a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.
mon. mar. 3
the parallax view, klute @ new beverly
luis trenker: the emperor of california 7 PM @ goethe-institut LA
tue. mar. 4
the mountain goats @ troubadour
the parallax view, klute @ new beverly
paranoid park (preview screening) @ ucla film archive
wed. mar. 5
the mountain goats @ troubadour
bipolar bear @ the smell
charles bukowski films 7 PM @ 7 dudley cinema
flavor of green tea over rice, tokyo story @ new beverly
the strange one @ egyptian theatre
the bank job (preview screening) @ aero theatre
howlin rain @ spaceland
my name is albert ayler 7 PM FREE @ hammer museum
thu. mar. 6
bad dudes @ the smell
howlin rain 7 PM FREE @ amoeba records
flavor of green tea over rice, tokyo story @ new beverly
the taking of pelham one two three, charley varrick @ aero theatre
fri. mar. 7
the house that screamed MIDNIGHT @ nuart
mt. eerie @ the smell
journey to the center of the earth, the day the earth stood still @ ucla film archive
2001 a space odyssey (70mm) @ egyptian theatre
the italian job, who's minding the mint @ aero theatre
werckmeister harmonies @ lacma
death wish 10:30 PM, death wish ii @ silent movie theatre
sat. mar. 8
mae shi, old time relijun @ the smell
the goonies 6:30 PM @ angel city drive-in
fall-outs @ mr t's bowl
fantastic voyage, the lost world @ ucla film archive
2001 a space odyssey (70mm) 2:00 7:30 PM @ egyptian theatre
the killing, the asphalt jungle @ aero theatre
damnation @ lacma
gil mantera's party dream, mahjongg @ the echo
the big sleep 1 PM @ silent movie theatre
la promesse @ silent movie theatre
darktown strutters 10:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
saccharine trust FREE @ taix
sun. mar. 9
xnobbqx @ the smell
2001 a space odyssey (70mm) @ egyptian theatre
delirious, the interview @ aero theatre
beat swap meet record fair Noon-6 PM @ the echo
nazarin 1 PM @ getty center
enamorada 3:30 PM @ getty center
melies matinee 4 PM @ silent movie theatre
the lady and the beard 7 PM @ silent movie theatre
dragon princess 9:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
safety last 2 PM @ ucla royce hall
mon. mar. 10
werner herzog: three documentaries 7 PM @ goethe-institut LA
we barbarians, crystal antlers @ viper room
tue. mar. 11
ms 45, alley cat @ new beverly
they drive by night 1 PM @ lacma
atlas sound, valet, white rainbow @ the echo
wed. mar. 12
the fly (1958), the snake pit @ ucla film archive
mad professor @ dub club @ the echo
beach house (early show) @ the echo
thu. mar. 13
mike watt & the missingmen @ safari sam's
black sunday, black sabbath @ egyptian theatre
pather panchali @ aero theatre
fri. mar. 14
five dolls for an august moon, blood and black lace @ egyptian theatre
aparajito, apur sansar @ aero theatre
family nest @ lacma
the prefab people 9:20 PM @ lacma
werner herzog eats his shoe, a well-spent life, garlic is as good as ten mothers @ silent movie theatre
hard times 10:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
sat. mar. 15
lisa and the devil, baron blood @ egyptian theatre
jalsaghar, charulata @ aero theatre
the outsider @ lacma
lady in the lake 1 PM @ silent movie theatre
the son @ silent movie theatre
abar the first black superman 10:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
sun. mar. 16
boredoms @ the fonda
the poseidon adventure 7 PM, voyage to the bottom of the sea @ ucla film archive
shoot shoot shoot part two 7 PM @ filmforum @ egyptian theatre
kidnapped, shock @ egyptian theatre
king of california, the king of kong @ aero theatre
tokyo chorus 7 PM @ silent movie theatre
yes madam 9:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
mon. mar. 17
all you need is cash @ egyptian theatre
das boot (director's cut) 7 PM @ goethe-institut LA
explosions in the sky, lichens @ wiltern
tue. mar. 18
house of numbers 1 PM @ lacma
wed. mar. 19
the monster squad, night of the creeps @ new beverly
thu. mar. 20
the monster squad, night of the creeps @ new beverly
danger diabolik, planet of the vampires @ egyptian theatre
languis @ the scene
mike watt, silver daggers, john wiese @ safari sam's
fri. mar. 21
mae shi, rtx, bad dudes, foot village @ knitting factory
the monster squad, night of the creeps @ new beverly
the boston strangler @ ucla film archive
a bay of blood, four times that night @ egyptian theatre
almanac of fall @ lacma
jon brion @ largo
the mechanic 10:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
sat. mar. 22
the wild one 6:30 PM @ angel city drive-in
the monster squad 3:55 7:30 PM, night of the creeps 5:40 9:15 PM @ new beverly
towering inferno @ ucla film archive
the whip and the body, kill baby kill @ egyptian theatre
sátántangó 2 PM @ lacma
juarez 7 PM @ starlight studios
jon brion @ largo
sun. mar. 23
the girl who knew too much 6 PM, hatchet for the honeymoon, caltiki the immortal monster @ egyptian theatre
the circus 4 PM @ silent movie theatre
i was born but... 7 PM @ silent movie theatre
royal warriors 9:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
mon. mar. 24
bad dudes @ pehrspace
putting looney in the tunes @ ampas linwood dunn
tue. mar. 25
hit list, maniac @ new beverly
rancho notorious 1 PM @ lacma
wed. mar. 26
diva, let's get lost @ new beverly
cruising @ egyptian theatre
pharoah sanders quartet @ jazz bakery
memory inversion @ getty center
the sparrows 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
thu. mar. 27
diva, let's get lost @ new beverly
voyage to the beginning of the world @ ucla film archive
pharoah sanders quartet @ jazz bakery
fri. mar. 28
diva, let's get lost @ new beverly
the man from london @ lacma
pharoah sanders quartet @ jazz bakery
the family 10:30 PM, rider on the rain @ silent movie theatre
sat. mar. 29
the funhouse MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
hold that blonde 7 PM, old acquaintance @ starlight studios
cleopatra 2 PM @ ucla film archive
the big lebowski @ egyptian theatre
pharoah sanders quartet @ jazz bakery
the brasher doubloon 1 PM @ silent movie theatre
rosetta @ silent movie theatre
ganja & hess 10:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
sun. mar. 30
john wiese @ the smell
the yakuza 5:30 PM @ egyptian theatre
what did the lady forget? 7 PM @ silent movie theatre
robotrix 9:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
neil hamburger @ spaceland
mon. mar. 31
darjeeling limited, the royal tenenbaums @ new beverly
tue. apr. 1
black keys, jay reatard @ wiltern
darjeeling limited, the royal tenenbaums @ new beverly
body and soul 7 PM @ hammer museum
wed. apr. 2
jucifer @ knitting factory
darjeeling limited, the royal tenenbaums @ new beverly
crescent boogaloo band w/ dr. lonnie smith
the battleship potemkin 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
thu. apr. 3
network, the hospital @ new beverly
crescent boogaloo band w/ dr. lonnie smith
fri. apr. 4
network, the hospital @ new beverly
cannibal holocaust MIDNIGHT @ nuart
languis @ pehrspace
fanny and alexander 7 PM @ ampas linwood dunn
crescent boogaloo band w/ dr. lonnie smith
sat. apr. 5
network 3:05 7:30, the hospital 5:25 9:50 @ new beverly
les sans culottes @ satisfaction @ bordello
the virgin spring 7 PM, through a glass darkly @ ampas linwood dunn
beyond the forest 7 PM, what ever happened to baby jane? @ starlight studios
crescent boogaloo band w/ dr. lonnie smith
sun. apr. 6
cries and whispers 7 PM, autumn sonata @ ampas linwood dunn
invincible kung-fu legs 9:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
mon. apr. 7
smog @ ucla film archive
schindler's houses 8 PM @ redcat
tue. apr. 8
dalek @ casbah, SD
i walked with a zombie 7 PM @ hammer museum
devil's helper: the folk art films of phil chambliss 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
wed. apr. 9
dalek @ henry fonda theater
bed and sofa 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
thu. apr. 10
an evening with albert maysles 7 PM @ hammer museum
fri. apr. 11
the adventures of buckaroo banzai MIDNIGHT @ nuart
sat. apr. 12
loos ornamental 7 PM @ ucla film archive
schindler's houses 8:45 PM @ ucla film archive
moon over burma 7 PM @ starlight studios
sun. apr. 13
douro faina fluvial 7 PM, aniki-bobo, a caca @ ucla film archive
la roue 6 PM @ silent movie theatre
mon. apr. 14
stars of the lid @ the echo
tue. apr. 15
tamango 7 PM @ hammer museum
wed. apr. 16
blues & jazz voices 7 PM @ 7 dudley cinema
jewish luck 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
sun. apr. 20
HEALTH, foot village @ the smell
the general 4 PM @ silent movie theatre
fire dragon 9:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
tue. apr. 22
black orpheus 7 PM @ hammer museum
underworld cinema: the life and work of j.x. williams 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
wed. apr. 23
spiritualized @ lobero theatre, santa barbara
happiness 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
thu. apr. 24
standard operating procedure 7 PM @ hammer museum
fri. apr. 25
spiritualized @ 4th & b, san diego
sat. apr. 26
skylark 7 PM @ starlight studios
festival of books @ ucla
sun. apr. 27
festival of books @ ucla
license to steal 9:30 PM, naked killer @ silent movie theatre
tue. apr. 29
wholphin #6 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
wed. apr. 30
storm over asia 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
sat. may 3
the ugly beats @ satisfaction @ bordello
sat. may 10
the remarkable andrew 7 PM, blaze of noon @ starlight studios
sat. may 17
dirtbombs @ troubadour
tue. may 20
clinic @ troubadour
WHAT IT IS:
Abar, The First Black Superman
This high concept, no-budget, one-of-a-kind obscurity follows a brilliant, black scientist who moves into an all white neighborhood. Surprise, surprise; he's greeted by racist honkeys and his family is threatened. This motivates him to reach for the obvious solution: create a potion that turns the black militant Abar into a superhero with infinite mind power. He uses his powers to, among other things, make police docile, inspire hookers to beat up their pimps, and turn an Uncle Tom's pasta into a mouthful of worms. One of the only black science-fiction films, and clearly a homemade labor of love, Abar is the most positive, family-friendly movie ever made that wishes for the disappearance of the entire white race.
Dir. Frank Packard, 1977, 35mm, 90 min.
A CAÇA
(THE HUNT)
(1963, Portugal) Directed by Manoel de Oliveira
In Oliveira's most Buńuelian film, two boys on a hunt are accompanied by strange omens: a fox savagely tears into a chicken, one boy falls into quicksand. Portuguese censors demanded changes to Oliveira's bleak ending. The director obliged but in 1988 restored his original ending with a twist: He retained the censor-approved, happy ending as a coda, underscoring the original film's ironically dark and pessimistic vision.
Screenwriter: Manoel de Oliveira. Cast: António Rodrigues Sousa, Joăo Rocha Almeida. Presented in Portuguese dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, (1988 Restored Version), 20 min.
ALLEY CAT
(from IMDB)
A beautiful young martial arts expert stops a vicious street gang from robbing her grandparents' house. The gang marks her for murder, but her grandparents are killed instead. The girl sets out to take her revenge on the gang.
ALL YOU NEED IS CASH, 1978, Broadway Video, 70 min. Eric Idle and Neil Innes created their dead-on, affectionate spoof of the Beatles' story a full 17 years before the real Fabs made their "Anthology." Idle wrote and co-directed with "Saturday Night Live's" Gary Weis while Innes created the 20-song soundtrack. With cameos from the casts of "SNL" and Python and rock stars Mick Jagger, Ron Wood, Paul Simon and the Rutles' biggest fan – George Harrison. Preceded by Archaeological rarities from the Rutles vaults! Discussion following with Rutles Eric Idle, Neil Innes & Ricky Fataar moderated by Rutles/"Archaeology" producer Martin Lewis.
