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.
| Boogie Nights | |
| Alien | Thursday, May 7 |
| The 400 Blows | Saturday, May 9 |
| Speed | Thursday, May 14 |
| Rope | Saturday, May 16 |
| Dogtooth | Thursday, May 21 |
| Late Spring | Saturday, May 23 |
| Coffy | Thursday, May 28 |
| Bitter Rice | Saturday, May 30 |
| A Better Tomorrow | Thursday, June 4 |
| 8 1/2 | Saturday, June 6 |
| Clueless | Thursday, June 11 |
| Close-Up | Saturday, June 13 |
| Tombstone | Thursday, June 18 |
Paul Thomas Anderson’s golden-age porn-biz epic isn’t really about porn, or even sex. It’s about family. None of PTA’s flash one-ers or dead-on needle drops would matter if it weren’t for the keen insight of his script or the performances of his killer cast: Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Burt Reynolds, Heather G more »
Emily Bronte doesn't need pomo frippery or textual hair-splitting to work. William Wyler's 1939 adaptation cast Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon as Heathcliff and Cathy and shot the outdoor scenes in Southern California. It'll still clutch your heart and tweak your ducts. - Lee Gardner more »
Ridley Scott's breakout is so well made that, except for the computer displays, you could release it new tomorrow and it would still look fresh. Its sci-fi/horror mashup still gets ripped off on the regular more than 40 years later. When Scott revisited it for a pointless "director's cut," he barely touched it. It is that good. more »
Francois Truffaut ranks as perhaps the most overrated Nouvelle Vague director, but his semi-autobiographical debut feature will live forever. Fourteen-year-old Jean-Pierre Leaud's extraordinary performance as an urban adolescent let down by his loser parents, school, and society and running out of good options channels an more »
The premise was going to work almost no matter what: Dennis Hopper's mad bomber has rigged a city bus to blow if it drops below 50 mph as it careens through bottlenecked LA. But director Jan De Bont, editor Jon Wright, and athletic young star Keanu Reeves create kinetic cinema magic here. more »
Minor Hitchcock once best known for having been shot as a series of long oners, Rope now fascinates more for gay subtext that is just barely "sub." John Dall and Farley Granger play adult roommates who murder a pal to see if they can get away with it, then serve a light supper on the chest containing the corpse. Jimmy Stewart pl more »
Yorgos Lanthimos enjoys the awards and the stars and the big budgets now, but nothing he's done lately is as original, shrewd, outrageous, or deadpan hilarious as his second feature. A Greek family man and his wife have decided to protect their children from isolating them from it. That's already telling you too much. Just see i more »
The first of Yasujiro Ozu's classic collaborations with Setsuko Hara amply demonstrates why he cast her five more times. She plays the adult daughter of fellow Ozu stalwart Chishu Ryu. They have become comfortable with her tending him, but as they both age, he knows she must start her own life. Ozu and Ryu work their usual minim more »
The film that made Pam Grier a star. Nurse by day, badass by night, she's out for revenge against the pusher who hooked her sister. But as she kicks ass up the ladder toward Mr. Big, she runs into more than she bargained for. Grier easily handles the sex and violence inherent in classic Blaxploitation, but it's the vulnerability more »
Every year hundreds of women flock to temporary harvesting jobs in the rice paddies of Northern Italy, a perfect setting for working-class drama and romance. Doris Dowling is soaking in it - on the lam from the law, torn between a crook boyfriend and an upright soldier, trying to get on with her fellow workers. Giuseppe De Santi more »
John Woo was just another struggling Hong Kong filmmaker before this story of brotherhood, sacrifice, and many, many round of 9mm ammunition rebooted his career. Ti Lung and the uber-charismatic Chow Yun-fat star as down-and-out gangsters dragged back into the life. Woo himself plays a small role as well as choreographing the pi more »
Marcello Mastroianni stands in for director Federico Fellini as a celebrated cinema auteur besieged by the demands of his life and career and blocked over the creation of his next film (which you are currently watching). But no capsule logline captures the mindmeld effect of Fellini's mix of reality, memory, dreams, and fantasy, more »
Amy Heckerling transposes Jane Austen's Emma to Southern California mall culture with Alicia Silverstone as the contemporary stand-in for Austen's title busybody, matchmaking and Pygmalioning it up even as her own life gets a bit random. Even laden with 30-year speech and standards, the director's script sparkles. A perfect film more »
Is Close-Up a documentary? An Iranian man who pretended to be a famous Iranian director appears as himself, as does the family he hoaxed and the journalist who broke the story. Filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami secured permission to film the man's trial, and asks questions of the defendant on camera during the proceedings. Issues of pe more »
Thank god for Val Kilmer. Even Kurt Russell and his vigorous mustache can't quite save this epic Western saga from its self-seriousness and open-range sprawl. But Kilmer's Doc Holiday - a consumptive dandy and cardsharp quick with a pistol and a withering quip - makes every scene he's in a hoot and sticking around well worth it. more »
