as it is singular. 35mm
Sunday, January 18 • 7:00 PM • 105min
I Flunked But… & I Graduated But… (fragment)
Yasujiro Ozu, 1929–30 • I Flunked, But… deals with the comic attempts of a college student to pass a rigorous exam. He writes a cheat sheet on his shirt, only to find that his landlady has sent the garment out to be laundered! Failing, he has to adjust to being the only student who will not graduate, and must postpone his professional life, but ironically he realizes that he is better off being a student since his friends are unable to find jobs. The film was important to Ozu, as it was the first to feature his favorite actor Chishu Ryu in a major role. Shown with I Graduated, But…, an 11m fragment. 35mm - not available on DVD.
Monday, January 19 • 7:00 PM • 89m
Brakhage: Films from 1963–1970
Stan Brakhage, 1963–70 • Mothlight is a collage of found material taped to clear leader. The rigor and cruelty of the cinematic frame is here celebrated and condemned as powerfully and importantly as Kubelka’s Arnulf Rainer. Though his shortest film, Brakhage considered Eye Myth his version of an epic. With each frame handpainted, he hoped to capture the intermediate state between wakefulness and sleep. The Weir–Falcon Saga renders indeterminate whether its imagery is objective or subjective, dream or memory, fear or fact. Also in program: Fire of Waters, Pasht, The Horseman, the Woman, and the Moth, and The Machine of Eden. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Tuesday, January 20 • 7:00 PM • 129m
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Frank Capra, 1939• Shady politicians, rotten businessmen, and cynics in the Capitol cannot stop inspired senator Jefferson Smith from unmasking the crooked politics of his home state. In Capra’s Academy Award–winning classic, Smith collides with the designs of corrupt political bosses. Even after they smash Smith with a scandal, the junior politician refuses to back down. With only his hopeful secretary in his corner, Smith steadfastly defends the truth. James Stewart shows America that seemingly lost causes are still worth fighting for. 35mm ***Inauguration special! 1 for all and 2-for-1!*** (That is, 2–for–1 admission to tonight’s show!)
Wednesday, January 21 • 7:00 & 9:30 PM • 115m
Miller’s Crossing
Joel & Ethan Coen, 1990 • Bosses, bookies and broads converge in the Coen Brothers’ 1990 paean to the gritty, cigar–chomping world of Dashiell Hammett’s hardboiled tales. Biting dialogue, covert humor and unblinking brutality make appearances in a quest for redemption all but lost amidst the somber hues of Prohibition–era America. Mournful and meditative, this film evinces pathos while keeping its tongue lodged firmly in its cheek. The marvelous cast, including Byrne, Finney and regulars Buscemi and Turturro make for a film as elusive as the airborne fedora that escorts the audience into its sordid yarn of Italian–Irish aggression. 35mm
Thursday, January 22 • 7:00 PM • 81min
Steamboat ’Round the Bend
John Ford, 1935 • The last of Will Rogers’s three collaborations with John Ford was released after Rogers’s tragic death in a plane crash in 1935. Here he plays Dr. John Pearly, the owner of a steamboat in the 1890s that also serves as a floating wax museum and a venue for him to sell his highly alcoholic medicine. The film co–stars another classic American humorist, the great Kentucky writer Irvin S. Cobb, whose “Judge Priest” stories were the basis for the previous Rogers/Ford film. The outpouring of national grief following Rogers’s death caused the studio to cut the planned final shot of Rogers waving farewell. 35mm
Thursday, January 22 • 9:00 PM • 90min 
The Town That Dreaded Sundown
Charles B. Pierce, 1976 • Charles B. Pierce’s rarely screened atmospheric period piece and murder thriller is one of the rarest and most sought after big budget exploitation titles. Based on the true story of a potato–sack–wearing serial killer, dubbed “The Phantom,” who stalked couples parked in cars on lover’s lanes, “The Town that Dreaded Sundown” was one of the last major films released by B–Movie giant, American International Pictures. Filmed in Scope and on location in Texarkana, Arkansas (where the murders actually occurred), Town has the ambiance of a Dragnet episode coupled with the brutality of an early slasher. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Friday, January 23 • 6:30, 9:00 & 11:30 PM • Matinee Sunday, January 25 • 3:30 PM • 112min
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
Kenny Ortega, 2008 • Sweethearts Troy (Zac Efron) and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens), and the entire cast of High School Musicals 1 and 2 return for their senior year at East High School. In reality, East High was attended by the individuals portrayed in SLC Punk, and by kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart, but HSM3 transforms the school into a far sunnier, more melodic realm. Everyone is beautiful and exuberant… even the bratty drama queen (Ashley Tisdale). Students sing sincerely about their hopes and college plans between wholesome smooches. 35mm
Saturday, January 24 • 6:30 & 9:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, January 25 • 1:00 PM • 118min 
Happy–Go–Lucky
Mike Leigh, 2008 • A night with Poppy offers quite the escape from winter. She’s dedicated to her job as a teacher, and spends her time preparing for classes, taking flamenco lessons, clubbing with friends, etc., with a total optimism and cheer that others might find grating, even as her beautiful smile never seems put–on. Major dramatic arcs include confrontation with a driving instructor and a romantic dalliance, but the plot isn’t what defines the film’s experience; it’s the convincing and delightful portrait of a young, urban existence that’s neither existentially angsty nor materialistically frivolous. 35mm
Sunday, January 25 • 7:00 PM • 97min
The Lady and the Beard
Yasujiro Ozu, 1931 • Shot in just eight days, The Lady and the Beard is Ozu’s critical comment on the stereotypical view of ancient Japan juxtaposed with a modern westernized version. The protagonist, a Kendo champion who takes pride in his traditional attire and beard, rescues a young woman from a gang run by a woman thug. She convinces him to shave off the beard to get employment and become more socially acceptable. Unfortunately for him, he becomes the object of affection for three women: the lady, the thug, and an heiress, creating a series of humorous misunderstandings. 35mm - not available on DVD. Live piano accompaniment with Daniel Sefik.
