Small films shown quickly, so see them today
Showing movies is a tough racket, and the hard truth of the matter is that an opening weekend can make or break a film’s chances at breaking even at the box office. Do decently out of the gate, and you might get a chance at week two; do not-so-decently, and you’re probably destined for the DVD bin at Walmart — if you’re lucky.
One of the trickier bits about writing a weekly film column is figuring out how to cover films that might be gone by the time a given column hits the streets, or not long after. The Advocate publishes on a Thursday-Wednesday schedule, for instance, while most theaters operate on a Friday-Thursday week. Do the math, and you’ll see that a film highlighted here may be gone a day after the paper shows up in your local outlet (get ’em while they’re hot, people).
Sure, one can assume that the new superhero/vampire/dystopian teen drama will stick around for a fairly long run, but the smaller movies — despite being the more interesting films, quite often — can quickly fall through the cracks. But I think, for better or for worse, those are the films most worth writing about. So here are a few films that, at press time, are still scheduled for Thursday showings at Amherst Cinema. They may not be the most familiar names, and their heroes may not wear capes or cowls, but they are stories that, though lesser known, might strike a more familiar chord. And yet they could be gone before you knew they were there — catch them while you can.
The Lobster is Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’ strange tale of a future where single people are outlawed. Those without mates are carted off to a hotel where they are given 45 days in which to find a mate. Fail, and the unlucky singles are transformed into an animal of their choice before being released into the surrounding woods. Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz co-star alongside John C. Reilly and Ben Whishaw (The Danish Girl). Farrell plays David, a recently divorced man who arrives at the hotel with a dog that turns out to be his brother. “He was here a couple of years ago, but he didn’t make it,” explains David. Fans of the films of Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) may do well to take a look at The Lobster.
Continuing with the animal theme at Amherst Cinema, Dark Horse is a true story of a group of working class men in a Welsh mining village who decide to pool their resources and breed a racehorse. Against all odds, it becomes a champion before suffering a near-fatal setback. As his owners nurse him back to health, they come to realize that the horse is worth far more than it could ever win them on the track.
On the other side of the tracks, Genius is a drama that charts the remarkable friendship of book editor Maxwell Perkins (who discovered Hemingway) and literary icon Thomas Wolfe. While each helped raise up the other professionally, the two had a falling out as Wolfe’s star rose (partly because many thought it was Perkins’ push that gave Wolfe his lift). And yet just before Wolfe passed away at the too-early age of 37, it was to Perkins that he wrote his most tender letter, acknowledging the great role the editor had played in his life and career. Colin Firth and Jude Law star as editor and writer, while Nicole Kidman and Laura Linney co-star as the women in their lives.
Also this week: Cinemark theaters in Hadley and Springfield are bringing in Sunday and Wednesday screenings of the 1971 classic Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder as the titular candy kingpin. Rarely if ever has the strange and disturbing world of author Roald Dahl been so well captured: a candy colored dreamscape for children that is also a funhouse nightmare for adults who have forgotten what childhood can mean.
And finally this week, up in Shelburne Falls, Pothole Pictures screens what is surely one of the greatest noir films of all time: Chinatown. Jack Nicholson stars as L.A. private eye Jake Gittes in Roman Polanski’s 1974 masterpiece about political corruption and family secrets. The best Raymond Chandler book Chandler never wrote, Chinatown is everything a hardboiled story should be.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
