As you get busier and school starts to get real, it can seem like you don’t have enough free time to go to the film series as much as you’d like. Personally, though, I think it’s a totally sweet study break—never underestimate the power of movies to cleanse and clear your mind. It’s an experience that can’t be replicated by just sitting alone in your room, watching something quick on your laptop. Being in a theater with the lights down low so that you can’t help but focus all your attention on the screen, getting fully immersed in a self-contained story, participating in the experience with an entire theater full of people—in my opinion, nothing compares. So make the walk over to the Goldsmith at least once this week. It’s time well spent.
THE FALL
2006. USA/India. Dir: Tarsem Singh. With Lee Pace, Catinca Untaru. 117 minutes. TOMORROW, Oct. 6, $5.
Though this film was shot in 22 different countries, it takes place in only one: a hospital room in Los Angeles, 1920. From his bed, a paralytic stuntman captures the imagination of a little girl, Alexandria, by telling her a mythical story of intrigue, adventure, and five deadly assassins. And as the stuntman weaves his fantastic tale, he convinces Alexandria to run errands for him in the hospital—to steal morphine for him. Slowly but surely, the border between the real world and the story blurs as the unlikely pair crosses over to the other side.
EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL
1970. West Germany. Dir: Werner Herzog. With 28 little people. 96 minutes. THURSDAY, Oct. 7, FREE.
Werner Herzog has made some of the most bizarre and bizarrely personal films of the last 40 years, and worked with some of the oddest actors to tell his visceral, occasionally insane stories. But before directing the erratic and thoroughly deranged Klaus Kinski for “Aguirre: The Wrath of God” or a coked out Nicholas Cage in “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” he directed a small film about the revolt of an institution full of midgets who revel in their new-found freedom by breaking dishes, having food fights…and crucifying a monkey. As is so often the case with Herzog’s films, the production history is as confounding as the film itself. After one person was hit by a car and later lit on fire, Herzog told his cast they could film him diving into a cactus if there were no more injuries on set—there weren’t and he did.
DIE HARD **Pick of the Week!**
1988. USA. Dir: John McTiernan. With Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman. 131 minutes. FRIDAY, Oct. 8, $5.
The ultimate action movie.The ultimate Christmas movie. Writing on this film, it occurs to me that some of you might know the “Die Hard” series best from its fourth installment, “Live Free or Die Hard.” This must be remedied. While “Live Free” is a fairly enjoyable little movie in its own right—way better than the second or third films in the franchise—it absolutely, positively cannot compare with the original. Before this film, Bruce Willis was starring in romantic comedies—afterwards he became one of the biggest action stars in the world. Alan Rickman was still acting on the BBC—afterwards he was set on the path of playing classy but odious villains. Combining a script that some of the brightest minds in film scholarship are still drooling over with action sequences that I continue to see when I close my eyes every night, “Die Hard” will be the baddest-ass time you have at the film series this month, hands down. An excellent way to get pumped up for Friday night.
NIGHTS OF CABIRIA
1957. Italy. Dir: Federico Fellini. With Giullietta Masina, François Périer. 110 minutes. SATURDAY, Oct. 9, FREE.
The greatest director of Italian cinema directing the greatest actress of Italian cinema in one of the most moving films in history. The movie centers on a down and out prostitute in the seediest part of Rome, looking desperately for love. Inspired by his wife’s (Masina) small performance as a streetwalking character in his earlier film “The White Sheik,” Fellini fleshed out the character of Cabiria and wrote a movie about her. He struggled bitterly to get funding for the film, (not an easy thing to do in a Catholic country when your main character sells sex for money) but finally convinced the famous Dino De Laurentiis, who later went on to produce blockbusters in Hollywood, to give him the money.