Thanks to everyone who contributed their suggestions for next year’s Film Series, including whoever stuffed one box with an array of fabricated sexually explicit titles. This week, the film board is sifting through suggestions and battling it out film by film so that we can get you a good program for next year. So, for all of you who can’t wait to check your mailboxes when you come back in the fall and see what awesome films are lined up, I have two words for you: BE EXCITED!
But first, we still have two more great weeks of the Film Series to go, and then the senior theses films. Yes, I said SENIOR THESES FILMS! Come see the final projects of those crazy film majors who have put their blood, sweat, and tears into making a thesis film. For all of you freshmen, the senior films are really fun to go to but also very popular, so make sure to get there early. The 16mm and digital documentaries will be shown Thursday and Saturday, May 11 and 13, and the digitals on Friday and Sunday, May 12 and 14. All shows begin at 7:30 p.m. and will last approximately 90-95 minutes.
In terms of this week, the general theme seems to be SEX….lots and lots of it. We have the onstage foreplay of Johnny Cash and June Carter, an aberrant ménage-a-trois with Rita Hayworth, hot sex with Scarlett Johansson and Jonathon Rhys Meyer in a field in the rain, and a love affair between a young Thai soldier and a country boy. And since it is that time of year when people are hooking up like bunny rabbits, it seems only right that things are heating up in the Goldsmith Family Cinema.
WALK THE LINE: Friday, April 28
You know those movies where the chemistry between two characters is so electric it makes you get butterflies in your stomach as you watch their romance blossom on screen? I’m talking Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in “It Happened One Night,” Bogey and Bacall in “To Have and Have Not,” Paul Newman and Robert Redford in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Watching the flow of energy between charismatic screen partners is one of the great pleasures of cinema – and Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon accomplish it in “WALK THE LINE.” This immensely passionate biopic examines the legendary Johnny Cash through the lens of his enduring yet rocky relationship with June Carter, whom he married over ten years after their personal and professional relationship began. Witherspoon and Phoenix give remarkable performances and it is their real voices you hear singing. The game of romance and foreplay that ensues between them during their concerts is intoxicating and conveys a wealth of emotions. Besides the remarkable acting, the music is exceptional and will make you go straight home to compile a Cash playlist. This enjoyable, moving film won Reese the best actress Oscar.
GILDA: Saturday, April 29
Like any good film noir, “GILDA” has the trappings of a trashy crime drama soaking with the underlying ennui of post-war America. Yet the masculine plot of guns, fistfights, and crime takes a back seat to a fiercely delicious game of ménage-a-trois between the three main characters. The plot revolves around the love triangle between a gambler who discovers the wife of his new boss in South America is an old flame. Slightly perverse, even sadomasochistic at times, “GILDA” is a romance in which the characters seem to take joy in hurting and humiliating each other. This dark and twisted love story that deals with homosexuality, impotence, and misogyny made Rita Hayworth into one of the most alluring sex symbols in cinema history. After watching the film’s famous striptease, you’ll understand why so many had her pinned up on their wall. Hayworth’s life was forever affected by this role. She once reportedly said: “Every man I knew had fallen in love with Gilda and awakened with me.” This is surely a must see.
MATCH POINT: Wednesday, May 3.
This is Woody Allen as you’ve never seen him before. “MATCH POINT” begins as a taut drama with a nuanced black humor whose second act morphs into a mesmerizing thriller. Chris Wilton, played shrewdly by Jonathon Rhys Meyers, is a former tennis pro who finds work as an instructor at a posh country club. He befriends a young man from a wealthy family whose sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), falls in love with him. Chris becomes engaged to Chloe but has his eyes on Tom’s fiancée, the smoldering Nola (Scarlett Johansson). Caught between the lust for a woman and the lust for a life of caviar and opera, Chris finds himself pushing the limits of human temptation and entering into the depths of contemptibility. “MATCH POINT” is an intelligent and unnerving film that plays with viewer expectations and marks the end of Allen’s long creative drought.
TROPICAL MALADY: Thursday, May 4.
(This blurb brought to you by fellow columnist and cinephile, Will Di Novi.)
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, “TROPICAL MALADY” is a lyrical and mysterious new film by maverick Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, one of the most prominent young directors in the East Asian film renaissance that has been tantalizing film lovers worldwide for the past few years. “TROPICAL MALADY” chronicles the mystical love affair between a young soldier and the country boy he seduces, an affair soon disrupted by the boy’s sudden disappearance. Local legends claim the boy was transformed into a mythic wild beast, and the soldier journeys alone into the heart of the Thai jungle in search of him. Beautiful and baffling, “TROPICAL MALADY” is a must-see for anyone who cares about the state of contemporary movies.
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