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They Live

20/5/2016

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by Frank Olson
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​American B-movies have a long and distinguished history of smuggling subversive sociopolitical commentary into crowd-pleasingly tawdry scenarios. Eagle-eyed viewers can get an extra level of enjoyment out of certain cult classics by, for example, following the homoerotic subtext of The Bride of Frankenstein or taking note of the various ways that Night of the Living Dead reflects the turmoil of its time. They Live upends the usual priorities of the politically-minded midnight movie. Rather than hiding its criticisms of ‘80s social values, the film’s plot literally revolves around exposing the subtextual messages that reinforce the prevailing ideologies of our culture. 
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Trylon microcinema
May 23-24

​Director: John Carpenter
Producer: Larry Franco
Writers: John Carpenter (as Frank Armitage), Ray Nelson (story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning")
Cinematographer: Gary B. Kibbe
Editors: Gib Jaffe, Frank E. Jimenez
Music: John Carpenter, Alan Howarth
Cast: Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster, George "Buck" Flower, Peter Jason, Raymond St. Jacques

Runtime: 93m.
Genre: Horror/Sci-Fi
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: November 4, 1988
US Distributor: Universal Pictures


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Gun Crazy

13/2/2016

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by Frank Olson
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​There are few films as propulsive as Gun Crazy, Joseph H. Lewis’ delightfully gritty take on the classic “criminal lovers on the run” story. Every plot point, every line of dialogue, and every shot has been sculpted and sharpened for maximum efficiency and gut-level impact. Lewis and his creative team transform a generic outlaws on the lam plot into a live action flipbook of the seediest pulp novel covers.
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Heights Theater
February 18, 7:30pm

Director: 
Joseph H. Lewis
Producers: Frank King, Maurice King
Writers: MacKinlay Kantor, Dalton Trumbo (as Millard Kaufman)
Cinematographer: Russell Harlan
Editor: Harry Gerstad
Music: Victor Young
Cast: Peggy Cummins, John Dall, Berry Kroeger, Morris Carnovsky, Anabel Shaw, Harry Lewis, Nedrick Young, Trevor Bardette

Runtime: 86m.
Genre: Action/Crime/Drama
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: January 20, 1950
US Distributor: ​United Artists

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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

29/10/2015

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by Frank Olson
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​No one did more to define and redefine the traditional cinematic Western than John Ford. With his 1939 breakthrough Stagecoach, Ford made what could be considered the prototypical Western and helped establish John Wayne as the genre’s archetypal hero. The director’s subsequent work in the genre poked and prodded at the tropes and mores that he played such a strong role in creating. Ford was at the forefront of every stylistic change and technical breakthrough in the classical Western during its late ‘30s to early ‘60s heyday. With The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Ford read his favorite genre its last rights. 
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Heights Theater
October 29


Director: John Ford
Producers: Willis Goldbeck, John Ford
Writers: James Warner Bellah, Willis Goldbeck, Dorothy M. Johnson (story)
Cinematographer: William H. Clothier
Editor: Otho Lovering
Music: Cyril Mockridge
Cast: James Stewart, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Vera Miles, Edmond O'Brien, Andy Devine, Ken Murray, John Carradine, Jeanette Nolan, John Qualen, Willis Bouchey, Carleton Young, Woody Strode, Denver Pyle, Strother Martin

Runtime: 123m.
Genre: Western/Drama
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: April 22, 1962
US Distributor: Paramount Pictures

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McCabe & Mrs. Miller

18/9/2015

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by Frank Olson
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Though he first came to prominence with 1970’s glibly populist M*A*S*H, it was with the following year’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller that Robert Altman first demonstrated the breadth of his talent. This off-kilter Western kicked off a hot streak that included such gems as The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, and Nashville, none of which are as consistently dryly funny or as poetically haunting as McCabe. The film is often referred to as a “revisionist” or “anti” Western, but while it undeniably approaches the genre from a non-traditional perspective, there is no need for qualifiers. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is, by any standard, one of the finest achievements in the Western genre.
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Trylon microcinema
September 18-20

Director: Robert Altman
Producers: Mitchell Brower, David Foster
Writers: Robert Altman, Brian McKay, Edmund Naughton (novel McCabe)
Cinematographer: Vilmos Zsigmond
Editor: Lou Lombardo
Music: Leonard Cohen
Cast: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane, John Schuck, Corey Fischer, Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, Michael Murphy, Antony Holland, Hugh Millais

Runtime: 120m.
Genre: Drama/Western
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: June 24, 1971
US Distributor: Warner Bros.