Monday, January 26 • 7:00 PM • 60min
23rd Psalm Branch
Stan Brakhage, 1966–67 • When Brakhage and his family acquired a television set in the mid–1960s, he was appalled by the prosthetic, vicarious experience of the evils and violence of war that the device transmitted. For Brakhage, television’s pixel–and–scan imagery mirrored the structure of remembered vision. In 23rd Psalm Branch, he adopts the strategy of film’s enemy to combat it. ’TELEVISION,’ he wrote, “dumped the implication of monstrous war guilt into my living room,” and from that technological culpability he created what might be the most powerful anti–war film ever made. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Tuesday, January 27 • 7:00 PM • 91min
Make Way for Tomorrow
Leo McCarey, 1937 • A retired couple loses their home and must be separated, as none of their children can take them both. The respective host families express a tortured, yet fundamentally selfish, mix of pity and resentment toward their presences. While too heartbreaking to be a box–office hit in 1937, the critical consensus today places it among the greatest films ever made. Beautiful and poignant, Make Way for Tomorrow influenced Ozu’s Tokyo Story, and offers one of the most nuanced, thoughtful meditations in all of cinema on old age, love, and humanness in a world that regards our agonies with indifference. 35mm
Wednesday, January 28 • 7:00 & 9:30 PM • 117min
The Big Lebowski
Joel & Ethan Coen, 1998 • The Dude abides. But not when you pee on his rug. Or when you try to cut his johnson off. Not only the most popular film made by the Coens, but also one of the most iconic films of its generation, Lebowski is a hilarious romp through a ludicrous yet almost believable tale and a pitch–perfect take on life and its contradictions in the early 1990’s. Laugh with the laid back Dude (Jeff Bridges) and his Nam vet sidekick Walter (John Goodman) as they work out a mixup over the Dude’s given name, confronting the Jesus (a pederast), Jackie Treehorn (a pornographer) and the Nihilists (nihilists) along the way. 35mm
Thursday, January 29 • 7:00 PM • 97min
State Fair
Henry King, 1933 • More than any other director, Henry King specialized in folksy and sentimental representations of Americana. State Fair is one of his best efforts, appropriately pairing him with the down-home charm of Will Rogers at the peak of his career. Rogers plays Abel Frake, a farmer who takes his family to the Iowa State Fair in hopes of winning a blue ribbon with his hog Blue Boy. The film would be remade twice, notably adapted into a musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein in 1945, yet Rogers’s dry wit makes the original still the superior version. 35mm - not available on DVD.
Thursday, January 29 • 9:15 PM • 85min
The Taking of Christina
Armand Weston, 1975 • One of the most popular exploitation sub’genres was “rape ‘n revenge” films. Often extremely violent, these films were looked at as the grittiest exploitation category. However, Armand Weston’s 1975 hardcore sexploitation R ‘n R work, “Taking of Christina” is a rare exception. Despite its sleazy pretentions, Christina is a well made and surprisingly well acted kidnapping saga set in a small, upstate New York town and based on the true story of a Los Angeles woman named Inez Garcia. In spite of its hardcore sex, “Christina” is a rare and fine example of a non-sensationalizing survival tale. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Friday, January 30 • 7:00, 9:00 & 11:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, February 1 • 1:00 PM • 82min 
Christmas on Mars
Wayne Coyne, 2008 •After Mars’ first Christmas pageant loses its Santa Claus to an eerie suicide, the colonists convince a silent Martian to take his place. The pageant goes on to celebrate the first baby born on Mars, fathered by no man but test–tube–tastic science. The rest is what you might expect from psychedelic rock band The Flaming Lips, which intended for the film “to hint at childlike magic within a tragic and realistic situation”: colorfully kitsch costumes, an understandably space–age set, and original music played by the cast. 35mm
Saturday, January 31 • 6:45 & 9:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, February 1 • 3:00 PM • 98min
The Princess Bride
Rob Reiner, 1987 • “We’ll never survive.” “Nonsense! You’re only saying that because no one ever has.” In Rob Reiner’s adaptation of the 1973 novel, a not–so–classic tale is told by a grandfather for a sick boy. Ambidextrous swordfights, vocabulary misuse, and Billy Crystal conspire in this cult classic of love everlasting and wit never stopping. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be dragged by your friends to see this movie. Keep your eyes out for the Cliffs of Insanity (actually the Cliffs of Moher, Ireland). Also starring: Christopher Guest, Mandy Patinkin, and wrestler André the Giant. 35mm
Sunday, February 1 • 7:00 PM • 112min
The Night’s Wife & Woman of Tokyo
Yasujiro Ozu, 1930–33 • A tense thriller based on a popular Japanese short story “From Nine to Nine,” That Night’s Wife tells the story of a poor artist forced to steal money to pay for medicine for his very ill daughter. It’s shot in a small flat, emphasizing the suspense–filled, strained atmosphere and evoking early Lang and Dreyer. Melodramatic yet powerful, Women of Tokyo has shades of Mizoguchi, and has been acclaimed for its “subtle riot of discordant formal devices… and breathtaking wrench of perspective, from individual tragedy to matter-of-fact social breakdown.” 35mm - not available on DVD.
