You can find and download the full March calendar here.  Some of the picks have passed, but they’re still worth remembering to see next time they come around! Also, stay tuned to the Cinephile’s Dream categoryfor more picks later this week, for the end of March. You can also sign up to receive the calendar by email, or Tweet with the author.

Enjoy!  -JP

 

The First Half of March

Welcome to the bi-weekly blog post that accompanies my monthly calendar, also found on the Dodge College blog.  In these posts, I’ll be giving you my picks for the best of the best playing at the various repertory theaters in Los Angeles over the next two weeks.  While just about everything these amazing theaters play is great, sometimes certain films manage to stand out amongst the rest or one of the theaters comes up with a brilliant double feature and I believe that these screenings should be pointed out. 

Before I get into my actual picks, I should probably state what lead me to choose these particular films.  Well, it’s simple really: these are films that either I truly love or they are so important to film history that everyone should see them, or both.  The fact is that there are so many choices out there, but these are the sorts of films that will change the way you look at movies or, could possibly, change your life (I know The Night of the Hunter did that to me).  These films are the standards set by some of the greatest filmmakers of all time and deserve to be seen by as many people as possible.  With these picks, I also try to have a bit of variety.  Case in point: I love the films of Ingmar Bergman, but you will only find one double feature of his films in my picks (the Aero is in the midst of doing a retrospective on him) because, as much as I love him and his films, there are other choices that are just as worthy.

So here are those screenings, starting on March 1st and going through March 17th (although I’m focusing more on the films that will not have screened by the time this blog post goes up online).

·         Shame and Hunger at the New Beverly on March 7th and 8th – I truly believe that the director/actor combo of Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender will one day be thought of in the same league as Scorsese/De Niro, Bergman/Von Sydow, and Fellini/Mastroianni.  Though McQueen has only made two films, they are both stunning, though the subject matter can be difficult to sit through.  Hunger stars Fassbender as Bobby Sands, a member of the IRA who led a hunger strike while in Maze Prison in 1981.  The strike was in response to the British government revoking the political status of imprisoned IRA members.  Shame has Fassbender as a sex addict living in New York City who has to deal with his addiction and the problems that come along with his sister, who has suddenly returned to his life.  Fassbender is brilliant in both films, but McQueen’s direction is the real star.  He understands how to use long takes, sometimes leaving his camera in one spot for minutes on end, letting you fall into the world he’s created (the longest shot in Hunger clocks in at over 17 minutes, and the scene it makes up is nothing short of amazing).  There are moments when you forget you are watching a movie and feel like you’re sitting there watching these peoples’ lives.

·         Wild Strawberries and Persona at the Aero on March 8th – There are very few directors who have had more of an impact on the world of filmmaking than Ingmar Bergman, and this double feature shows two of his greatest works.  Wild Strawberries was released in the same year as what is arguably Bergman’s most famous work, The Seventh Seal, and I would argue that this is actually the better of the two.  A professor heads back to his alma mater to accept an honorary degree, and on his way, we see him reevaluate the way he leads his life through a series of dreams.  These dreams allow us to see how he became the way he is and further our understanding of the relationships he has with his family.  The second half of the double feature, Persona, is a minimalist film.  It really only has two characters, played by Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann, two of Bergman’s muses.  The story follows a stage actress who has become mute and her nurse as she attempts to bring her back to health.  Both of the films are deeply philosophical about life and death, and both have incredibly memorable endings.

·         Raging Bull and Requiem for a Heavyweight at the Aero on March 9th – Possibly the ultimate boxing double feature.  Like Persona did for Bergman, Raging Bull saved its director’s life.  Scorsese, who has addicted to cocaine and depressed over the failure of New York, New York put his heart and soul into making Raging Bull, and it shows.  Thirty-two years later and still nobody has shot better boxing sequences than Scorsese.  Even with it being a great boxing picture, the story is about so much more.  It’s really about the destructive lifestyle men can lead, and how that lifestyle destroyed Jake LaMotta’s relationships with his wife and family.  De Niro’s transformation from lean, mean fighting LaMotta into the fat, washed up shell of his former self is one of the greatest performances ever put on celluloid.  On the other half of the bill is Requiem for a Heavyweight.  Originally a teleplay for Playhouse 90, both the television and feature versions were written by Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone.  The film, directed by Ralph Nelson (Lilies of the Field, Charly), is a darker version of the original teleplay, but is also a more interesting film.  The final sequence, mostly shot from the protagonist’s POV, has our hero fighting a young Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali).  The fact that Serling was an avid boxer brings an extra bit of authenticity to the film.

           

·         The Night of the Hunter at the Aero on March 15th – In my opinion, this film is the single most underrated and under appreciated American film ever made.  Directed by the great actor Charles Laughton, the film was a huge failure both critically and commercially at the time of its release in 1955.  This was probably because it was far ahead of its time (not to mention that, unlike most films Hollywood was making at the time, this is definitely not a film the whole family can enjoy).  Robert Mitchum’s performance as mass murderer Reverend Harry Powell, with the words “love” and “hate” tattooed on his knuckles, is one of the scariest things you’ll ever see.  Laughton created one of the great American fairy tales, as he tells the story of two children attempting to escape from their new stepfather (Powell), who only married their mother after hearing that their father, his former prison cell mate, hid $10,000 somewhere with his family.  The film’s black and white cinematography, shot by the great Stanley Cortez, and production design take much from the German expressionist movement of the 1920s and 30s.  Of all the great films screening in March, if you can only go to one, this should be it (and if you can’t, you should check out Criterion’s amazing release instead).

·         Tron (70mm screening) at the Egyptian on March 17th – At the time of its release, the special effects in Tron were mind-blowing, nothing like them had ever been seen before.  Even today, I think they still look pretty fantastic.  Besides the fact that the film is a lot of fun, Jeff Bridges is fantastic, and the animation was directed by Dodge College professor Bill Kroyer, the main reason for having this film on the list is because of its presentation: 70mm.  I’m only aware of four theatres in Los Angeles that can still play traditional 70mm (the Egyptian, the Aero, the Laemmle Royal, and LACMA), so it has become far more difficult to see these films in this particular format, but it is worth it to seek them out.  The clarity of a 70mm image is unlike anything traditional 35mm can ever hope to have, and for a big movie like Tron, it makes the viewing experience far more epic.  I’m a big fan of the format, and feel that 70mm screenings should be sought out even if the film wasn’t shot with 65mm cameras because they usually still look great.  The Cinematheque is fantastic about showing films on 70mm as often as possible, so keep an eye out on the blog for mentions of films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Lawrence of Arabia when they’re shown on 70mm.

So there you are, some of the finest in cinematic offerings imaginable.  If these don’t suit your tastes, there’s also great screenings of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, a Marx Brothers double feature of Duck Soup and Animal Crackers, or the original 1925 version of Chaplin’s The Gold Rush.  Check the blog again in a couple of weeks for my picks for the 2nd half of the month.

-Max Keller