We all have a tendency, as we get on in years, to remember our better days and let the not-so-great times wash away in the river of time. It’s human, and while you might roll your eyes at your great-aunt launching into that same story about sneaking into a Beatles concert, rest assured that someday someone will be rolling their eyes at your own oft-told stories. But you? You’ll be too happy to notice.
In film, too, stories we love get told and retold, reshaped and reinvented for new crowds (see the recent remake of The Jungle Book for an example of how long a road one tale can take). But sometimes we just want to look back on earlier days for more sentimental reasons: to be reminded of how idealistic we were, or how daring, or how hopeful.
This week, a few old favorites return to take a bow on area screens. The look-back gets underway Thursday, Aug. 14, with Amherst Cinema’s 7 p.m. screening of Purple Rain. With the recent death of Prince still stinging, watching the film that propelled him into the American consciousness is a salve. It really is amazing, at this 30-plus year remove, to sit back and recognize the incredible and unlikely coup that Prince was able to pull off. Here was a guy in a ruffled shirt and heels, riding a purple motorcycle and singing about masturbation during the Reagan administration. And not in some artsy “only in New York” neighborhood, but in the singer’s own Minnesota.
The film is a loosely autobiographical story about the musician’s family and stage life in the area. That, I think, is what truly made Prince seem so different to those of us who grew up in that era: more than anyone else at the time, he made it seem okay to be yourself, however that might be. And with Prince, it wasn’t just okay — it was celebratory, honest, and brimming over with love.
On Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Pothole Pictures in Shelburne Falls will screen The Goonies, director Richard Donner’s much-loved treasure-hunt story from 1985. The ensemble cast (most of whom would go on to have long careers in Hollywood) features a group of misfit kids who come together to save their neighborhood from being torn down. An old treasure map leads them to the hideout of a ragtag criminal gang, and then to a sunken pirate ship in an underground cavern. It is a story of kids triumphing over the adults who would do them wrong, but there was always something more going on with The Goonies, and today it has a cult following that few films in the genre can claim. If you have kids of your own, bring them.
Back at Amherst Cinema on Sunday and Tuesday is Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ famed 1941 film. I’d say it needs no introduction, but the truth is, it rather desperately does. Most people know the title more than the story. An American tale of power and corruption (one modeled on the legend of newspaperman William Randolph Hearst) as well as a wrenching story of innocence lost, it was long overlooked after its initial release, only to come back into focus after drawing praise from European critics who saw what we largely did not.
Also this week, area Cinemark theaters revisit two old hits. The first is via the much-discussed reboot of Ghostbusters, which brings a mostly female cast to the story of a New York beset by paranormal oddities. I must confess, I’m baffled by the backlash this film has seemed to generate (I have not seen it yet); it seems that quite a few people take issue with a comedy filled with great comedians simply because those comedians are women. All I can say, in the face of such stupidity, is that I hope this new group of Ghostbusters — Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones — has a supernaturally crushing box office weekend.
Oddly enough, the other film screening with Ghostbusters on Sunday and Wednesday is Fight Club, the 1999 David Fincher film (based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel) that has been a love-it-or-hate-it movie from day one. Filled with a frustrated violence that serves as a window onto the contemporary male condition, it has been embraced both by those who see it as a call to arms and those who see it as a subtle warning about the path we are on. Edward Norton and Brad Pitt star.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
