Repertory

by Matt Prigge

Ambler Theater
$6-$8. 108 E. Butler Ave. 215.345.7855. www.amblertheater.com

Chinatown
(1974) (Shown on film): Guess which award-gobbling Polish filmmaker who fled America permanently on charges of statutory rape and who did the (possibly real) nose-slitting duties in this primo neo-noir is featured prominently in the Rush Hour 3 trailer. Hint: It’s not Andrzej Wajda. A- Thurs., Aug. 16, 7pm.

Chinatown
(1974) (Shown on film): See Ambler Theater. A- Wed., Aug. 15, 7pm.

The Adventures of Robin Hood
(1938) (Shown on film): Please consider, long and deeply, that this is the only cinematic representation of the legend that’s actually, you know, fun. Errol Flynn plays the noble rapscallion, Olivia de Havilland his maid and Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone the villains, while directors Michael Curtiz and William Keighley give this potentially overloaded studio product both the spring in its step and the right amount of weight. A- Wed., Aug. 22, 7pm.

The Matrix
(1999) (Shown on film): Shame about those sequels, no? C+ Sun., Aug. 19, 2pm.

The Adventures of Robin Hood
(1938) (Shown on film): See Bryn Mawr Film Institute. A- Mon., Aug. 20, 7pm.

The Goonies
(1985) (Shown on DVD): In which a pre-LOTR Sean Astin, a pre-Matrix/Sopranos Joe Pantoliano and a pre-Meatballs 4 Corey Feldman duke it out for pirates’ booty in suburbia. B- Wed., Aug. 15, 8pm.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
(1994) (Shown on DVD): General Zod, Agent Smith from The Matrix and that forgetful dude from Memento crossdress across the Outback. Contains the all-too-true line, “I said it before and I’ll say it again: No more fucking ABBA.” B- Wed., Aug. 22, 8pm.

1776
(1972) (Shown on DVD): Peter Hunt ’s whimsical musical on the founding fathers has been vying for some kind of audience for years, but who could’ve imagined a stunt like this? Every weekend till the end of summer, Once Upon a Nation will screen the film à la Rocky Horror, with patrons encouraged to sing along and throw props that are provided beforehand. (Not reviewed.) Fri., Aug. 17, 7pm.

The Big Clock
(1948) (Shown on video): After killing his mistress in a fit of passion, Hearst stand-in Charles Laughton tries to pin it on Ray Milland ’s overworked crime reporter who in turn tries to keep the investigation off his back while conducting his own. The labyrinthine plotting has long been one of the main attractions—it was remade, after much reworking, into the Kevin Costner vehicle No Way Out. But the film, fluidly directed by John Farrow, is also one of the richest in tone, ranging from the buoyancy of Milland’s performance to the dark tones of the Wellesian deep-focus photography. With Farrow’s wife (and Mia’s mom) Maureen O’Sullivan, George Macready, Elsa Lanchester and Henry Morgan. Laughton, slurring up a storm, pronounces fewer consonants than Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. A- Thurs., Aug. 16, 8pm.

Directors in Focus: Chris Marker
According to his IMDb filmography, prolific French cine-diarist Chris Marker—whose two best-known films La Jetée and Sans Soleil were recently Criterionized—has directed 42 films. Even if it takes them another five years, I-House will screen every last one of them. (Plus all those either missing or that he simply collaborated on.) This latest excursion knocks another 10 off the list, plus one for which he simply wrote the narration track. Along with the two nights of tangent-heavy fare, be sure to swing by I-House’s MYX Gallery for an installation of Marker’s first journey into the CD-ROM world, 1998’s Immemory. All but the inventor of the essayistic film, Marker’s works tend to plainly lay out his obsessions—memory, travel, Japan, Russia, Marxism, cats. Here he offers another point of entry into his brain, allowing a mix of QuickTime movies, stills and words that should have you glued for longer than you’d like.

