What’s Screening: January 19 – 25

~ Lincoln Spector

The Noir City Festival takes over the week. It’s worth it. But you might want to leave The Grand Lake to see some other movies? How about high art in 3D? Or a master criminal who loves The Mamas and the Papas.

Festivals & Series

  • Noir City opens Friday night and closes more than a week later

Festival Recommendations: Noir City

A- The Asphalt Jungle, Grand Lake, Friday, January 26, 7:15pm, opening night.

There’s no protagonist in this noir directed by the great John Huston. Instead, we get to know six very different criminals as they set out together to steal a fortune in diamonds. Sam Jaffe plays the German egghead who plans the heist. Louis Calhern plays the wealthy and respectable lawyer with plans to take all the loot for himself. Marc Lawrence is a husband and father. The cast also includes Sterling Hayden, James Whitmore, Jean Hagen, and a not-yet famous Marilyn Monroe. The movie gets a bit slow at the end, with a speech we didn’t need to hear. Double billed with Four Against the World (Cuatro Contra El Mundo).

A- Elevator to the Gallows, Grand Lake, Saturday, January 27, 7:30pm

Louis Malle launched his directing career, and arguably the New Wave, with this noir tale of a perfect crime gone wrong. Laced with dark, ironic humor, the film cuts back and forth between a murderer trapped in an elevator, the murderer’s lover wandering the streets searching for him (Jeanne Moreau in her breakout role), and two young lovers enjoying a crime spree. And all of it is set to Miles Davis’s powerful jazz score. Read my Blu-ray review. Double billed with Strongroom (Ascenseur pour l’échafaud).

B+ Odd Man Out, Grand Lake, 7:00pm, January 20, Saturday, 7:00

This Irish film from 1947 could easily be made in today’s Palestine. The police can always enter a house without being asked. James Mason stars as the leader of the underground Irish Republican Army. After killing a man by accident, the police are breaking their backs to get him and the people around him. Unfortunately, the film drags near the end, thanks to the overacting of Robert Newton. Double billed with Victims of Sin (Victimas Del).

The Week’s Big Event (other than Noir)

A- Anselm in 3D, Roxie, starts Friday

The Roxie installed has installed a 3D projector. Wim Wenders found a rare, artistic use for stereoscopic cinema. Anselm Kiefer is a German artist who works in very large canvases, and not always in two-dimensional ones. Kiefer’s studio is so large that he uses a bicycle to get around it. The artist still feels that he should apologize for the Third Reich. I found this a very beautiful film to watch.

Movies that play over & over

Stop Making Sense
֍ Lark, Saturday, 9:00pm
֍ Lark, Thursday, 6:40pm

Vintage films on the big screen

A Chungking Express, 4-Star
֍ Wednesday 5:00pm & 7:30pm
֍ Thursday, 5:00pm

A strange and inexplicable movie…mostly in a good way. Chungking Express contains two separate boy-meets-girl stories, one told after the other. The men in both stories are police officers obsessed with food and looking for love. One woman is a master criminal who carries a gun and is willing to use it. The other is an eccentric waitress who loves The Mamas and the Papas. Writer/director Kar-Wai Wong and cinematographer Andrew Lau Wai-Keung find ways to tell a story and make cinema new all over again.

A Cleo From 5 To 7, Vogue
֍ Wednesday, 7:30pm
֍ Thursday, 9:15pm

One of the best films of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda’s Cléo From 5 to 7 follows a young woman as she wanders through Paris on a summer evening. But it isn’t just a joyful walk; she’s waiting for the results of her cancer screening. Cléo meditates on life from the point of view of a young woman who may soon be famous, or dead. There’s even a silent movie tribute starring Jean-Luc Godard. You can read my longer report, but you’ll have to scroll down a bit.

A Galaxy Quest, New Mission
֍ Friday, 11:0am
֍ Tuesday, 7:00pm

There’s no better way to parody a well-known genre than to write characters who know the genre and find themselves living in what they thought was their favorite fiction. Few movies do this better than Galaxy Quest. In this spoof of all things Star Trek, the cast of a long-canceled sci-fi TV show find themselves on a real space adventure with good and bad aliens. Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, and Alan Rickman star.

C+ Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), 4-Star
֍ Saturday, 10:00am (Popcorn Palace)
֍ Saturday, 1:30pm
֍ Saturday, 4:00pm
֍ Sunday, 10:00am (Popcorn Palace)
֍ Sunday, 1:30pm
֍ Sunday, 4:00pm

Japan’s Studio Ghibli doesn’t always make great movies. This one, set in a very quaint and fantasized Europe, isn’t all that much. A young witch moves to the big city, makes friends, and loses her powers. But then, her only powers are flying with a broom and having two-way conversations with her cat. Of course, a big disaster gives our protagonist a chance to become a heroine. Not much.

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.