Opportunities for the Week of 3/19-3/25

Posted by Austin Cinephile

Time for the weekly roundup of Weird Wednesday, Terror Tuesday, special events and outstanding new releases that you will not want to miss this week. Only the best selections here, aiming to ensure you see at least one great film every day.

Friday 3/19 -Thursday, 3/25
Alamo South Lamar, Regal Arbor, The Dobie – THE RUNAWAYS
Not only does this film feature actress du jour Kristen Stewart and rising starlet Dakota Fanning earning some indie cred in a biopic about Joan Jett and somebody named Cherie Currie, who played in some band called The Runaways, but it also brings Austin Cinephile favorite Michael Shannon back to our screens in a performance that arrives on a wave of advanced praise. Word on the street is that Stewart and Fanning have a bit of a love scene. Michael Shannon and young actresses making out for the sake of their craft; does this movie have it all?

Friday 3/19 -Thursday, 3/25
Regal Arbor – A PROPHET
If you read anything about the Oscars, you know that this is the film that went into the ceremony as the favorite for Best Foreign Film, which, in that category, pretty much dooms it to failure. Trophy or not, critics unanimously raved about this story of a young man who gets involved with some criminals while serving a prison sentence and decides that crime is the life for him. Like another recent European gangster film, Gomorrah (from Italy), A Prophet (from France) shoulders the burden of the usual “It’s, like, the new Godfather, yo” descriptions. Let’s try to put that earlier film out of our minds and enjoy this new film on its own terms, shall we?

Friday 3/19 -Thursday, 3/25
The Dobie – RED RIDING
Do you like movie trilogies? Then, have I got some good news for you! This week, the Dobie presents the first of three films that comprise the Red Riding trilogy, a set of films originally produced for broadcast on the BBC. Having wowed television audiences in England, the films now arrive in our theatres. Set in Northern England during the 1970s-1980s, the trilogy follows some police officers as they try to solve a few child abduction cases and track down a serial murderer. Each of the three films follows different characters and is directed by a different filmmaker. So don’t miss out this week on the first installment, or you may get left behind!

Sunday, 1:00pm
Alamo Ritz – LA DANSE: THE PARIS OPERA BALLET
In case you missed this remarkable documentary when it played at the Arbor a few months ago, the Alamo Ritz is doing you a favor and bringing it back for a brunchtime screening this Sunday. And trust us, it’s a film you don’t want to miss.

Sunday, 7:00pm
Alamo Ritz -Tobe Hooper’s EGGSHELLS
How could I not reprint this original description of this film, first released in 1968: Eggshells, an American Freak Illumination Time & Space Fantasy of the exploding Austin inevitable crypto embryonic hyper-electric presence dueling with itself as Vince Sobrosek goes to the bathroom yelling “listen to yellow dog, goddamn yellow dog!” while the devil’s hose dog tongue loops and lollies through a glory hole and your uninvited dinner guests make love to the ghosts of Don Levy and Nic Roeg in a threesome with Carlos Casteneda in a bedroom that paints itself on it’s way to a wedding and your girlfriend and her lover dance out of the hemoglobin balloon forest while the writer-man takes an axe to the windshield and runs home naked, makes love to a girl he loves for her breasts, and they all grab a seat under the hair dryer transmogrifyers as Vince proclaims, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.” Did you get all that?

Tuesday, 7:00pm
Alamo Ritz -Hey Homo: ANNIE
You’ll think I’m crazy for saying this, and maybe I am, but I think this movie is great. I watched it several times when I young. Carol Burnett as the villain of villains, orphanage director Miss Hannigan, hams it up and boozes it up as she tries desperately to cash in on her desperate orphaned girls in any way possible, including bringing in her sleazy brother Rooster, played by Tim Curry, and his trampy girlfriend (Bernadette Peters) to pretend to be Little Orphan Annie’s real parents so they can con some money out of her new foster parent, Daddy Warbucks. Curry, Burnett, and Peters setting their scheme to music (“Easy Street”) is a highlight not just of the film but of musical cinema in general. Say what you will, but I think, with this film, director John Huston (yeah, it’s the Maltese Falcon guy) managed to assemble one of the last musical casts that actually had a genuine talent for musical comedy. After this, it was all Flashdance and Footloose and Disney cartoons.

Tuesday, 10:20pm
Alamo Ritz -Terror Tuesday: HELL HIGH
These days, we label as demented any teacher who sleeps with his or her student. According to this film, in the 1980s, teachers really knew how to go crazy on their students; forget sex, they stabbed those hormonally charged bastards with fireplace pokers. So let’s get together and remember a time when teachers really knew how to protest for better wages.

Wednesday, 11:55pm, PICK OF THE WEEK
Alamo Ritz – Weird Wednesday: PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW
If you went to Weird Wednesday last week because it was our pick of the week, we apologize for leading you astray. Unless you liked it, in which case, pay no attention to what I just said. But this week, we are certain that we will have a film that can be uttered in the same breath as Teen Lust, Lord Love a Duck, and Delinquent Schoolgirls. This movie is the real deal, ladies and gentlemen, directed by Roger Vadim, a man who knew so much about sex and how to film it that he managed to marry young, beautiful Brigitte Bardot AND young, beautiful Jane Fonda AND still found time to have a little domestic partnership with young, beautiful Catherine Deneuve. The best George Clooney can muster is some Italian bimbo who can’t even produce enough English sentences to make it through a red carpet interview. So if you’ve never seen a Vadim film, come to Pretty Maids All in a Row, our PICK OF THE WEEK, and see what you’re missing. Films littered with beautiful women, in case you hadn’t guessed.