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Cutter's Way

20/8/2015

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by Frank Olson
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Ever since 1973, when Elliott Gould’s shaggy private eye strutted insouciantly through Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, Hollywood has shown a periodic fascination with the collision of ‘60s counterculture and the corrupt nighttime world of noir. It’s easy to root for the idealistic little guy railing against the cynical and shadowy establishment, and it’s hard not to identify with and get swept up in the protagonists’ struggle as they get swallowed up in a web of deceit that they can barely comprehend. This fruitful dynamic has powered films as distinct as the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. The most profound and elegant variation on this story is found in Cutter’s Way, Ivan Passer’s touching look at several beautiful losers surviving in a world that no longer has a place for them.
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Trylon microcinema
August 21-23

Director: Ivan Passer
Producer: Paul R. Gurian
Writers: Jeffrey Alan Fiskin, Newton Thornburg (novel Cutter and Bone)
Cinematographer: Jordan Cronenweth
Editor: Caroline Ferriol
Music: Jack Nitzsche
Cast: Jeff Bridges, John Heard, Lisa Eichhorn, Ann Dusenberry, Stephen Elliott, Arthur Rosenberg, Nina Van Pallandt, Patricia Donahue, Geraldine Baron

Runtime: 109m.
Genre: Crime/Drama/Mystery
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: March 20, 1981
US Distributor: United Artists Classics



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The Magnificent Ambersons

8/5/2015

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by Frank Olson
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One of the most prevalent misconceptions about Orson Welles is that he spent the majority of his cinematic career trying to recapture the glory of his masterful debut Citizen Kane. While Kane is certainly one of the boldest and most impressive (if not the boldest and most impressive) first efforts in the history of the medium, it isn’t the only Welles film that qualifies as essential viewing, nor did it provide the model for any of Welles’ subsequent efforts. Though Welles only managed to direct about a dozen complete features in his career, his is one of the most eclectic and stylistically varied filmographies on record. Studio interference and persistent financial issues prevented the actor-writer-director from accomplishing all that he could have in the movies – and an argument could certainly be made that he made a bigger impact in radio and theatre than in motion pictures – but in a way these roadblocks only make what Welles did achieve even more impressive. Perhaps no project better illustrates the ability of Welles’ artistry to shine through unfortunate production circumstances than his second film, The Magnificent Ambersons. Though famously compromised by RKO Studios, Ambersons holds up as one of cinema’s most elegant and profound tragedies.
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Trylon microcinema
May 8-10

Director: Orson Welles
Producer: Orson Welles
Writers: Orson Welles, Booth Tarkington (novel)
Cinematographer: Stanley Cortez
Editor: Robert Wise
Music: Bernard Herrmann (uncredited)
Cast: Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford, Richard Bennett, Orson Welles

Runtime: 88m.
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: July 10, 1942
US Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures 

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Dead Man

11/8/2014

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by Frank Olson
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When Dead Man arrived in the mid-90s (first at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, and then in a limited theatrical release the following year) it was received with befuddlement. In his damning one-and-a-half star pan for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert summed up the naysayers’ point of view when he wrote that writer-director Jim Jarmusch was “clearly trying to get at something…and I don’t have a clue what it is.” Viewed today, Jarmusch’s sixth feature feels poetic, visionary, and profound, a unique masterpiece that may be the very best film released in its decade.
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Trylon microcinema
August 11–12

Director: Jim Jarmusch
Producer: Demetra J. MacBride
Writer: Jim Jarmusch
Cinematographer: Robby Müller
Editor: Jay Rabinowitz
Music: Neil Young
Cast: Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Crispin Glover, Lance Henriksen, Michael Wincott, Eugene Byrd, John Hurt, Robert Mitchum, Iggy Pop, Gabriel Byrne, Jared Harris, Mili Avital