Almanac of Fall
Oszi almanach | 1984/color/120 min. | Scr/dir: Béla Tar; w/ Hédi Temessy, Erika Bodnár, Miklós Székely B.
This chamber drama about an old woman who becomes ensnared in the power plays of her children and caretakers combines expressive lighting and color camerawork to stunning effect.
ANIKI-BÓBÓ
(1942, Portugal) Directed by Manoel de Oliveira
Two schoolboys equally enamored of a fetching classmate are at the center of this simple, but never saccharine, tale of young love, rivalry and a special doll in a window. Picking up on its darker undertones, many critics also read it as a critique of the dictatorial Salazar regime. Novelist and frequent collaborator Agustina Bessa-Luís described it as one of Oliveira's "most perfect films."
Screenwriter: Manoel de Oliveira. Cast: Nascimento Fernandes, Fernanda Matos, Horácio Silva. Presented in Portuguese dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 70 min.
APARAJITO
The second part of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy. Aparajito follows Apu (Smaran Ghosal) on his intellectual odyssey from the streets of Benares to the promise and optimism of Calcutta, as he begins his college studies. Music by Ravi Shankar. "It's transitional in structure, rather than dramatic, but it's full of insights and revelations" (Pauline Kael). With Pinaki Sen Gupta, Karuna and Kanu Banerji, and Ramani Sen Gupta.
APUR SANSAR
The final part of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy, adapted from Bengali writer B.B. Bandapaddhay's epic novel, is a poignant summing up of the earlier films' themes and stylistic preoccupations. Its story traces Apu's leap into adulthood, the consequences of his marriage and birth of his first child. Ray's painterly use of landscape finds a poetry in the incidental, loose textures of daily life. Music by Ravi Shankar. With Soumitra Chatterjee (as Apu), Sharmila Tagore, Alok Chakravarty, and Swapan Mukherji.
Autumn Sonata (1978)
In her last feature film appearance, Ingrid Bergman stars as a concert pianist reunited with her daughter (Liv Ullmann) after a seven-year estrangement; the tension between them is underscored by flashbacks from their earlier lives. 93 mins.
THE BANK JOB, 2008, Lionsgate, 114 min. Dir. Roger Donaldson. Jason Statham leads a group of small-time hoods out for a big score who quickly learn that they're in over their heads -- but by the time they realize how many forces are aligned against them, it's too late to turn back. Based on a true story, this brilliantly constructed thriller pays homage to the British crime films of the 1970's before going off in its own fascinating and wildly entertaining directions. Superb performances, a precise and kinetic visual style, and a plot that is intricate and elaborate make this that rare thriller that's as moving as it is exciting. Discussion following with director Roger Donaldson.
BARON BLOOD (GLI ORRORI DEL CASTELLO DI NORIMBERGA), 1972, International Media Films, 100 min. Dir. Mario Bava. Lovely Elke Sommer is menaced by Joseph Cotten, a 400-year-old sadistic nobleman bent on restoring his youth in Bava's gruesome, grand guignol Gothic. With Massimo Girotti, Rada Rassimov. "...an almost Technicolor richness that encompasses a wide range of styles, from an enameled hardness that recalls the work of Douglas Sirk to a luminous, painterly vividness based on Bava's fondness for color gels and his endlessly-churning fog machine... ultimately a heady exercise in style, with several brilliantly mounted sequences; a convincing, insistent air of horror; and some unforgettable imagery." – Gary Morris, Images Movie Journal (English dubbed print.) Introduction to screening by director Joe Dante (THE HOWLING; HBO's "Masters of Horror") and discussion in between films with actress Elke Sommer.
The Battleship Potemkin
Sergei Eisenstein's legendary film is based on the violent 1905 riot at the Potemkin harbor by sailors, which spread onto the streets of Odessa as troops opened fire on unarmed civilians. The film is divided into five episodes—Men and Maggots, Drama at the Harbor, A Dead Man Calls for Justice, The Odessa Staircase, and the Rendezvous with a Squadron. Despite its reputation as a cold masterpiece of revolutionary filmmaking, it is a wonderful combination of theory and practice as Eisenstein experiments with the emotional effects of "montage." His brilliant editing allows audiences to experience the transition between the state of inaction and action as a visceral and explosive transformation.
Dir. Sergei Eisenstein, 1925, 35mm, 80 min.
A BAY OF BLOOD (TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE, aka REAZIONE A CATENA), 1971, International Media Films, 84 min. Dir. Mario Bava. We tracked down the sole surviving print of this in Luxembourg for our Cinematheque's Greatest Hits Series in 1998 – but now we have a much newer print that was struck in 2002. This is the great-granddaddy of slasher movies, a movie that profoundly influenced late 1970s and 1980s horror, from all the Italian gialli that came afterwards to the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise. Thirteen oversexed Italians, most of them concerned with securing the land rights to the remote, rural bay of the title, slaughter each other in amazingly inventive ways. With Claudine Auger (THUNDERBALL), Luigi Pistilli (THE GREAT SILENCE), Laura Betti (LA DOLCE VITA; HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON)."Unreels like a macabre, ironic joke...an Elizabethan tragedy as Tex Avery might have written." – Tim Lucas. (English dubbed print.)
Bed and Sofa
Popular Soviet filmmakers working after the Bolshevik Revolution often used the medium to glorify the masses. However, Abram Room's film, Bed and Sofa, stars just three people. During hard times, Vlodya is forced to board with his old war comrade, Kolya, and his wife Liuda. At first wary of one another, sparks begin to fly between Vlodya and Liuda, leading to tensions in the household of three and a shifting of allegiances between the various couplings. What makes this film unique besides the naturalistic performances and Room's magisterial direction is its frank sexuality. Outrageous and daring, the film was banned in the United Kingdom but earned a following in private film clubs.
Dir. Abram Room, 1927, 35mm, 74 min.
The Big Sleep
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Nuff said, but there is much more. This convoluted tale is held together by the most tortuous plot ever. Contacted by WB while on holiday, Raymond Chandler couldn't remember who the murderer was! With the star power of the two leads, the bare-knuckled palaver by William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett and magnificent staging by director Howard Hawks, this may be the most definitive version of Chandler's work on screen. With the perversely sexy Martha Vickers, eternal noir schlemiel Elisha Cook Jr., and the vicious Bob Steele. Don't miss this enduring classic on the big screen!
Dir. Howard Hawks, 1946, 35mm, 116 min.
Black Orpheus (1959)
Winner of the 1960 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, this ancient love story is based on the musical Orfeu da Conceiçăo, by Vinícius de Moraes. With a celebrated bossa-nova soundtrack by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfá, the film re-imagines the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in the slums of Rio de Janeiro during Carnivale.
DIR. MARCEL CAMUS
RUNNING TIME: 100 MINUTES.
BLACK SABBATH (TRE VOLTI DELLA PAURA), 1963, International Media Films, 92 min. Dir. Mario Bava. Reportedly Bava's favorite of his films: three minimalist tales of terror, topped by "The Wurdelak" with Boris Karloff as a ravenous Russian vampire! This is the original European version complete with a different music score, alternate introduction by Karloff, and the restored sexual implications that had been changed when the film was released here by American International. With Mark Damon, Michele Mercier, Susy Andersen, Jacqueline Pierreux. "Yes, this is the film that Ozzy Osbourne and his rock star friends took the name for their band from...the stories...stand up as compelling tales of terror in their own right, adeptly weaving the atmosphere of nightmares...a beautifully sustained exercise in scares..." – Graeme Clark, The Spinning Image (UK) (In Italian with English subtitles.) Introduction to screening by director Joe Dante (THE HOWLING; HBO's "Masters of Horror") Uncut European Version!
BLACK SUNDAY (LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO), 1960, International Media Films, 87 min. Mario Bava's first full film as a director opens with a signature image: a beautiful witch spewing curses as she's clamped into a spiked mask. Barbara Steele is fabulous in a double role as the deathless witch and her own virginal descendant. It's a performance that brought her worldwide attention and a unique position as the most beautiful and seductive of horror film idols. Eerie, hallucinatory – essential Bava. With John Richardson, Ivo Garrani. "...still the number one film of the Italian Horror renaissance, startlingly original and genuinely creepy. It introduced the icon Barbara Steele to the screen and is probably her best film as well. The blend of vampire and witchcraft lore is atmospheric (all of those real crypts and broken stairs) and violent." – Glenn Erickson, DVD Savant (English dubbed print.) ("See Satan wearing strange robes and fighting with all the furies of Hades!") Uncut European Version!
BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (SEI DONNE PER L'ASSASSINO), 1964, 88 min. Dir. Mario Bava. This fiendishly simple story of models at a fashion salon being stalked by a gruesomely imaginative killer is often credited as the film that started the Italian giallo (sexy suspense thriller) craze that mushroomed in the 1960s and 1970s. Bava's cast of characters is a fascinating catalogue of beautiful but flawed women and the men in their lives – self-seeking neurotics, alcoholics, addicts, lechers and psychotics. The director's color palette is awesome to behold. With Eva Bartok, Cameron Mitchell. "...shares with FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON and BAY OF BLOOD a crystallization of the director's worldview, where the tension between opulent surfaces and moral dislocation hint at a closer affinity with Antonioni than is usually perceived...not for nothing is his exquisite feel for design, decor, color, and movement tied to the endless cataloging of human sin, with beauty and ugliness, like desire and dread, forever leaking into one another." – Fernando F. Croce, SlantMagazine.com (English dubbed print.)
BLUES & JAZZ VOICES - Rare perfomance films of Bessie Smith, Howlin' Wolf, Billie Holiday, Louis Jordan, Big Mama Thornton, Son House, Anita O'Day, Mel Torme, Ella Fitzgerald and Fats Waller. Testify to the lasting power of America's music backbone.
Body and Soul (1925)
Paul Robeson makes his screen debut in this silent masterwork by black independent director Oscar Micheaux. Set in a small Southern town, the film was a direct condemnation of the power of the clergy, with Robeson playing dual roles as a mildmannered inventor and a crooked ex-convict who impersonates the town's preacher.
DIR. OSCAR MICHEAUX
RUNNING TIME: 102 MINUTES.
THE BOSTON STRANGLER
(1968) Directed by Richard Fleischer
Director Richard Fleischer transforms a straightforward police procedural into a kaleidoscope of fear with Abbot providing the extensive split-screen imagery that captures the radiating paranoia that gripped Boston in the early 1960s when serial killer Henry DeSalvo stalked the city.
Screenwriter: Edward Anhalt. Cast: Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda, George Kennedy. 35mm, 116 min.
The Brasher Doubloon
This is a beautifully mounted adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel The High Window. George Montgomery is Philip Marlowe with Gene Tierney look-alike Nancy Guild as the damsel-in distress. The theft of a rare coin lures Marlowe through the underbelly of Los Angeles into a tangled web of blackmail and murder. The film offers dark, atmospheric photography by John Brahm with an ace supporting cast of Conrad Janis, Florence Bates, Marvin Miller and Roy Roberts. This movie, the rarest cinematic version of Chandler's work, is not on DVD and almost never screened theatrically. See it only at the Silent Movie Theatre!
Dir. Robert Brahm, 1947, 35mm, 72 min.
CALTIKI THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (CALTIKI - IL MOSTRO IMMORTALE), 1959, 76 min. "Slimy Glob of Doom Engulfs the World!" Signed by director Robert Hampton (a pseudonym for Riccardo Freda), who did just as he had done on the earlier I VAMPIRI – left after only a few days of filming, leaving the lion's share of directorial chores to his good, yet unambitious friend, cinematographer Mario Bava. Although Freda had horror film chops of his own (i.e., THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK), he wanted to see Bava making his own pictures. There had been several very popular "giant globular amoeba" movies already such as THE BLOB, THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT and X THE UNKNOWN, and here Bava tackles the subject with unnerving aplomb. Bava's opening evocation of the Mayan ruins on limited resources, conjuring the scary subterranean netherworld home of the ancient Caltiki, is a sight to behold. There are a number of grisly shocks for the time period. "...visually it's more of a bridge between film noir in the (cinematographer) John Alton mode, and the limitless imagination and ingenuity Bava would soon be applying to his own, ‘official' movies...extremely effective, sometimes horrifying visuals, particularly Bava's gruesome makeup effects, which were without precedent in their nauseating graphicness by 1959 standards (beating Nobuo Nakagawa's gore-fest JIGOKU by a year)." – Stuart Galbraith IV, DVD Talk (English dubbed print, screened from a digital video source) NOT ON DVD Introduction to the screening by actor Dante DiPaolo (THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH).
