Wednesday, August 27 at 7pm
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
Directed by Don Scardino (U.S. 2013) 100 min. 35MM. With Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Mason Cook, Jim Carrey.
One pleasure in this comedic, Vegas-set, magician comeback story is Jim Carrey’s “biting comedy, so on point that at times the line between parody and plausible seems about as thick as a piece of thread. This is Carrey in full force, as potent and nasty a creation as John Turturro’s Jesus Quintana, but since he’s on the screen a lot more than that character from The Big Lebowski, he changes the tenor of The Incredible Burt Wonderstone from soft and silly to something more complicated and certainly more adult. … The stylistic differences between Carell and Carrey as comedians, one so determined to be liked, the other seemingly beyond that neediness, create a kind of narrative confusion that isn’t settled by the screenplay… just fluid enough to also seem, on occasion, to be uncontained. The triumphs are undeniable (Carrey, obviously, but also Alan Arkin, who infuses his predictable role with a sort of weary, alluring elegance) but when [the titular Burt Wonderstone] gets a load of [Carey’s] Steve Gray for the first time and says ‘who is this hot mess?’ it’s easy to transfer the question to the movie itself. Maybe that’s why I want another look at seeing The Incredible Burt Wonderstone; like every hot mess, it invites the gaze.” (Adapted from Mary Pols’ Time magazine review)
Wednesday, September 3 at 7pm
Valley Girl
Directed by Martha Coolidge (U.S. 1983) 99 min. DCP. With Nicholas Cage, Deborah Foreman, Elizabeth Daily.
Martha Coolidge’s second feature is a perfect ’80s version of Romeo and Juliet, reimagined, in which its Romeo is a nonchalant punk from Hollywood and Juliet is a Valley girl from an encapsulating, pink-clad world in the suburbs of LA’s San Fernando Valley. Coolidge’s endearing rom-com, starring a 17-year-old Nicholas Cage and Deborah Foreman, is a timeless classic, tying the two colliding worlds of these young lovers somewhere between the Sherman Oaks Galleria in the Valley and The Central (later the Viper Room) in Hollywood, garnished tireless making-out, gossip, and house parties (Academy Film Museum notes).
“With no money or clout, what started as a cheap exploitation film managed to, like, totally click with a generation — and produce an unconventional superstar.” – The New York Times
Wednesday, September 17 at 7pm
Seventeen – Full, Uncensored Version!
Directed by Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines (U.S. 1983) 120 min.
A film about coming of age in the working class. We decided to follow a group of teenagers — girls and boys, white and black — whose lives intertwine during their last year in high school. By filming for more than a year, and by living where we were filming, we encountered a range of experience… Kids smoke dope, get drunk, sass their teachers, disobey the taboo against race-mixing, try to break away from their mothers and fathers. It’s clear that they, on occasion, fuck and fight. But the film is not scandalous. It got that reputation, sight-unseen by most citizens, when the authorities tried to ban it…
We refused to change our film.
We respected the kids’ complexity, celebrated their liveliness, despaired of their future. And we loved them dearly. But it was impossible to oblige America’s notion that to be worthy film subjects, the working class must be saintlike, and to be embraceable, cinema-verité (or any art) must become a broken version of what the makers made. Adapted from the filmmakers’ notes on the film.
“Call it ‘direct cinema,’ call it ‘cinema vérité’ — whatever the label, this is a powerful form of storytelling that contains more truth than any fact-filled historical documentary and more human drama than any Hollywood blockbuster I [have] ever seen.” – Amanda Micheli, International Documentary Association
Wednesday, September 24 at 7pm
Trouble in Mind – Rare Print!
Directed by Alan Rudolph (U.S. 1985) 111 min. 35MM. With Kris Kristofferson, Lori Singer, Keith Carradine.
The setting of Rudolph’s dreamy, out-of-time neo-noir is referred to only as “Rain City,” but the glistening streets belong to Seattle in its pre-tech boom days, when the old, working-class city hadn’t yet been washed away. Ex-cop Hawk (Kristofferson), fresh out of prison after serving time for waxing a mobster, rushes right into a new predicament, devoting himself to saving a couple of fresh-to-the-city naïfs (Singer and Carradine) from being drawn into the urban underworld, ruled over by none other than John Waters regular Divine, in a rare non-drag performance. Seemingly inspired in equal parts by Edward Hopper, Dashiell Hammett, and Memphis Milano, the closed world created by Trouble in Mind is like nothing else in cinema (Metrograph Cinema Notes).
“Alan Rudolph is a kindred spirit to filmmakers on the order of Jonathan Demme and his mentor Robert Altman, evincing an abiding interest in everyday and intimate human behavior, and in the social milieus we place ourselves in and/or from which we try to extricate ourselves.“ – Quad Cinema
Wednesday, October 1 at 7pm
The Breakfast Club – 40th Anniversary!
Directed by John Hughes (U.S. 1985) 97 min. 35MM. With Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Michael Hall.
