The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
We're aware that we've been talking about the Criterion Channel a lot in these here parts but we recognize not all of you are subscribers (yet). So here are eight random suggestions of things to watch on streaming services if you're scrolling zombie-like through your endless quantity-not-quality options.
There's good undiscovered stuff if you know where to look!
Okay, ready? Here are 8 things we like available now...
Confession: I am extremely terrible about keeping a calendar, or even a letterboxd list which I update sporadically from time to time before forgetting again. In short the only "diary" of any sort I have is this ode to movies you're visiting now... The Film Experience. Nevertheless in reviewing the film year I realized that I haven't been frequenting NYC's wonderful repertory theaters as much as in past years. Must fix. And I really have to do a better of keeping track of what I'm seeing in general lest I actually forget I saw something and it's missing from LISTS. *gasp*
But I ♥ going to the movies. And if you're reading this it's safe to assume that you do too. So it's list time. Please share your favorite moments of moviegoing this year in the comments.
15 Favorite Moments Inside Movie Theaters in '15 because it's the best place to be!
15 The Incredible Hulk(2008) April 29th: That moment when my best friend and I suddenly realized that we could leave anytime during the Marvel Movie Marathon (preceding the premiere of The Age of Ultron) and still get the same seat. What a relief. I mean... nobody should have to sit through Iron Man 2 ever again!
14 Clouds of Sils Maria(2014) April 6th: Sitting down for a special invite-only screening of Clouds of Sils Maria and seeing so many actors I loved in the audience (Diane Lane, Parker Posey, Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin). Turner was surprisingly willing to make conversation afterwards, her voice miraculously even lower than onscreen in person; she kindly ignored my fairly obvious terror at finally meeting one of my all time favorite goddesses.
13 Hateful Eight (2015) - INTERMISSION ONLY! Dec: Though I've admired Teo Bugbee as a writer for over a year (and she's written for the site on rare occasion) we finally met recently and every time we managed to sync up our schedules (lunch, drinks at a bar, a screening of Hateful Eight) it somehow become an extra imaginary screening of Carolwe talked about the movie so much. Basically Teo is the only way I made it through Hateful Eight.
Some people plan weeks in advance but if you're a 'what shall we do this weekend?' last minute type like, my, uh, friend... who never has any firm plans until the last second even on holiday weekends... Here are some suggestions depending on where you live!
NEW YORK CITY This weekend the Walter Reade has an Italian film program. You can see the Alain Deloin (mmmm) drama The Professor (1972) tonight and I personally don't plan to miss Sophia Loren's Oscar winning Two Women (1961) on Sunday (two showings) since that one is very difficult to find a good print DVD of and it's a rare chance to see it on the big screen. The Maysles Cinema in Harlem is showing Iris (2015), Albert Maysles' last film, all week long with a few Q&As scheduled. The Museum of the Moving image has a Masaki Kobayashi retrospective starting this weekend and you can see the Oscar nominated Kwaidan (1964) on Sunday. Make sure to time your visit so that you can see MoMI's great expansive Mad Men exhibit. I already want to go back to it.
If you're not in the cinema mood (gasp), see one of the Tony nominees. Several of them are super expensive / sold out but you can still get discount tickets for arguable Best Play frontrunner The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, and the gorgeous dance musical An American in Paris (reviewed). The cheapest discount tickets that are 100% worthwhile are Chita Rivera in The Visit (the music is gorgeous and it may well be your last chance to see this legend live - she's 82!) and the exuberant funny On the Town (reviewed) but I apologize in advance should you become greatly obsessed with Tony Yazbeck; It can't be helped really, you will. Great sources for discounts are Today's Tix and TDF.
CHICAGO Tonight at 7:45 PM TFE favorite David Dastmalchian will be at the Gene Siskel Film Center to discuss his new film Animals, a tough but teary romantic drama about two small time grifters / addicts. So buy a ticket, won't you? I personally love it when actors create their own work to show Hollywood that they're more than just whatever they've been typecast as.
LOS ANGELES Always the perfect weather there, right? And they make use of it with several outdoor screenings. This weekend Almost Famous, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Rear Window, and Dazed and Confused at various locations.
SAN FRANCISCO The Roxie theater has a double feature of The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) and The American Friend (1977) as part of their "copy & paste" series on remakes and reimaginings. That could be fun. The Castro has a 85th birthday celebration for Harvey Milk with a screening and fireside chat of The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), the Oscar winning documentary that is one of the greatest documentaries I've personally ever seen. Selling fast apparently so if you're free tonight.