Monday, February 2 • 7:00 PM • 135min
Scenes from under Childhood
Stan Brakhage, 1967–70 • A four–part film that examines, in stages, the differences in perception between children and adults. Brakhage’s aim, he said, was to “express something of this world that’s so alive to children: of closing the eyes and seeing explosions and dots and so on.” As adults, Brakhage believed, our sense of sight as been tutored away from the wonder and magic the world actually contains. The sight of children, as this film tries to capture that sight, is freer, and has yet to learn such limiting discipline. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Tuesday, February 3 • 7:00 PM • 85min
Milking the Rhino
David Simpson, 2008 • Milking the Rhino tells a nuanced tale of human–wildlife coexistence in post–colonial Africa. The Maasai tribe of Kenya and Namibia’s Himba – two of Earth’s oldest cattle cultures ’ are in the midst of upheaval. Emerging from a century of “white man conservation,” which turned their lands into game reserves and fueled resentment towards wildlife, Himba and Maasai communities are now vying for a piece of the wildlife–tourism pie. Charting the collision of ancient ways with Western expectations, Milking the Rhino tells intimate, hopeful and heartbreaking stories of people facing deep cultural change. DVD.
Wednesday, February 4 • 7:00 & 9:30 PM • 116min
Barton Fink
Joel & Ethan Coen, 1991 • “I’ll show you the life of the mind!” screams Coen regular John Goodman as he storms down one of the creepiest hallways in cinema, weapon in hand and flames aplenty joining him in his rampage. Goodman begins the film as a door to door insurance salesman, often dropping in on screenwriter Barton Fink (John Turturro) to provide conversation and help ease Fink’s writer’s block, in a poorly lit room in the dreary hotel Earle. But as the film progresses – in typical dark comedy Coen brothers style – Fink’s already decrepit life gets more and more confused, and the imagery follows suit. 35mm
Thursday, February 5 • 7:00 PM • 90min
Ruggles of Red Gap
Leo McCarey, 1935 • Perhaps the easiest way to grasp Americana is to set it in relief against other cultures. In this charming comedy, Charles Laughton stars as Ruggles, an English butler who is wagered and lost by his upper class master in a poker game. As a result, the terrified Ruggles is sent to a small town in the wild west of 1908. Released the same year as his masterful turns in Mutiny on the Bounty and Les Miserables, the film features one of Laughton’s finest performances, particularly in his moving recitation of the Gettysburg Address to a crowd of cowboys in a saloon. 35mm
Thursday, February 5 • 9:00 PM • 85min 
Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde
William Crain, 1975 • Blaxploitation films were a staple of ‘70s cinema and black knock–offs of classic horror tales were amongst the most popular. Based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale, William Crain’s Dr. Black & Mr. Hyde is a marvelously entertaining example of the blaxploitation genre. Full of over–the–top dialogue and ludicrous plot developments, the film stars Bernie Casey as the titular doctor, a kindly physician who treats prostitutes and the poor until he invents a serum that turns him into an evil white serial killer. The over the top conclusion features a chase up the historic Watts towers. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Friday, February 6 • 6:45, 9:00 & 11:15 PM • Matinee Sunday, February 8 • 3:00 • 101min
Religulous
Larry Charles, 2008 • Directed by Charles of Borat fame, Bill Maher confronts religious devotion in the Vatican, the Holy Land, London, and Salt Lake City, among other places. See Maher confront the dancing Jesus of a Biblical theme park! Watch him confess his sins, evangelize Scientology, and visit a Muslim gay bar! Some have criticized Maher’s gleefully unfair interviews – stocked with interruptions, false pretenses, added subtitles – but Religulous isn’t meant to be a sober overview of faith. Instead, Maher is preaching to the choir. For non–theists, it’s a very funny sermon. 35mm
Saturday, February 7 • 7:00 & 9:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, February 8 • 1:00 PM • 72min
The Exiles
Kent Mackenzie, 1961 • Mackenzie’s beautiful film first got attention from Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself, and as Andersen promises, it shows a world now vanished. The cast of non-professional Native Americans play characters living hard–drinking lives in Bunker Hill, a seedy, cosmopolitan wonderland in downtown L.A. now gentrified beyond recognition. The performances are moving, but the unsung miracle of this DIY masterpiece is the photography, which never sacrifices elegance for grit, and tricked almost every critic into praising its use of “natural lighting.” 35mm
Sunday, February 8 • 7:00 PM • 91m
I Was Born But…
Yasujiro Ozu, 1932 • “I Was Born, But…” was one of Ozu’s hit films, winning the Kinema Jumpo poll as best Japanese film of the year and proclaimed by film critic Donald Ritchie to be a ““masterpiece”. Two boys move with their authoritative father to his boss’ neighborhood and fall prey to bullies, eventually becoming bullies themselves. During a film screening at the boss’ house, they see their father acting like a joker to please his boss. This disillusionment leads to a quarrel and a hunger strike! The film moves from the idealized “child world” to the often hypocritical world of the adult and the shattering of illusions as that transformation occurs. 35mm
Monday, February 9 • 7:00 PM • 102min
