What’s Screening: February 2 – 8

~ Lincoln Spector

There are a lot of vintage movies in theaters this week – even though there’s only one festival. There are powerful religious films like The Passion of Joan of Arc, Andrei Rublev, and Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day. But if you’re not spiritual, there’s plenty of music and comedy.

Festivals & Series

Movies that play over & over

Vintage films on the big screen

A+ The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Saturday, 7:30pm

One would assume that courtroom drama isn’t the best genre for silent films. And yet, by concentrating on faces and the emotions they display, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc surpasses all but a few cinematic dramas, silent or otherwise. Based on transcripts from the Saint’s 15th-century trial for heresy, Dreyer’s film is about people – not myths. Renée Jeanne Falconetti plays Joan as an illiterate, terrified, 19-year-old peasant girl in way over her head. Read my larger appreciation. Preceded by Mabel’s Busy Day and Run Girl Run. Bruce Loeb on piano.

A+ Floating Features: Groundhog Day, (1993), Friday, 6:00pm, Red and White Fleet, Board at Pier 43 ½; Buy tickets through the Roxie.

Spiritual, humane, and hilarious, Groundhog Day wraps its empathetic world view inside a slick, Hollywood comedy. Without explanation, the movie plunges its self-centered protagonist into a type of purgatory, living the same day over and over until he finds enlightenment. Bill Murray’s weatherman goes through stages of panic, giddiness, and despair before figuring out that life is about serving others. And yet not a frame of this movie feels preachy. Fast paced and brilliantly edited, it’s pure entertainment. For more on this great comedy, see my essay.

B+ McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Roxie, Sunday, 8:00pm

Introduced by Marc Maron. Also 35mm! With all his great work, Robert Altman never made anything as brilliant as his rethinking of the western genre. The plot sounds like a western cliché: A lone rider with a rep as a gunfighter comes to town (Warren Beatty). He doesn’t act like a killer. He launches a peaceful business – a whorehouse. He knows nothing about the enterprise, and that’s where Julie Christie comes in. But when a big, criminal-run organization wants to take over his now-successful company, he makes a very bad choice. What makes the film a masterpiece is Vilmos Zsigmond’s golden cinematography, Leonard Cohen’s atmospheric music, and…well, just everything else about this film. Read my essay.

A I Am Not Your Negro (2016), Balboa, 7:30pm

Here is the African American experience, spoken by the words of James Baldwin, and read by Samuel L. Jackson. Director Raoul Peck provides visual context from old news footage, talk shows, and scenes shot for this powerful documentary. Every American should see I Am Not Your Negro; unfortunately, only those already sympathetic to its message will likely catch it. Read my full review.

A In the Mood for Love (2000), Roxie, starts Friday

Wong Kar Wai’s brilliant film about adultery has no sex, little touching, and we never see who we believe are the adulterous couple. A handsome man and a beautiful woman live in the same apartment building. Both of their spouses are out of town, and they just may be out of town together. Inevitably, the two protagonists fall slowly in love. While there’s no sex, almost every shot is filled with deep eroticism. Starring Maggie Cheung, Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, and the color red.

A In the Heat of the Night (1967), 4-Star, Thursday, 5:00pm

The Best Picture winner of 1967 is one terrific noir. You probably already know the story. A brilliant, African American homicide detective from Philadelphia (Sidney Poitier) finds himself in a small, redneck town in Mississippi when an important member of the community has just been murdered. Rod Steiger plays the bigoted sheriff who slowly realizes that this Black man is much smarter than him. Warren Oates plays an almost comic figure as a not-too-smart cop. Written by Stirling Silliphant and directed by Norman Jewison. Haskell Wexler’s unique cinematography (for its time) helped change the way color films looked. Read my Blu-ray review.

A Fanny and Alexander (1982; Full Television Version), Roxie, Sunday, 11:30am

In Ingmar Berman’s penultimate film, set in early 20th-century Sweden, two happy children enjoy their loving family. But it’s a fragile world, and one parental mistake could have it tumbling around the children’s ears. When their father dies, and their mother marries an extremely strict, Calvinist bishop, the children’s lives become a living hell, made bearable only by Alexander’s prolific imagination. Read my Blu-ray review.

A Andrei Rublev (1966), Roxie, Saturday, 5:40pm

How can a film that’s plotless, episodic, slow, and runs 205 minutes, be so good? Andrei Rublev tells multiple stories in the life of the title character–a famous 15th-century religious painter. Sometimes an active participant and sometimes a passive observer, Rublev observes a world of poverty, faith, political and religious conflict, and horrifying, seemingly random violence. Andrei Tarkovsky’s great medieval epic questions the meaning of faith in a hostile universe, while emphasizing its immense importance. Truly magnificent.

A- Good Night and Good Luck (2005)

35mm! As a producer/director, George Clooney broke the rules. He made a historical drama that sticks rigorously close to well-documented historical facts, and the result is terrific. Good Night and Good Luck tells the story about the early TV battle between legendary television journalist Edward R. Murrow, played by David Strathairn, and Senator Joseph McCarthy is shown in archive footage. We don’t meet Murrow’s family; we never see his home. There’s little character development, but Clooney sticks to what matters.