CHARLES BUKOWSKI FILMS - Ultra rare screening of Hank films. "He shocks the literary establishment with his aliterary style and his blunt language, his eagerness to 'make it new,' as Ezra Pound would say. He brings the American language alive on the page, the way it is spoken by the average American, and thereby delights readers who have long been disenchanted by literature's antiseptic content and alienating austerity." -Jay Dougherty. Plus 7pm preshow Hank readings by S.A. Griffin & others.
CHARLEY VARRICK, 1973, Universal, 111 min. Many people who went to see this on its initial release were expecting a genial Walter Matthau comedy. Instead they got this hard-as-nails, Don Siegel-helmed thriller about a lone wolf master crook, Charley Varrick (Matthau in a change-of-pace role), who robs a small-town bank unaware it's full of Mafia money. With riveting supporting performaces from a truly lethal Joe Don Baker, Andrew Robinson, Sheree North, Felicia Farr. Discussion in between films with actor Hector Elizondo.
CHARULATA
Ray considered this film, structured like a musical rondo, to be his best work. Set in 1879 during the social reform movement in Calcutta, it tells of Charulata (Madhabi Mukherjee, in an exquisitely graceful performance), the bored and neglected upper-class wife of the reformer Bhupati Dutta (Sailen Mukherjee). Wrapped up in the politics of the times, Bhupati is oblivious to his wife's lonelines. When his young cousin Amal (Soumitra Chatterji) arrives, Bhupati hopes that he will encourage Charulata in her reading of literature; instead, she falls in love with the young man. "Gets nearer to the heart of the 'woman's dilemma' than films which see the problem in terms of career possibilities. In so doing, [Ray] has made a film that is extraordinarily contemporary" (Molly Haskell).
The Circus
Chaplin charms again in this sweet-natured comedy, in which the beloved Little Tramp bumbles into a circus, only to become its main
attraction. The boisterous tumult of Big Top life offers the star countless opportunities to exhibit the brilliant comedic physicality and
expressiveness of the role that made him an icon. Uproarious antics give way to romance as the Tramp falls for the daughter of the ruthless circus proprietor, but as always, the tender humor makes this Chaplin classic shine. At the 1928 Academy Awards (the first ever held), Chaplin was awarded a special Oscar for "versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing The Circus."
The feature will be preceded by a shorts program and accompanied by Bob Mitchell on the organ.
Dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1928, 16mm, 71 min
CLEOPATRA
(1963) Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Presented in 70mm!
A spectacle both behind the camera and on-screen, the troubled production of Cleopatra is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Working closely with Emil Kosa, Jr., who won an Academy Award for special photographic effects, Abbott contributed extensively to the burning of the library at Alexandria and Battle of Actium sequences, following, as he wrote, Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck's dictum, "if you talk about something in a film, you must show it."
Screenwriter: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison. 70mm, 243 min.
Cries and Whispers (1972)
This intense character study explores the dynamics among three sisters, one of whom is dying of cancer, and the servant who looks after her. 88 mins.
CRUISING, 1980, Warner Bros. Classics, 106 min. A bleakly chilling emotional travelogue of desperation, loneliness and spiritual hunger, Al Pacino stars as a naive undercover cop who descends into the leather bar underworld of New York's gay S&M scene to ferret out a serial killer. Widely condemned and misinterpreted on its initial release, CRUISING emerges today as one of director William Friedkin's major works -- it succeeds as a police procedural, a horror film (there are scenes every bit as terrifying as THE EXORCIST) and a saga of one man's confrontation with his disintegrating, "decent" self-image. With Paul Sorvino. Featuring a terrific score by composer Jack Nitzsche, with songs by The Germs.
Damnation
Kárhozat | 1988/b&w/122 min. | Scr: Béla Tarr, László Krasznahorkai; dir: Tarr; w/ Miklós Székely B., Vali Kerekes
Tarr's first film noir is a dark tale of illicit romance between a loner and a married cabaret singer.
DANGER: DIABOLIK, 1967, Paramount, 100 min. Dir. Mario Bava. "Diabolik – out for all he can take, seduce or get away with...!" Is there a groovier 1960s flick than this?! From sexy, cat-suited super-thief John Phillip Law to his gorgeous partner in crime, Marisa Mell, to Ennio Morricone's psychedelic paradise of a score (including "Deep Deep Down," one of the greatest spy-themes ever), this is the epitome of mid-20th Century Pop Art culture. This astonishing adaptation of the notorious, super-popular Italian comic strip looked so fantastic on completion, producer Dino DeLaurentiis was flabbergasted that Bava had completed the production for less than a third of the million dollar budget. "This is a wonderful comic-book of a film...the film's celebration of anarchic anti-authoritarianism makes it possibly one of the most entertainingly subversive films ever foisted on the public..." – Richard Scheib, The Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Review (English dubbed print)
Darktown Strutters
C'mon guys– circle the date on your calendar – this is a Pop Art black biker gang musical! A bewildering mix of political incorrectness, sci-fi, slapstick comedy, soul music, drug humor and costumes that would give H.R. Pufnstuf pause. The Darktown Strutters are a super-cool trio of triker mamas busy battling a Col. Sanders-type southern fast food mogul who dresses like a superhero pig and has a secret machine that controls the leaders of the black community – who urge everyone to go out and buy more of the Colonel's ribs. Other enemies: a bumbling police force that acts like Keystone Cops, if the Keystone Cops were seething, bloodthirsty bigots, and the Klan, yes, the Klan, in the form of a competing motorcycle gang wearing protective goggles over their hoods. They all run around in sets by genius production designer Jack Fisk (Phantom of the Paradise, Mulholland Drive) that look like an inner city theme park designed by an LSD zonked underground comic artist. The most insane blaxploitation movie ever. Period.
Dir. William Witney, 1975, 35mm, 90 min.
DAS BOOT director's cut
1995, 207 min., color, German w/English subtitles, digital
In 1982, DAS BOOT took moviegoers on an unprecedented journey. Audiences set out to sea with the patrol of U-96 - one of the famed German U-boats that prowled the North Atlantic challenging the British Navy at every turn - and faced an astonishing series of life-and-death struggles as the scared, exhausted and desperately courageous crew blasted away in battle, dove to untested depths, and were evading depth charges in an all-out effort not so much to win the war as to return home to their families and loved ones.
This is director Wolfgang Petersen's ultimate version of one of the most critically acclaimed war movies of all time.
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
(1951) Directed by Robert Wise
Director Robert Wise demanded the utmost realism for telling the Cold War-influenced story of an alien who lands in Washington DC with an intergalactic message of peace—backed up by an indestructible robot. Working under veteran Fox effects man, Fred Sersen, Abbott set the bar high for the flood of Hollywood sci-fi films to follow.
Screenwriter: Edmund H. North. Cast: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe. 35mm, 92 min.
DELIRIOUS, 2006, Peace Arch Releasing, 102 min. Dir. Tom DiCillo (LIVING IN OBLIVION). Les Galantine (Steve Buscemi), a paparazzi photographer who yearns to be a "real" photographer, slinks through a daily routine of watching as the rich, famous and beautiful walk past the velvet ropes and into the exclusive VIP areas of New York's best clubs. This routine is upset when a young homeless man named Toby (Michael Pitt), stumbles upon Les and his fellow paparazzi staking out a trendy Manhattan hot spot in the hope of getting a shot of K'harma, a pop diva (Alison Lohman). Seeking shelter, Toby follows Les and becomes his unpaid "assistant," eagerly lapping up Les' life lessons, amusing sayings and laissez-faire perspective on life. A comic drama with a witty, timely and hilarious screenplay by one of independent cinema's strongest voices.
Devil's Helper: The Folk Art Films of Phil Chambliss
"An Arkansas auteur... imagine if Fellini had lived in a trailer in Arkansas instead of Rome." - The London Times
"Phil is simply a person who needs to create. He could have just as likely picked up a knife and whittled a wooden pig, or painted the Rapture on the side of a barn. Instead, he sat in the guard shack at the gravel pit every night, writing and planning his movies." - Dub Cornett, Oxford American
Phil Chambliss is America's first folk-art filmmaker. He's lived his entire life in Calhoun County, Arkansas. He never went to film school or college, never took a class or read a book on filmmaking. The films he managed to see – Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More, the entire Peyton Place television special, and a particular episode of The Rifleman in which Lee Van Cleef plays Johnny Drago – led him to take the 95 bucks his then-wife had saved for a new icebox, and spend it instead on a movie camera. With camera in tow, he wrangled some friends into acting, and went on to create a body of work that includes dozens of bizarre, brilliant, idiosyncratic films, shot over the course of several decades. Phil's films are a revelation, full of unexpected humor, complex social commentary, and a strong, almost suspended, sense of time and place. There is only one Phil Chambliss, and The Cinefamily is very proud to present the first Los Angeles presentation of his singular work.
Phil Chambliss will be in attendance for a Q&A.
Tickets - $12/ $8 for members
Diva
(1981 -- 1 hr. 57 min.)
Atmospheric thriller about a young postal delivery boy, his obsession with an opera diva, the bootleg tapes he makes of her performances, and the evil hoods who chase him down, thinking he has a tape that implicates them in a crime.
DOURO, FAINA FLUVIAL
(LABOR ON THE DOURO)
(1931, Portugal) Directed by Manoel de Oliveira
At the age of 21, Oliveira borrowed money from his father to make his first film. Inspired by Walter Ruttmann and Dziga Vertov, Oliveira employed the vertiginous angles and oppositional aesthetics of modernist cinema to depict the lives of workers on the Douro River in his hometown of Porto. Oliveira's fiercely unsentimental vision enraged many Portuguese critics, but won him notable foreign admirers, including Luigi Pirandello.
with Portuguese subtitles. 35mm, silent, w/ music track, 21 min.
Dragon Princess
Sonny Chiba gets his ass kicked by four jealous karate experts who want his position as top karate master and spare his life as long as he promises to flee Japan. Blinded in one eye and near death, he teaches his daughter (the lovely and alluring Etsuko "Sue" Shiomi) everything he knows in the delicate art of handing someone their own ass; and she eventually returns to Tokyo, tracking down each of her father's enemies and making them apologize...with their lives! Shiomi is an instantly likable actress who didn't get wide recognition in this country, but her irresistible beauty and fighting ability kept her very busy in Japan (she and Chiba worked together before on the Sister Streetfighter series). This is a visually dazzling, fast-paced action spectacular that was co-directed by Yutaka Kohira, who cut his teeth as an assistant director on the Female Convict Scorpion series, starring Meijo Kaji. Sit back, you're in good hands here.
Dirs. Yataka Kodaira and Yutaka Kohira, 1976, 35mm, 90 min.
Enamorada (A Woman in Love)
(Mexico, 1946, Emilio Fernández, 35mm, 99 min., in Spanish with English subtitles)
A fusion of tearjerker, screwball comedy, and national foundation myth, Enamorada transposes Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew to a small Puebla town during the anti-clerical Juarez Revolution. In the film, the liberal General Reyes (Pedro Armendáriz) falls for Beatriz (Maria Félix), the hotheaded daughter of the town's wealthiest reactionary. Though the film is concerned with religion, Figueroa's camera especially worships the ravishing Félix—whether she's clasping a mammoth pistol, smoking a long black cigarillo, or exploding a firecracker under the general's horse. Meanwhile, the love-struck Reyes grows increasingly more gentle and teary-eyed. Critics have suggested that Fernández's true aim for the film was a mythic reformulation of national gender archetypes, a vision of a new Mexico where virile women fight for justice alongside heroically sensitive men.
