Mack Bates

Tuesday, Dec. 10 – Thursday, Dec. 12: Marcus screens the Chevy Chase classic National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and the Judy Garland classic Meet Me in St. Louis Check listings for times @ Marcus Theatres (the Majestic, Menomonee Falls, North Shore, Ridge, and South Shore) Tickets $5. Remember when Chevy Chase was the man? Me neither. Which is why it’s so refreshing to know that the good folks at Marcus Theatres are giving us all the rare opportunity to see the Chev-ster back on the big screen in all his goofy glory as Clark Griswald in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989).…

This Veterans Day, Marcus Theatres pays homage to a group of local WWII vets who make the trip to visit the World War II Memorial. The UWM Union Theatre is hosting a series of free screenings for all to enjoy. And Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto jockey hard for Oscar gold both having lost over 30 pounds to convincingly portray HIV+ patients turned unexpected allies in the indie film, Dallas Buyers Club, co-starring Jennifer Garner, which opens in local theaters this Friday. ***CRITICS CHOICE*** Monday, Nov. 11 – Thursday, Nov. 14: Five local Marcus Theatres present special screenings of the WWII…

This past May, Moviegoers’ staff blogger Mack Bates wrote about the crowdfunding campaign via Indiegogo waged by Milwaukee Summer Entertainment Camp founder Kyle Olson, a South Milwaukee native and award-winning filmmaker, and the family of Ashleigh Love (a local teenage girl whose still-unsolved murder made headlines in the fall of 2009), to film a proposed anti-violence documentary with the working title Letters to Ashleigh. In the film, family members, friends, and strangers would read letters (to Ashleigh) that they had written to her following her death. The goal was to raise at least $3,000 of the film’s proposed $3,500 production…

For the first time in recent memory, there are no horror films opening in theaters this Halloween week. However, if you’re looking to get your scream on in a movie theater, the UWM Union Theatre, the Rosebud and the Times are shrewdly picking up the slack and offering up some horror classics through the week. Monday, Oct. 28: Kelly Kirshtner’s Horror Classic plays the Union. 7 p.m. @ UWM Union Theatre (2200 E. Kenwood Blvd.) FREE. As it says on the theater’s website: “The horror genre has a tremendous range, reinventing itself in different forms for different decades and audiences.…

35 mm is dead; long live 35 mm While digital distribution makes a special sort of sense for a film festival (keeping track of nearly 100 prints in the nascent days of the festival must’ve been a Herculean task), we just can’t stop loving the format. The festival screened The Land Before Time, Wings of Desire, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Enter the Dragon, Earth and Blow Out, among others in 35 mm this year. There is a je nais se quoi about an extra large projection (all of these 35 mm screenings took place in the Oriental’s main theater, only…

With the 2013 Milwaukee Film Festival (or MFF 2013, for short) now behind us – I’m already looking forward to what the people at Milwaukee Film have in store for next year’s fest – what’s a moviegoer to do after partaking in such a delectable cinematic feast in their own backyard? The answer’s easy: keep partaking of cinema whenever and however possible. This week alone, two of the city’s other film festivals, the 16th Annual Milwaukee Jewish Film Festival and the 28th Annual Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival, are taking place. The former started Sunday and wraps this Thursday, while the latter starts this Thursday and wraps on Sunday.…

After 15 glorious, screening-packed days that offered up 241 films (104 features and 137 shorts), playing at three local theaters – the Oriental, the Downer and the Fox-Bay Cinema Grill – the final day of the 2013 Milwaukee Film Festival has sadly arrived. Last weekend, at an invite-only function where the winners of this year’s festival jury awards were announced, Jonathan Jackson, artistic and executive director of the festival, pointed something out an interesting fact that most festival patrons likely never take into account: It takes a village, and the better part of a year, to program and organize the…

Begong Ava, Begong Hele Since its inception in 2009, the Milwaukee Film Festival (or MFF, for short) has presented “The Milwaukee Show,” an annual competitive showcase of the best new work in short film from local filmmakers that is part of the festival’s Cream City Cinema program. The showcase, which gets its one-time festival showing tonight at 7 p.m. at the historic Oriental Theatre (2230 N. Farwell Ave.), usually consists of a dozen short films that run the gamut in both filmmaking style and technique. According to this year’s festival program, “These filmmakers may hail from the Milwaukee area, but…

What better way to kick cap off the first full week of fall than to attend a screening (or two or three) over the weekend during the first leg of the 2013 Milwaukee Film Festival? Starting today and continuing through Friday, Oct. 10, this year’s festival will showcase 104 features and 137 shorts – that’s a total of 241 films for those of you counting – over the next 15 screening-packed days. All film screenings will take place at either the Downer Theatre (2589 N. Downer Ave.), the Oriental Theatre (2230 N. Farwell Ave.), or the Fox-Bay Cinema Grill (334 E. Silver Spring Dr.,…

The 2013 Milwaukee Film Festival kicks off this Thursday! Fifteen days, 241 films, and one sweet opening night party at the lakefront. But there are other events worth checking out this week. And while the 2013 opening weekend of the Milwaukee Film Festival is conspicuously absent in this week’s On The Marquee, rest assured a spectacular MFF 2013 preview is coming your way tomorrow. Monday, Sept. 23 – Thursday, Sept. 26: Catch the mob comedy The Family starring Robert DeNiro, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Tommy Lee Jones on the big screen Check local listings for showtimes and ticket pricing. Two-time Oscar winner…