1971–1972: The Pittsburgh Trilogy
Stan Brakhage, 1971–72 • In each of these films Brakhage depicts a different one of what he thought of as ‘mystical occupations,’ those social functions we depend upon but rarely consider as lived experiences. The first, eyes, considers policemen as society’s ocular specialists, whose trained visual facility keeps us both safe and under surveillance. Deus Ex looks at the hospital as a site for modern miracles. The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes enters a morgue, where the disassembling of human bodies reveals constellations of sublime possibilities curtailed by death. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Tuesday, February 10 • 7:00 PM • 84min
Titicut Follies
Frederick Wiseman, 1967 • One of the most disturbing documentaries ever filmed, Wiseman’s brutal examination of the Massachusetts Institution for the Criminally Insane reveals cruelty far beyond what is even remotely acceptable today. Mundane acts such as getting a shave or being served a meal become exercises in torture. The only movie in U.S. history to be banned for reasons other than obscenity or national security, it was ironically accused of mistreatment of the inmates by revealing their extreme mistreatment in the facility itself. A landmark film in terms of the capacity of documentary to bring about reform. 16mm
Wednesday, February 11 • 7:00 & 9:30 PM • 111min
The Hudsucker Proxy
Joel & Ethan Coen, 1994 • If you like frisbees, or hula–hoops or bendy straws, or just about any other zany invention, you’ll enjoy this equally zany comedy about the guy who invented them. Norville Barnes, an inexperienced college grad with high hopes and big ideas, gets elevated from company grunt to company president at Hudsucker Industries as a stooge. But once there, he proves far smarter than those who planted him there had bargained for – who’d have thought that a spinning hoop would actually succeed? The film stars Tim Robbins and Paul Newman, but look for the late Anna Nicole Smith in a bit part. 35mm
Thursday, February 12 • 7:00 PM • 94min
Remember the Night
Mitchell Leisen, 1940 • Before Double Indemnity, Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray teamed for this lovely and relatively unknown Christmas film. MacMurray is an assistant DA who takes pity on Stanwyck, a shoplifter he’ll have to prosecute after the holidays. He takes her to his home in Indiana for Christmas where she’s overwhelmed by the love of his family, including Beulah Bondi, Hollywood’s greatest player of mother characters. It doesn’t take long, naturally, for criminal and prosecutor to fall in love. Preston Sturges wrote the screenplay, his last before turning to directing, and it’s full of his trademark wit and elegance. 35mm - not available on DVD.
Thursday, February 12 • 9:00 PM • 108min
Alice, Sweet Alice
Alfred Sole, 1976 • Alfred Sole’s bloody masterpiece takes place in a New Jersey town in early 1962 as young Karen (Brooke Shields in her first role) is about to receive her first communion. On her way to the altar, Karen is murdered by a mysterious killer who is soon believed to be her jealous older sister, Alice. When more murders begin to occur, Alice is brought to an institution for observation, but is there more to these crimes than there appears to be? Alice, Sweet Alice is an unusually straight–faced and brutal exploitation masterpiece distinguished by a clever script, exceptional performances, and outstanding period decor. 35mm
Friday, February 13 • 6:30, 9:00 & 11:30 PM • Matinee Sunday, February 15 • 3:00 • 114min
Appaloosa
Ed Harris, 2008 • Perhaps no one looks quite so good wielding a pistol as Viggo Mortensen. Then again, few are so magnificent wielding a sword in Tolkien garb or knife–fighting nude in a public bath… In Appaloosa, Mortensen plays Everett Hitch, who along with his partner (Ed Harris), attempts to bring justice and order to a late 19th century New Mexican town. Don’t expect The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance sort of justice, but do expect the ethical nuance, precarious stoicism, and stunning visions of the “West” as imagined in recent excellent reinventions of the Western. 35mm
Saturday, February 14 • 7:00 & 9:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, February 15 • 1:00 • 87min
City Lights
Charlie Chaplin, 1931 • In 1931 when it came out, the New York Times wrote that City Lights proved the “eloquence of silence.” Chaplin avoided the constraining sound stage of early talkies, so his Little Tramp prances and skates in immortal long shots. The most representative Chaplin film, City Lights has “the slapstick, the pathos, the pantomime, the effortless coordination, the melodrama, the bawdiness, the grace, and, of course, the Little Tramp ” the character said, at one time, to be the most famous image on earth,” says Roger Ebert. 35mm ***Kiss your Valentine and get in 2-for-1!***
Sunday, February 15 • 7:00 PM • 90min
Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?
Yasujiro Ozu, 1932 • Set in depression’era Tokyo, Where now are the Dreams of Youth? revisits the split between childhood fantasies and adult realities through the lives of four college friends. Saito, a wealthy young adult who’s had an easy life, takes over his father’s position as head of the business. His friends come to him seeking employment. They are willing to do anything he asks; one of them even looks the other way when he casts his eye on his fiancé. Ozu’s commentary on social inequality shows how its effects inflict lasting damage even in the strongest of friendships. 35mm - not available on DVD.
