Thursday, August 27 at 1:15pm
Dumb & Dumber
Peter Farrelly (U.S. 1994) 107 min. 35MM. With Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels
“Released at Christmas 1994, Dumb & Dumber delighted audiences and caused most critics to react as if someone had just farted in a drawing room. Somebody had: the Farrelly Brothers. But one man’s gas is another man’s perfume. Low comedy can be done well or badly; not every poop joke is a winner. What distinguished the Farrellys was the sheer exuberance in their barrage of scatology and no-brainer gags. The sweetness of their approach became more evident in their third movie, There’s Something About Mary, but Dumb & Dumber remains their most satisfying picture. The Farrellys and the stars, Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, are like evil toddlers smearing their food on the walls, themselves and each other. If you’re not willing to accept their invitation to revel in the joy of being a dirty kid once again, the movie probably isn’t for you. If you are, it’s idiot paradise.” – Charles Taylor, Salon
Thursday, September 3 at 1:15pm
Les rendez-vous d’Anna
Chantal Akerman (1978) 127 min. DCP. With Aurore Clément, Helmut Griem, Magali Noël. French with English subtitles.
In one of Akerman’s most penetrating character studies, Anna, an accomplished filmmaker, makes her way through a series of European cities to promote her latest movie. Via a succession of eerie, exquisitely shot, brief encounters—with men and women, family and strangers—we come to see her emotional and physical detachment from the world. “More personal than might have been appreciated in 1978, Anna brings Akerman’s career-long concerns to the fore—homelessness, solitude, the child-parent relationship, the nature of sexual identity. It even riffs on itself as a (relatively) commercial movie.” –J Hoberman, The New York Times
Thursday, September 10 at 1:15pm
Ordet
Carl Th. Dreyer (Denmark 1955) 125 min. DCP. With Henrik Malberg, Emil Hass Christensen, Preben Lerdorff Rye, Hanne Aagesen. Danish with English subtitles.
A farmer’s family is torn apart by faith, sanctity, and love—one child believes he’s Jesus Christ, a second proclaims himself agnostic, and the third falls in love with a fundamentalist’s daughter. Putting the lie to the term “organized religion,” Ordet (The Word) is a challenge to simple facts and dogmatic orthodoxy. Layering multiple stories of faith and rebellion, Dreyer’s adaptation of Kaj Munk’s play quietly builds towards a shattering, miraculous climax. “The end is to enrich one’s fellow human beings by engrossing them in an emotional experience they would not otherwise encounter” (Dreyer).
Thursday, September 17 at 1:15pm
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
Preston Sturges (U.S. 1944) 101 min. 35MM. With Eddie Bracken, Betty Hutton, Diana Lynn.
Perhaps Sturges’s most censor-defying farce. “A volcanically burgeoning small-town girl gets drunk and is impregnated by one of several soldiers, she can’t remember which. Her father, her younger sister, and her devoted 4-F lover do all they can to help her out. The result is a shambles, from which they are delivered by a ‘miracle’ which entails its own cynical comments on the sanctity of law, order, parenthood, and the American home. . . . Sturges tells his story according to a sound principle. . . . In proportion to the insanity and repressiveness of the age you live in, play the age as comedy if you want to get away with it” (James Agee). Preserved by the Library of Congress.
Thursday, September 24 at 1:15pm
Hail Mary
Jean-Luc Godard (France / Switzerland 1985) 107 min. DCP. With Myriem Roussel, Thierry Rode & Juliette Binoche. French with English subtitles.
Hail Mary was condemned long before it was ever seen by the public, from Vatican City to Manhattan—anyone who attended a screening at the 1985 New York Film Festival will remember running a gauntlet of pamphleteers, prayer circles and newscasters outside Alice Tully Hall. The irony, of course, is that the film itself is far from blasphemous, but rather a glorious cinematic hymn, an attempt to reconcile spirit and flesh, science and nature. “Somehow I think we need faith, or I need faith, or I’m lacking in faith,” Godard told Katherine Dieckmann. “Therefore maybe I needed a story which is bigger than myself.” – Lincoln Center notes Screening with: The Book of Mary (Anne-Marie Miéville, 1985, 25m), a film about the broken affections between a husband and wife through the eyes of their young daughter.