An Evening with Albert Maysles
One of America's foremost non-fiction filmmakers, Albert Maysles who along with his brother David (1932–1987) is recognized as a pioneer of "direct cinema," the distinctly American version of French "cinema verité." Their seminal early films Salesman (1968), Gimme Shelter (1970), and Grey Gardens (1976) became cult classics and are still finding new rapturous audiences. On the occasion of the publication of A Maysles Scrapbook: Photographs/Cinemagraphs/Documents, Maysles screens selections from filmed portraits of Orson Welles, Marlon Brando, and Truman Capote, and takes audience questions.
THE FAMILY
Bronson goes Euro with two stylish crime sagas. First up, The Family (a.k.a. Violent City) co-stars Telly Savalas as a psycho crime lord hunting down assassin-on-the-run Bronson through the streets of New Orleans. From the action-packed, wordless open ten minutes to the stunningly gorgeous, nearly silent finale, this is stylish, bullet-ridden piece of Eurotrash from director Sergio Sollima (The Big Gundown), with a killer, psyched-out score from Ennio Morricone. Dir. Sergio Solima, 1970, 35mm, 100 min.
Family Nest
Családi tuzfészek | 1979/b&w/100 min. | Scr/dir: Béla Tarr; w/ László Horváth, Lászlóné Horváth
Tarr's debut feature, made at age twenty-two, is a humorous depiction of three generations crammed into a single flat during a housing crisis.
Fanny & Alexander (1982)
Set in turn-of-the-century Sweden, this haunting film chronicles several seasons in the life of the Ekdahl family, as seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy. 188 mins.
FANTASTIC VOYAGE
(1966) Directed by Richard Fleischer
In a race against time, an American medical team is shrunk to the size of bacteria and injected into the body of a comatose Czech scientist, who holds the key to a vital military secret. Working with art director Jack Martin Smith, Abbott and his team crafted a spellbinding inner world with images that, for all the film's Hollywood credentials, border on the avant-garde.
Screenwriter: Harry Kleiner. Cast: Raquel Welch, Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence. 35mm, 100 min.
Fire Dragon
Yuen Woo-Ping is best known to Western audiences as the action choreographer for The Matrix and Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but his origins are deeply steeped in classic Hong Kong cinema. He was the guiding talent behind Jackie Chan's breakthrough movies, and responsible for star-studded kung fu classics like Tai Chi Master and Iron Monkey. In 1994, he was hired to direct Taiwanese superstar Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia, in this martial arts gem which was to be her final feature before retiring. Lin is the title character, an assassin whose ultimate aim is the overthrow the emperor, but begins to question her allegiances to the deadly prince who wants to usurp his reign. What ensues is a non-stop barrage of martial arts mayhem that one can only expect from this dynamite combination of director and star. For newcomers to the films of Yuen Woo-Ping and Brigitte Lin, Fire Dragon is a near flawless introduction.
Dir. Yuen Woo-Ping, 1994, 35mm, 90min.
FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON (5 BAMBOLE PER LA LUNA D'AGOSTO), 1970, International Media Films, 88 min. Dir. Mario Bava. A clique of the idle rich gathered for a swinging weekend at an island beach house are murdered one by one in this ultra-groovy, Pop Art giallo. Soaked with a glamorously sleazy ambience and an absurd lounge music score by the great Piero Umiliani, FIVE DOLLS emerges as one of the pinnacles of 1970's Euro-trash cinema! Supremely entertaining, with more of Bava's unique imagery that seems poised on that intangible borderline between sensual dream and inescapable nightmare. With William Berger, Edwige Fenech, Ira von Furstenberg. (English dubbed print.)
Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice
A man with very simple tastes and habits meets with growing exasperation from his more sophisticated wife. She treats him with increasing disrespect, and nearly has an affair, but something changes her attitude and she returns to him with an appreciation for his simplicity and reliability.
THE FLY
(1958) Directed by Kurt Neumann
The honeycomb image of dozens of Patricia Owens recoiling in Technicolor terror from a bug-headed Al Hedison is iconic of the 1950s horror cycle, but Abbott's contributions to The Fly evoke much more than fear. His effects—the glowing teleportation device, a man ensnared in a spider's web—carry us from the wonder of science to the pathos of human suffering in an indifferent universe.
Screenwriter: James Clavell. Cast: Al Hedison, Patricia Owens, Vincent Price. 35mm, 94 min.
FOUR TIMES THAT NIGHT (QUANTE VOLTE ... QUELLA NOTTE), 1972, International Media Films, 83 min. Director Mario Bava's tongue-in-cheek, teasingly erotic take on Akira Kurosawa's RASHOMON chronicles various versions of what really happened on libertine Brett Halsey's date with lovely firebrand Daniela Giordano. A little-known comic gem from horror expert Bava. "...a loose and breezy sex farce...Bava rises to the task quite well and brings his trademark visual skills into play for some dazzling little flourishes throughout the film...A colorful pop art feast for the eyes..." – Mondo-Digital.com (English subtitled print.) Introduction by director Eli Roth (CABIN FEVER; HOSTEL 1 & 2).
THE FUNHOUSE
Two young couples on a double date go to a mysterious carnival. As a prank they decide to spend the night in the funhouse. When they witness a brutal murder, they suddenly find themselves in horrific danger.
Ganja & Hess
Don't miss this rare chance to see the only director-approved print of this art-horror classic in existence! A cursed African blade which infects its victims with vampirism ties together a hallucinatory story of a doctor (Duane Jones, fresh off the original Night of the Living Dead) who inherits the affliction from a research assistant (played by director Bill Gunn), whose wife (a gorgeous Marlene Clark) becomes involved with his secret. Tons of funky sexual subtext, creepy primal imagery, startling full frontal nudity, and unsettling Christian themes fuel this unique departure from the usual black horror offering, which was hacked up for distribution under titles like Blood Couple but shown here in its original, uncut version. Dense enough to generate a dozen grad school papers but still enjoyable as a tripped-out ‘70s mood piece, it's unlike anything else you've ever seen.
Dir. Bill Gunn, 1973, 35mm, 110 min.
Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers
Worshippers of The Stinking Rose couldn't dream of a more sacred celluloid altar to the olfactory and gustatory beauty (or maybe just... undeniable power) of everyone's favorite vampire-repellant. Those who scour the internet for hot food-on-food action will revel at Blank's joyous homage to the colorful culture that surrounds culinary rapture.
Dir. Les Blank, 1980, 51 min
The General
Based on a true--and truly crazy--Civil War story, this comedy casts Keaton as Johnnie Gray, a Southern railway engineer with two great loves: his train, and his girl. When both are threatened by Union soldiers in an elaborate, fantastically-shot hijacking, Keaton's hapless Everyman springs into action, with thrilling and riotously funny results. The General stands out among Keaton's films for its undeniable artfulness: produced with an auteur's attention to detail, some of its train-stunts appeared so realistic that the local townspeople visiting the set screamed in horror. Keaton often cited this as his favorite personal creation—come see what makes it a timeless, gorgeous classic.
Dir. Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, 1927, 75 min.
The film will be preceded by a shorts program and will include live musical accompaniment.
THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (aka THE EVIL EYE / LA RAGAZZA CHE SAPEVA TROPPO), 1963, International Media Films, 86 min. Director Mario Bava pioneered the giallo genre with this Hitchcockian suspenser about a young American chased across Rome by "the Alphabet Murderer." Tourist Leticia Roman visits her aunt, only to have the old woman die of a heart attack on her first night there – just as the electricity goes out! In quick succession, Roman runs out into the stormy night, gets knocked down by a purse snatcher and witnesses a brutal murder. But when she awakens in the hospital, no one believes her. She is befriended by a smitten young doctor (John Saxon), who begrudgingly helps her try to find the key to the mystery. Look for Italian American actor Dante DiPaolo as the tormented reporter who may know the killer's identity (DiPaolo later became George Clooney's uncle by marriage to George's aunt Rosemary). Originally released in the U.S. in a much altered version as THE EVIL EYE, this is the original Director's Cut. (In Italian with English subtitles.)
Happiness
Banned until the ‘60s, Happiness is the crowning achievement of the Soviet films Chris Marker rediscovered and restored in 1971. Despite being made during a period of social realism, Alexander Medvedkin's film is a broad comedy whose slapstick masks vicious anti-Bolshevik commentary, marrying bleak but soulful wisdom with something akin to the magical absurdism of late 19th century Russian literature. The film resembles a stylized folk tale whose scenery is taken from popular Russian woodprints and tells the tale of the lazy peasant Khmyr and his motivated wife Anna who finds inspiration on a collective farm. Despite the criticism Medvedkin received for his searing parody of life after the revolution, he stated: "So Happiness is a satirical picture. I made it as the nail in the coffin of this rosy dream. I ridiculed that dream because it's unrealistic; 999 people out of 1,000 get nothing from a dream like that."
Dir: Alexander Medvedkin, 1934, 35mm, 66 min.
Hard Times
Two tough guys for the price of one! Hard Times was the third big screen teaming of heavy growlers Charles Bronson and James Coburn (after The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape), as well as the impressive and surprisingly emotional directorial debut of Walter Hill--who went on to earn his cult movie chops with The Warriors and 48 Hrs. among many others. Many decades before the advent of Fight Club and Kimbo Slice, the film pairs Depression-era New Orleans street fighter Bronson with shifty manager Coburn; toss in the mob, a little romance with Chucky's real-life spouse Jill Ireland, colorful support from Strother Martin (Mr. "What-we-have-here-is-a-failure-to-communicate," from Cool Hand Luke), stunning ‘Scope photography, and a haunting score by Barry De Vorzon, and you've got the recipe for one helluva good time at the movies, easily one of the best from everyone involved despite the fact that no one seems to have ever heard of it.
Dir. Walter Hill, 1975, 35mm, 93 min.
HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON (IL ROSSO SEGNO DELLA FOLLIA), 1970, 88 min. Dir. Mario Bava. Wealthy psychopath and wedding dress designer Stephen Forsyth is perfectly aware that he is crazy, and he skillfully covers his tracks as he stalks and murders potential brides before their nuptials. He's also tormented by a childhood secret that he can't quite remember, an overwhelming force that sucks him ever deeper into the maw of madness. His own bitter wife (Laura Betti) finally pushes him over the edge to where he can no longer distinguish between fantasy and reality. The deliciously macabre script was co-written by Spanish genre specialist Santiago Moncada (A BELL FROM HELL) and an uncredited Bava. "...one of Mario Bava's...most playful thrillers, a demented black comedy that pokes fun at the murderous psychos which were littering the European cinema screens during the late '60s...a beautifully filmed drawing room murder tale which unexpectedly leaps midstream into a bizarre and wholly original ghost story." – Mondo-Digital.com (English dubbed print)
HIT LIST
(from IMDB)
Gangster boss Vincent Luca shall appear in court to account for his crimes - but he has a man at the police who tells him names and locations of the witnesses, so he can kill them all - but one: In the last hit, the professional killer gets into the wrong house. When the owner Mark Collins comes home, he finds his pregnant wife unconscious in the kitchen, his friend dead in the living room and his son kidnapped. The police officer wants Luca to believe he has the real witness' son and sends Collins into prison. But he manages to escape and takes things into his own hands.
The Hospital
Paddy Chayefsky wrote this biting black comedy about a modern mega-hospital that strangles its patients--and doctors--in red tape. George C. Scott stars in a ferocious, Oscar-nominated performance.
House of Numbers
1957/b&w/92 min./CinemaScope | Scr: Russell Rouse, Don M. Mankiewicz; dir: Russell Rouse; w/ Jack Palance, Harold J. Stone, Edward Platt
A man tries to spring his twin, ex-boxer brother from San Quentin.
THE INTERVIEW, 2007, Sony Picture Classics, 84 min. Steve Buscemi directs and stars in this remake of a 2003 feature by the assassinated Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Buscemi plays a veteran political reporter who feels humiliated when an editor assigns him to write a profile of a soap opera star (Sienna Miller), but over the course of an evening together the two opposites find as much mutual attraction as repulsion. "Steve Buscemi's adaptation preserves the original's biting basic scenario while adding a few Americanizing tweaks to this tale." -- Dennis Harvey, Variety Director Tom DiCillo will introduce the screening.