Monday, February 16 • 7:00 PM • 107min
Brakhage: Films from 1972–1976
Stan Brakhage, 1972–76 • Fred Camper has argued that in The Riddle of Lumen “each image represents a unique and miraculous form of light.” The Wold-Shadow imposes a sheet of clear glass between the camera and its object, a shot of woodlands. Shooting in single frames, Brakhage applies stunning layers of paint to the glass. Star Garden is a celebration of the sun as possibly the only source of true beauty on earth. Also in program: The Process, The Shores of Phos: A Fable, Aquarien, Dominion, Flight, “he was born, he suffered, he died”, Hymn to Her, Skein, Sol, and Airs. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Tuesday, February 17 • 7:00 PM • 88min
Tell Them Willie Boy is Here
Abraham Polonsky, 1969 • Three years after debuting with Force of Evil (1948), a powerful tragedy of the moral savagery of capitalism, the Marxist filmmaker Abraham Polonsky was blacklisted, and banned from Hollywood for seventeen years. So this revisionist western was only the director’s second, and sadly his second–to–last film. Nevertheless, Willie Boy, which tells the story of a young Paiute warrior on the run from a posse of whites, is a masterpiece. The picture’s terse rhythm, forged with an innovative, run–and–gun style of zooming, proves that Polonsky hadn’t lost his touch in the hiatus, nor his commitment to cinema as politics. 35mm - not available on DVD.
Wednesday, February 18 • 7:00 & 9:15 PM • 94min
Blood Simple
Joel & Ethan Coen, 1984 • The Coens’ debut film introduces all their classic set–ups: a complex plot spun from a simple story, a royal screw–up developed from a pathetically smalltime caper, a grotesquely mundane cosmos made up of quaint simpletons, and a sardonic, hard–edged style completing the package. Somewhere in Texas, a bar manager and his boss’ wife are fooling around. When the boss becomes suspicious, he hires a private detective to photograph their hanky panky. Of course, as in many a Coen film since, the unleashing of a sinister agent triggers a chain reaction of gruesome, senseless murder. 35mm -
Thursday, February 19 • 7:00 PM • 88min
The Magnificent Ambersons
Orson Welles, 1942 • Orson Welles notoriously had the control wrested from him by the studio for his follow–up to Citizen Kane, an adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s 1919 novel. Butchered as it may be, Ambersons remains one of Welles’ finest works, and by extension one of the greatest pieces of all American cinema. The film tells the story of the decline of the Ambersons, a wealthy family in turn–of–the–century Indiana. The cast, made of several regulars from Welles’ stock company, is superb, particularly Joseph Cotton and Agnes Moorehead, and Bernard Hermann once again delivers an iconic score. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Thursday, February 19 • 9:00 PM • 124min
Can’t Stop the Music
Nancy Walker, 1980 • Of all the great musical flops, none is as defining of the late ‘70s as Can’t Stop The Music: the one and only Village People musical comedy. Shot in scope, with million–dollar sets and hundreds of extras, Can’t Stop the Music tells the Village People’s “story” and was marketed to be the biggest musical sensation of the ‘80s, which it sadly wasn’t. Here, in this excessive music gem–cum–failure, we can witness Steve Guttenberg, Valerie Perrine, and all six original Village People shaking their hips and delivering some of the lamest humor ever captured on film. Not to mention the YMCA scene… 35mm .
Friday, February 20 • 6:30, 9:00 & 11:30 PM • Matinee Sunday, February 22 • 3:00 PM • 124min
Synecdoche, New York
Charlie Kaufman, 2008 • The directorial debut of Charlie Kaufman, the most interesting living screenwriter in America, is as wonderfully strange and sad and fantastic as his past writing credits (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) would suggest. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a depressed and unfulfilled theater director. Gifted with a MacArthur Genius Grant, he attempts to make real the impossibly complex and perfect story in his mind, using a cast and a set as detailed and massive as all of New York. Failure is rarely this beautiful. 35mm
Saturday, February 21 • 7:00 & 9:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, February 22 • 1:00 PM • 89min
Choke
Clark Gregg, 2008 • Victor Mancini is an unapologetic sex fiend who spends his days working at a Williamsburgesque tourist attraction, and seeking another lay at the various sex addiction workshops he frequents. When his evenings aren’t filled with further indulgence, he’s intentionally choking at expensive restaurants. Wealthy customers save him, and send him money; the extra cash pays the bills for his dementia–plagued mother’s private hospital room. In Choke, misanthropy mixes with dark humor, just what one would want from another Chuck Palahniuk adaptation. 35mm
Sunday, February 22 • 7:00 PM • 100min
Dragnet Girl
Yasujiro Ozu, 1933 • Set in the vice–ridden port city of Yokohama, Dragnet Girl brings Ozu’s love of the Hollywood gangster film to the forefront. Tokiko leads a double life: an office typist by day and a gangster’s moll by night. She does all she can to keep her lover’s eye from straying to the innocent sister of one of his protégés. Despite movement away from his typical subject matter, Ozu’s trademark stylistic conventions remain definitive and affective in Dragnet Girl. This may not be his most complex work, but it provides a rare glimpse of his roots, while his use of visual motifs presages the master he is to become. 35mm - not available on DVD.
