Tag Archives: Brattle Theatre

BOFCA REPERTORY PICK: 6/13

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The Brattle’s ‘Nicolas Cage: Greatest American Actor’ series is a great opportunity for audiences to re-assess the wrongly reviled performer, and to see him as what he truly is: a man daring enough to separate acting and realism. His over-the-top performances, so often dismissed as camp, feel more like an actor trying to achieve an unforeseen future of acting – one where emotional honesty and expressionism is key, and reality means nothing. His performances skew abstract and absurdist in a culture where everything, even superheroes, need to be gritty. And never before has Cage been as absurd as in his masterpiece of unrestrained “mega-acting,” VAMPIRE’S KISS.

Most of the films in the Brattle’s series see Cage as filtered through the mind of great auteurs. RAISING ARIZONA sees him reborn in the eyes of the insane Coen Brothers, who split the difference between philosophical inquiry and Looney Tunes lunacy in their character. FACE/OFF sees him playing a classic John Woo bad guy, diving in all directions with two handguns cocked and loaded. WILD AT HEART strands him in a Lynchian nightmare of sex, violence, and Americana. But VAMPIRE’S (which was forever immortalized by its inclusion in the ‘Nicolas Cage Losing His Shit’ viral video) sees Cage let loose in a way he never has before. Swinging madly from accent-to-accent, he allows no boundaries of character or reality to limit the depraved insanity of his performance as Peter Loew, a womanizing yuppie whose misogyny starts to externalize itself in bloodsucking ways. And director Robert Bierman seems delighted with the choice; allowing his mainly static frames to merely sit in awe of Cage’s alien presence.

But the great mistake audiences made is in assuming this is a sub-TROLL 2 work of so-bad-it’s-good camp. But the truth is that this tale of false masculinity and creeping insanity is closer to AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD than to MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER. It follows Cage down the rabbit-hole of self loathing, at first creating a psychological link between his bedtime troubles and a bat-bite, then following that conceit until Cage is slogging through clubs, trying to pick up women with plastic fangs enshrouded in his teeth. It’s a slow descent into madness, and Bierman follows through with a masters dedication: he allows both Cage’s hallucinations and his mental illness to follow through to their most extreme endgames, until he’s wondering around the street begging bystanders to stake him the death (all the while, he imagines that his romantic savior is just around the corner.)

Many have compared this film and its themes to AMERICAN PSYCHO, but that film has nothing on Cage’s one-of-a-kind take on the psychologically demolished yuppie character. Yes, he’s awash in false gravitas and retarded sexuality, but the film is about so much more than just the sleaziness of the playboy lifestyle. I’m not being facetious with the AGUIRRE comparison: Bierman’s willingness to watch Cage’s confidence and demeanor slowly unravel itself to the point of self-destruction is downright Herzogian, and Cage’s hunchback limps and pained howls evoke the one of the cinema’s greatest madmen, Klaus Kinski. In fact, I almost wish this had been double featured with BAD LIEUTENANT – VAMPIRE’S KISS feels like a lost hallucinatory comedy Herzog made twenty years prior. – Jake Mulligan

VAMPIRE’S KISS plays tonight, 6/13, at 5:15, 7:30, and 9:45. The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge MA, 02138.

BOFCA INTERVIEW: 6/12

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Rockin’ good news.

The Brattle Theatre is about to be overwhelmed by eleven of the wildest and weirdest performances of the past twenty-odd years. Nicolas Cage: Greatest American Actor showcases this singular performer at his most boffo bizarre. While researching a recent article in The Improper Bostonian, our own Sean Burns spoke with The Brattle’s Creative Director Ned Hinkle about the series. Here are some highlights from their conversation:

Q: Why Nicolas Cage? Why now?

A: Do you really have to ask? He’s not only a cultural icon, a legit movie star, and a talented actor, but he’s also a magnet for the crazy, the weird, and the wonderful of cinema. ­And he has a sense of humor about it!

He’s basically a very famous, very handsome super-nerd; which I think is just awesome. It also helps that he’s in two of my favorite films of all time (WILD AT HEART and RAISING ARIZONA) and one of the all-time best guilty pleasures (CON AIR.)  While it’s admittedly facetious to subtitle the series “Greatest American Actor,” I mean it when I say Cage’s range is something to behold and his ability to leave it all on the screen is just amazing. I personally think that his talent is overlooked far too often and that he gets written off as a goofball in some silly movies because he needs a paycheck.

Hell, I like Nicolas Cage so much that I can even forgive him for appearing in that remake of WINGS OF DESIRE…. but only just barely.