LONDON There's a "Bollywood Fever" festival at the OXO Tower Wharf today through Monday with 15 different films, a few of which are sold out already.
I freely admit that if I were anywhere near London I wouldn't rest till I'd seen Imelda Staunton doing "Mama Rose" in Gypsy (extended through November!)
EVERYWHERE Movies available to rent or download from iTunes that are also in theaters OR skipped them altogether are the aforementioned Animals from friend of TFE Dastmalchian and a movie you might not have heard of called Ask Me Anything. I haven't seen it yet but full disclosure, I know people involved: a friend of mine produced it and it won Best Actress at the Nashville Film Festival last year (which I've attended as a jury member a couple of times)! Put it in your curiousity pile if you enjoy Britt Robertson. She's already headlined a few small pictures before her mainstream breakthrough-bid this year (Tomorrowland and The Longest Ride) and this one, about a girl between high school and college chronicling her life on an anonymous blog, is the most recent of them. It was even cited by Taste of Cinema as one of the ten most underappreciated indies of recent year.
Actually EVERYONE was back this weekend in the sequel-saturated landscape. The nice surprise is that it was totally infused with girl power. The real kind, not just the lip service kind with "Strong Female Characters" that the boys then rescue. OK, The Scarlet Witch is rescued by The Vision in Age of Ultron, but she brings it in the power department overall and the film just passed the one billion mark worldwide and became the top grosser of 2015 (in the US). But the top two this week were newer 'old' ones. Anna Kendrick and her harmonizing family The Barden Bellas returned to rescue themselves as they headed toward graduation and the world championships. Meanwhile Mad Max: Fury Road won the hearts of critics with its surprisingly feminist storyline and ambitous action setpieces. The film essentially has two title characters because the story may start with Mad Max but it's Imperator Furiosa in the driver's seat and she's taking this franchise down roads it's never been down before. Charlize Theron once again reminds the world that she's every bit as strong an action star as any man (and considering that Blunt, Jolie, and Johansson are also aces in this department, there are surely others who could carry an action picture if given the chance these actresses have had).
And "They" say nobody will go see female superheroes. That's what all of these bitches are, you regressive studio execs! WAKE UP. Fund more female-driven movies.
TOP TEN BOX OFFICE May 15-17 Weekend 01 Pitch Perfect 2 $70.3 NEW 02 Mad Max: Fury Road $44.4 NEW Review 03 Avengers: Age of Ultron$38.8 (cum. $372) Review & Marathon & Podcast 04 Hot Pursuit$5.7 (cum. $23.5) Review 05 Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 $3.6 (cum. $62.9) 06 Furious 7 $3.6 (cum. $343.8) Review 07Age of Adaline $3.2 (cum. $37) 08 Home$2.7 (cum. $165.6) 09 Ex Machina $2.1 (cum. $19.5) Review 10 Far From the Madding Crowd $1.3 (cum. $2.6)
NEW LIMITED RELEASES May 15-17 Weekend 01 Where Hope Grows $490,000 (276 Theaters) 02 Good Kill $17,000 (2 Theaters) 03 I'll See You in My Dreams$16,000 (3 Theaters) 04 In the Name of My Daughter$14,000 (3 Theaters) 05 Animals $12,000 (10 Theaters) 06 The Connection $9,800 (2 Theaters)
In truly perplexing news, who is still buying tickets to Paul Blart Mall Cop2 when there are this many good movies in theaters of pretty much all genres !?
In 'Less Likely To Be At a Theater Near You' news, Far From the Madding Crowd had a great weekend, vaulting into the top ten with an expansion despite still being in a few thousand less theaters than everything else in the top ten.
Kim Shaw and David Dastmalchian in "Animals"
Of the other new releases, we hope y'all will go see ANIMALS. It's true we're biased in favor of the movie since the film's screenwriter/star David Dastmalchian guest blogged here just recently and I had the pleasure of moderating their Q&A here in NYC this weekend at the Village East cinema. But you don't have to take my word for it since it was a big hit at SXSW and also has the thumbs up from critics. It's currently available for download and playing theatrically in NYC, Atlanta, Kansas City, Detroit, Seattle, Phoenix, Miami, Columbus, and Los Angeles. Next week it adds Chicago, where it was filmed and where many of its actors are from, to the list so if you live in Chicago head to the Gene Siskel next weekend! I told Dastmalchian that it seems terribly fitting that I went to the movie specifically to see him work a rare leading role and I came out appreciating not just him but actors I wasn't yet familiar with in other much smaller roles, the kind he used to get noticed for.
