The Cinema, Inc.
PO Box 20835
Raleigh, NC 27619
(919) 787-7611

2008-09 Season

Tickets on Sale! 12 films for only $20
The Rialto Theater, Raleigh (map), 7 PM, the 2nd Sunday of each month

We proudly invite you to join us for our
43rd year of screening great films!

September 14, 2008 - Godzilla
Japan, 1954, Black and White, Not Rated, 98 Minutes, Subtitled.
Directed by Ishiro Honda. Starring Takashi Shimura, Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi, Akaihito Hirata.

Godzilla is a notorious film, one that paved the way for many giant-monster-movie imitators. But there is a larger subtext to Godzilla that is often overlooked or forgotten. The movie was made in Japan less than ten years after the nuclear bombing of two Japanese cities. Considering this viewpoint, the film has a melancholy core, one in which the Japanese contemplate their destruction by unstoppable external forces. The notion of a giant irradiated sea monster was more than just a cartoonish thrill in 1954 Japan, and many scenes in the film are surprisingly powerful. That said, Godzilla is still campy and entertaining fun at its best. Some of the acting is ham-handed and lost in translation. The special effects are primitive by today’s standards, with a man in a 220-pound rubber suit stomping on a realistic miniature city, but they come together to create an effective illusion. Watching the monster smash its way through Tokyo still has a certain visceral appeal fifty years later. Don’t forget the popcorn!

October 12, 2008 – Ed Wood
U.S., 1994, Black and White, Rated R, 127 Minutes.
Directed by Tim Burton. Starring Johnny Depp, Martin Landau,Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones.

Ed Wood is in part a biopic about Edward D. Wood, Jr., the notorious B-movie director of the 1950s. It also is an homage to those movies and one of their great stars, Bela Lugosi (played by Martin Landau, who won an Oscar for his performance). Lugosi was a big star in the 1930s and 40s, but in the 50s he was an aging man fighting obscurity and addiction. Ed Wood worshiped Lugosi, befriended him, put him in his quickly and poorly made movies. Lugosi came to depend on this friendship. Although Wood frequently dressed in women’s clothing, surrounded himself with oddball characters, and was a terrible director, his likeability and warmth shine through in Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s hands. Ed Wood celebrates the eccentric rather than lampooning it.

November 9, 2008 – Fail Safe
U.S., 1964, Black and White, Not Rated, 112 Minutes.
Directed by Sidney Lumet. Starring Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau, Larry Hagman, Daniel O’Herlihy, Fritz Weaver, Frank Overton.

An off-course airplane triggers the U.S. nuclear defense system. After the error is recognized, a single U.S. bomber that is past the fail-safe point terminates radio transmissions and heads for Moscow. The U.S. president gets on the phone with his Russian counterpart and tries to avert catastrophe. While this film has many parallels with the black comedy Dr. Strangelove, it is not a comedy but a tense drama that realistically portrays the nuclear fears of the 1950s and 60s. A rich ensemble cast gives great performances, capped by an against-type, scene-stealing turn by Walter Matthau.

In this documentary, filmmaker Yale Strom goes to Poland in search of one of the last known Klezmer musicians. Poland was once the heart of traditional Klezmer music, but this peculiarly Jewish music was virtually wiped out by the Nazi occupation during WWII. This film puts a human face on the grim statistics of the Holocaust through the charismatic and entertaining Leopold Kozlowski. Kozlowski is the last living Klezmer musician to have grown up in Eastern European Jewish culture before the Holocaust. At the time of the making of the film, Kozlowski was still living, teaching, and making Klezmer music in Poland. The music is lively, beautiful, and moving; Kozlowski is a man you won’t soon forget.

January 11, 2009 – Killer of Sheep
U.S., 1977, Black & White, Not Rated, 83 Minutes.
Directed by Charles Burnett. Starring Henry Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy, Angela Burnett, Eugene Cherry, Jack Drummond.

Think of the film Killer of Sheep as poetry - quintessentially American urban poetry - in the vein of Langston Hughes or Richard Wright. The elements of traditional narrative are missing, but there is just enough story and realism to make the bold visual images and diverse soundtrack come alive. Charles Burnett was a UCLA graduate student in 1977 when he shot this film on a budget of $5000, using untrained actors and real locations in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. In 2006, Burnett restored and remixed his film, adding music that cost many times the original budget. Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips said, “…Burnett’s blues poem can be experienced simply (as one family’s story) or more expansively (as the chronicle of a neighborhood). It is a small wonder containing multitudes.”

February 8, 2009 – The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
U.S., 2004, Color, Rated R, 108 Minutes.
Directed by Michel Gondry. Starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson.

This film follows a couple, Clementine (Winslet) and Joel (Carrey), who meet, fall in love, and break up. This simple premise has been used many times before, but in the hands of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (who also wrote Being John Malkovich and Adaptation) it is re-worked into something more impenetrable. When it is then passed through music-video veteran director Michel Gondry’s hands, it becomes lunacy bordering on genius. After the breakup, the despondent Clementine contacts Lacuna, Inc., a firm that can remove unwanted memories from the brain, and has her memories of Joel removed. Joel finds out. In retaliation, he has his memories of her removed as well. However, mid-procedure, he has a change of heart, and tries to hide memories of her deep in his psyche, away from the Lacuna “doctors.” Gondry and Kaufman use the story to explore the nature of thought, reality, and love. The film moves freely back and forth in time and displays a breathtaking creativity unlike any film before it.