Invincible Kung-Fu Legs
An ultra-violent version of Taming of the Shrew, this little seen gem gives us the lovely and talented Hsia Kwan-li in a role tailor-made for her, and her ultra-flexible legs. Playing daddy's little princess, she struts around town with her goofy man-servant, picking fights with the local jive turkeys and getting into altercations that often result in her kicking the crap out of someone, literally. When her new martial arts teacher shows up (played by "Flashlegs" Tan Tao-liang), the two detest one another and immediately start trying to kill each other off. She's a princess used to beating people up until she gets her way, while he's a no-nonsense martial arts master used to being obeyed. How will they ever get along? Throw into the mix a vicious villain out to tear off Tan's head; and you've got a movie that's one part Educating Rita and one part Five Fingers of Death. Honestly, if that doesn't convince you, there's nothing more to say.
Dir. Lee Tso Nam, 1980, 35mm, 90 min.
I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
Legendary horror producer Val Lewton teams with director Jacques Tourneur (Cat People) to retell Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. A Canadian nurse (Frances Dee) is hired to take care of the lifeless wife of a plantation owner. Resorting to voodoo in order to find a cure, she soon realizes the terrifying truth about her situation.
DIR. JACQUES TOURNEUR
RUNNING TIME: 69 MINUTES.
I Was Born, But...
As in most of Ozu's thirties pictures, the visual style is far more expressive then that of his post-war work. Ozu always got great performances from child actors, and this film is essentially expressed through the two boys. I Was Born, But... marked one of Ozu's earliest successes as a filmmaker, both financially and critically, as the film was a box office success and also won the Kinema Jumpo poll as best Japanese film of the year. It's a witty comedy, but the film also has a touch of pathos drawn from another Ozu favorite Charlie Chaplin. Ozu himself loosely remade the film in color in 1959 under the title Ohayo (Good Morning.)
Dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1932, 35mm, 100 min.
JALSAGHAR
Ray's Chekhovian story of Bishamber Rai, an aging, proud, Indian nobleman who undergoes a slow decline after he, to spite his ambitious businessman neighbor, decides to present a lavish musical fete. "The hero is great because he destroys himself; he is also mad...worrying over its faults as a film is like worrying over whether King Lear is well constructed; it really doesn't matter" (Pauline Kael). With Chabi Biswas, Ganga Pada Basu, Kali Sarkhar and Padma Devi. Fully restored.
Jewish Luck
Once touted as "the greatest Jewish film ever made," Jewish Luck was produced in the Soviet Union during the time when government policy still defended different cultures from pervasive racism. The action revolves around Sholem Aleichem's classic stories about the tragicomic character, Menakhem Mendl. Mendl, a daydreaming schlemiel whose get-rich quick schemes are always doomed, manages to transform himself from a beguiling pauper to a wealthy matchmaker. His self-effacing grandiosity peaks with a hilarious Tati-esque dream sequence where Mendl sees himself "saving the America" by loading a steamboat full of young Russian brides. Theorists surmise that Eduard Tissé's cinematography inspired his later work on Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin.
Dir: Alexis Granowsky, 1925, 35mm, 88 min.
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH
(1959) Directed by Henry Levin
Based on Jules Verne's classic novel, this unforgettable adventure to the planet's core was one of Abbott's first major projects as head of Fox's special photographic effects department. James Mason and an all-star cast descend underground, encountering a world teeming with enormous lizards, colorful crystal caves and giant mushrooms.
Screenwriter: Walter Reisch, Charles Brackett. Cast: Pat Boone, James Mason, Arlene Dahl. 35mm, 132 min.
KIDNAPPED (L'UOMO E IL BAMBINO, aka RABID DOGS), 2002 (shot 1974), International Media Films, 92 min. Dir. Mario Bava. A major rediscovery in Bava's career, the unfinished L'UOMO E IL BAMBINO sat in a Rome film vault for over 20 years, until it was finally assembled for DVD release several years ago – and now for theatrical release as KIDNAPPED by producer Alfredo Leone, featuring several new additional scenes directed by Bava's son Lamberto, and additional music by Stelvio Cipriani! An experiment in pure, psychological terror, KIDNAPPED follows a trio of ruthless bank robbers as they hurtle around Rome's super-highways in a stolen car with an old man and a seriously ill child. But stay alert – things are not what they seem to be in this brutally clever action thriller. (In Italian with English subtitles.)
KILL, BABY, KILL (OPERAZIONE PAURA), 1966, International Media Films, 83 min. Dir. Mario Bava. Forget the ridiculous title – this exquisite Gothic brings together several of Bava's major themes: a murdered child who returns from the grave to exact vengeance, and a village blighted by its own ignorant evil. One of the most atmospheric, effective ghost stories ever filmed. Another one of Bava's efforts that was plagued with money problems, you would never know it from his use of the evocative, antiquated locations and the astonishingly superior camerawork. At times, it assumes the hypnotic complexities of an M. C. Escher drawing. Suffused from beginning to end with yet another superb Carlo Rustichelli score. With Erika Blanc, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart. "The last great piece of suggestive horror filmmaking." -- Tim Lucas, The Darkside. (English dubbed print.) Introduction by director Ernest Dickerson (BONES; NEVER DIE ALONE; "The Wire").
KING OF CALIFORNIA, 2007, First Look International, 96 min. Dir. Mike Cahill. Evan Rachel Wood plays a 16-year-old whose life takes an interesting turn when her father (Michael Douglas) is released from a psychiatric hospital where he has spent many years and enlists her in his attempt to unearth a lost Spanish treasure, which he believes to be buried beneath the local Costco. "The wrenching tale has something for anyone who likes their melodrama spiked with palpable tension and genuine suspense." -- Lisa Nesselson, Variety
THE KING OF KONG, 2007, PictureHouse Entertainment, 79 min. Dir. Seth Gordon. In 1982, "Gamer of the Century" Billy Mitchell managed to score 874,300 points on the arcade classic Donkey Kong, a record many thought would never be broken. In 2003, 35-year-old family man Steve Wiebe, after losing his job at Boeing, found solace in Donkey Kong, surpassing Billy's record with a thought-to-be-impossible 1,000,000 points. Steve and Billy then engaged in a cross-country duel to see who could set the high score and become the King of Kong. Along the way, both men learned valuable lessons about what it means to be a father, a husband and a true champion. "A funny and madly arresting new documentary." -- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly Discussion in between films with director Mike Cahill (KING OF CALIFORNIA) and director Seth Gordon (KING OF KONG) schedule permitting.
The Lady And The Beard
Okajima, a college student with invincible kendo sword fighting skills, both vexes and amuses women with his conservative ways and his big, brushy beard which he carries with pride. In an interview with Donald Richie, Ozu said of this picture, "Okada Tokihiko [the "Beard"] gave a smashing performance. The film's a knock out! Even though it only took eight days to shoot, response was much better than that of Young Miss, my previous picture This film business is so unpredictable." Ozu here deftly inflects a Harold Lloyd plot with a touch of raku go Japanese farce.
Dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1931 35mm, 75 min.
Lady in the Lake
Robert Montgomery offers his definition of Philip Marlowe from an unusual first-person camera perspective via Steve Fisher's screen adaptation of Chandler's novel of the same title. While star-director Montgomery more than holds his own as a dyspeptic Philip Marlowe, the principal attributes of this Metro production are extraordinary work by delectable Audrey Totter--she gave a thumb's down to Mark Hellinger's The Killers in order to work in this film--and one of the most authentic coppers of cinematic law enforcement, the great Lloyd Nolan. This underrated send-up is enthralling, superbly crafted entertainment.
Dir. Robert Montgomery, 1947, 35mm, 105 min.
la Promesse
The Dardenne Brothers use a passing conversation in The Brothers Karamazov as a jumping-off point for this searing, claustrophobic exploration of a 15-year-old boy's staggered attempts to unearth his moral compass. Jérémie Renier perfectly channels Dostoyevsky's inscrutable, conflicted heroes as Igor, the son of an amoral slumlord whose generally revolting life centers around the trafficking and exploitation of illegal immigrants. Igor willingly participates as a pawn in his father's grim business, until the pleas of a near-stranger (and his resulting involvement with the man's widow and orphaned infant) force him to contend with the conscience his volatile upbringing and bleak industrial hometown have almost irrevocably stunted. The Dardennes pull expertly from their experience as documentarians to parse out Igor's story in chilling segments—the film's tense naturalism is truly flawless. This is the feature that garnered the brothers a devoted following-- an absolute must-see for rabid fans of Haneke, Loach, and Kieslowski's tonally-similar Decalogue.
Dirs. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 1996, 90 min.
la Roue
Co-Presented by LA Film Forum
Join The Cinefamily and Turner Classic Movies as we co-present the world premiere digital restoration of filmmaker Abel Gance's extraordinary work, La Roue (1922), which was created from the best available prints and negatives from several countries, and which will be accompanied by a new orchestral score by composer Robert Israel. Gance's masterwork is a tragic love story set in the grime and soot of the railway yards, told with astonishing cinematic technical advances. French filmmaker Jean Cocteau took note of the film's transformative power by declaring, "There is cinema before and after La Roue, as there is painting before and after Picasso." By 1923, Gance had established himself as France's leading filmmaker, and this film cemented that reputation. Its sophisticated use of cutting was so innovative that according to Gance, Russian directors Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin traveled to France and personally thanked him for educating them in the art of editing.
Dir. Abel Gance, 1923, Digibeta, 273 min.
There will be a 30 minute break for dinner.
LET'S GET LOST
(Bruce Weber, USA, 1988, 35mm, 119 min)
In the 1950s, Chet Baker's jazz trumpeting, edgy, intimate crooning and pretty boy good looks epitomized West Coast "cool." When famed photographer Bruce Weber caught up with him three decades later, time and drug addiction had ravaged his life and angelic beauty with deep valleys and crevasses. LET'S GET LOST artfully intercuts gorgeous black and white footage of the gaunt latter-day Baker, with images of the young jazz trumpeter in iconic 1950s early television and film appearances and photographs by William Claxton. Shot by Weber and cinematographer Jeff Preiss during what would turn out to be Baker's final year, the film also includes interviews with friends, family, lovers and associates. This transfixing, bittersweet portrait of the jazz legend won the Critics' Prize at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award.
LICENSE TO STEAL
License to Steal is a wonderfully absurd caper flick. Godenzi plays a master thief who finds herself in a dangerous sibling rivalry with Agnes Aurelio; both women have their eyes set on the same prize, the Napoleon Mask, and both are willing to fight to prevent the other from stealing it first, even as the police close in on both of them. This film has myriad, jaw-droppingly gonzo fight scenes, with many of the signature moves that made Sammo Hung one of the best in the business. Dir. Billy Chan Wui-Ngai, 1990, 35mm, 90 min.
LISA AND THE DEVIL, 1972, International Media Films, 95 min. Dir. Mario Bava. First released in the USA in an alternate edit with some different footage as THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM (to phenomenal success), this original, "director's cut" version is one of Bava's masterworks. Tourist Elke Sommer is lured by devil Telly Savalas into a household of white lilies and rotting corpses. Caught in a time warp of decadent, aristocratic decay and horrifying, half-remembered memories of a fatal amour fou, Sommer tries desperately to find her way out of the nightmare. But there may be no escape. Elegiac and dreamlike, with Bava's own poetic brand of morbid, melancholic lyricism. "Beautifully filmed and exquisitely scored by Carlo Savina...as much a dreamy art film as it is a European horror opus. Many of the images rank among Bava's best...with a strange and haunting finale that offers several levels of interpretation." – Mondo-Digital.com; "...a hauntingly beautiful poem about decay and death..." -- Phil Hardy, Overlook Film Encyclopedia of Horror (English dubbed print.)
LOOS ORNAMENTAL
(2008, Austria/Germany) Directed by Heinz Emigholz
One of the masters of European modernism, Adolf Loos helped launch modern architecture with his foundational text decrying decorative building, fittingly titled Ornament and Crime, in 1908. Loos Ornamental presents 28 structures and spaces designed by the Viennese architect, who was also a mentor to Schindler and Richard Neutra, in the chronological order in which they were built. In the fate that befell Loos's career, Emigholz finds echoes of the fate of European modernism in the early decades of the 20th century.