David Dastmalchian concludes his guest blog takeover with this playlist (which we've helpfully collated on Spotify for you) - you should follow him on Twitter & Instagram ! - Editor
Photograph by Braden Moran
Soundtrack of My Life -by David Dastmalchian
I read once that memory is like film editing. We cut and paste the sequences together in a way that make our past fit into the context of our present. I have this strange kind of daydream that feels like a movie trailer and I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. I look at a time in my life – or my life as a whole – and imagine it with few words but with a great deal of music. I change the songs often and the points of focus shift from day-to-day but I will share just a few of the predominant soundtrack jams from the life and mind of, well, you know – me.
1. Shine on You Crazy Diamond – Pink Floyd My parents used to shoot super 8 films of us as kids in Kansas and my dad had them all edited together onto a DVD a few years back. There’s no audio so you’re just sitting there watching us all blowing out candles or learning how to swim in silence. Actually, I think there was some bad Vince Guaraldi rip-off jazz that the Costco or wherever people had dubbed in. I just popped in my Wish You Were Here and listened and watched. Perfect music to sum up so much.
2. The Rainbow Connection – Jim Henson The Muppet Movie and its effect on my life are no small secret. I first took to a stage when I was 6 years old in Kansas so that I could strum a ukulele in my overalls and sing this song which says EVERYTHING you need to say about love and imagination. Beautiful, man.
3. Come Together and Let it Flow – Spiritualized These anthems of my late teens and early twenties sum up the tracking shot of a dude with blasted pupils, sitting wayyyyy back on a couch in a poster-lined apartment in Chicago and watching the wax slowly melt off the candles. I believe that I was really trying to find some way to link up with the people around me and only inadvertently succeeded in isolating myself from them all.
4. Goodnight, Irene – Leadbelly And old pal of mine used to do a bang-up version of this song when he would play around Chicago – but it really strikes up an image for me of driving across the long expanse of endless highway across my Kansas homeland. Those early memories of sitting in the back of my parents station wagon and rolling through the wheat-lined roads of the Midwest are some of my most cinematic mental images.
5. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes – The Platters My mother had a “Golden Collection” of the Platters (one of those record sets you’d order off TV that came with special liner notes and fancy packaging) and I loved it. We would listen to the records on the old Motorola console in our living room and I would slow dance with an imaginary woman of my dreams – I think at that time it was probably Kristy McNichol or Justine Bateman. Or Lita Ford.
6. Simple Twist of Fate – Bob Dylan AND Joan Baez have versions of this classic jam that sum up the quick cuts of my early 20’s when I was hitch-hiking and riding Greyhound busses from Seattle to Asheville and trying to find my way back to Alaska while riding out the decade-long trip of simpleadventure and recklessness that was starting to ramp up in speed and severity, which leads to….
7. Stuck on You (Failure) One of those songs that plays perfectly in the long, spiraling overhead crane shot as it comes down to face a guy who thought he knew what he was getting into and didn’t realize until it was too late that he was in way, way, way too deep over his head.
9. Which leads to that final deathbed moment. It’s a beautiful song but sad – but shouldn’t it be sad? It’s okay for deathbeds to be somber. I don’t want a marching band playing “Oh When the Saints” – I want all my loved ones crying and lamenting that we won’t be having any more adventures… for a while at least. Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd) Yes, that IS two Pink Floyd songs on my trailer track list – so sue me. It’s my guest blog and I can do what I want.
And now I leave you with this – the trailer for our upcoming release, ANIMALS, which will be in theaters and on VOD on 5.15.15. For details on where you can see the film, please visit www.animalsthefilm.com And if you love the song as much as we do, it’s from a band called “Lavendar Diamond”. Go find and buy all of their beautiful music here: www.lavenderdiamond.net
Thanks for reading and THANKS to Nathaniel for letting me sit in the driver’s seat for a day. It was a lot of fun and I hope you didn’t get too many unsubscribes during my brief tenure. Now… back to your regularly scheduled programming!
Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 8:19PM 
We're aware that we've been talking about the Criterion Channel a lot in these here parts but we recognize not all of you are subscribers (yet). So here are eight random suggestions of things to watch on streaming services if you're scrolling zombie-like through your endless quantity-not-quality options.