Q: Interesting that you have programmed so many of Cage’s iconic 1990’s roles, and yet not his brief, Oscar-winning window of respectability, LEAVING LAS VEGAS?

A: I’ll put it out there: I am not a fan of LEAVING LAS VEGAS. I’ve never liked it. Probably because I appreciate Cage the best when his roles have a bit of humor to them, and that movie is just so joyless. Aside from that, I wanted to focus mostly on the Cage films that weren’t taken seriously. Or, as I have affectionately dubbed them: “The Crazy Cage Films.”

Q: So is the goal to send audiences home with a deeper, more un-ironic appreciation of this (ahem) National Treasure?

A: I do think that if people can see past the joke that Cage is in danger of permanently becoming they will truly, un-ironically appreciate him as an actor. I mean, the chances he takes are just phenomenal. And no, sometimes they don’t work out. Hello, WICKER MAN! But often they do. In VAMPIRE’S KISS he eats a live cockroach for Chrissakes! It’s easy to say that Cage’s best days are behind him and that he’s his own punch line now, but look at BAD LIEUTENANT. That movie is brilliant, and his performance is what makes it. He’s goofy but scary, unhinged but in control, and not afraid to look ugly.

 

Nicolas Cage: Greatest American Actor. Runs June 11th through June 21st at The Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. For a full schedule, visit http://brattlefilm.org

 

 

 

BOFCA REPERTORY PICK: 5/31

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I’ve seen Wes Anderson’s first film, BOTTLE ROCKET, more times than I can count. Like his other films co-written with Owen Wilson, RUSHMORE and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, it has a whimsical screwball energy throughout that I find irresistible. Yes, it may lack the dollhouse feeling with which he’s come to be so known (though certainly, his OCD and his symmetry fetish are here in full effect) but it has the same earnest innocence, the same respect for its characters, and the same underlying feeling of melancholy that make his best works so unique. And of course, his ear for music is as eclectic as ever, employing a beautiful score from Mark Mothersbaugh, his signature Stones needle-drops, and even the theme from the 1970s spaghetti western take on “Zorro”.

Brothers Luke and Owen Wilson play two of three twenty-somethings – who Anderson has, in a conceit that plays far better than it sounds, behave like they’re 8-years old – on a largely imagined crime spree, planning and pulling off their own high-concept heists. Though that’s likely overstating the case – the film plays more like “Charlie Brown” than BONNIE AND CLYDE. This movie must have hit people like a bullet upon release in 1996. The American independent scene was run amuck with Tarantino fever; and Anderson’s lightly melancholic tale seems to almost satirize the overwrought ‘crime spree on the run’ genre. While all those movies had their eyes on the bullets, the gunfights, and the pop culture nods; Anderson turns his towards nothing less than his characters souls.

A tribute to the innocence of boyhood, that singular stage-of-life when you’re equally excited by crime sprees, sketching flip-books, and playing with fireworks, BOTTLE ROCKET is a beautifully composed, enigmatic film that easily transcends the coming-of-age and crime genres it plays around in. And paired with Wes Anderson’s latest film, MOONRISE KINGDOM, at The Brattle Theatre no less, it’s a deal you can’t turn down. – Jake Mulligan

Check back tomorrow morning for our weekly Review Roundup!

BOTTLE ROCKET shows Thursday, 5/31 at 5:30. MOONRISE KINGDOM plays at 8:00 in a free preview screening open to the public, co-presented by the Independent Film Festival Boston. Doors open at 7:00, and it is first-come, first-serve. The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge MA, 02138.

BOFCA REPERTORY PICK: 5/29

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Coming off the three-day-weekend (and a couple of movie marathons for our membership,) the Brattle Theatre keeps programming on track, preparing local audiences for this week’s new Wes Anderson release, MOONRISE KINGDOM.

First up is possibly one of Anderson’s most overlooked films, THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU. I’m glad they’re starting off with this oddity, if only because it deserves a second glance. Still the critically lowest-graded film Anderson has made (53% on Rotten Tomatoes), THE LIFE AQUATIC should be seen as more of a fantasy film with a dramatic touch. Cruising the seven seas is a breeze for an expert like Steve Zissou (Bill Murray), a figure loosely based on the real life explorer, Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Tragedy strikes during the filming of one of his renowned documentaries, and his best friend is killed by a species of shark that supposedly no longer exists. Zissou sets off with an odd assortment of characters that includes a heavily-accented Willem Dafoe, a pregnant Cate Blanchett, and a long-lost son played by an eager Owen Wilson, to exact revenge on this shark.