In person: Heinz Emigholz
Presented in German dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 72 min.
THE LOST WORLD
(1960) Directed by Irwin Allen
This dazzling adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel marks the beginning of Abbott's 20-year association with legendary filmmaker Irwin Allen. Building on his experiences with Journey to the Center of the Earth, Abbott and his team use multiple techniques to bring a menagerie of outsized lizards and molten dangers to terrifying life.
Screenwriter: Charles Bennett. Cast: Michael Rennie, Jill St. John, David Hedison. 35mm, 97 min.
LUIS TRENKER: THE EMPEROR OF CALIFORNIA
Germany 1935/36, directed by and starring: Luis Trenker, 97 min. b/w, German/English. digital proj.
It is regarded the most beautiful German western ever made. Despite its emotionalism this film manages to get by on little dialogue and shows an intense feel for scenery. Trenker probably adapted Blaise Cendar's "Gold", in which the life of August Sutter is recounted. Sutter established his agrarian empire in the Sacramento Valley, until it was destroyed by gold fever. What remains at the end of this almost iconographic film –quite untypical for its time – is a feeling of futility.
The Man from London
A Londoni férfi | 2007/b&w/132 min. | Scr: Béla Tarr, László Krasznahorkai; dir: Tarr; w/ Miroslav Krobot, Tilda Swinton
Based on the Georges Simenon novel, Tarr's new film is his first shot outside his native Hungary. Tilda Swinton stars as the wife of a dock worker in a seaside town, whose entire life is changed when her husband witnesses a murder in the middle of the night and winds up with a suitcase of cash.
MANIAC
(from IMDB)
A schizoid, serial killer randomly stalks and kills various young women in New York which he sees as revenge for the mistreatment he got while being raised by his own abusive mother.
The Mechanic
Among hard-core Bronson fans, many feel this is one of his best. Directed by Michael Winner (who also helmed all three of the Death Wish films, as well as Chato's Land and other Bronson flicks), this gritty crime thriller has Bronson as an aging hitman "The Mechanic" who fixes things for an all-powerful "Organization." His specialty is doing every job differently and always making his kill look like an accident. The film has a terrific 16-minute opening where there is no dialogue as Bronson patiently plans a hit. Jan-Michael Vincent also stars as a young apprentice and Keenan Wynn and Jill Ireland (married to Bronson) add terrific supporting work. The script was written by Lewis John Carlino – who went on to write and direct the underrated Robert Duvall drama, The Great Santini. See Bronson in all his 70s squinting glory as The Mechanic!
Dir. Michael Winner, 1972, 35mm, 100 min.
Méličs Matinee
Co-Presented by LA Film Forum
In celebration of the first major home-video retrospective of Georges Méličs films anywhere in the world, The Cinefamily presents an afternoon of films by and about the cinema pioneer, hosted by film historian David Shepard. A genuine virtuoso, Méličs produced and directed his films while also devising the narratives, designing the sets, costumes and props, and frequently performing the leading parts. Our program will start off with a 35mm screening of Le Grand Méličs (1953), by Georges Franju. Assembled from archival and private holdings from around the world, this program will include several of Méličs' "trick" films and a presentation of some of his most famous journey films, including a complete half-hour showing of Conquest of the Pole (1912). Come marvel at the masterworks of a man whose vision and tenacity made possible the acceptance of film as a creative artform, and see why, without a doubt, Méličs cinematic innovations made the medium what it is.
Digibeta, approx 120 min.
Memory Inversion
Rita Gonzalez, artist and assistant curator, special exhibitions, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosts a program that focuses on video art from the late 1980s and early 1990s. The program features videos by Lawrence Andrews, Steve Fagin, and Erika Suderberg, among others. The first in a series of six evening video screenings, this event coincides with the exhibition California Video.
MS. 45
(from IMDB)
A mute woman gets raped twice coming home from work and decides to take matters into her own hands. She dresses suggestively and roams the streets alone, reaking vengeance upon anyone who tries to take advantage of her. Eventually her secret life spills over into her regular life in the fashion industry.
THE MONSTER SQUAD
(from IMDB)
Young kids form a club that is devoted to monsters, but soon get more than they bargained for when Count Dracula adjourns to Earth, accompanied by Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolfman, the Mummy, and the Gillman. The uglies are in search of a powerful amulet that will grant them power to rule the world. Our heroes - the Monster Squad are the only ones daring to stand in their way.
My Name is Albert Ayler
Seven years in the making, Director Kasper Collin's astounding documentary shares the story of prophetic free jazz saxophonist, Albert Ayler. Ayler always said that "if people don't like it now, they will," which has proven more than accurate, as he is now widely seen as one of the most important innovators. In 1962 he recorded his first album in Sweden. Eight years later he was found dead at 34, in New York's East River. Tracing his journey from Cleveland to Sweden and ultimately to New York, this documentary uses newly discovered audio and film recordings of Ayler and interviews with his family, friends, and fellow musicians. Join Kasper Collin in person for a post-screening Q&A.
NAKED KILLER
Since its release in 1992, Clarence Fok and Wong Jing's Naked Killer has garnered a cult following among fans for its over-the-top, explicit violence and graphic sexual nature, and is often mentioned as one of the top ten must-see films for any die-hard fan of HK cinema, so it was a no-brainer to conclude our series with this thriller starring Simon Yam as an impotent and guilt-ridden cop who gets in the middle of a feud between warring teams of female assassins. This is one sick twist of a film; overloaded with stylish action, rampant bloodshed, deranged black humor and if the film teaches us anything, it's this: always look at what you're eating before you put it in your mouth. Dir. Clarence Fok, 1992, DVD, 90 min.
Nazarín
Based on the novel by Benito Peréz Galdós (1958, Luis Buńuel, 35mm, 94 min., in Spanish with English subtitles)
Nazarín was one of Buńuel's most deeply ambivalent films. Pope John Paul II included it in his list of the 45 best films of all time, while film critic Leonard Maltin deemed it "one of Buńuel's harshest critiques of Christianity." Set in the Mexico of Porfirio Diaz, the film centers on Don Nazario, a "Quixote of the priesthood," whose obsessive devotion to Christian ideals results in calamity for himself and those around him. Eventually defrocked, he sets out on a journey through the countryside with a local prostitute and her sex-starved sister. While Nazario is adamant in his desire to "accept suffering with resignation," Buńuel leaves viewers in doubt as to whether the priest should be seen as a saintly fool or a kind of spiritual masochist. The film's ambiguity is heightened by Figuero's fluid camera, which hovers gently but precariously around the characters, often seeming to anticipate their actions and even their thoughts.
NIGHT OF THE CREEPS
(from IMDB)
In 1959, an alien experiment crashes to earth and infects a fraternity member. They freeze the body, but in the modern day, two geeks pledging a fraternity accidentally thaw the corpse, which proceeds to infect the campus with parasites that transform their hosts into killer zombies.
The Outsider
Szabadgyalog | 1981/color/122 min.| Scr/dir: Béla Tarr; w/ András Szabó, Jolán Fodor
A violinist stumbles through fatherhood, marriage, factory work, hospital work, and eventually military service. This is Tarr's first film edited by wife Agnes Hranitzky, with whom he still works to this day.
PARANOID PARK
(2007) Directed by Gus Van Sant
Gus Van Sant's study of teenaged angst is a mesmerizing story centered around a group of youths who hang out at a legendary skate park, and one boy's supposed involvement in a startling act of violence. In the vein of his previous works, Gerry and Elephant, Van Sant's latest work, aided by Chris Doyle's masterful camerawork, is a beautifully rendered meditation on violence and adolescence.
IFC Films. Cast: Gabe Nevins, Dan Liu, Jake Miller, Taylor Momsen. 35mm, 90 min.
PATHER PANCHALI
The opening entry of Satyajit Ray's extraordinary Apu trilogy, adapted from the epic novel of Bengali writer B.B. Bandapaddhay, is a fiercely naturalistic, devastating portrait of poverty and despair. Ray uses his considerable storytelling powers of detail, incident and observation to interpret the relationship of a young Bengali boy and his family. The film has an emotional rhythm and a fluid, precise lyricism. Winner of the Jury Prize at the 1956 Cannes Film festival. Music composed and performed by Ravi Shankar. With Kanu Banerji, Karuna Banerji, Uma Da Gupta and Chunibala Devi.
PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (TERRORE NELLO SPAZIO), 1966, MGM Repertory, 86 min. Dir. Mario Bava. A doomed crew of astronauts (in eye-popping black leather space-suits) is stranded on a malevolent, mist-shrouded planet inhabited by a dying race of invisible body snatchers. Large portions of ALIEN were cribbed from this gorgeous, atmospheric thriller. For the planet's exterior, Bava reportedly had an almost bare set with only a few giant prop rocks to work with – yet through his unique ability to work cinematic magic, drawing on his arsenal of matte paintings and cutouts, his use of forced perspective, models and his extraordinary lighting, the film's special effects create a genuine bad-dream landscape. This is the restored uncut version with the original Italian score! With Barry Sullivan, Norma Bengell. (English dubbed print.)
THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE
(1972)
While its recent digital-heavy remake sank like a stone at the box office, the original Poseidon Adventure has achieved cult status as much for the theatrics of its all-star cast as its bravura effects—which helped set a standard of realism for the modern-day blockbuster.
Screenwriter: Stirling Silliphant, Wendell Mayes. Dialogue: Ronald Neame. Cast: Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters. 35mm, 117 min.
The Prefab People
Panelkapcsolat | 1982/b&w/82 min. | Scr/dir: Béla Tarr; w/ Judit Pogány, Róbert Koltai
In this improvised film Tarr examines "a blue-collar marriage dissolving under pressure from Communist-era poverty, masculine inadequacy, and restless depression."—Michael Atkinson, Village Voice.
PUTTING LOONEY IN THE TUNES
A Double Centennial Tribute To Tex Avery And Michael Maltese
Tex Avery and Michael Maltese, both born a century ago in early 1908, crossed paths at the Warner Bros. animation studio back when it was Leon Schlesinger Productions (now affectionately referred to as "Termite Terrace"). Among their collaborations and individual career achievements are many of the wackiest moments (animation or live action) ever devised for the film medium. This double centennial tribute returns to the big screen some of the short cartoons Avery and Maltese worked on together as well as selected highlights from their prolific individual careers in animated films.
Avery's directorial approach to animation was to celebrate the medium's unique energy and limitless possibilities at a time when Disney animation was striving for increased pictorial realism. Maltese, who wrote dozens of animated shorts over the course of his career, was perfectly suited to incorporating Avery's madcap style into the evolving stable of Warner Bros. characters, which included Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd.
Avery began his career at Walter Lantz's Universal cartoon studio, working on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. In 1935 he moved to Warner Bros., where he would create Daffy Duck and crystallize the personality of Bugs Bunny. From 1941 to 1954 Avery directed cartoons for MGM, introducing audiences to Screwy Squirrel, Droopy Dog and a whole new style of animated humor. In 1954 he initiated his final theatrical cartoons for Walter Lantz (four of which he actually completed, more of which were finished by Alex Lovy); some of these cartoons were Chilly Willy's best.
Maltese began at Warner Bros. in 1937 and actually appeared on camera as a studio guard in You Ought to Be in Pictures, a 1940 Porky Pig short. After working with Avery and many other Warner directors, Maltese would go on to collaborate primarily with Chuck Jones, writing and storyboarding some of the most memorable Warner cartoons ever made, including What's Opera Doc?, Duck Dodgers in the 24˝th Century and One Froggy Evening.
To complement the screenings, "Putting Looney in the Toons" will also feature a unique autobiographical element - audio presentations of rare recorded interviews with both Avery and Maltese (again, singly and together) discussing their careers with film historian Joe Adamson.
Rancho Notorious
1953/color/89 min. | Scr: Daniel Taradash; dir Fritz Lang; w/ Marlene Deitrich, Arthur Kennedy, Mel Ferrer
A cowboy seeking revenge for his girlfriend's murder follows a clue to a bandit hideout.
