What’s Screening: September 8 – 14

~ Lincoln Spector

A lot of vintage films are screening this week. The 4-Star‘s Scorsese series continues, along with another series on Kubrick. One of Les Blank’s best documentaries makes you want to eat and dance (mostly dance). There’s ghouls and members of the Free French, and a very weird western.

Festivals & Series

Festival Recommendations: Scorsese

Last week, I noted that three Scorsese films played in Bay Area theaters. Well, I didn’t know there was a Scorsese series going on. The 4-Star is playing a Scorsese series called: More Than a Gangster.

A Raging Bull (1980), 4-Star, Saturday & Sunday, 8:00pm

Martin Scorsese put a cap on 70’s cinema with this study of boxer Jake La Motta. It isn’t an easy film to watch; the experience is  akin to a fierce pummeling. But it’s worth it. Robert De Niro gives one of the great physical performances in cinema, changing from a taut athlete to a man who has let himself go. He’s also making things difficult for the people close to him. Scorsese and cinematographer Michael Chapman make brilliant use of black and white, allowing us to experience the emotional brutality of the fights.

A The King of Comedy (1982), 4-Star, Thursday, 5:00pm

Martin Scorsese’s meditation on celebrity and fandom (written by Paul D. Zimmerman) feels in a strange way like a much less violent Taxi Driver. Like Travis Bickle, Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) is clearly out of his mind. But instead of raining horrible death on the scum of New York, he just wants to make people laugh. The problem is that he thinks he’s a brilliant comedian, but he won’t work his way up in the clubs. Instead, he stalks a famous TV comedian (Jerry Lewis in a fine, serious performance). Sandra Bernhard steals every scene she’s in as another crazy fan. Although basically a serious film, it’s often quite funny.

A After Hours (1985), 4-Star, Thursday, 7:30pm

New York City can be very weird late at night. Or at least it is in Martin Scorsese’s almost surreal comedy. A young man (Griffin Dunne) goes out with the intention of getting laid. Instead, he spends a night wandering through a few blocks of one crazy neighborhood, finding himself in one strange predicament after another, until he becomes the target of urban vigilantes.

Festival Recommendations: Kubrick

A+ Paths of Glory (1957), New Mission
֍ Saturday, 3:15pm
֍ Monday, 9/11pm
֍ Tuesday, 10:10pm
֍ Wednesday, 3:10pm

Stanley Kubrick doesn’t just show us that war is hell. He illustrates how helpless men go through that hell for the benefit of powerful men. When an impossible mission inevitably fails, the officers who planned the fiasco get off the hook by arranging for three enlisted men to be tried for cowardice – convictions and executions are foregone conclusions. After all, three executions are easier than admitting the generals’ mistakes. Kirk Douglas plays the honorable officer who tilts at the windmills of corrupted military justice. Read my A+ report.

A+ Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), New Mission
֍ Saturday, 10:10pm
֍ Sunday, 4:30pm
֍ Monday, 7:00pm
֍ Tuesday, 11:20am
֍ Wednesday, 10:00pm

Here’s a deeply dark, hilarious comedy about the end of the world. General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) orders his men to bomb the USSR and start World War III. But have no fear! The men responsible for avoiding Armageddon (three of them played by Peter Sellers) are almost as competent as Laurel and Hardy. Stanley Kubrick’s “nightmare comedy” reminds you just how scary things were back in the ’60s. Read my Blu-ray review.

A Spartacus (1960), New Mission, Sunday, 11:00am

This very fictionalized version of the famous Roman slave revolt is simply the most powerful, intelligent, and coherent toga epic from the golden age of toga epics. And yes, I know that sounds like weak praise, but it isn’t. Stanley Kubrick’s only work as a director-for-hire doesn’t give us the glory of Rome, concentrating instead on the horror, cruelty, and exploitation of an empire. Star and Executive Producer Kirk Douglas gave Dalton Trumbo a well-deserved screen credit, which helped end the Hollywood blacklist.

Theatrical revivals

Double bill: Casablanca (1942) & Roman Holiday (1953), Stanford
 ֍ A+ Casablanca: 5:35pm & 9:40pm
 ֍ B Roman Holiday: 7:30pm

Casablanca: You’ve either already seen the best movie to come out of Hollywood’s studio-era sausage factory, or you know you should. Let me just add that no one who worked on Casablanca thought they were making a masterpiece. For more details, see Casablanca: The Accidental Masterpiece.
Roman Holiday: She’s a runaway princess, and he’s a reporter hoping for a scoop. But the real star is Rome; shooting Hollywood films overseas was a new thing in the early 1950s. Directed by William Wyler, from a story by blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.

