Tuesday, Oct. 28: The traveling Ann Arbor Film Festival comes to town with its 16mm program
7 p.m. @ UWM Union Theatre (FREE!)
A staple of the Union Theatre schedule is the return of the traveling Ann Arbor Film Festival, coming prepared with a whole host of 16mm goodies with which to enthrall us this year. The Union couldn’t have put it better when they said “The AAFF tour is a collection of the finest cutting-edge, independent and artistically-inspired short films from the 52nd Ann Arbor Film Festival across all genres: experimental, documentary, animation and narrative.” These films always get short thrift (PUN ABSOLUTELY INTENDED) when it comes to public screenings, so this is a great chance to catch things you would simply have not the opportunity to see otherwise.
Wednesday, Oct. 29: Rhyme & Reason
6 p.m. @ TRUE Skool – 161 W. Wisconsin Ave., Suite 1000 (FREE!)
Continuing TRUE Skool’s 10-year anniversary programming of films and documentaries that chart the influence of Hip-Hop in politics, culture and the entertainment industry, Rhyme & Reason explores the evolution of rap (at least to the point of its release, 1997) and hip hop culture and how it arrived at such a level of cultural prominence. Given that in the years since its release it has become the dominant form in music and the arts, the post-screening discussion should prove especially fruitful. This doc also has an amazing roster of interview subjects, I’ll only name a handful: Biz Markie, Dr. Dre, E-40, KRS-One, Kurtis Blow, The Pharcyde, Phife Dawg, Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G., Raekwon, Tha Alkaholics, and Wu-Tang Clan. Incredible, right?
***CRITIC’S CHOICE***
Wednesday, Oct. 29 through Sunday, Nov. 2: UWM Union Theatre’s Horror Weekend takes place
All screenings free to the public!
Wednesday: Trick ‘r’ Treat @ 4:15 p.m. & Plan 9 from Outer Space @ 7 p.m.
Thursday: Plan 9 @ 7 p.m. & The Texas Chainsaw Massacre @ 9 p.m.
Friday: Texas Chainsaw @ 7 p.m. & Night of the Living Dead @ 9 p.m.
Saturday: Night @ 5 p.m., Texas @ 7pm & Trick ‘r’ Treat @ 9 p.m.
Sunday: Texas @ 6 p.m., Night @ 8 p.m.
This is an awesome program that UWM has put together for Halloween week, made even better by the majority of the screenings being 35 or 16mm! Only Night of the Living Dead is a digital projection, so I would highly, highly recommend coming out in droves to support these screenings to show that there is still a hunger in the local film scene for movies being screened on actual film! Beyond that, the films being shown run a really solid gamut of what horror cinema has to offer. Plan 9 is famously awful, but made with a conviction of purpose that has to be respected while Trick ‘r’ Treat is a great seasonally themed anthology that plays like an R-rated Goosebumps omnibus.
Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are both all-time classics that persevere in being thoroughly frightening despite the series of sequels and remakes that have come in their wake. George Romero and Tobe Hooper both come about their rawness through different means, but both films are exemplars of independent cinema that unnerve and replicate the anxiety and emotion of nightmares through their filmmaking. Special notice should be given to TCM (the movie abbreviation, not the movie network), as this is a 40th anniversary restoration print being screened over the weekend, so the movie will look as good as it did upon its initial release. And trust me when I say these are the types of movies that deserve to be experience with a crowd, surfing the waves of a unified fear.
Thursday, Oct. 30 through Thursday, Nov. 6: Saw is re-released on its 10th anniversary
Check local listings for showtimes and pricing
I never caught the original Saw on its first release in theaters, nor have I seen any of the subsequent sequels, although my understanding is that when taken as a whole they form a pretty interesting series of interconnected stories beyond the ‘torture porn’ designation they’ve been branded with over the years. Plus, something that got James Wan (of the fantastic The Conjuring) his start couldn’t possibly be all bad. The first film (with Cary Elwes and Danny Glover) is getting a re-release to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its existence and it may just be high time that I finally dip my toes into the blood-filled waters of this particular franchise.