March 8, 2009 – Monsieur Ibrahim
France, 2003, Color, Rated R, 95 Minutes, Subtitled.
Directed by Francois Dupeyron. Starring Omar Sharif, Pierre Boulanger, Gilbert Melki, Isabelle Renauld, Isabelle Adjani.

A coming-of-age story of a Jewish teenager in a lower-class Paris neighborhood, Monsieur Ibrahim is also a story of father and son relationships. When the teen Momo (Boulanger) has trouble connecting with his depressed father, he seeks inspiration in the streets. He is befriended by the local shopkeeper, Ibrahim (Sharif), who dispenses the wisdom and guidance that Momo’s father should. And although it never becomes the focus of the film, religion and ethnicity play a strong role in the story, underscoring French attitudes about immigrants in the 1960s (and echoing current French-Muslim difficulties). While there are opportunities for the film to devolve into bleak realism, the story remains touching, humorous, and complex.

April 12, 2009 – Stage Fright
U.K., 1950, Black and White, Not Rated, 110 Minutes.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Todd, Alistair Sim, Sybil Thorndike, Michael Wilding.

The character of Eve Gil (Wyman) is an accidental hero in the vein of Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) in Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest. Eve is studying drama at the Royal Academy when she runs into an old friend (Todd) who explains that he has been implicated in a murder he didn’t commit. When Eve becomes a sleuth to try to help her friend, she is drawn into a complex web of deception. Critic Dave Kehr said, “The issues aren't satisfactorily resolved, but Hitchcock seems to be exploring the ways in which various falsehoods--the falsehoods of acting, storytelling, and art in general--can lead to the truth, and the equally powerful ways in which they can betray it.” Marlene Dietrich’s supporting role as an older diva steals the show.

Dogme 95 is an avant-garde filmmaking movement started by directors Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg which eschews the use of conventional Hollywood moviemaking techniques such as props, special effects, soundtracks, special lighting or camera techniques. Vinterberg's contribution to the Dogme 95 collective, The Celebration, is an electrifying achievement driven by powerhouse acting and hand-held digital camera work so realistic it is easy to forget that this is a feature film. Friends and family gather to pay tribute to Helge on his sixtieth birthday. When it's time for the eldest son, Christian (Thomsen), to give the opening toast, the fireworks begin. At times hysterical, at times tragic and heartbreaking, this is a film that has the ability to single-handedly reaffirm one's faith in cinema. Inspiring and brilliant, it won the Jury Prize at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.

Louis Malle’s directorial debut, Elevator to the Gallows is an unusual film noir crime story. Florence (Moreau) and her lover Julien (Ronet) engineer the murder of Florence’s husband. But when Julien attempts to tie up a loose end, he becomes trapped in an elevator with precious minutes ticking away before the police discover the victim’s body. While he is stuck in the elevator, a young couple steals his car and Florence wanders Paris in search of her lover. But there is another facet to this film that elevates it above other noir thrillers. In the words of Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter: “What turns it fabulous, indeed mythical, is the presence of another entity: Paris at night in the '50s, to the tune of Miles Davis's score as realized in the dappled hues of Henri Decae's gorgeous poetic cinematography.” Elevator to the Gallows won the Prix Delluc, France’s most prestigious film award, and launched Malle on an illustrious career that made him a directing icon.

Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Noiret) has been exiled from his native land and is now residing on one of Italy's small and charming islands. It is there that he meets Mario (Troisi), a simple man with a simple mind, whom Pablo hires as his personal mailman. Although Pablo is initially cold towards Mario, the two eventually develop a friendship, with Pablo teaching the eager Mario the joys of poetry. When Mario falls for sexy barmaid Beatrice (Cucinotta), Pablo even helps him win her heart via poetic love letters. Although the British Michael Radford directed the movie, Massimo Troisi was the co-writer and guiding force behind the film. Troisi so believed in the material and the title character that he postponed heart surgery to complete the film, dying the day after production finished. His understated but powerful performance turns this good-hearted little film into a quiet meditation on fate, tact, and poetry.

August 9, 2009 – The 39 Steps
U.K., 1935, Black and White, Not Rated, 88 Minutes.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Peggy Ashcroft, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Tearle.

Richard Hannay (Donat) is a Canadian rancher on vacation in London who sees a vaudeville act at the Palladium. When a shot rings out in the theater, a frightened young woman (Mannheim) approaches Hannay and asks for his help. The woman claims that foreign spies who plan to smuggle valuable military secrets out of the country are after her. When she is later killed, Hannay finds himself both framed as the man responsible for her death as well as the next potential victim of the spy ring. Traversing through rural Scotland on the run from both the police and the spies, Hannay finds himself attached to a cool but reluctant blonde. Together they have to figure out the meaning of the woman's last words and bring down the spy ring before the precious military secrets are smuggled abroad. The 39 Steps established Hitchcock as a thriller director early in his career and introduced many themes that became trademarks: the chase, dangerous adventure, a mysterious murder, and of course, the MacGuffin.