A I Went To the Dance (1989), Cerrito, Thursday, 7:00

Les Blank made many documentaries about food and music. This one, which is about Cajun music, is one of his best. Many musicians play their music and talk about making wonderful noise. You can think of the picture as a large lecture on the history of Cajun music. But it can also get you up dancing. Most of the musicians in this fantastic film are little known. Here are some of their names: Dewey Balfa, Charles Barry, and Beausoleil. After the screening, there will be Q&A with Maureen Gosling and Harrod Blank, and after that live music by Eric & Suzy Thompson.

A The Conversation (1974), Balboa, Monday, 7:00pm

Francis Coppola’s low-budget “personal” film, made between Godfathers I and II, is almost as good as the two epics that sandwich it. The Conversation concerns a professional snoop (Gene Hackman) who bugs peoples’ private conversations for a living. Remote and lonely, his emotional armor begins to crack when he suspects that his work could lead to murder. Walter Murch’s ground-breaking sound mix exposes us to layers of meaning within the titular recorded discussion as we hear it over and over again.

A Airplane! (1980), Vogue, Wednesday & Thursday, 7:30pm

They’re flying on instruments, blowing the autopilot, and translating English into Jive. So, win one for the Zipper, but whatever you do, don’t call him Shirley. Airplane! throws jokes like confetti – carelessly tossing them in all directions in hopes that some might hit their target. Surprisingly enough, most of them do. There’s no logical reason a movie this silly can be so satisfying, but logic never was part of the Airplane! formula. I’d be hard-pressed to name another post-silent feature-length comedy with such a high laugh-to-minute ratio.

A- Army of Shadows (1969), BAMPFA, Saturday, 7:00

Resistance is a dirty and almost inevitably deadly job, but in Nazi-occupied France, someone had to do it. Jean-Pierre Melville’s dark, semi-autobiographical, 1969 adventure can occasionally confuse those who don’t know the history (or the geography), but the rewards are well worth the effort. The suspense set pieces, including a night-time novice parachute jump and a rescue attempt by ambulance, are nerve-wracking, but not nearly so much as the protagonists’ constant fear and horrendous moral dilemmas. Nothing gets romanticized in this spy story. Part of the series Rialto Pictures Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Salute.

A- Sleepbomb: Night of the Living Dead (1968), Roxie, Sunday, 5:30pm & 8:00pm

Played with a live music score! This is fear without compromise. The slow, nearly unstoppable ghouls were shockingly gruesome in 1968 (sequels and imitations renamed them zombies). Decades later, the shock is gone, yet the dread and fear remain, made less spectacular but more emotionally gripping by the black and white photography. Night of the Living Dead is scary, effective, occasionally funny, and at times quite gross. It can be viewed as a satire of capitalism, a commentary on American racial issues, or simply one of the scariest horror films ever made. I have no idea if the new music will make it better or worse.

A- Dead Man (1995), Balboa, Wednesday, 7:30pm

A western written and directed by Jim Jarmusch is by definition a very weird flick. The plot involves a timid accountant (Johnny Depp) who becomes a wanted outlaw within a day of getting off the train. It sounds like a Bob Hope comedy. But despite some quirky humor, Dead Man is mostly dead serious. It’s also, to my knowledge, the first black and white western since The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The supporting cast includes John Hurt, Gabriel Byrne, and Robert Mitchum.

B+ Fantastic Planet (1973), Balboa, Sunday, 7:30pm

As a story, this French animated sci-fi mortality tale comes off as a very obvious allegory. Human beings, imported from Earth, struggle to survive on a planet populated by blue giants who view us as either pets or vermin. But it’s the imaginative visuals, not the story or the message, that makes Fantastic Planet worth watching. The filmmakers couldn’t afford Disney-quality animation, but they made up for it with striking and original designs. Creatures, plants, devices all look like something never seen before.

B+ Pride & Prejudice
(2005), New Mission
֍ Saturday, 1:00pm
֍ Wednesday, 1:00pm

A sweet romance about class-defying true love, set during a time when marriage was a business proposition. In this 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen’s oft-filmed novel, the British cast does an excellent job, including token Yank Donald Sutherland. But Pride and Prejudice belongs to Keira Knightley, who really shines as Elizabeth Bennet. Not to be confused with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

B Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Saturday, 7:30pm

Here’s one of the earliest movie stars at her best. Mary Pickford, actually 25 but playing a teenager, moves in with two overly strict maiden aunts, and livens up the entire town. This adaptation of the classic novel is episodic, charming, and funny. Preceded by The New York Hat. Bruce Loeb will provide musical accompaniment on piano.

B- Computer Chess (2013), New Mission, Saturday, 11:30am

This reasonably funny mockumentary follows a computer chess tournament in 1980. Assorted geeks and nerds (including one “lady”) show up at a hotel to test their hardware and software’s chess skills. The winning algorithm will then face an actual human chess master. To add color, a bizarre new-age group has its own gathering at the same hotel. The whole thing is shot in standard-def black-and-white; it looks awful but that’s the point. The jokes range from the clever to the obvious, and I must admit that most of the audience I saw it with laughed more than I did.

Continuing engagements

Movies I can’t review

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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.