RIDER ON THE RAIN
The taut French thriller Rider on the Rain from René Clément (Purple Noon) has Bronson and a sex killer brought into a small town with an incoming rainstorm. Reputedly the inspiration for the classic song "Riders on the Storm" by The Doors, it's a moody little gem unfortunately unavailable in a decent video edition anywhere; now you can see it up on the big screen as God intended. Dir. Rene Clement, 1969, 35mm, 115 min.
Robotrix
In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s the buoyant and beautiful Amy Yip made a name for herself as the Queen of the Category Three (the infamous film rating that stands as the HK equivalent of our beloved NC-17), claiming the crown with her starring role in Sex and Zen, the highest grossing Cat III film of all time. But it was a year earlier when she starred in this, one of her most memorable films. The plot concerns an insane scientist who develops a process through which he transfers his own human consciousness into a powerful android, kidnapping an oil sheik's son to convince the sheik to build him a robot army, and then goes on a rape and kidnap spree to test out his new toy. Only hottie cyborgs Amy Yip and Chikako Adyama and their highly technological (and well-endowed) bodies of armor can stop the mayhem. If you thought the only things missing from classics like The Terminator and Robocop was the subtle hand of Russ Meyer, then you're in for a treat.
Dir. Jamie Luk, 1991, 35mm, 94 min.
Rosetta
The intimately observed and quietly heartbreaking Rosetta gave the Dardennes their first international success, garnering best film and actress accolades at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. 17-year-old Emily Dequenne's fierce-yet-vulnerable debut performance as a young woman exiled from society by her own inescapable poverty dominates this precisely observed realist drama, which best demonstrates the filmmakers' gifts of emotional clarity and nuance and their ardent humanism. Rosetta's urgent call for social justice led to new laws protecting young Belgian workers, but its message resonates far beyond the political. Intimately observing the unrelentingly defensive Rosetta as she struggles for work, support and human connection in a city of closed doors, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne draw us closely into the world of a beautiful and forgotten outsider, forging an atmosphere at once gritty and elevated, ecstatic and hushed.
Dirs. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 35mm, 95 min.
Royal Warriors (aka In The Line of Duty 2)
D and B films hoped lightning would strike twice, with this sequel to Yes, Madam. Royal Warriors begins with Michelle Yeoh and Co. thwarting a mid-air rescue attempt of a Chinese criminal by one of his blood brothers, and killing him in the process. Upon their return to Hong Kong, our heroes are targeted for revenge by the other members of the gang. This film was an even greater showcase of Michelle Yeoh's acrobatic abilities, and her stock as a premier action heroine started to rise. This came much to the dismay of husband Poon who allowed her to star in just two other movies for his company before deciding that he would much rather be married to a former Miss Malaysia 1983 than to the next female action hero, so he forced her to retire. Luckily, for the rest of us, in 1992 she divorced Poon and jumped a motorcycle onto a moving train in Jackie Chan's masterpiece Police Story 3: Supercop.
Dir. David Chung Chi-Man, 1986, 35mm, 96 min.
Sátántangó
1994/b&w/435 min. plus an intermission and dinner break | Scr: Béla Tarr, László Krasznahorkai; dir: Tarr; w/ Mihály Víg, Putyi Horváth, László fe Lugossy
Tarr's masterwork tracks the strange and often drunken happenings in a crumbling village on Hungary's remote prairie. "I'd be glad to see it every year for the rest of my life."—Susan Sontag.
SCHINDLER'S HOUSES
(2007, Austria/Germany) Directed by Heinz Emigholz
Structured as a series of elegantly composed views in and around some 40 Southern California homes designed by Austrian-born architect Rudolph Schindler, many nestled into the hillsides of Los Feliz and Silverlake, Schindler's Houses is much more than a survey. Emigholz's long takes, subtle edits and hypnotic soundtrack of everyday sounds draw the viewer into Schindler's pioneering modernism and, through them, into a reinvigorated connection to Los Angeles itself.
In person: Heinz Emigholz
Presented in German and English dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 99 min.
SHOCK (aka BEYOND THE DOOR II), 1979, 92 min. Mario Bava's last feature film (co-directed with son Lamberto, uncredited) revisits themes first explored in KILL, BABY, KILL and THE WHIP AND THE BODY, as Daria Nicolodi (DEEP RED) and her child are haunted by the ghost of her first husband, a drug addict. Actor Ivan Rassimov (MAN FROM DEEP RIVER), who usually played a villain in 1970s Italian pictures, does a rare good-guy turn here as Nicolodi's concerned doctor. With John Steiner (TENEBRE) as Nicolodi's current, almost-never-at-home airline pilot husband. Contains some of maestro Bava's scariest, most impressive effects. (English dubbed print.)
SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT:
Works of the London Film-Makers' Co-operative in two programs
The London Film-Makers' Co-operative was established in 1966 to support work on the margins of art and cinema. It uniquely incorporated three related activities within a single organization – a workshop for producing new films, a distribution arm for promoting them, and its own cinema space for screenings. In this environment, Co-op members were free to explore the medium and control every stage of the process. The physical production – printing and processing – of a film became a vital part of its creation, and is what distinguished the LFMC films from other avant-garde work of the period.
SMOG
(1962, Italy) Directed by Franco Rossi
Franco Rossi directed this rarely screened film about an Italian attorney and his brief encounter with the City of Angels. With a whole day to kill before his connecting flight to Mexico City, Vittorio heads for Hollywood, but feels lost amidst the lack of cafes and other pedestrians. He soon meets Italian ex-pat Mario (Renato Salvatori), who makes ends meet by teaching Italian to Beverly Hills housewives, while dreaming of striking oil in Culver City. Mario introduces him to the pretty Gabriella (Annie Girardot), who creates ambient music systems for art galleries and swimming pools. Gabriella's dream is to buy the glamorous glass-walled pad she's house-sitting in the Hollywood Hills (Pierre Koenig's Stahl House). With forays into swanky Hollywood cocktail parties, a diner, bar and bowling alley, SMOG is a fun and fascinating time capsule of mid-century Los Angeles.
Cast: Enrico Maria Salerno, Annie Girardot, Renato Salvatori. Presented in Italian dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 88 min.
THE SNAKE PIT
(1948) Directed by Anatole Litvak
Director Anatole Litvak's searing melodrama about a woman's struggle with mental illness exemplifies how visual effects can punctuate key themes and emotions in any genre. Abbott's crucial contribution to the film literalizes the metaphor of its title, powerfully connecting us to the tormented subjectivity of Olivia de Havilland's suffering hospital patient.
Screenwriter: Millen Brand. Cast: Olivia de Havilland, Mark Stevens, Leo Genn. 35mm, 108 min.
The Son
"The corners of walls, staircases, spirals, hallways. Breaking straight lines. Walk forward/walk backward. Movements of hesitation. Labyrinth. Maybe in Olivier's head." –The Dardenne Brothers
The Dardenne Brothers' detailed diary on the making of The Son are filled with notes like these about star Olivier Gourmet's body, which is "in permanent disequilibrium." It's through the physicality of Gourmet's superior performance that we first begin to feel the power of The Son. The camera stalks him aggressively, often from behind, with tightly framed Steadicam movements as muscular as the neck on the back of the head we're staring at. It's like we're hoping to eventually see through his skull, and into his brain...and then, miraculously, we do. Slowly the close-ups reveal more of his face, and the movie reveals more information, until eventually the audience reaches unexpected heights of emotional identification. The Son brings you completely inside a man's personal moral and emotional crisis, till every tiny expression, every minute movement of Gourmet's body language, becomes explosive in its possible ramifications. Suspenseful, moving, and thought-provoking.
Dirs. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2002, 35mm, 103 min.
The Sparrows
If typical Pickford vehicles leave you longing for the deeply-embedded weirdness of her Expressionist contemporaries across the pond, the humid, disorienting atmospherics of this sinister Southern fairytale might placate the part of you that disregards most silent fare in favor of daydreams about Night of the Hunter. The Sparrows is a true departure for The Girl with the Golden Hair, as it finds its star extracting orphaned moppets from—good God—a baby farm—while thrusting its gifted cast into thick tangles of vines, delirium-inducing surrealities, cloistered storybook settings, and swamps infested with orphan-starved alligators, among other places. The Sparrows gave Pickford a chance to reveal the depth and ambition she brought to her off-screen life, as an accomplished, passionate professional, the key player in a legendary studio. As her friend Lillian Gish would famously say: "Those little virgins, after five minutes you got sick of playing them - to make them more interesting was hard work."
Dir. William Beaudine, 1927, 35mm, 84 min
Standard Operating Procedure
In Standard Operating Procedure, documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (The Fog of War, The Thin Blue Line) examines the context of the shocking and damning photographs of prisoners from Abu Ghraib. Morris talks directly to the soldiers who took the images and those who were in the photographs to try and answer the question: How could American values become so compromised that Abu Ghraib—and the subsequent cover up—happen?
Storm Over Asia
It is 1918, and the Mongolian descendants of Genghis Khan have become pastoral herdsmen, exploited on their ancestral land which has been occupied by cigar-smoking British merchants who "buy cheap and sell dear." Bair, our shepherd protagonist, steals a precious fur piece and sets off a series of events that up the simmering national differences to a full boil. Vsevolod Pudovkin, an avant-garde master, has created a work that operates on many levels—it is a breathless adventure film, a recording of a lost way of life, a timeless and humanistic rallying cry for revolution, and a fascinating take on the propaganda film.
Dir: Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1928, 16mm, 74 min.
THE STRANGE ONE, 1957, Sony Repertory, 99 min. Dir. Jack Garfein. Ben Gazzara has a field day in his screen debut as a warped military-school student with a brutal iron grip on his fellow classmates. Based on THE GRADUATE author Calder Willingham's novel End As A Man, THE STRANGE ONE is unique as one of the few projects developed by the Actors Studio (where it began as an Off-Broadway play) that made it intact to the screen. The political allegory and sado-masochistic and gay subtexts right below the surface caused considerable controversy on the film's initial release. With George Peppard (also in his first feature film), Pat Hingle.
THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, 1974, MGM Repertory, 104 min. Dir. Joseph Sargent. Nerve-demolishing suspense delivered at an intoxicating pace as merciless hijackers led by cold-blooded Robert Shaw take over a NYC subway and demand $1,000,000 in ransom. Hardboiled action thrillers just don't get much better. Plus, as an added bonus, the viewer gets to enjoy some of the most profanely entertaining, hard-nosed, unsentimental dialogue of any 1970s fare. With a sterling cast that includes Walter Matthau, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo and Jerry Stiller, and a killer score by David Shire.
Tamango (1958)
Banned for its inter-racial romance, Tamango follows the voyage of a Dutch slave captain (Curd Jergens), who faces a revolt sparked by a captured African slave (Alex Cressan). The rebellion reaches a showdown when the captain's mistress (a devastating Dorothy Dandridge) is taken prisoner.
DIR. JOHN BERRY
RUNNING TIME: 98 MINUTES.
They Drive By Night
1940/b&w/93 min. | Scr: Jerry Wald, Richard Macaulay; dir: Raoul Walsh; w/ George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino
Truck driving brothers are framed for murder by a lady psycho.
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
On an isolated island, a young woman slips into schizophrenia as her father, a writer, dispassionately chronicles her descent. The woman's discovery of the diary hastens her disintegration, and her husband and brother are implicated in her tragic fate. 91 mins.
Tokyo Chorus
Thematically Tokyo Chorus anticipates some of Ozu's later mature work, but stylistically Ozu is clearly taking a Hollywood influenced approach to his material. One of the strands of the film concerns the contrast between urban and suburban living. Tokyo Chorus is remarkably moving, particularly in the way Ozu captures without sentiment and with humor the struggle of a salaryman to provide for his family during the Depression. There are some outstanding images and sequences within this film that are among Ozu's best, and here he perfectly balances humor and pathos. With a screenplay by Noda Kogo who became Ozu's favored writer and who worked on many of his later masterpieces (Tokyo Story, An Autumn Afternoon) Ozu deftly combines the eager young man on the go situation of a Harold Lloyd film with some of the social criticism found in King Vidor's The Crowd, another Ozu favorite.
Dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1930, 35mm, 90 min.
