Every Saturday at 11:30am, Monday at 7pm and Thursday at 9pm, the Charles presents repertory films in DCP format (and from time to time on 35mm film) in The Charles’ original 360 seat theatre.
| A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS | |
| Pinocchio | Saturday, November 1 |
| Barry Lyndon | Monday, November 3 |
| Performance | Thursday, November 6 |
| Scarface (1932) | Saturday, November 8 |
| Scarface (1983) | Thursday, November 13 |
| Return of the Jedi | Saturday, November 15 |
| Andrei Rublev | Monday, November 17 |
| BRAZIL | Thursday, November 20 |
| Marathon Man | Saturday, November 22 |
| The Last Waltz | Thursday, November 27 |
| Stray Dog | Saturday, November 29 |
| Lifeforce | Thursday, December 4 |
| Ball of Fire | Saturday, December 6 |
| CURE | Thursday, December 11 |
Freddy Krueger creator Wes Craven rejoined the franchise as a screenwriter for the second sequel, and the quality jumps. Patricia Arquette and her top-drawer scream make their screen debuts among a group of troubled teens in a mental hospital who are being run through the wringer of the horror series’ oneiric logic and spectacul more »
Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece isn’t just a film—it’s a device that resets your internal sense of time, its deliberate pace bringing you back to 18th-century Europe more effectively than any periwig. Ryan O’Neal’s character offers a lesson for us all as he grasps and elbows his way up the ladder of society only to hit most of the more »
Fleeing both the cops and the crooks, James Fox’s cocky Cockney gangster stumbles into a den of hippies, who dose him, ball him, and mess with his mind. Not all of the far-out ‘60s editing tricks have aged well, but watching Fox’s character’s psyche dissolve around Swinging London royalty Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg (playin more »
From the dawn of talkies comes one of the greatest crime films ever made. Paul Muni’s performance as the scuffling street guy who shoots and schemes his way to the top of the rackets lacks contemporary subtlety, shall we say, but Howard Hawks’ direction dazzles with its skill and vision, and the whole thing moves like a scalded more »
Screenwriter Oliver Stone and director Brian De Palma faithfully transposed Howard Hawks’ gangster classic 50 years forward to the ‘80s coke boom, inspiring a generation of rap tropes and kindling the conflagration of Al Pacino’s “Big Al” late acting style in the process. Pacino is still arguably great here, but the secret sauce more »
This is the end—or so it was understood at the time, before original IP became a value proposition for shareholders. Pros: George Lucas upped the ante on set pieces and the three leads remain magnetic. Con: The first recurring use of blowing up the doomsday thingy as a stock climax and, of course, Ewoks. more »
Andrei Tarkovsky’s unconventional account of the life of a 15th-century Russian painter is likely to live on as long as its subject’s icons. Tarkovsky muse Anatoly Solonitsyn never paints a stroke as Andrei. The film instead shadows his episodic struggles with making art in light of the cruelty and venality of the muddy world. A more »
Smart move on Terry Gilliam’s part adopting a cockeyed steampunk aesthetic here. It places the film slightly outside the typical pop-culture timescale and keeps a fable-like veneer slapped on top of what is, at root, a dystopian tale of repression, stupidity, and cruelty. Jonathan Pryce stars as the most everyman Everyman ever. more »
One of the great ‘70s paranoid thrillers rests on the narrow shoulders of Dustin Hoffman. Working his annoying-kid vibe to his advantage, Hoffman’s everydork seems suitably overwhelmed when he’s dragged into an international conspiracy involving shadowy government agents and Nazi war criminals (e.g. a delicious Laurence Olivier) more »
Peer around Robbie Robertson’s ego to locate a top-five greatest concert film. Not only does the Band tear through a heap of their Americana-ground-zero hits like it was the last time, but the murderer’s row of special guests can’t be topped: Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and more. Boomer heav more »
Toshiro Mifune in a crisp white suit and cap presents one of the underrated iconic looks in cinema. His rookie detective loses his pistol to a pickpocket in a heat wave and leads the audience on a tour of postwar Japan’s sweaty mean streets as he tries to get it back before it’s used in more crimes. This is where Akira Kurosawa’ more »
Naked space vampires! If that logline doesn’t sell you, please note that Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist) directs and duly manages to squeeze considerable mileage out of some cool production design, coulda-been-worse practical effects, and C-list actors like Steve Railsback and Peter Firth. Not to mention n more »
Barbara Stanwyck’s nightclub-singer moll lams it from the cops and hides out amid a clutch of milquetoast encyclopedia researchers led by hunky grammarian Gary Cooper. Cooper’s character finds her slangy argot fascinating, then falls for the rest of the package. With Howard Hawks directing and Billy Wilder co-writing the script, more »
Random people keep turning up gruesomely murdered, their placid killers unaware of having done the deed. The unrelated victims sport an “x” carved deep into their throats. From that premise, Japanese dread master Kiyoshi Kurosawa weaves one of the great modern psychological thrillers and perhaps his deepest meditation on the lon more »