Runtime: 121m.
Genre: Drama/Fantasy/Western
Countries: USA/Germany/Japan
Premiere: May 26, 1995 — Cannes Film Festival
US Theatrical Release: May 10, 1996
US Distributor: Miramax Films

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Metropolis

18/7/2014

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by Frank Olson
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There has never been (and will never again be) a science fiction film as influential as Metropolis. It isn’t the first film in the genre—a great deal of Georges Méliès’ movies, including his signature piece A Trip to the Moon, qualify. But where Méliès’ early 1900s shorts are charmingly quaint, Fritz Lang’s unwieldy 1927 epic still feels staggeringly modern in many respects, and its DNA is all over dystopian fantasies as different as Blade Runner and Brazil. Regardless of how technologically advanced the special effects in the later films have become, no cinematic visions of the future have been able to fully hide Metropolis’ inspiration. With the possible exception of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (which was itself likely inspired by Lang’s film) there is no piece of pop culture that has inspired humanity’s collective vision of the future as strongly as Metropolis has.
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Trylon microcinema
July 18-20

Director: Fritz Lang
Producer: Erich Pommer
Writer: Thea von Harbou
Cinematographers: Karl Freund, Günther Rittau, Walter Ruttmann
Music: Gottfried Huppertz (original score)
Cast: Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Fritz Rasp, Theodor Loos, Erwin Biswanger, Heinrich George, Brigitte Helm

Runtime: 153m.
Genre: Drama/Sci-Fi
Country: Germany
US Theatrical Release: March 13, 1927
US Distributor: Paramount Pictures  
  

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Kind Hearts and Coronets

26/5/2014

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by Frank Olson
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Kind Hearts and Coronets is a dark comedy that is equally erudite and nasty. Angry and class conscious as only a British film can be, the film’s humor comes from the way that its emotions are barely suppressed by its regal, stiff upper lip refinement. Like Charlie Chaplin’s contemporaneous Monsieur Verdoux, Kind Hearts elides most of the actual violence of its gentlemanly killer anti-hero in a way that suggests that politely efficient murder is more vicious than brute force. The audience is invited to share in the protagonist’s lust for vengeance but also made to reckon with the consequences of his actions. Our hero may be wittier than his victims, but the film never lets us forget that we're rooting for a murderer whose attitude is often as snobbishly callous as those of his upper-class victims.
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Trylon microcinema
May 26 & 27

Director: Robert Hamer
Producers: Michael Balcon
Writers: Robert Hamer, John Dighton, Roy Horniman (novel)
Cinematographer: Douglas Slocombe
Editor: Peter Tanner
Music: Ernest Irving
Cast: Alec Guinness, Dennis Price, Valerie Hobson, Joan Greenwood, Audrey Fildes, Miles Malleson, Clive Morton, John Penrose

Runtime: 106m.
Genre: Comedy/Crime
Country: UK
Premiere: June 21, 1949 – London
US Theatrical Release: June 14, 1950

US Distributor: Eagle-Lion Films  

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The Trouble with Harry

5/5/2014

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by Frank Olson
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Alfred Hitchcock was on an incredible creative winning streak from 1951 through 1960, a period bookended by the masterful Strangers on a Train and Psycho. In the midst of continually justifying his “Master of Suspense” moniker with a number of the genre’s all-time classics (Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest) Hitchcock also made several equally interesting (if less commercially successful) films which challenged preconceptions about his trademark style while still adhering to his familiar thematic concerns. Perhaps the most offbeat and overlooked of these films is The Trouble with Harry, a small-town comedy that feels remarkably light on its feet despite its morbid scenario.
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Riverview Theater
May 5

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Producer: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: John Michael Hayes, Jack Trevor Story (novel)
Cinematographer: Robert Burks
Editor: Alma Macrorie
Music: Bernard Herrmann
Cast: Edmund Gwenn, John Forsythe, Mildred Natwick, Mildred Dunnock, Jerry Mathers, Royal Dano, Parker Fennelly, Barry Macollum, Dwight Marfield, Shirley MacLaine

Runtime: 99m.
Genre: Comedy/Mystery
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: October 3, 1955
US Distributor: Paramount Pictures

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