Tuesday, August 25 at 7pm
Monkey Business – Monroe Centennial Restoration!
Directed by Howard Hawks (U.S. 1952) 97 min. DCP. With Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn.
“Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant reunited, in a film which looks back to screwball’s heyday and especially to Bringing Up Baby. Barnaby Fulton (Grant) is working on a youth formula for a chemical company, but lab monkeys monkey around with the potion. The resulting elixir sends Barnaby and his wife Edwina (Rogers) spiraling back to their wild teens and beyond, with Marilyn Monroe’s curvaceous secretary Miss Laurel causing a certain amount of bad blood between them.” – British Film Institute
“It would be tempting for contemporary audiences to find Monkey Business’ reiteration of Monroe’s dumb blonde character sexist and, by extension, class Hawks as a sexist director, but the intentions of the film are complicated. Hawks’ strengths and weaknesses hinge on his non-intellectual approach, what Robin Wood calls ‘his intuitive response and spontaneous involvement.’ As a result, Monkey Business reflects many of the latent attitudes of post-war America. This, coupled with Hawks’ intuitive practice of building gags upon gags until they reach their logical conclusion, leads the film down some strange corridors…”
– Andréas Giannopoulos, Senses of Cinema
Tuesday, September 1 at 7pm
Resurrection – Area Premiere!
Directed by Bi Gan (China 2025) 159 min. DCP. With Huang Jue, Jackson Yee, Li Gengxi, Mark Chao, Shu Qi. Chinese with English subtitles.
With his senses-ravishing third feature, visionary director Bi Gan takes his deepest plunge yet into the realm of pure cinematic dreamscape. In a world where humans have forsaken dreams in exchange for immortality, a dreaming monster (Yee) embarks on a shape-shifting odyssey through illusion, beauty, and terror that takes him across the twentieth century and to the end of time. Unfolding in five dazzlingly imagined chapters that encompass everything from silent-cinema expressionism to film noir to a delirious vampire love story shot in one of Bi’s signature long takes, Resurrection is a work of breathtaking imagination in which cinema is the ultimate portal to the unconscious mind.
“What makes the film especially delectable is that Bi Gan changes visual styles and narrative techniques throughout this movie odyssey… a cinephile’s delight.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times