TOKYO STORY
"One of the manifest miracles of the cinema" ( The New Yorker ), TOKYO STORY has regularly placed on the Top Ten list of most polls, along with RULES OF THE GAME, THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, and CITIZEN KANE. It should be seen at least once, if not once a year. An elderly couple journeys to Tokyo to visit their children and are confronted by indifference, ingratitude, and self-absorption. The traditional tatami-and-tea domesticity fairly crackles with vexation and discontent; only the placid daughter-in-law (Setsuko Hara, summoning up a life of disappointment) shows any kindness to the old people. When they are packed off to a resort by their impatient children, the film deepens into an unbearably moving meditation on mortality. "One of the greatest of all Japanese motion pictures. Ozu's style, now completely refined, utterly economical, creates a film which is unforgettable because it is so right, so true, and because it demands so much from an audience" (Donald Richie).
TOWERING INFERNO
(1975) Directed by John Guillermin and Irwin Allen
A pinnacle of the 1970s disaster film cycle, Towering Inferno confronted Abbott with the unenviable task of believably inserting a 138-storey building into the skyline of San Francisco—and then burning it down. Using every trick in the book, Abbott achieved an unparalleled level of effects realism that still gives CGI a run for its money.
Screenwriter: Stirling Silliphant. Cast: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden. 35mm, 165 min.
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, 1968, Warner Bros. Classics, 139 min. "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that," murmurs supercomputer HAL 9000 as it attempts to eliminate bothersome human astronaut Keir Dullea in master filmmaker Stanley Kubrick's mind-blowing meditation on the inherent dangers (and wonders) of technology, the limitless vistas of space, and the future of the human race itself. Based on a 1948 short story "The Sentinel" by Arthur C. Clarke, "2001" was reconceived by Kubrick himself, working with author Clarke to create the ultimate Journey Into the Unknown. But if you think you've seen "2001," think again – until a few years ago, the film was available only in a 35 mm version that reduced Kubrick's legendary visuals (and the spectacular 6-track stereo sound) to a pale shadow of their true glory. Before his death, Kubrick oversaw a painstaking, frame-by-frame restoration of the film in 70mm, resulting in a version that looks and sounds as good as (if not better than) the original 1968 release! With Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester.
Underworld Cinema: The Life and Work of J.X. Williams
J. X. Williams was a legendary bottom-of-the-barrel director in the sixties and seventies, pushed even lower by his Commie leanings. One of the few surviving artifacts of Williams's tawdry career, "Peep Show" is a strange amalgam of dank noir drama and cheesy journalism, recounting Sam "Momo" Giancana's reign with the Outfit. Styled as a confessional by one of Momo's gunsels, the tabloid tell-all traces the Cosa Nostra's connections first to the fall of Cuba and Kennedy's mob-supported presidency, then to a spreading blight of drug trafficking that swept through Vegas on the way to the White House. The lineup of seedy suspects includes Frank Sinatra, crown crooner to the mob; Babs Deluxe, a voluptuous vixen who could shake it for a shakedown; J. Edgar Hoover, never prettier in a dress; and the anonymous mob enforcer who sings like a true Soprano. Noel Lawrence, the reigning J. X. Williams expert, will talk about this misfit director's overlooked and illicit career. ?As a special bonus, Lawrence will also present three short subjects from the J.X. filmography: "The Virgin Sacrifice", "Satan Claus", and "Psych-Burn".
The Virgin Spring (1960)
This somber fable set in medieval Sweden tells of the brutal rape and murder of an innocent girl and the chilling revenge exacted upon her attackers by her deeply religious farming family. 89 mins.
VOYAGE TO THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD
(VIAGEM AO PRINCÍPIO DO MUNDO)
(1997, Portugal/France) Directed by Manoel de Oliveira
This supremely elegiac road movie stars Marcello Mastroianni, in his last screen role, as Oliveira's alter ego, a Portuguese-born film director on a wistful, farewell tour of his native land to visit key sites from his privileged youth. Oliveira's stately pacing sustains a gently reflective tone until a darker current takes hold, transforming the film into an urgent meditation on the search for origins and the plight of Portugal's rural dispossessed, their difficult history and vanishing way of life.
Introduced by Randal Johnson, UCLA professor and author of Manoel de Oliveira; book-signing follows the screening.
Screenwriter: Manoel de Oliveira. Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Leonor Silveira, Diogo Dória, Jean-Yves Gauthier. Presented in French and Portuguese dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 95 min.
VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA
(1961) Directed by Irwin Allen
When the Van Allen radiation belt engulfs the earth in apocalyptic flames, it's up to the crew of a US nuclear submarine, naturally, to save the world. Between blood-red skies and the darkest ocean depths, they confront all manner of obstacles, courtesy of Abbott's effects, including underwater mine fields, enemy subs and, in a nod to Jules Verne, a giant octopus.
Screenwriter: Irwin Allen, Charles Bennett. Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Joan Fontaine, Barbara Eden. 35mm, 105 min.
A Well-Spent Life
Blank's perfectly sweet, laconic portrait of genius bluesman Mance Lipscomb is one of the director's most satisfying morsels: his lens alternates, with stunning care, between slices of the guitarist's unmatched musical skill and pastoral philosophies, and his marvelously funny, gentle home life. Come see why there's no question as to what made this Kurt Vonnegut's all-time favorite film.
Dir. Les Blank, 1972, 44 min
Werckmeister Harmonies
2000/b&w/145 min. | Scr: Béla Tarr, László Krasznahorkai; dir: Tarr; w/ Lars Rudolph, Peter Fitz, Hanna Schygulla
A mysterious travelling circus featuring an embalmed whale ignites a violent revolt among the citizens of a remote village. Tarr's magic-realist film depicts a series of Kafkaesque events as seen through the eyes of a naďve postman. With a haunting score by Hungarian composer Mihály Vig.
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
The most unlikely inspirational film ever made documented the results of a bet between iconic German filmmaker Werner Herzog (subject of Blank's classic 1982 documentary Burden of Dreams) and his student, Errol Morris (he's since fulfilled Herzog's prophecy tenfold, becoming the quirky visionary documentarian responsible for Fast, Cheap & Out of Control and The Fog of War). The Cinefamily would like to confirm that, yes, the time has come for you, finally, to watch Werner Herzog eat an entire shoe, because life is short, and it is marvelous, and a fancy chef cooked the shoe in duck fat first.
Dir. Les Blank, 1980, 20 min
Werner Herzog: Three Documentaries
HERAKLES
1962, 10 min. b/w, German w/English subtitles, digital proj.
Werner Herzog's very first film relates to six of the twelve labours of Heracles. The film starts with shots of young male bodybuilders working out in a gym, posing on a stage and flexing their muscles. Each of the labours are then announced by on-screen text in the form of a question, followed by related scenes of modern challenges intercut with the bodybuilders.
HUIE'S SERMON
1980, 42 min, color, English w/German subtitles, digital proj.
This short lasts for the entire length of the reverend's Huies' ermon, filmed in front of a live congregation in the reverends hometown of Brooklyn. This really is documentary in its rawest form as the single camera shot tracks the manic reverend from a safe distance for the entire length of his sermon as Huie escalates into an ever increasing incomprehensible frenzy.
LESSONS OF DARKNESS
1992, 55 min, color, German w/English subtitles, digital proj.
Though shot in contemporary times, the horrific destruction and consistently distanced humanity on display make the movie feel more like a work of sophisticated science-fiction than an examination of current events. The footage that Herzog has shot mainly focuses on the blazes in the oil fields of Kuwait. It uses sheer scale to put the conflict into perspective while demonstrating both the awesome power of nature, especially fire, and our primal attraction to its beauty. Glorious helicopter shots of oil coated expanses reveal a seemingly hopeless world of decay, where men scramble about trying to fix a cataclysm.
What Did The Lady Forget?
The lives of hen-pecked Professor Komiya and his socialite wife Tokiko are turned upside down when their spoilt niece Setsuko comes to stay with them from Osaka. Setsuko is a "moga" (modern girl,) and Ozu gets a chance to satirize contemporary social mores in this movie. The film is a social satire of the upper class and it even mixes in elements of screwball comedy. Ernst Lubitsch seems to be an influence here. Ultimately this is Ozu at his most lighthearted. What Did the Lady Forget is a wonderful comedy highlighted by terrific performances. This may not be the most significant film Ozu ever made, but it is one of his most charming comedies.
Dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1937, 35mm, 71 min.
THE WHIP AND THE BODY (LA FRUSTA E IL CORPO) 1963, 92 min. Dir. Mario Bava. Demonic aristocrat Christopher Lee returns from the dead to whip his brother's wife, Daliah Lavi (LORD JIM; the original CASINO ROYALE), into a sexual ecstasy in this chilling essay on the ties that bind. Amour fou is taken to its ultimate conclusion in a deliriously romantic study in perverse psychology, our choice as the most sumptuous, atmosphere-drenched Gothic chiller from the last forty years! Widely censored at the time of its release, this may be the only surviving print in the U.S. Carlo Rustichelli provided the melancholic score, rife with haunting love themes for the damned. "Lee once said that this inspired sado-masochistic fantasy is the best of his Italian films...Bava creates an uncannily sensuous atmosphere, especially when he trains his camera on Lavi, obsessively detailing her face as desire, pleasure and pain mingle in a hallucinatory erotic delirium." – Phil Hardy, Overlook Film Encyclopedia of Horror (English dubbed print.)
WHO'S MINDING THE MINT, 1967, Sony Repertory, 97 min. Dir. Howard Morris. When U.S. Mint employee Harry Lucas (Jim Hutton) inadvertently destroys $50,000 in currency, he sees a scam printing new money after-hours as his only way out of trouble. Unfortunately for him, his plan grows increasingly complicated as he brings in more and more partners -- most of them flawed or incompetent in some way -- on board for the operation. This hilarious riff on the heist genre boasts superb comic performances by Milton Berle, Joey Bishop and Jamie Farr, among others.
THE YAKUZA, 1975, Warner Bros., 112 min. Sydney Pollack directs this potent, poignant thriller that blends American neo-noir and the then-peaking Japanese yakuza film genre. Robert Mitchum is a world-weary private eye who joins up with a taciturn kendo instructor (yakuza movie icon Ken Takakura), who has a wartime obligation to Mitchum. Likewise, Mitchum owes past wartime comrade, Tanner (Brian Keith) a favor as well, and it's a humdinger: rescue Tanner's kidnapped daughter in Japan. A labyrinthine plot is set in motion and soon Mitchum and Takakura become embroiled in a horrifying series of double-crosses and mixed signals that result in a trail of bloody retribution. Adapting the story by Leonard Schrader, Paul Schrader and Robert Towne wrote the moody screenplay. Co-starring Richard Jordan (THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE), Keiko Kishi, Herb Edelman, Eiji Okada. The sleek production design by Stephen B. Grimes not only evokes the Spartan Japanese lifestyle, but also amply reflects an atmosphere where cold, serpentine violence can strike from the darkness like a coiled viper. "Mitchum is at his laconic leaden-eyed best as the private eye who is forced to team up with a reformed criminal played by Takakura, an icon of the Japanese gangster genre...there are enough double-crosses to satisfy the most jaded fans of the genre." – Channel 4 Film (UK) Discussion following the film on the work of Stephen B. Grimes.
Yes, Madam
The film that introduced both Michelle Khan and blonde Pennsylvania native Cynthia Rothrock to the world. While Yeoh would go on to marry millionaire Dickson Poon, owner of D and B Films (which found its first major success with this picture), Rothrock became the hottest non-Asian commodity in Hong Kong, leading to her signing a long-term contract with Golden Harvest. Born from the mind of Sammo Hung, an executive at D and B, Yes, Madam is a tour-de-force of female ass-kicking that would serve as the template for every "girls-with-guns" rip-off to follow. The plot isn't entirely original: two mis-matched cops team up to recover a stolen microfilm bearing crucial evidence against a bunch of gangsters. How will they ever get along? The originality really comes in the amazing choreography of the fight sequences, made even more impressive by the fact that Yeoh hadn't one day of fight training under her belt at the start of pre-production. To call this her trial by fire (or in this case, glass) would be an understatement.
Dir. Corey Yuen, 1985, 35mm, 93 min.