...OUR SPRING SCHEDULE...
ME AND ORSON WELLES (UK 2009; PG-13)
Tuesday Feb. 23, Thursday Feb. 25, Saturday Saturday Feb. 27 @ 7:30PM; Sunday Feb. 28 @1, 3:10PM.
Direction: Richard Linklater; screenplay: Holly Gent Palmo and Vincent Palmo, Jr.
A callow but audacious high school actor (Zac Efron) brazens his way into the Mercury Theatre's legendary 1937 staging of a modern fascist Julius Caesar, lorded over by charismatic and tyrannical wunderkind Orson Welles (Christian McKay). "Art is a fairy tale we choose to believe in, and this movie, a fiction confected about real people, is too good not to be true" - NY Times. "Great spirit and considerable charm. It's about the giddiness of promise - the awakening of young talent, after years of the Depression, to a moment when anything seems possible" - New Yorker. 113 minutes.
STILL WALKING (Japan 2009; NR)
Tuesday March 2, Thursday March 4, Saturday March 6 @ 7:30PM;
Sunday March 7 @ 1, 3:15PM.
Direction and screenplay: Hirokazu Kore-eda
The Yokoyama family reunion, superficially so joyous but, just beneath the smiles, deeply melancholy with the memory of an old tragedy, is the occasion for this exquisitely moving and delicately understated drama from director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Nobody Knows)."[Kore-eda] has an admirable eye. It's almost as admirable as his heart" - Boston Globe. "A magnificent new film from Japan" - Roger Ebert. "Seems like a perfect found object, as if it had always existed and was just waiting to be uncovered" - The Onion (A.V. Club).114 minutes. Subtitles.
THE WEDDING SONG (France 2008; NR)
Tuesday March 9, Thursday March 11, Saturday March 13 @ 7:30PM;
Sunday March 14 @ 1, 3PM.
Direction and screenplay: Karin Albou
Tunis, November 1942: The intense friendship of two teenage girls, Sephardic Jewish Myriam and Muslim Nour, is strained to the limit by the tensions of Myriam's impending arranged marriage to a much older man; Nour's frustrated engagement to her penniless fiance; the Nazi occupation; and the inexorable approach of the war. "With intimacy and sensuality Albou explores what it means to be a woman and the bonds that women form with each other in an increasingly precarious situation" - LA Times. Critics' pick, NY Times. 97 minutes. Subtitles.
BIG FAN (USA 2009; R)
Tuesday March 16, Thursday March 18, Saturday March 20 @ 7:30PM;
Sunday March 21 @ 1, 2:50PM.
Direction and screenplay: Robert D. Siegel
Patton Oswalt ("The King of Queens") is sit-up-and-take-notice good as a drab parking garage drone and fanatical New York Giants acolyte whose life takes an unpredictable turn when he asks his favorite player for an autograph in a Manhattan bar - and instead wakes up in a hospital bed. The macho fantasia of blowhard sports talk radio gets an absorbing salute from Robert D. Siegel, writer of The Wrestler. "Bleakly funny, compulsively watchable... taps into the mouthy pathology of jock-radio with love and absurdity" - Boston Globe. "Touchdown" - NY Observer. 86 min.
•••••INTERMISSION - Tuesday March 23-Sunday March 28
Cinema 320 takes a one-week breather. But never fear, world cinema marches on in Jefferson 320 with Worcester's Fifteenth Annual Latino Film Festival. Call (508) 798-1900 x229 for more details.
SITA SINGS THE BLUES (USA 2008; NR)
Tuesday March 30, Thursday April 1, Saturday April 3 @ 7:30PM;
Sunday April 4 @ 1, 2:50PM.
Direction and screenplay: Nina Paley
Take the Ramayana, the ancient Indian saga about Prince Rama and his loyal but much-dumped-upon wife Sita. Make it a cartoon. Then add some whimsical voiceover commentary by three modern Indian-Americans who are almost as confused by the mythological soap opera as we are. Stir in another, parallel story of the bumpy breakup of a San Francisco yuppie and his loyal but wronged wife. Top off with marvelously imaginative visuals and a great soundtrack of Roaring 20's blues songs by Annette Hanshaw, celebrating the eternal and universal vagaries of love. The result is a unique and utterly delightful animated concoction. "I was smiling from one end of the film to the other... Astonishingly original... One of the year's best films" - Roger Ebert. 82 min.
