Movie Blog: This Week's Best Bets
Usually it's not quite so early in the year that I've been exposed for not performing my due diligence as a movie blogger, but I have to admit that I have not yet seen the movie that just topped the box office charts for the last two weeks running and is well on its way to being 2013's first $100 million club honoree -- Ride Along. Oops. Maybe I'll redress that in the next week, maybe not. Maybe I'll instead opt for the cold-weather comfort of awesome repertory and specialized programming around town. Here are this week's best bets:
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Monday, Jan. 27 & Tuesday, Jan. 28: Sans Soleil (Trylon Microcinema)
I've written at length on Chris Marker's masterpiece before, which is a genuine accomplishment for me since I practically stand speechless in the shadow of its majesty. I cannot overstate enough how much this astonishingly free-minded philosophical and temporal travelogue means to me, but I trust my words from earlier: "No two people will come away from Sans Soleil with the same impression, nor will a solitary viewer's multiple viewings yield the same experience. Marker's film prefigures multimedia and, like what Amy Taubin said of Inland Empire in Film Comment, approximates the experience of being trapped inside the Internet and making radical leaps of associative connection…only Marker typically prefigured the technology."
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Wednesday, Jan. 29: The Negative & Operation Babylift: The Lost Children of Vietnam (Trylon Microcinema)
A pair of free screenings at the Trylon on Wednesday include a showing of a local short by Ted Hall (produced by Jeremy Wilker and Matt Osterman) that's referred to as "a concisely creepy and darkly beautiful tale of romance and bad timing," as well as a public showing of Operation Babylift: The Lost Children of Vietnam, presented in cooperation with AdopSource and Gazillion Voices, who are bringing screenings on the last Wednesday of every month from now through April.
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Wednesday, Jan. 29 & Thursday, Jan. 30: Schindler's List (Parkway Theater)
Speaking of screenings intended to raise consciousness, why not take in another viewing of Steven Spielberg's legendary (or, if you're Stanley Kubrick, frustrating) recreation of the Holocaust? I know I'm not the only one who hasn't seen it in well over two decades. All proceeds will go toward the Shoah Foundation.
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Friday, Jan. 31 thru Sunday, Feb. 2: Eraserhead (Trylon Microcinema)
As winter slogs along, it's bound to get weird up in here. Thankfully, the Trylon is presenting a program of David Lynch bizarreness to hopefully help the rest of us feel a little bit more normal in our hour (make that four-plus months) of cabin fever. Talk about an ice bath -- the series starts with what even today remains probably Lynch's most inscrutable, most unnervingly disturbing nightmare. Get a jump on Valentine's Day with this tale of two newlyweds and their attempt to start a family.
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Friday, Jan. 31 thru Thursday, Feb. 13: Oscar Nominated Short Films: Animated & Live Action (Uptown Theater)
I love that people are now making the effort to get out and see the films nominated in what are usually considered the Oscar-pool winning Academy Award categories. I'll have more about these ten short films later this week (including my predictions for what I think will win, and whether I think there's something that deserves the honor more). Suffice it to say for now that there are worthy films in each program. (The documentary short program will run at Riverview one week later.)