For some it’s hard to believe that it’s been 40 years since this iconic, generation defining, teen-movie classic hit theaters and became an instant blockbuster. We’re talking to you, Generation X! John Hughes, the unrivaled king of a specific and memorable type of coming of age film (which many associate with the 1980s), here tells the relatable, compassionate, funny and hopeful story of adolescent archetypes who find common ground: what happens when the jock, the nerd, the princess, the rebel, the outcast wind up together in detention?
Wednesday, October 22 at 7pm
American Pie 2
Directed by J.B. Rogers (U.S. 2001) 108 min. DCP. With Jason Biggs, Sean William Scott, Shannon Elizabeth, Alyson Hannigan, Eugene Levy.
Roger Ebert’s congenial review confirms that this sequel to the box office smash that was American Pie is, if nothing else, very funny: “This may seem crushingly obvious, but here goes: The problem with a sequel like American Pie 2 is that it’s about the same characters, and the elements of surprise and discovery are gone. … That said, I had a good time, maybe because the characters are broad comic types, well played; the movie feels some sympathy for their dilemmas, and because it’s obsessed with sex. Also because it has Jim’s dad (Levy), the world’s most understanding and supportive parent, who meets his son in the emergency room during the most embarrassing and humiliating evening of the kid’s life (and remember, this is the kid who made love on the Internet), and tells him, ‘I’m proud of you, son.’”
Wednesday, November 5th at 7pm
Détective
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard (France/Switzerland 1985) 95 min. With Claude Brasseur, Nathalie Baye, Johnny Halliday, Jean-Pierre Léaud. French with English subtitles.
A mainstream genre picture sacrificed on the altar of the late, great Jean-Luc Godard, Détective is a cunning, comic deconstruction of the film noir. Its convoluted yarn, a noir forte, crams a handful of gangster-movie archetypes—sleuths, dames, mafia debtors, and debt collectors—into a Parisian hotel and lets their unspooling plotlines entangle one another. The film was a commission job: producer Alain Sarde had a script and star attached (Baye); Godard was short of cash to finish Hail Mary. The puckish fun of Détective comes from how the director and his collaborator Anne-Marie Miéville inside-out the assignment, making window dressing out of the story while reflexively calling back to Godard’s crime pictures of the ’60s (e.g. Band of Outsiders). Jean-Pierre Léaud is memorable as a manic gumshoe stumped by a prince’s murder. A teenage Julie Delpy appears in a minor role (adapted from Vancouver Cinematheque notes).
“A mini-masterpiece … Built on the charisma of its stars and on memories of the great thrillers of the ’40s [and] held together by Godard’s romantic pessimism, curiosity, and sense of humor.”
–Tony Rayns, Time Out
Wednesday, November 12th at 7pm
Othello
Directed by Orson Welles (Morocco/France/UK/U.S. 1951) 91 min. DCP. With Orson Welles, Suzanne Cloutier, Micheàl MacLiammoir.
Gloriously cinematic despite its tiny budget, Orson Welles’s Othello is a testament to the filmmaker’s stubborn willingness to pursue his vision to the ends of the earth. Unmatched in his passionate identification with Shakespeare’s imagination, Welles brings his inventive visual approach to this enduring tragedy of jealousy, bigotry, and rage, and also gives a towering performance as the Moor of Venice, alongside Suzanne Cloutier as the innocent Desdemona, and Micheál MacLiammóir as the scheming Iago. Shot over the course of three years in Italy and Morocco and plagued by many logistical problems, this fiercely independent film joins Macbeth and Chimes at Midnight in making the case for Welles as the cinema’s most audacious interpreter of the Bard.
“It may well be the greatest Shakespeare—a brooding expressionist dream made in eerie Moorish locations over nearly three years, yet held together by a remarkably cohesive style and atmosphere.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Wednesday, December 3 at 7pm
Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros
Directed by Frederick Wiseman (France/U.S. 2023) 240 min. DCP. French and English with English subtitles.
Esteemed documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s latest is a food-lover’s heaven — a long, behind-the-scenes excursion into the world of France’s venerable restaurant La Maison Troisgros, which has held three Michelin stars for more than five decades. The phrase menus plaisirs translates to “small pleasures” — and this film is rich with them. Wiseman explores the rarefied world of the Troisgros family, who have operated their establishment for four generations. He and his cameraman James Bishop observe the restaurant’s owners and workers from multiple perspectives. They catch the place in a moment of transition as long-time proprietors Michel and Marie-Pierre gradually pass the reins to their son Cesar. In the kitchen, the chefs operate like artists in their handling of exquisite dishes (Toronto Film Festival notes). As The Hollywood Reporter describes the film, it is “a mouth-watering and methodical marathon for foodies…Both a food lover’s dream and an aspiring chef’s guidebook, uncovering the sophisticated alchemy that makes such places not only run flawlessly, but serve up groundbreaking dishes that are also locally sourced.”
“A mesmerizing four-hour portrait of a family, a business, a world… Intimate and expansive, the movie takes you from kitchen to farm fields and back as it charts the triumphs and quotidian frustrations along with the aesthetic and ethical sensibilities of people whose love for their calling is inscribed in every tweezered morsel. It’s a dedication that recalls that of the genius behind the camera…” – Manohla Dargis, New York Times