One of the great treats of having Amherst Cinema around for so long — it turns 10 next year — is that the programming has had the chance to grow beyond the standard fare that is all too expected of an “art house” theater (a label, I’d guess, the theater itself would reject as too limiting). Great movies have always just been the beginning.
Certainly, Amherst has brought in a good number of foreign films and revivals (more on that below), and they’ve shown plenty of those small, but important films that are so necessary to the maturing of the art form.
On Wednesday night, at 7 p.m., the cinema hosts the latest installment of its Science on Screen series, an ongoing speaker-and-film mashup that uses film as a jumping off point for wider discussions of science. This week pairs Julian Schnabel’s (Basquiat) remarkable 2007 film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly — a true story of a middle-aged playboy who finds himself trapped in his own body due to a sudden stroke — with Dr. Kyle Cave and Dr. David Moorman of UMass Amherst’s department of psychological and brain sciences. The pair will discuss the difficulty of communicating with “locked-in” patients, and the connection between brain activity and conscious experience. Diving Bell’s subject Jean-Dominic Bauby — editor of French Elle before his paralysis, he would go on to pen a memoir using only the movement of one eye as a way to select letters — should prove an interesting topic.
If you’re more interested in music than science, try the 7 p.m. Monday show, when the theater brings in Jeff Preiss’ film Low Down as part of the Jazz a la Mode film series. Hosted by local radio personality Tom Reney (director Preiss will also be on hand for the screening), the series has been a great reminder that some of America’s greatest music is not just for playing in the background.
In Low Down, the musician and addict Joe (John Hawkes) struggles to live life on the best terms he can while also providing for his teenage daughter Amy-Jo (Elle Fanning). Set in a sepia hued Hollywood during the 1970s, the film also stars Glenn Close, Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), and a wonderfully cast Flea, here as trumpeter Lester Hobbs, but better known as the bassist for Red Hot Chili Peppers. Flea, who himself grew up as the child of an addict and jazz musician parent, also helped produce the film.
But music isn’t your thing either? How about foreign film? Amherst has you covered there this week, too, when it concludes the “Apu Trilogy” of Indian director Satyajit Ray with screenings of Apur Sansar on Sunday and Tuesday. The final chapter finds Apu — just a boy when the first film began — now in his early 20s and embarking on a post-college writing career (or so he plans). But epic journeys never seem to take their heroes exactly where they mean to go, and Ray’s films are no different; Apu might have his life charted out, but fate may have other plans.
Also this week: Northampton gets in on the special show scene this Wednesday night when Cinema Northampton — a collaborative effort composed of Forbes Library, the Academy of Music, and a clutch of other local town and arts groups — puts on a 7 p.m. screening of the classic comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The show is set to take place at dark on the lawn of Forbes Library. This is your last chance to catch a movie under the stars; starting in October the monthly series moves into its winter digs at the Academy. And Hadley’s Cinemark Theater is screening The Intern, a modern-day take on the boss/secretary story. Robert De Niro stars as 70-year-old widower Ben Whittaker, who decides to re-enter the workforce as part of a community outreach program. He gets brought on as an intern at a fashion startup helmed by the much younger Jules Ostin (Anne Hathaway). There are a lot of old-man jokes, but also some harder truths about aging: “I just know there’s a hole in my life,” says Ben, “and I need to fill it. Soon.”•
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
