Wednesday, February 7 – 7:30 PM

Peter Boyle Memorial Tribute Screening - Double Feature:

Actor Peter Boyle shot to stardom out of virtually nowhere in 1970 with the savagely irreverent, very dark counter-culture opus JOE and never looked back. Although rarely top-billed (JOE and the gonzo gangster masterpiece, CRAZY JOE, were notable exceptions), Boyle continually offered memorable, sardonic support in countless classics, including roles in TAXI DRIVER, FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, THE CANDIDATE, HARDCORE, F.I.S.T., WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM, THE BRINK’S JOB, MALCOLM X, MONSTER’S BALL (to name only a few). More recently Boyle had garnered fame with a new generation in the long-running hit TV sitcom, "Everybody Loves Raymond." Please join us to remember and honor this great, charismatic performer.

TAXI DRIVER, 1976, Columbia, 113 min. Director Martin Scorsese's "savage, many-headed dragon of the American New Wave" (Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice) has lost little of its potency in the thirty years since its original release. Peter Boyle plays veteran cabbie "Wizard" who holds court at the Beltmore Cafeteria expounding on that "pursuit of happiness thing" available to all in this "American free country." Described as "good-natured" and even reminiscent of "a Thirties character actor" by critic Manny Farber when he reviewed the film, Boyle's "Wizard" is one of the few people that Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro's seminal pistol-packing, insomniac loner) confides in amidst the open sewer that is mid-1970s Manhattan with its pimps (Harvey Keitel), hookers (Jodie Foster), politicos (Cybill Shepherd and Albert Brooks) and other scummy creatures of the neon wilderness. The Paul Schrader-scripted, Scorsese-helmed TAXI DRIVER is described by Farber as a blend of "Fritz Lang expressionism, Bresson's distanced realism, and Corman's low-budget horrifics." That it won not only the Cannes Palm D'Or but also received four Oscar nominations may speak not only to the picture’s pungent force but how toothless and lame American cinema has become in the interim.

JOE, 1970, MGM Repertory, 107 min. Dir. John G. Avildsen (ROCKY). A low-budget indie film shot over a month-and-a-half in the winter of 1970, JOE was penned by Norman Wexler - a middle-aged, ivy league-educated ad-copywriter with a drawer full of unproduced plays. The film traces the adversarial relationship between a white-collar father (Dennis Patrick) and his hippie daughter (a debuting Susan Sarandon). After a pharmaceutical binge, she lands in the ER, and dad heads to downtown Manhattan to gather her belongings but instead stumbles into a confrontation with her grungy partner (Patrick McDermont). Appropriately traumatized patriarch Patrick then winds up at a bar where he befriends working-class Joe (Peter Boyle), who is a fount of caustic barbs against the counter-culture. The pair bond and set out on an odyssey that concludes in nightmarish carnage at a rural commune. Re-editing the film around Boyle's performance and even releasing a soundtrack album devoted to his diatribes, original distributors Cannon not only made JOE box-office gold, but Boyle himself became an icon. Upon its release, the film was screened around the clock in some New York theaters, often with audience members shouting back at the screen, as Joe became both laughable enemy and virtuous hero.

Friday, February 9 – 7:30 PM

OSCAR DOC SHORTS

Don't miss this rare chance to see a program of the documentary short films nominated for this year's Academy Awards BEFORE the winners are announced! Always a magnificent look into the talent working in this often overlooked format. The following films will screen subject to availability (but not necessarily in the order listed below).

Directors Michael Cahn and Leslie Iwerks will be present for discussion following the screening.

Sunday, February 11 – 3:00 PM

Family Matinee:

WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?, 1988, Disney, 103 min. Director Robert Zemeckis (BACK TO THE FUTURE), with the help of producer Steven Spielberg, made this exhilirating, groundbreaking movie blending live-action and animation, with real people and cartoon characters co-existing in 1940’s Hollywood. Toon star, Roger Rabbit (voiced by Charles Fleischer) goes to down-on-his-luck private eye, Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), hiring him to investigate his supposedly two-timing wife, Jessica.

With Joanna Cassidy, Christopher Lloyd, Stubby Kaye. "Sheer, enchanted entertainment from the first frame to the last - a joyous, giddy, goofy celebration of the kind of fun you can have with a movie camera." – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Sunday, February 11 – 7:30 PM

Sneak Preview:

STARTER FOR 10, 2006, Picture House, 96 min. Dir. Tom Vaughn. A working-class student from Essex navigating his first year at Bristol University, Brian (James McAvoy, of SHAMELESS) has a lot to prove. While his hometown mates worry about him turning into a poncey wanker, Brian’s biggest concern is making the team for the long-running British television quiz show University Challenge. Brian also finds himself romantically torn between two very different co-eds: ultra-fit blonde bombshell and University Challenge teammate Alice (Alice Eve), and thoughtful, politically-conscious Rebecca Epstein (Rebecca Hall, of THE PRESTIGE). With Margaret Thatcher’s economically depressed UK as a backdrop, and a killer, pitchperfect soundtrack—featuring music by The Cure, Wham!, Bananarama, Yaz, The Smiths, New Order, Tears For Fears, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Buzzcocks, and The Psychedelic Furs—in the foreground, STARTER FOR TEN is the great British teen 80s movie that never was.