A- Blood Simple (1984), Balboa, Tuesday, 7:30pm

The Coen Brothers’ first film shows a promise of what they’d become. An exceptionally dark, violent, gruesome, and funny noir, it tells a story that is totally incoherent to the characters onscreen, but completely logical to the audience. You’ve got an adulterous couple (half of which is Frances McDormand in her first movie role), a violently vengeful husband (Dan Hedaya), and a private detective with less morals than your average snake (M. Emmet Walsh).

A- Brief Encounter (1945), Roxie, Sunday, 5:50pm

Love, romance, and marriage may make the world go around, but it often goes in the wrong direction. This pre-epic David Lean drama follows the story of two people who fall deeply in love in a train station. The problem is that they’re both already happily married. There is no solution that won’t hurt several very nice people. To make it worse, they’re all British, and they try to keep their upper lip stiff. The film is told through the eyes of the woman who loves her husband but has much hotter feelings for another man. By the way, one scene in the film inspired Billy Wilder to make The Apartment.

B+ Akeelah and the Bee (2006), 4-Star Sunday
֍, 10:00am; Popcorn Palace
֍ 1:30pm

A talent for spelling gives Akeelah—a poor, eleven-year-old African American—a shot at escaping the ghetto. But first, she must learn about more than words from her mentor, played by Laurence Fishburne. Yes, it’s inspirational, but that’s not always a bad thing.

B+ My Fair Lady (1964), Fathom’s Big Screen Classics at several theaters

George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play Pygmalion brilliantly examined issues of class, culture, and gender roles in an intimate story deftly balanced between drama and comedy. The musical version adds spectacle, which is completely unnecessary, yet doesn’t hurt the movie. Rex Harrison makes a wonderful Henry Higgins–tyrannical, cruel, and yet slowly falling in love without understanding why. But as Eliza Doolittle, Audrey Hepburn is miscast. Stanley Holloway steals the movie as Eliza’s happily slothful father; his two songs are the movie’s musical highlights. Read my essay.

B Summer of Soul (2021), 4-Star, Friday, 8:00pm

If you go to see this concert documentary only for the music, you’ll be disappointed. I don’t think there’s a single song played from start to ending without interruption. The film is much more about race issues than music. It’s primarily a record, shot on primitive, 1960s video, of a free concert in Harlem just weeks before Woodstock. But each act is interrupted with someone talking about the artist, or the African American situation then or now. The musicians, who include Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Mahalia Jackson, and B.B. King, are fantastic. Just remember that the music takes backstage to the issues.

B The Killers (1946), Balboa, Thursday, 7:30pm

Burt Lancaster’s breakthrough movie isn’t called the “Citizen Kane of film noir” because it’s the best of its genre, but because of its multiple flashback story structure. When a gas station attendant (Burt Lancaster) is murdered, an investigator starts asking questions and a life of crime is revealed. It’s a fun little movie, and it introduced Burt Lancaster to the world as the likable thug whose murder sets all those flashbacks in motion. Ava Gardner plays the femme fatale who enjoys and exploits Lancaster’s beefcake lug.

B Buck and the Preacher
(1972), 4-Star, Thursday, 7:30pm

Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut is a fun and entertaining western with, of course, a race issue. Decent, black settlers, led by Buck (Poitier), are trying to go west. But white bigots make it nearly impossible. Native Americans barter with Buck; it’s a problematic relationship. As the two heroes, Poitier and Harry Belafonte (as the Preacher) have a fun chemistry, with Poitier as the cool and calm hero, while Belafonte is funny, outrageous, and not the sort of person you would ever trust. With Ruby Dee as Buck’s wife.

B Branded to Kill (1967), Balboa, Saturday, 7:30pm

This slick, commercial, yet strange crime thriller follows the career ups and downs of a talented professional killer (as chipmunk-faced Jo Shishido). He shoots lesser killers down by the hundreds. He has wild and violent sex with his wife in all sorts of places. And he indulges in his greatest weakness: sniffing rice. Branded to Kill works better in individual scenes than as a whole.

B- Desert Hearts (1985), Sunday, 2:55pm

This lesbian romance meant more when it was made than it means today. A college professor lands in Reno to get a quick divorce, but a much younger woman falls for her, and the professor learns an important lesson. The film is set in the 1950s (or at least the early ’60s), when this sort of relationship had to be hidden. The characters are likable, but they often seem to be there just to further t plot.

C+ Victor/Victoria (1982), Castro, 6:00pm

Julie Andrews plays a woman playing a man, who is playing a woman, and all of it in nightclubs circa ’30s Paris. James Garner plays an American gangster who discovers issues with his sexuality. Robert Preston plays a man who knows exactly what kind of man he is – and it’s not conventional. The film’s treatment of homosexuality was very liberal for a Hollywood film made in 1982. But the movie stretches far too long for the story. Most of the jokes don’t land well, but there is one perfect bit of slapstick that could have been designed by Buster Keaton. Written and directed by Blake Edwards.

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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.