WHITE RIBBON (Austria 2009; NR)
Tuesday April 6, Thursday April 8, Saturday April 10 @ 7:30PM;
Sunday April 11 @ 5:30PM only.
Direction and screenplay: Michael Haneke
On the eve of the Great War, malicious unsolved crimes invoke a mood of creeping dread that gradually overpowers a little German village. Michael (Cache) Haneke's acclaimed drama is a deliberately enigmatic clinical dissection of the secret sins of society's most respectable pillars, illustrating the way in which a cold, unloving community becomes the womb of a catastrophic future. "Tense, provocative and unnerving. Could be considered a culmination of this difficult director's brilliant career" - LA Times. "You'll be knocked for a loop" - Rolling Stone. Golden Globe, Best Foreign Film. Academy Award nominee, Best Foreign Language Film. 144 minutes. Subtitles. NOTE special Sunday showtime.
THE MAID (Chile 2009; NR)
Tuesday April 13, Thursday April 15, Saturday April 17 @ 7:30PM;
Sunday April 18 @ 1, 2:55PM.
Direction and screenplay: Sebastian Silva
An upper middle class family in Santiago, Chile is perplexed by the increasingly erratic behavior of their live-in maid (Catalina Saavedra, giving one of the best performances of the year) in this consistently intriguing and enjoyably off-balance comedic drama from director Sebastian Silva. "Strikingly talented cinema from a notable international filmmaker" - Hollywood Reporter. "A remarkable performance that won her a special award at this year's Sundance Film Festival... Saavedra goes through one of the most uncanny psychophysical transformations I've ever seen in a movie without the benefit of obvious makeup or other prosthetics" - Village Voice. World Cinema Dramatic Jury Prize and World Cinema Special Jury Prize for Acting, Sundance 2009. 95 minutes. Subtitles.
POLICE, ADJECTIVE (Romania 2009; NR)
Thursday April 22, Saturday April 24 @ 7:30PM;
Sunday April 25 @ 1, 3:15PM. NOTE: No show Tuesday April 20.
Direction and screenplay: Corneliu Porumbolu
Romanian Communism may be dead, but its authoritarian heart beats on in this dryly absurd satire of the police state mentality, featuring an undercover cop with a conscience who is constantly exhorted by higher-ups to bring the whole bureaucratic weight of the Law smashing down on one pot-smoking teenager. "Cunning and provocative... requires patience, but its rewards are many. It's hard to imagine how a scene in which a police captain barks an order to bring him a dictionary can be loaded with suspense, but, really, it is" - Philadelphia Inquirer. "Has considerable power, and the issues it raises linger in the mind" - NPR. 115 minutes. Subtitles.
THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS (USA 2009; NR)
Tuesday April 27, Thursday April 29, Saturday May 1 @ 7:30PM;
Sunday May 2 @ 1, 2:50PM.
Direction and screenplay: Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith
In 1971 Rand Corporation strategist Daniel Ellsberg, deeply disillusioned by the Vietnamese War, touched off an uproar when he leaked 7000 pages of classified material to the New York Times. The ensuing chain of events led to a landmark Supreme Court case and ultimately, Watergate. Abominated as a traitor, acclaimed as a patriot, Ellsberg endured to see his enemies in the Nixon White House eventually disgraced. This is his story. "Riveting. A straight-ahead, enthralling story of moral courage" - New York Magazine. Academy Award nominee, Best Documentary Feature, 2009. 94 minutes.
MID-AUGUST LUNCH (Italy 2009; NR)
Tuesday May 4, Thursday May 6, Saturday May 8 @ 7:30PM;
Sunday May 9 @ 1, 2:50PM.
Direction and screenplay: Gianni Di Gregorio
Over the Italian national holiday of Prenzo di Ferragosto, which falls during the laziest days of the Mediterranean summer, a middle-aged Roman bachelor who lives with his 93-year-old mother in a small apartment is obliged to take in three more elderly ladies for an overnight stay. The result is an absolute delight - one of the warmest and most gracefully winning movies we have shown in many a year. "A film of gentle wit with a wicked twinkle in its eye" - Sight & Sound. "Charming and gently hilarious... A gem whose intelligent, deadpan humor is entirely irresistible" - Hollywood Reporter. 75 min. Subtitles.