Wednesday, August 26 at 7pm
Coherence
Directed by James Byrkit (U.S. 2014) 89 min. DCP. With Emily Baldoni, Maury Sterling, Nicholas Brendon.
On the night of an astronomical anomaly, eight friends at a dinner party experience a troubling chain of reality bending events. Part cerebral sci-fi and part relationship drama, Coherence is a tightly focused, intimately shot film that quickly ratchets up with tension and mystery.
“A perverse realization of the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, as the reality of the film’s eight characters overlaps with seemingly infinite other realities. What this premise allows is for eight characters/actors to multiply into infinite others, and Byrkit uses a simple, but brilliant technique to permit this transformation… given Coherence’s ingenuity as a film that spawns an ever-expanding, imaginative universe out of eight actors and a room, any qualms about its ending ultimately seem trifling.” – Samuel B. Prime, Slant Magazine
Wednesday, September 2 at 7pm
Playtime
Jacques Tati (France 1967) 116 min. DCP. With Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Rita Maiden. French and German with English subtitles.
Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in an age of high technology reached their apotheosis with Playtime. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati again thrust the lovably old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, along with a host of other lost souls, into a baffling modern world, this time Paris. With every inch of its super-wide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, Playtime is a lasting record of a modern era tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion.
Wednesday, September 9 at 7pm
La La Land
Damien Chazelle (U.S. 2016) 129 min. DCP. With Emma Stone, Finn Wittrock, John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, Ryan Gosling.
On the heels of Lionsgate’s 10th anniversary re-release, we present the modern musical whose aspirations to resurrect the classic form made a huge splash for its director and its star studded cast. “This stylish, old-fashioned musical about two young Angelenos in love was one of the most pleasant cinematic surprises of 2016. Best Actor nominee Ryan Gosling plays the jazz musician whose love for aspiring actress Emma Stone (who won her first Best Actress Oscar for her performance) may not be enough to withstand the challenges of their ambitions. The film is one of three to earn a then-record 14 nominations—including Best Picture—and it won Oscars for its cinematography, original score, original song City of Stars, production design, and Damien Chazelle’s direction. Chazelle and his team staged elaborate song-and-dance numbers on location around Los Angeles, some in lengthy, unbroken takes.” – Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Wednesday, September 23 at 7pm
Metropolis – Restored and Complete Version!
Directed by Fritz Lang (Germany 1927) 148 min. 35MM. Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Gustav Froelich, Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm. With English intertitles.
Incorporating more than 25 minutes of newly discovered footage, this 2010 restoration of Metropolis is the definitive edition of Fritz Lang’s science-fiction masterpiece. Backed by a new recording of Gottfried Huppertz’s 1927 score (presented in 5.1 Stereo Surround), the film’s dazzling visual design and special effects are more striking than ever. And the integration of scenes and subplots long considered lost endows Metropolis with even greater tension and emotional resonance, as it dramatizes the conflict between wealthy über-capitalists and rebellious subterranean laborers orchestrated by a diabolical scientist capable of destroying them both.
“One of the most celebrated movies in cinema history… For the first time, Lang’s vision… which has influenced contemporary films like Blade Runner and Star Wars, seems complete.” — The New York Times