What’s Screening: June 23 – 29

~ Lincoln Spector

Troubled families, big fish, baking bread, musical bicycles, and yet there’s no place like home.

Festivals & Series

Theatrical revivals

A+ Jaws (1975), 4-Star, 5:00pm & 7:30pm

People associate Jaws with three men in a boat, yet the picture is more than half over before the shark chase really begins. For that first half, Jaws is a suspenseful, witty variation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play, An Enemy of the People, but with a hero more conflicted and less noble (Roy Scheider). Then he joins up with two other men, and the picture turns into a hair-raising variation of Moby Dick. Jaws’ phenomenal success helped create the summer blockbuster, yet by today’s standards, it’s practically an art film–albeit one that could scare the living eyeballs out of your sockets. See my Blu-ray review.

A The Baker’s Wife (1938), BAMPFA, Friday, 7:00pm

Sold out, but you might get lucky. The first thing you should know about Marcel Pagnol’s 1938 comedy is that it’s very, very funny. The second thing you need to know is that it’s also sweet and humane. This utterly charming French treat takes place in a small town where everyone knows everyone else. When the titular character runs away with a handsome shepherd, it turns the whole town upside-down. Yet the husband is so sweet he just can’t assume foul play. Read my full report. Part of the series Ambassador of Cinema: Tom Luddy’s Lasting Influence at BAMPFA.

A Tokyo Story (1953), BAMPFA, Saturday, 7:00pm

Yasujirō Ozu shows us a family in all of its troubling complexities. An elderly couple travel to Tokyo to visit their busy and overworked adult children. Everyone greets them with the proper respect, but only a widowed daughter-in-law offers real warmth. In Tokyo Story, Ozu does something altogether different and remarkable. He looks at an ordinary family going through experiences that don’t happen every day, but happens in almost everyone’s life. Read my Blu-ray review. Part of the series Shitamachi: Tales of Downtown Tokyo.

A Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), 4-Star
֍ Friday, 7:30pm
֍ Saturday, 5:00pm
֍ Saturday, 7:30pm

The best big-screen chapter in the Star Trek franchise (yes, I prefer it, just barely, to Wrath of Khan) has the original cast time travel to 1986 San Francisco. Why? To save the whales, who, according to the Star Trek universe, were hunted to extinction in the late 20th century. Played largely for laughs (with a plot like that, how else could you play it), it finds plenty of fish-out-of-water humor–from Scotty’s struggles with a Macintosh to McCoy’s horror at the “medieval” medical procedures. Leonard Nimoy directed as well as playing Spock.

B+ The Triplets of Belleville (2003), New Mission, Sunday, 12:00 noon

A modern, low-budget, dialog-free animated film for adults (and teenagers; it’s rated PG-13). The story involves a French champion bicyclist who’s kidnapped by mobsters and brought to America to…never mind, it’s just too weird to explain. But who cares? The jokes are funny, the visuals are clever and original, and the music swings (the triplets of the title are an aging vocal trio).

B+ Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), 4-Star, 10:00am
֍ Friday, 10:00pm
֍ Sunday, 10:00pm (dubbed)
֍ Sunday, 5:00pm (subtitled)
֍ Monday, 7:30pm (subtitled)

I don’t know when Studio Ghibli started making animated movies particularly for the American and European market. This one, based on a novel by Diana Wynne Jones (certainly not a Japanese name), seems set as a fantasized Europe in the early 20th century. The story deals with a useless war, a handsome wizard with a very bad yellow streak, a courageous girl turned into an old woman, and, of course, the moving castle of the story. The design and hand-drawn animation are exceptional.

B+ The Wizard of Oz (1939), Roxie, Sunday, 3:30pm

35mm! It’s an entertaining movie, with clever songs, lush Technicolor photography, and two great performances: Judy Garland’s Dorothy and Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion. When you think about it, the movie is pretty strange. A seemingly nice “wizard” (Frank Morgan) sends a child to murder a powerful psychopath. And when Dorothy finally gets home, her dog is still going to be put to sleep.

B+ The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Balboa, Saturday, 11:30pm

With the Bawdy Caste Live Shadow Cast! This is in no way, shape, or form a great movie. It’s cheaply shot. The songs, while catchy, are hardly great rock. The characters are broad clichés, and the plot is almost non-existent. But it’s a crazy, funny, absurd celebration of everything sexual, with Tim Curry carrying the movie as a cross-dressing mad scientist. Also starring a very young Susan Sarandon.

Continuing engagements

Movies I can’t review

These are films that I haven’t seen, or saw too long ago to write them up. And yet, they have enough of a reputation to note them here.

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Published by Lincoln Spector

Lincoln Spector writes about cinema, technology, and cinema technology. From 1986 through 2008, he wrote Gigglebytes, the first technology-oriented humor column. From 1977 through 2016, he wrote PC World's Answer Line column and blog.