***ANOTHER CRITIC’S CHOICE***
Thursday, Oct. 30 & Friday, Oct. 31: Halloween
Oct. 30 at 10 p.m. & Oct. 31 at midnight @ Times Cinema ($5!)
It wouldn’t be Halloween without Halloween, John Carpenter’s masterpiece of abject dread-through-mise en scene. For horror fans, revisiting this film on a yearly basis almost takes on the importance of a religious pilgrimage. You have to return back to the roots of what you love as homage, and catching it at midnight on Halloween seems as a good a way as any to pay your respects to this absolute classic. John Carpenter has one of the most impressive bodies of work of any American director alive, something that can be forgotten during the past decade spent mostly out in the cinematic wilderness, so remind yourself of just how amazing both he and this movie are with these two special screenings.
***YES, YET ANOTHER CRITIC’S CHOICE***
Friday, Oct. 31: Whiplash, Birdman, Nightcrawler, Horns, and The Surface open locally
Check local listings for showtimes and pricing
As if the bevy of horror-related options wasn’t enough to satisfy you this week, this might be the best week of the year so far in terms of great films being released in local theaters. I’ll be a little tight-lipped with regards to these, as I don’t want to give too much away in advance of my reviews, but it will be hard for you to go wrong this weekend with many of the choices at your disposal. It’s absolutely appropriate that Nightcrawler finally makes it local bow on Halloween weekend, as the lead character played by Jake Gyllenhaal is absolutely ghoulish. This story of his ascension through the ranks via the footage he captures of local accidents for nightly news broadcasts is a gripping neo-noir, but Gyllenhaal’s performance is star attraction.
Whiplash is an amazing kinetic experience of a film with two great performances from Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons as a mentor/protégé duo at one of the country’s most prestigious music colleges as Teller aims to achieve greatness through perfection as a jazz drummer. Perfection comes with a cost, though, something this film makes abundantly clear. This is one of the year’s very best films, one I can’t wait to take in with a big crowd through its myriad twists and turns.
What better weekend for Horns to finally make a theater debut locally as well? Adapted from Joe Hill’s rock-solid novel, Horns finds Daniel Radcliffe’s Ignatius Perrish waking up one morning with a splitting headache and two horns starting to grow from his forehead. The primary suspect in the murder and rape of his girlfriend, “Ig” must use the power being granted to him by these horns (they seem to compel people to reveal their darkest secrets) to uncover the real culprit before it’s too late. Alexandre Aja’s work is frequently compelling (Team Piranha 3D FOREVER), so I’m onboard for this, especially after seeing Radcliffe prove more than capable of escaping the long shadow cast by Harry Potter with his rom-com What If earlier this year.
Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance as it’s also known) has gotten some of the most ecstatic reviews of any movie to be released this year. Its director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, has been hit or miss in the past but it can never be said that the film he crafts aren’t cinematically exciting. This particular film, looking at a washed-up Hollywood actor (Michael Keaton) known best for his work in the famed Birdman superhero movie series is trying to jumpstart his career by directing and starring in a stage adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story. Filled to the brim with great performers (Edward Norton, Zach Galifianakis, Emma Stone, Amy Ryan, Naomi Watts and Andrea Riseborough to be specific), already being lauded for its technologically audaciousness (Inarritu makes the majority of the film feel as though it transpires in one fluid shot), and sitting pretty at 93 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, this looks to be a contender come Oscar time.
And finally, if you missed out on the chance to catch the locally made closing night selection of this year’s MFF, The Surface, you’ll get another chance as it begins a limited run at selected local Marcus Theaters this weekend. Starring Sean Astin and Chris Mulkey as two men stranded out in the middle of Lake Michigan who must learn to co-exist in order to survive, it wowed the sold-out crowd on closing night at the Oriental and now you have the chance to see this locally-made film on the big screen yourself!