Monday, February 23 • 7:00 PM • 71min
The Text of Light
Stan Brakhage, 1974 • Brakhage’s first wholly abstract film, laboriously filmed in single frame exposures as beams of light play through a crystal ashtray. Shooting with a macro lens, the camera was so close to the object that no shapes or clues were left that the viewers could use to orient themselves. Instead of an ashtray, then, the flashes of illumination seem to emanate from the mechanisms of Brakhage’s camera itself. ‘That light travels over the ground, that it pools – that there is a pool of luminescence which is very ephemeral, and which takes a relaxing of Western muscles in the eyes in order to be aware of.’ 16mm - not available on DVD.
Tuesday, February 24 • 7:00 PM • 88min
Reminiscenes of a Journey to Lithuania
Jonas Mekas, 1972 • A three–part collation of materials related to Jonas Mekas’ return to his home village of Semeniskiai in Lithuania. Tellingly, the filmmaker only devotes a crucial third of the film to the trip itself, offering only ‘100 glimpses of Lithuania.’ The rest consists of two passages, one sketching aspects of daily life in the (at the time) poor Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg where he lived shortly after immigrating, and the other a visit with friend and fellow filmmaker Peter Kubelka at his own home in Vienna. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Wednesday, February 25 • 7:00 PM & 9:15 • 106min
O Brother Where Art Thou?
Joel & Ethan Coen, 2000 • When you think of Homer’s Odyssey, the deep south of the 1930’s doesn’t necessarily come to mind… but why not! Packed with fantastic performances from George Clooney (our Ulysses… Ulysses McGill), John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson and everyone’s favorite cyclops, John Goodman, O Brother does Homer’s tale justice without trying too hard to be literal. The Coens pay homage to the original epic by borrowing what they like and then making it their own. To top it all off, the soundtrack is one of the best folk/bluegrass albums in recent memory, featuring the likes of Allison Krauss and Gillian Welch. 35mm
Thursday, February 26 • 7:00 PM • 112min
Heaven Can Wait
Ernst Lubitsch, 1943 • Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche), a wealthy member of New York’s elite, heads straight to Hell upon his death. His Excellency (Laird Cregar), a Satan–like figure, however, doubts whether Van Cleve has sinned enough to be qualified to enter. To prove his case, Van Cleve proceeds to tell his life story, in all its sordid detail, concentrating on his long relationship with his wife Martha, played by Gene Tierney. Ernst Lubitsch’s only completed Technicolor film is a typically charming and sophisticated comedy about the upper-crust of fin–de–siècle society. 35mm
Thursday, February 26 • 9:30 PM • 82min
Don’t Go in the House
Joseph Ellison, 1979 • Movies with “don’t” in their titles were in high demand throughout the ‘70s. Almost always horror tales, “don’t” films were some of the most entertaining grindhouse pics. Joseph Ellison’s Don’t Go In the House might be the best “don’t” film ever made; an ultra sleazy murder thriller about a Norman Bates like serial killer, who offs his female victims with a blowtorch while constantly flashing back to horrifying memories from his past. The film is chock full of blood, nudity and one of the best electronic scores found in a low budget film of the era. 35mm
Friday, February 27 • 6:30, 9:00 & 11:30 PM • Matinee Sunday, March 1 • 3:00 • 114min
Twilight
Catherine Hardwick, 2008 • Set in gloomy but beautiful Forks, Washington, Twilight tells of a forbidden love. Bella doesn’t quite fit in with others at her high school, and doesn’t really want to. She meets the mysterious, witty Edward, who is eventually revealed to be an 100–year–old vampire, and falls in love. He and his family choose not to drink human blood, which allows his romance with Bella to blossom hygienically, even as he’s nearly overcome by urges. When a new clan of vampires comes to town, he must put everything into protecting his newfound soul mate from their bites. 35mm
Saturday, February 28 • 7:00 & 9:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, March 1 • 1:00 • 90min
Plus Tard, Tu Comprendras
Amos Gitai, 2008 • Acclaimed Israeli director Gitai tells the story of a French–Jewish man investigating his parents’ sufferings during the Holocaust. Family tensions rise, as his mother remains obstinately silent on the subject, and his sister defends an Aryan declaration written by his long–dead father during the war. The heavy subject matter of the Holocaust almost always lends a film some weight, but Plus Tard claims its heaviness from other places as well, adeptly showing the fluidity of past and present, and the tenacity with which the grand–scale horrors of history reverberate. 35mm
Sunday, March 1 • 7:00 PM • 80min
An Inn in Tokyo
Yasujiro Ozu, 1935 • Perhaps the greatest silent Ozu ever made, An Inn in Tokyo recounts the struggles of a poor widower and his sons as he searches for work in depression– era Japan. Kihachi lives in the Manseikan Inn with others like him, amongst them a widow and her daughter. Things begin to look up when a friend helps him get a job, but the widow’s daughter falls ill. In desperation, he steals money to help her out before turning himself in. In a powerful scene, the father has an imaginary picnic with his hungry sons. The film captures the essence of the human struggle for survival in the bleakest of circumstances. 35mm - not available on DVD.
