Perhaps the most famous fictional figure in all of English literature, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective has spawned dozens of cinematic and televisual interpretations stretching all the way back to 1900. Everyone is familiar with the Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, and Robert Downey Jr., but a number of smart, witty, and irreverent films also take a revisionist (and frequently, much more rewarding) approach to the character. This June, we’ll investigate a batch of these unlikely suspects… [read more]
The weather is getting warmer and the summer skies are getting clearer, and with the stars as our guide, we’ll be taking a cue from the most clichéd rhyme in the book: We’re heading to the Moon—or, at least, the stars—on Wednesdays in June. Join us for a varied batch of sci-fi films dedicated to interstellar travel, from the glorious camp of Flash Gordon to the metaphysical wonder of Tarkovsky’s Solaris. We’ll also take side trips with the crew of the Enterprise with Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan… [read more]
After leaving Germany in 1937 and working erratically throughout Europe, theater and film director Detlef Sierck landed in Hollywood in 1942 and changed his name to the fittingly American-sounding Douglas Sirk. Directing more than 30 films before his retirement in 1960, he developed a characteristic style all his own, focusing on love, death, social constraints, and the strictures of upper-middle class families. The body of work he left behind peaked in the 1950s with a series of films that portrayed the dark realities… [read more]
Four films, four master directors, and one genius actor: Jean-Louis Trintignant. Recognized as one of the greatest actors of his generation, Trintignant remains somewhat overshadowed by his contemporaries. That’s changed thanks to his recent role in Michael Haneke’s Amour, and with this series, we call attention to his art. In The Conformist, Trintignant plays a malleable proto-fascist given the task of assassinating his former professor. He plays another kind of assassin in Jacques Deray’s The Outside Man… [read more]
Though his talent is often taken for granted, Steve Martin has proven himself to be perhaps our best and most varied comic actor. Every Friday in May, we’ll be showing five of his funniest films, beginning with The Jerk, his first starring role and the culmination of the gut-busting absurdity of his stand-up act. Roxanne is Martin’s update of the Cyrano de Bergerac legend that shows off his ability to be simultaneously silly, subtle, and sweet. Director Frank Oz paired Martin with Michael Caine as a couple of charming con men… [read more]
To coincide with our exclusive Rochester screenings of his
newest film, To the Wonder, we will explore the career path of
Terrence Malick, whose work pursues grand statements about
man, nature, and our role in the cosmos. Malick’s debut film,
Badlands, finds a dark humor in its spree killers and a strange
beauty in the barren landscapes they travel. The voiceover, a
key component of Badlands, became a hallmark of Malick’s
work in the breathtaking Days of Heaven. Then silence—until
The Thin Red Line… [read more]
A good number of films have found humor, drama, satire, and poignancy in the relationship between masters and servants—not all of them British, mind you!—and we’ll be taking a quick survey of some of these Upstairs/Downstairs classics on Wednesdays in May. From one of cinema’s true masters, Jean Renoir, comes what is perhaps the ultimate master/servant movie: The Rules of the Game, in which a country estate is the setting for a roundelay of romances, jealousies, and assaults between a group of bourgeois and their maids, poachers, and gamekeepers… [read more]
