Upon arriving back at Camp Wes for another illustrious academic year, I was un¬expectedly struck—as I’m sure many of you were—by a strange, phantom feeling that something was missing. It was worse than the feeling I got when they took away our trays last year. It cut even deeper than when Neon removed my favorite Mongolian-themed sandwich when I was a sophomore. The pain was even greater than when I ar¬rived freshman year to the realization that the infamous act of “chalking” had been banned. Yes, friends, the source of my shock was the glaring absence of everyone’s favorite spaceship-turned-circular-dining-facility, Mocon. She is gone for good, and all that remains is a large Mocon-sized space on Foss, and with it, a large Mocon-sized hole in my tender heart.
But like an aging aunt with a recent facelift, you can still recognize good old Wesleyan by that familiar, charming twinkle in her eye. And that twinkle, oh fellow Cardinals, is the Wesleyan Film Series –a soothing reminder that some great things never change, even though plenty else has. You can still count on four outstanding movies playing Wednesday through Saturday nights at the Goldsmith Family Cinema. If it ain’t broke, and it most certainly ain’t, then don’t fix it, and we’re most certainly not going to. So gosh darn-it, if you’re nostalgic for days of Wes gone by, or even if you’re a mere freshman just pretending you are, come experience something as Wesleyan as gender-neutral pronouns: the fucking film series.
A PROPHET
2009. France/Italy. Dir: Jacques Audiard. With TaharRahim. 155 min.
Wednesday, 9/15, 8 p.m., $5
Into the storied canon of the mafia/gangster picture comes this frighten¬ing, gritty flick–one of the most internationally acclaimed of ’09. A rebirth and reexamination of established conventions, this is a twisted “Goodfellas” behind bars and stripped of romanticism and pomp. The story follows a green 19-year-old who is forced into organized crime upon his imprisonment, but soon learns the system and takes over. Ripe with everything from rags to riches and murders to snitches, “A Prophet” is above all gorgeously powerful film—a different sort of “offer you can’t refuse.”
BEAUFORT
2007. Israel. Dir: Joseph Cedar. With Oshri Cohen. 131 min.
Thursday, 9/16, 8 p.m., FREE
The second installment in our “Reflections on War” mini-series—which began as a brutal bang last week with Kubrick’s precise, heartbreaking “Paths of Glory”—transports us to a different century and a different continent, but is just as affecting. “Beaufort” chronicles the fight of a band of Israeli soldiers as they struggle to maintain their post and their sanity amidst increas¬ingly aggressive enemy attacks. To shed the inside light on his creation, au¬thor/screenwriter Ron Leshem will speak and field questions. If you enjoyed Kirk Douglas’s tour-de-force in last week’s film, come get this week’s fix with “Beaufort.”
BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE
1989. USA. Dir: Stephen Herek. With Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter. 90 min.
FRIDAY, 9/17, 8 p.m., $5
Strange things are afoot at the Goldsmith Family Cinema. Come squeeze into our time-traveling telephone booth and shred the gnarly waves of time with your two favorite history-hopping bash bros, Bill S. Preston, Esquire and Ted “Theodore” Logan. This cult classic is much more than a slacker-comedy with a twist—it’s a totally excellent zeitgeist of teenage cul¬ture with a pitch-perfect script and hilarious, highly (pun intended) quotable performances. Everyone will be there—Billy the Kid, Socrates, Abe Lincoln, Napoleon, and probably even that stoner chick on your hall that you think is a righteous babe…right?
BLOOD OF A POET
1930. France. Dir: Jean Cocteau. With Enrique Rivero. 55 min.
SATURDAY, 9/18, 8 p.m., FREE
Basically as far from “Bill & Ted” as one can get in one night, this sur¬real rumination on the nature of the creative process is a profoundly affecting experience by one of avant-garde cinema’s most influential titans. Cocteau said himself of his film: “Poets . . . shed not only the red blood of their hearts but the white blood of their souls,” which is a perfectly enthralling encapsula¬tion of Cocteau’s great filmic experiment. Since it’s on the shorter side, we’re programming it with a similarly intense interpretation of the filmic medium: “Duck Amuck,” a Looney Tunes short with everyone’s favorite oddball am¬phibian, Daffy Duck!