PSA: Great Films on the Big (or Slightly Bigger) Screen
Friday, January 4, 2013 at 11:31PM 
If there's an awesome repertory movie house near you make sure to support it this weekend or next during the peak craziness over this year's Oscar nominees. See something really special you haven't seen before to remind you that the here and now ain't everything.
NYC -The gob-smackingly brilliant Black Narcissus (pictured left, which we wrote about during Season 1 of 'Hit Me...') is playing at Film Forum and will make nearly every one of next week's Oscar nominees look like timid wallflowers when it comes to psychosexualspiritual provocations, expressive production design and the use of color and light. Take that, uh... Life of Pi (?)
LA -The American Cinematheque in Hollywood is playing a double bill of Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas and the Coen Bros' Miller's Crossing on Saturday night in case this year's dearth of organized crime epics is bumming you out. [Insert tasteless joke about disorganized crime in Django Unchained. Hi, Jonah Hill!] Under no circumstances whatsoever should you miss Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons next Friday the 11th if you have never seen it. I guarantee you it demolishes any of the fresh Oscar nominees you'll still be talking from the day before.
CHICAGO -Okay okay... if you wanna stick with this year's crop but would like to try something new let it be known that The Rabbi's Cat, one of the foreign films hoping to squeeze out an American blockbuster from the Animated Feature Oscar shortlist is playing at the Siskel Film Center. I wish I were in Chicago to catch this. If you do, please report back.
Meanwhile back here in NYC, Norway's expensive ocean explorers drama Kon-Tiki which is hopefully something special since Norway chose it rather than Joachim Trier's top ten magnet Oslo August 31st to represent them for the Best Foreign Language Film category has one showing at the Walter Reade on Saturday evening.
...got any big movie plans this weekend?
Reader Comments (8)
don't forget in San Francisco, the Castro will be showing "Beau Travail" next week and then "Pierrot le Fou" later this month. and of course there will be Noir City 11 at the end of the month. 1.5 amazing weeks of noir on the big screen like god intended it to be seen.
I attended a repertory screening of BLUE VELVET. The print was in drab shape and the sound may not have been stereo. All moments to whisper with my cousin received a resounding shush — I don't think there's a movie I need to see on the big screen that I missed during its theatrical run.
All About Eve was actually playing for two showings at a theater in Manhattan on Thursday but I skipped it because I didn't feel like traveling to the city (I live in Brooklyn). I'm kicking myself now, lol.
San Francisco Bay Area, if you don't know about BAM/PFA (Pacific Film Archive) you should. They have non-stop showcases of classics with a Spaghetti Western and Hitchcock series coming up shortly to commemorate Django and Hitchcock.
www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/
I totally support your call. I saw West Side Story recently and I still levitate when I think about it.
PS I saw Zero Dark Thirty yesterday.
International (not that there's probably any fellow Canberra readers here, but....) - weekend's already half over, but tomorrow Arc Cinema in Canberra is showing potential-Oscar-nominee COMPLIANCE. And next weekend it is both continuing it's Steampunk season with 20,00 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, followed by an outdoor screening of BRAZIL, and then HELLZAPOPPIN' on the Sunday.
Hopefully seeing Polanski's Repulsion at the BFI later, which I loathed when I first saw it, so I'm hoping the big screen changes my mind given how revered it is and how heavily in my wheelhouse it is. (Yes, my wheelhouse is fucked up.) I'm hoping I can persuade my friend to stick around for Chinatown afterwards too.
UGH. Being sick sucks.
I just found out that The Impossible AND Zero Dark Thirty are both finally playing near me. And that The Sessions is on its last week at the local art house. And I feel like CRAP.
And oh how I wish there was a good repertory theater near me. My dream is to one day make enough money to build/open one of my own. There aren't enough of them outside the big metro areas.