One Day in the Life of Andrei Aresenevich/The Last Bolshevik
(1999/1993) (Shown on Beta SP): Most artist profiles err toward the hagiographic, not to mention ploddingly lateral. (Stanley Kubrick made A Clockwork Orange. Then he made Barry Lyndon. Then he made The Shining ... ) That the title of Chris Marker’s look at Solaris and Stalker perpetrator Andrei Tarkovsky—One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich—uses the great Russian director’s middle name is only the first sign this isn’t like most filmmaker profiles. Made for French television, Arsenevich uses Tarkovsky’s reunion with his family while exiled in Stockholm in 1986—where, on his deathbed, he was putting a spit-shine on The Sacrifice—as an excuse to leapfrog around his too-sparse filmography. At only 55 minutes (perhaps not coincidentally, one more than Tarkovsky’s death-age), it can’t help but feel incomplete, but even one tiny section of the film reveals how little engagement most profiles make with their subjects. The Last Bolshevik, shown second, begins with a George Steiner quote: “It is not the literal past that rules us; it is images of the past.” Even more of an experimental profile than Arsenevich, Bolshevik ostensibly takes on undersung Russian director and lifelong Communist Alexander Medvedkin (of the 1934 satire Happiness). But, as is Marker’s wont, it becomes an excuse to tackle the Soviet Union’s entire 20th century—specifically how the legend gets printed more often than the truth. Marker compares the famous Odessa Steps sequence from Sergei Eisenstein’s Potemkin with the real Odessa Steps, pointing out that they take nine seconds to descend but got stretched out over seven minutes on film. Similarly, the epic recreation of the storming of the Winter Palace in Eisenstein’s October is said to have taken more lives on set than it did when it actually happened. (Marker even finds a still from the film that’s been reprinted as the real deal in several history books.) Not that the ever-restless Marker would ever settle for one dominating theme. As he asks, not rhetorically, early on: “What’s in common with a cat washing, a very young Red Army general and a statuette of a Chinese fisherman?” Both: A- Fri., Aug. 17, 7pm.

Chris Marker Short Films
(Shown on film and Beta SP): The odds-and-sods portion of the Marker two-dayer begins not with Marker the director but Marker the narration writer. Directed by the great Joris Ivens (Rain), 1962’s ... A Valparaiso scales the Chilean seaport, particularly its 42 vertiginous hills—a neat metaphor for the disparity between its high and low denizens that Marker’s commentary doesn’t miss. A collaboration with his politically minded collective SLON, 1968’s The Sixth Face of the Pentagon scours the first major American demonstration against the Vietnam War for breadth, catching the sparse American Nazi Party; Peter, Paul and Mary; and Brooklyn College students who’ve gone from apathetic to activists virtually overnight. An acidic response to the coup that began Augusto Pinochet’s reign of terror, 1973’s Embassy takes found footage—Super-8 film discovered in a French embassy—and lets the narration track make up the rest. Filmed on hazy ’80s video, Matta edits together the most animated parts of a tour given by the titular Chilean painter through a gallery of his work. Highlights include him impersonating a snail, making a bad pun on his name and showing off his belly button. Concluding the night are five teensy films on animals, among them owls, an elephant dancing to Stravinsky and Marker’s beloved cat Guillaume-en-Egypte listening to music. Sat., Aug. 18, 7pm.

The Kid Brother
(1927) (Shown on film): The Lawn Chair Drive-In concludes its summer session with one of Harold Lloyd ’s few excursions outside city limits, as well as its star’s favorite of his films. Lloyd plays a small-town boy who falls for Jobyna Ralston, the star of a traveling medicine show, while encouraging the wrath of the local sheriff. The highpoint is reportedly a bravura point-of-view shot, filmed with a makeshift elevator, of Lloyd climbing a tree to spy on his beloved. (Not reviewed.) Tues., Aug. 21, dusk.

Fancy Pants Cinema
(Shown on video and DVD): Lug along your homemade opus to this weekly barrage of short films, or just swing by to catch stuff made by strangers. Tues., Aug. 21, 10pm.

Kicking & Screaming
(2005) (Shown on DVD): Show of hands: How many of you have tried to rent this Will Ferrell soccer comedy and instead gotten a movie from the mid- ’90s about depressed and sarcastic postcollegiates? Or the other way around? At least you’re not trying to get that Oscar winner about racists and instead getting the one about people who get off on car crashes. (Not reviewed.) Thurs., Aug. 16, dusk.

Big
(1988) (Shown on DVD): Imagine what kind of topsy-turvy world we ’d be living in had either Like Father Like Son or 18 Again! been the kid-to-adult blockbuster rather than this Tom Hanks showboat-a-thon? Perhaps Kirk Cameron wouldn’t even be a crazy Young Earth-touting evangelical. C Mon., Aug. 20, 8pm.

Horns and Halos
(2002) (Shown on DVD): Best known for the ’90s musician-starring low-budgeters Half-Cocked and Radiation, husband-and-wife team Suki Hawley and Michael Galinsky also made this doc on the publication, withdrawal and republication of J.H. Hatfield’s controversial George W. Bush biography Fortunate Son. (Not reviewed.) Sat., Aug. 18, 7:30pm.