Movie Blog: This Week's Best Bets
Check out this week's best bets from repertory and limited-run screenings!
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Tuesday, Oct. 7: Eyes Without a Face (Trylon Microcinema)
High up on the list of movies that, by virtue of their age, catch even most gorehounds off guard is Georges Franju's French shocker Eyes without a Face. I don't want to spoil it for those who have never seen it, but suffice it to say that just when you think you're riding along with it on some woozy Jacques Tourneur vibe ... BAM! Mandatory pre-Halloween viewing.
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Tuesday, Oct. 8: Jubilee (Walker Art Center)
Derek Jarman, the subject of an October series at the Walker Art Center screening room, was a multifaceted artist who worked in a variety of mediums, but regardless of venue, his attitude was straight punk. (Well, actually gay punk, but you get the idea.) The Walker's series breaks their Jarman retrospective down into two distinct threads -- his political stances, and his cinematic voice. They kick off by looking at one of his earlier efforts -- the 1977 Jubilee, which is presented alongside Jarman's music videos for The Smiths and Marianne Faithfull.
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Thursday, Oct. 9: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Heights Theater)
Widely credited as being the more-or-less final nail in the coffin for the old Production Code (the industry-moderated guidelines by which Hollywood kept uppity types from cracking down on their perceived licentiousness) -- which also means it's sort of responsible for our current ratings system which supplanted the Code -- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a remarkably faithful, dynamic and intense adaptation of Edward Albee's excoriating play. Presented as part of the Heights' "Beyond Mad Men" series, it doesn't have much to do with Madison Avenue, but it has everything to do with the dissolution of the Eisenhower-era sunny view on domestic relationships. George and Martha's bad romance was powerful enough on stage even as an allegory. Adding Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, then America's most notorious couple by several lengths, to the cast only served to add fresh blood to Albee's shark tank. It's a harrowing watch, somewhere between John Cassavetes' Faces and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
