Pet-theory time. While the 1956 original sounded a warning about Cold War paranoia, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake offers an elegy for the 1960s. Donald Sutherland leads the real San Franciscans, floppy haired intellectuals who like exotic food and going to book events, while the alien-pod people who would replace them strike firs more »
Revival Series
Each week repertory films will be presented on 35mm prints and DCP in The Charles’ original 362 seat theatre. There are three showings of a movie each week.
VIEW CALENDAR
Invasion of the Body Snatchers | Thursday, October 31 |
Army of Shadows | Saturday, November 2 |
Burden of Dreams | Thursday, November 7 |
The Big Sleep | Saturday, November 9 |
Days of Heaven | Thursday, November 14 |
My Night at Maud’s | Saturday, November 16 |
Hardcore | Thursday, November 21 |
Chess of the Wind | Saturday, November 23 |
Querelle | Wednesday, November 27 |
A Matter of Life and Death | Saturday, November 30 |
The Time Masters | Thursday, December 5 |
The Letter | Saturday, December 7 |
Fitzcarraldo | Thursday, December 12 |
Now Playing
Upcoming
Army of Shadows
Former French Resistance fighter Jean-Pierre Melville slips behind the front lines of World War II for a hard look at the vicious war in the streets of occupied France. As with a Resistance cell, information is parceled out slowly, obliquely—you follow Lino Ventura before you know why. Soon, you’re trapped deep in a world of sud more »
Coming Soon
Burden of Dreams
It says a lot that a documentary about Werner Herzog dragging a steamship over a mountain is as compelling as the film he made about a character dragging a steamship over a mountain (Fitzcarraldo). Doc legend Les Blank’s camera shadows Herzog as he plunges into the Peruvian jungle and surmounts every muddy, sweaty obstacle to ca more »
The Big Sleep
If you have a friend who’s always whispering “Who’s he?” or “Why did that happen?” during movies, leave them home. The plot of Howard Hawks’ classic adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled novel approaches quantum physics. But Humphrey Bogart made Philip Marlowe iconic, and the crackling script, featuring work by the great L more »
Days of Heaven
One of the most beautiful American films ever made. Richard Gere and Brooke Adams star as migrant workers and secret lovers who decide to dupe wealthy farmer Sam Shepard. Heartbreak and tragedy ensue. The breath-stopping ravishment of Terence Malick’s magic-hour shooting schedule is leavened perfectly by the vinegar and innocenc more »
My Night at Maud’s
Nothing like an Éric Rohmer film to remind you of how Mickey Mouse most cinema is when it comes to how people and their relationships actually work. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays a stoic engineer who pines for a woman he sees in church. Or maybe he should pursue the more libertine woman with whom he has a charged overnight encoun more »
Hardcore
Writer/director Paul Schrader’s most underrated film? It’s a crowded field, but his Dantean descent into the ‘70s porn underworld is a contender. George C. Scott’s Calvinist Midwesterner ventures to Los Angeles to find his missing teen daughter with Peter Boyle’s sleazy private eye and Season Hubley’s sexworker as his guides. Th more »
Chess of the Wind
Like nothing else you will see onscreen this year. Made and banned in pre-revolution Iran and unseen again until 2020, Mohammad Reza Aslani’s film rarely leaves the walls of an oppressively opulent house as a family squabbles over an inheritance. Betrayal, murder, and other less tangible dreads rear their heads. Do not miss. -Le more »
Querelle
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film adapts Jean Genet’s novel into a queer seaside fever dream. Brad Davis stars as the titular sailor amid a hotbed of vice, drug dealing, murder, repressed (and flagrant) man love, and everybody sleeping with everybody else, plus the director’s signature theatrical flair and lurid vibe. What’s more »
A Matter of Life and Death
A film romance unlike any other. WWII bomber pilot David Niven falls for radio operator Kim Hunter as his plane goes down in flames. His impossible survival sets off an interplanar incident as life and afterlife wrestle with the power of their love. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s use of brain-boggling design, practical more »
The Time Masters
The director behind French cult animation classic Fantastic Planet and French comics god Möbius teamed up on an animated film? Vraiment! René Laloux and Jean “Möbius” Giraud did collaborate on this space adventure, in which a team of explorers race to save a child marooned on a hostile planet. Sort of like the trippiest episode more »
The Letter
Bette Davis’s wealthy married woman shoots a man who is not her husband dead on her front steps. Dozens see her do it. It’s up to a lawyer/family friend played by James Stephenson to get her off on self-defense. But is she as innocent as she seems? William Wyler’s noir benefits from his expert direction, the sweaty tropical sett more »
Fitzcarraldo
The focused madness of Werner Herzog’s filmmaking obsession found its purest expression in his account of a European (Klaus Kinski) who hatches an elaborate scheme to bring grand opera to the backwaters of the early 20th-century Amazon. All he has to do is drag a steamship over a mountain. Animating feat aside, it remains one of more »