The Film Series is smokin’ this upcoming week, with four great American flicks that range from the classic to the current, the Oscar-celebrated to the will-never-get-another-chance-to-see-it-again-in-your-life variety (Decasia!). Also, THE FILM SERIES SUGGESTION BOXES WILL ONLY BE AROUND UNTIL NEXT WEEK. They are located at Weshop, PacLab, the Center for Film Studies, the Science Tower, and assorted other high-traffic locations on campus. Make sure you let the Film Board know what movies you want to see.
TO THE PREFROSH who may be casting their virginal eyes upon this hallowed column: Rather than making the ubiquitous pre-frosh jokes and innuendos, I will instead offer my encouragement that you take advantage of a rare moment of Wesfest non-debauchery to contribute your suggestions for next year’s Film Series. In a little over four months, you too will be spreading your parents’ cheddar over the toast of the Film Series.
CAPOTE: Friday, April 21 (8 p.m., GOLDSMITH FAMILY CINEMA)
“Capote” is a terrific biopic, examining a small period of a famous life and using this richly-textured portrait to cast insight into the broader scope of the individual’s life and times. Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s stunning talent comes to full fruition in this biopic about Capote working on his brutal masterpiece, “In Cold Blood.” Writer Dan Futterman and first-time director Bennett Miller offer a subtle and absorbing study of the gray areas of artistic representation, while Hoffman’s Oscar-winning transformation into the flamboyant and fascinating character provides a solid anchor for one of the year’s best films.
BONNIE AND CLYDE: Saturday, April 22 (8 p.m., GFC, FREE)
“Bonnie and Clyde” is bold, exhilarating, all-American moviemaking. If you have ever been captivated by “The Godfather,” “Nashville,” “Badlands,” or any of the other masterworks from that glorious era in the late 60s and 70s when American movies were made by mavericks and pulsed with passion, you owe those feelings of awe and excitement to this movie. “Bonnie and Clyde” is the cinematic thunderbolt that paved the way by bringing American Violence and Film Art into a virile, tantalizingly UN-platonic union, blazing a fiery hole into the American pop-cultural consciousness. Warren Beatty is a smoldering portrait of misguided lust for violence as Clyde, and Faye Dunaway is pure hot Texan heat as Bonnie. They merge to bring explosive chemistry to the screen and, be forewarned, a prodigious amount of fire to your loins. Telling the real-life tale of 1930s bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, “Bonnie and Clyde” studies Dustbowl America with an unflinching, lyrical gaze, cutting to the core of the American mythology of violence with insight and an alarmingly alluring sense of style.
TRANSAMERICA: Wednesday, April 26 (8 p.m., GFC)
These choice words come courtesy of Film Board Sensation and Argus film column partner-in-crime Anna Rabinovitch:
“Transamerica puts a new spin on the road trip flick, as a transsexual fronting as a Christian caseworker drives cross country with her son who wants to be a porn star. Want to learn more? Here’s a quick plot rundown: Felicity Huffman plays Bree, a prim and proper social conservative born a man but compelled to become a woman. A week before sexual reassignment surgery in Los Angeles, Bree learns that she has a teenage son, Toby, who is being held for bail in New York. Her therapist insists that the operation cannot take place unless she puts things right with her son. This leads to Bree and Toby’s cross-country journey from New York to California, with her true identity kept under wraps as she tries to help her troubled son. The film is courageous and tempered by a self-mocking humor as it dismantles the tenets of gender and reconstructs them before our eyes. Huffman carries this movie, doing an excellent job as a woman playing a man playing a woman. Try to wrap your head around that one.”
DECASIA: Thursday, April 27 (8 p.m., GFC, FREE)
“Perhaps there is something in the very nature of film, which lives or dies by projected beams of light, that courts the invisible, the otherworldly.” – Author, Film Critic and general man about town Philip Lopate
Lovers of the photographic image, I preemptively charge you with high treason if you don’t storm the CFS to check out this gem. Ever see a film burn up in the projector and thought that the resulting image was hauntingly arresting? Decasia is an experimental documentary that assembles footage made up entirely of decaying and damaged old silent film clips. Remember the digital nightmare of George Lucas’s recent “Star Wars” turkeys? Remember the strategically-aligned cinematic deathstars the pompous jackass fired into the media about the obsoleteness of film? Remember his flat, video game-like visuals that made you thirst even more for the indescribable richness of texture and pure celluloid glory of F-I-L-M? Storm the theater and bask in the unadulterated beauty of film, merge artistic enjoyment with a spirit of anti-Digital Dark Side artistic engagement, flip the bird to Lucas while flipping down the sweet, acoustically perfect seats of the CFS! A riveting elegy of film as film, “Decasia” celebrates the power of celluloid images to transport us not only in life but also in their death.
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