Wednesday, February 14 – 7:30 PM

Kevin Thomas’ Favorites

DINNER AT EIGHT, 1933, Warner Bros., 113 min. Amazingly, it took director George Cukor only 28 days to shoot his first film at MGM, a sparkling, witty adaptation of the Edna Ferber-George S. Kaufman play that has become one of Cukor's most frequently revived films. Billie Burke is the elegant hostess whose dinner party features guests that are colorful or in crisis or both. Indeed, her husband Lionel Barrymore, a shipping magnate, is facing both financial and health crises. The most unforgettable guests are John Barrymore as a fading actor, Wallace Beery, a nouveau riche tycoon with an ex-hat-check girl mistress, Jean Harlow, who is assured by none other than Marie Dressler that what she has to offer will never go out of style. - Kevin Thomas

Wednesday, February 21 – 7:30 PM

Sneak Preview:

THE NUMBER 23, 2007, New Line Cinema, 95 min. Director Joel Schumacher’s latest thriller stars Jim Carrey as a man whose life unravels after he comes into contact with an obscure book entitled The Number 23. As he reads the book, he becomes increasingly convinced that it is based on his own life. His obsession with the number 23 starts to consume him, and he begins to realize the book forecasts far graver consequences for his life than he could have ever imagined. With Virginia Madsen (SIDEWAYS), Danny Huston (THE CONSTANT GARDENER). THE NUMBER 23 will be released on February 23^rd! Discussion following with Producers Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson.

Thursday, February 22 – 7:30 PM

Presented in association with IDA and Slow Food:

OUR DAILY BREAD (UNSER TÄGLICH BROT), 2005, First Run/Icarus Films, 92 min. Dir. Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s amazing film shows the places where food is produced: surreal landscapes plasticized and optimized for tractors and agricultural machinery, clean rooms in cool industrial buildings designed to ensure logistic efficiency, machines that require uniform materials for smooth processing. What might look like something from the world of science fiction is reality. Our food is produced in spectacular spaces which are seldom seen. There’s little space for humans here. OUR DAILY BREAD shows the industrial production of food as a reflection of our society’s values: plenty of everything, made quickly and simply by a specialized few. Dispensing with commentary and explanatory interviews, the film unfolds on the screen like a disturbing dream: a detailed feast of images, an insistent gaze, accompanied by whirring, clattering, booming, slurping, the machines’ hydraulic breathing—only the screeching of chickens is louder. "Superb! The film’s formal elegance, moral underpinning and intellectually stimulating point of view also make it essential. Takes us inside worlds of wonder and of terror." – Manohla Dargis, New York Times

Selected on more than sixteen national critics’ "TEN BEST OF THE YEAR" lists!

"Outstanding! Provocative! Eccentrically lovely and frequently horrifying." – Premiere

"An invigoratingly subtle form of political cinema."— Richard Porton, Cinema Scope

Official Website for OUR DAILY BREAD

Friday, February 23 – 7:30 PM

LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF, 2003, 169 min. Dir. Thom Andersen. A must see for Los Angeles history buffs and cinema enthusiasts who will marvel at the hundreds of archival and film clips revealing an almost secret history of the City of Angels! "This cinematic essay focuses on the discrepancy between the lived-in urban reality of Los Angeles and its various century-deep cinematic mythologies, the movie is about more than just what the movies get wrong. It’s about the way the imaginary space of cinema intrudes upon the actual space of our lives, so that the L.A. of the movies becomes a kind of separate urban reality unto itself." -- Toronto Star. Voted the Best Documentary of 2004 by the Village Voice. NOT ON DVD.

Saturday, February 24 – 5:00 PM

Presented in association with IDA and Slow Food:

OUR DAILY BREAD (UNSER TÄGLICH BROT), 2005, First Run/Icarus Films, 92 min. Dir. Nikolaus Geyrhalter. [See description - Thursday, February 22 at The Aero]

Saturday, February 24 - 7:30 PM

LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF, 2003, 169 min. Dir. Thom Andersen. Voted the Best Documentary of 2004 by the Village Voice. NOT ON DVD. [See description – Friday, February 23 at The Aero]

Wednesday, February 28 – 7:30 PM