Monday, March 2 • 7:00 PM • 244min
Sincerity & Duplicity
Stan Brakhage, 1973–80 • These paired film series constitute Brakhage’s most sustained attempt at a purely cinematic autobiography. As he spools through his personal archives of previously unused footage for these films, it is as though he is discovering a cinematic equivalent not to memory but to dendrochronology, literally ‘tree time.’ For Brakhage, a crucial difference between autobiography and history is that the former is not, can not, be linear but associational. In deeply honest, self–critical gestures of celluloid, Sincerity and Duplicity are, in his words, “what home movies could be if they were stripped of sentimentality.” 16mm - not available on DVD.
Tuesday, March 3 • 7:00 PM • 140min
Stevie
Steve James, 2002 • Filmmaker Steve James (Hoop Dreams), returns to rural Pomona, Illinois to document what has become of the difficult, lonely boy he had been a ‘Big Brother’ mentor to back in 1985. What James’ intimate camera uncovers, over the course of five years, is a troubled, childlike young man and a family history of sadness, courage, love and mystery as rich and fearless as a first–rate naturalistic novel. This complex and deeply emotional documentary, produced in collaboration with Kartemquin Films, has rewarded and challenged audiences at theaters and festivals throughout the US and internationally. DVD.
Wednesday, March 4 • 7:00 & 9:30 PM • 116min
The Man Who Wasn’t There
Joel & Ethan Coen, 2001 • Less widely known than other recent Coen films, The Man Who Wasn’t There offers, among other things, an early look at Scarlett Johansson before Ghost World and Lost in Translation made her the super–famous starlet she is today. If a teenage Johansson seducing the much older protagonist (Billy Bob Thornton) isn’t enough reason to come, come instead for the crisp black and white film noir cinematography meant to deposit you right back into the 1950s, or for the impressive supporting cast, including James Gandolfini, Tony Shalhoub (from the TV show Monk), and of course Coen regular Frances McDormand. 35mm
Thursday, March 5 • 7:00 PM • 97min
The Strawberry Blonde
Raoul Walsh, 1942 • In this delightful musical comedy, James Cagney plays Biff Grimes, a dentist in 1890s New York who has long been in love with the gold–digging Virginia Brush (Rita Hayworth) yet loses out to his sleazy rival Hugo Barnstead (Jack Carson). Even after he marries another woman, played by Olivia de Havilland, Biff’s infatuation with Virginia continues. Throughout, Cagney and the gang perform classic numbers like “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home” and “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louie.” The Epstein brothers (Casablanca) adapted the script from a popular play by James Hagan. Archival 35mm - not available on DVD.
Thursday, March 5 • 9:15 PM • 97min
Vice Squad
Gary Sherman, 1982 • Vice Squad is the quintessential masterwork of early ‘80s exploitation cinema. It’s cold, unflinching narrative is set against a lively and often humorous cast of supporting characters and is technically on par with Hollywood films of the period. Season Hubley is Princess, a street-smart prostitute who, upon learning of the murder of a friend by an evil pimp, Ramrod, agrees to help the police entrap him. However, Ramrod escapes custody and goes on the hunt for Princess. Vice Squad is perhaps the best “hooker drama” ever made and ranks as one of the finest cinematic depictions of the sleazy underbelly of LA. 35mm
Friday, March 6 • 7:00, 9:00 & 11:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, March 8 • 1:00 • 93min
Ashes of Time Redux
Wong Kar–Wai, 2008 • For the original, his third film, Wong made the most of a chaotic shoot on the fringe of the Gobi desert, and the result was a demanding but organic visual style. In this recut, leaner version, the dealings of a bunch of swordsmen and a suspicious brother–sister duo still defy easy narration, but the blurry camera–work – suggestive of one swordsman’s imminent blindness – has been touched up and the colors sharpened, at least to the degree permitted in a film about the fallibility of memory and the ill–defined contours of everyday impressions. 35mm
Saturday, March 7 • 7:00 & 9:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, March 8 • 3:00 • 80min
My Winnipeg
Guy Maddin, 2007 • Watch only the first five minutes of this film, and you could be forgiven for not getting its unorthodox and irreverent take on the personality of a city losing its memories and character quick. Watch any more and you’ll be transfixed, if not by the deeply personal mix of wit and nostalgia with which Maddin narrates, then by his compelling thesis that even something as seemingly inanimate as a city can have intense character, emotion and mystery. Once transfixed, you’ll feel Maddin’s own intense sense of loss at the transformation of the Winnipeg he knew and loved. 35mm
Sunday, March 8 • 7:00 PM • 103min
The Only Son
Yazujiro Ozu, 1936 • This was Ozu’s first talkie film, yet facets of Ozu’s silent movie style remain. The Only Son is an incredibly moving film illustrating the inevitable disappointments that life brings and man’s acceptance of this reality. A widow sells her land and works in a silk factory to pay for her only son’s education in Tokyo. Many years later, she visits him with the hope that he is a successful individual, instead finding him living in a tenement with a wife and child. Though she is sad she holds back her feelings, tells him that she is proud of him, and finally returns to her village. 35mm - not available on DVD.