But as with Anderson’s previous efforts, a great deal of care went into set design, and I’ll be surprised if a better combination of the primary colors can ever be coordinated again with a yellow submarine, sky-blue track suits, and bright red knit hats. Certain colors feel desaturated out, but then there’s small bursts of color on clothing or a fish to break the monotony of drab ship quarters. Some of the craziest combinations belong to the invented fishes, some fitted with an enough of the spectrum to make FINDING NEMO’s inhabitants jealous. Zissou’s nemesis, Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum) is appropriately fitted in Cold War modern gear, usually donning white suits or robes on his grey ship. The color around Hennessey’s ship look just as bleak, the ocean blue no longer as bright. For Hennessey sees and experiences the ocean differently than Zissou, often missing its natural beauty just outside of the ship’s hull.

With color-coded subtlies and possibly the most marine biology jokes outside of a classroom, THE LIFE AQUATIC is just as lovely of a journey as any other soul-searching Anderson classic. As with his other works, AQUATIC finds its leading man adrift in loss (Chaz Tenebaum coping with the death of his wife in THE ROYAL TENEBAUMS, three brothers reuniting after their father’s death to search for their mother in THE DARJEELING LIMITED). There’s a rebellious streak of revenge throughout the film, one the keeps the rag-tag crew of misfits and interns floating along. Perhaps that doesn’t sit well with everyone, but AQUATIC is a must-see for Bill Murray’s jarring performance and of course, the quirky color palette that is Anderson’s playground. –Monica Castillo

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU shows Tuesday, 5/29 at 5:00 and 9:30p.m. The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge MA, 02138

BOFCA REPERTORY PICK: 5/28

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After Saturday’s twofer of French New Wave masterpieces, the Brattle presents another can’t miss double-header today. This time, it’s focused upon arguably the two finest filmmakers our country has ever produced – Orson Welles, and Stanley Kubrick.

In my mind, the two have always shared a strange intrinsic connection as the seminal filmmakers of their respective generations. The parallels are undeniable: both worked, for the latter parts of their life, divorced from the Hollywood system (though, in Kubrick’s case, not from Hollywood money.) Though for entirely different reasons, both released only 12-feature length films over decades-long careers. Both were highly alienating figures whose best works, uniformly, never got their due until years following their release. Both indulged in a great number of literary adaptations, and both have such films celebrating their 50th birthday: Welles’ THE TRIAL, and Kubrick’s LOLITA.

Released in 1962, the films saw the two celebrated auteurs on opposite sides of their career paths. Welles clearly saw a peer in Kubrick, saying in an interview that year that he saw talent in him that “great” directors like Nicholas Ray, John Huston, and Robert Aldrich lacked, “perhaps… because his temperament comes closer to mine.” Kubrick , at that time, was a hotshot 33-year old coming off a big critical success in his anti-war manifesto PATHS OF GLORY and a massive financial success in his sword-and-sandals crowd-pleaser SPARTACUS. He was also on the verge of defining the artistic voice for which he would be known for the rest of his career.

His LOLITA, admittedly, is hampered by the Production Code; it struggles to translate the singular exuberance of Nabokov’s prose to the screen. Yet the playful use of Peter Sellers anticipates the hilarity of his next film, DR. STRANGELOVE (and the subtle comedy in everything that came after it) and the meticulous set design and camera movements anticipate the rigidly centered style that would emerge with 2001. It may not be essential cinema, but it’s essential for anyone interested in Stanley Kubrick.

Orson, on the other hand, was entering another leave from the country in which he made his name: after the unexplainably disappointing treatment given to his final Hollywood film TOUCH OF EVIL (that’s a whole other article) he once again returned to Europe in search of alternative financing for what would become his final narrative films. Unlike Kubrick, the elder Welles’ aesthetics were at their peak already: he shot THE TRIAL on a measly budget with low-rent locations, and he comes out with a masterpiece of claustrophobic mise-en-scene. While the casting of Anthony Perkins as Kafka’s fatally befuddled “hero” Josef K. is an integral part of the equation, it is Welles’ direction, his disorienting compositions, and his surreal camera movements that elevate THE TRIAL from a low-rent adaptation into a haunting experience simultaneously hallucinogenic and terrifying.

While their works never got their due from the critics of the day, the visual exuberance and incomparably distinct artistic voices of both Welles and Kubrick would influence the most notable American filmmakers that followed in their wake, past and present: everyone from Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma to Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson. They remain, to this day, arguably the two most iconic artists to ever step behind the camera in this country. Don’t miss this incredibly rare chance to see two of their least-cited films on 35mm, on a beautiful screen, with a one-of-a-kind crowd. You may not get another one. – Jake Mulligan

THE TRIAL shows Monday, 5/28 at 1:30 and 7:00, with LOLITA at 4:00 and 9:30. The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge MA, 02138