People, this week is bonkers. Ridonkulous. Fantabulistically ferocious. You’ve got your classic ’70s disco melodrama; your transcendent ’30s comic masterpiece; your side-splitting, iconic mockumentary of the early ’90s; and your Academy Award-winning Bible Belt documentary from the Nixon era. Variety is the spice of life, and the Film Series is sprinkling it on y’all like fairy dust. Rise up! Stand and be counted! Get out of the rain and into the movies.
“Saturday Night Fever”
(USA, D: John Badham, 1977)
Friday, April 6, 8 p.m. $4
A pre-Scientology John Travolta is poetry in motion in this ’70s classic, lending body and soul to his portrait of aspiring disco king Tony Manero. As the Disco Inferno blazes its gyrating path through your heart and hips, and as Travolta lays ferocious claim to the title of suavest Go-Go Guido in movie history, take a brief moment to note the incisive class commentary the movie’s laying on you, soft and subtle as the metaphorical mozzarell’ melts gently across its marinara-soaked disco Hero. At its essence, this is the sharp-eyed, compellingly universal story of a kid from Brooklyn who’s just trying it to make it to Manhattan, hustlin’ after the American Dream on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge. The results are tragic, but if they weren’t, this wouldn’t be America. One of the best. Fuhgeddaboutit.
“Trouble in Paradise”
(USA, D: Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
Saturday, April 7, 8 p.m. FREE!
Two clandestine jewel thieves, once lovers, find themselves targeting the same wealthy woman for their next heist. Romantic entanglements ensue as the two compete by going undercover as the wealthy woman’s secretary and maid, but which one will succeed in stealing the goods? This film is often considered legendary comedic director Ernst Lubitsch’s greatest and is also his own personal favorite. A masterpiece that gives meaning to sophistication and perfectly showcases the “Lubitsch Touch,” this movie showcases his flair for suggestive humor, sexual innuendo, and elegant style.
“Waiting For Guffman”
(USA, D: Christopher Guest, 1996)
Wednesday, April 11, 8 p.m. $4
This film is one of Christopher Guest’s funniest. Following in his mockumentary style, “Waiting For Guffman” centers on the production of a musical in a small Missouri town headed by the very off-Broadway director, Corky St. Clair (Guest). Corky’s amateur theater group consists of a Dairy Queen waitress (Parker Posey), the local dentist (Eugene Levy), and two married travel agents (Catherine O’Hara and Fred Willard), all of whom suffer enormously from delusions of grandeur. When word gets out that Broadway theater critic Mort Guffman will come review the show, the pressure is on to put together an outstanding production. Come and watch this hilarious film and Corky’s sensational musical!
“Marjoe”
(USA, D: Sarah Kernochan; Howard Smith, 1972)
Thursday, April 12, 8 p.m. FREE!
Jesus may be your homeboy, but is he also a cash cow? A fascinating, Academy Award-winning documentary from the era before Televangelism, “Marjoe” poses this questions and more as it follows one-time child Evangelist Marjoe Gortner on the church tent Revivalist circuit. Studying the showmanship inherent to Evangelism and “the religion business”, the eye-opening, shamelessly entertaining “Marjoe” is part rollicking concert film, part muckraking religious exposé. In the words of the film’s original tagline: “You keep the faith…Marjoe keeps the money”.
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