Monday, March 9 • 7:00 PM • 98min
Brakhage: Films from 1977–1981
Stan Brakhage, 1977–81 • David Sterritt describes Brakhage’s nine–part Roman Numeral Series as “exercises in pure color, motion, and shape,” noting that the films “search for the ‘original vision’ or ur–perception we are born with, and can still recapture if we keep ‘looking’ when we close our eyes or go to sleep.” Rather than purely celebrating that untutored vision, as his earlier films did, Romans views it as well with horror, however, seeing in it the risk of seeing too much, a fright that what we’ve lost the will and ability to see might be more than we can handle. Also in program: The Domain of the Moment, @, and Creation. 16mm - not available on DVD.
Tuesday, March 10 • 7:00 PM • 83min
In the Family
Joanna Rudnick, 2008 • At 31, Joanna Rudnick faces an impossible decision: remove her breasts and ovaries or risk incredible odds of developing cancer. Armed with a test result that leaves her vulnerable, confused, and feeling like a “ticking time bomb,” she balances dreams of having children with the unnerving reality that she is risking her life by holding on to her fertility. In the Family, Kartemquin Films’ latest production, follows Joanna as she connects with other women trying to navigate the unpredictable world of predictive genetic testing. Intensely personal and timely, In the Family asks: How much do you sacrifice to survive? DVD.
Wednesday, March 11 • 7:00 & 9:15 PM • 100min
Intolerable Cruelty
Joel & Ethan Coen, 2003 • Most Coen films combine two hallmarks: a hyper–twisted, hilarious plot and a dark outlook on life and the humans living it. Intolerable Cruelty keeps the twists, but lightens up substantially in tone, creating a pleasant excuse to watch George Clooney and Catherine Zeta–Jones being their stylish, stylish selves. Clooney is a divorce lawyer, and so the story goes, a damn good one. Jones is, for lack of a better term, a bitch. The match is made in heaven… until the backstabbing begins. Also starring Cedric the Entertainer, Geoffrey Rush, and Edward Herrmann as the expertly (and typically Coen) named Rex Rexroth. 35mm
Thursday, March 12 • 7:00 PM • 99min
The Trouble with Harry
Alfred Hitchcock, 1955 • The menace growing underneath picture–perfect small–town America was one of Hitchcock’s trademark themes, particularly in his favorite film, Shadow of a Doubt. Here, in an uncharacteristic work, he depicts with deadpan humor what would happen if a corpse were to mysteriously appear in the middle of a scenic Vermont town. Townspeople, including Edmund Gwenn and John Forsythe, act remarkably nonchalantly as they all imagine how they might have been accidentally responsible. This twisted black comedy, Hitchcock’s funniest film, marks the screen debut of Shirley MacLaine. 35mm
Thursday, March 12 • 9:15 PM • 83min
Angel
Robert Vincent O’Neil, 1983 • Exploitation auteur Robert Vincent O’Neil’s Angel is just about the most kindhearted and sweet film you’ll ever see about a 16–year–old hooker, her transvestite best friend, and a necrophiliac serial killer set on murdering prostitutes! Shot with the aesthetic of a late night TV movie and featuring character actor Dick Shawn in drag throughout, Angel is one of the finest low budget thrillers of the ‘80s and serves as a rare and fascinating look at the subculture of Los Angeles in the early part of that decade. Also featuring Dick Shawn, and Rory Calhoun playing an out of work former western star. 35mm
Friday, March 13 • 6:45, 9:00, & 11:15 PM • Matinee Sunday, March 15 • 3:30 • 101min
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Kevin Smith, 2008 • Kevin Smith’s first film to leave the sunny pastures of New Jersey instead sets itself in the equally idyllic Monroeville, PA. Two strictly platonic, debt–riddled roommates (Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, off a stint as Laura Bush in Oliver Stone’s W., showing at Doc 1/17) scheme to make an epic skin flick in order to pay the bills. During production, they discover that their relationship is far more complicated than the usual plumber/lonely housewife fare. Smith wisely borrows from the Judd Apatow playbook to create a love story as touching as the humor is raunchy. 35mm
Saturday, March 14 • 6:30 & 9:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, March 15 • 1:00 • 113min
Rachel Getting Married
Johnathan Demme, 2008 • Long suppressed tensions and conflicts resurface for the Buchman family when Kym (Anne Hathaway) temporarily leaves drug rehab for what is meant to be her sister’s idyllic wedding in the country. Rachel Getting Married is witty and poignant in its portrayal of one family’s complex existence, but above all else, it feels honest. Director Demme has an eclectic group of films to his name, including Silence of the Lambs and Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains, and perhaps it’s this that allows Rachel to be much more than just another dysfunctional family drama. 35mm
***SPECIAL FREE EVENT***
Thursday, March 19 • 7:00 PM • 96min
Sin Nombre
Cary Fukunaga, 2009 • Sin Nombre, the winner of the Directing Award and the Excellence in Cinematography Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, is an epic dramatic thriller written and directed by Student Academy Award winner Cary Joji Fukunaga in his feature debut. Seeking the promise of America, a beautiful young Honduran woman, Sayra (Paulina Gaytan), joins her father and uncle on an odyssey to cross the gauntlet of the Latin American countryside en route to the United States. Along the way she crosses paths with a teenaged Mexican gang member, El Casper (Edgar M. Flores), who is maneuvering to outrun his violent past and elude his unforgiving former associates. Together they must rely on faith, trust and street smarts if they are to survive their increasingly perilous journey towards the hope of new lives. 35mm. Producer James Schamus will be available for a Q&A after the screening.