The Castro Theatre outdoes itself with a March that sizzles with my favorite guilty pleasure: the astutely concocted thematic double- or even triple-bill.
Godard Double Feature (3/5): Goodbye to Language or Adieu au language (2014, France) In 71 minutes, this last of the French New Wave rebels gives us a violent, fateful romantic encounter between a single man and a married woman, spanning several seasons and featuring a persistent pooch. With Heloise Godet, Kamel Abdeli, Richard Chevallier. (70mm, 3D, 7:30 p.m.)
King Lear (1987) Shakespeare's penultimate classic gets a heavy-duty makeover, possibly an absurdist parody, with a truly eccentric ensemble: Peter Sellars, Burgess Meredith, Molly Ringwald, Jean-Luc Godard, Woody Allen, Norman and Kate Mailer. The phrase "It has to be seen to be believed" was probably never more appropriate. (In French, Russian, Japanese and English, with English subtitles, 35mm, 90 min., 9 p.m.)
Midnights for Maniacs (3/6): Little Shop of Horrors (1986) Frank Oz reworks a 1960 Roger Corman classic and provides a truly wild black comedy with huge doses of camp sensibility. With Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Vincent Gardenia, James Belushi, John Candy, Christopher Guest, Bill Murray and a truly outrageous turn from Steve Martin in his early prime. It's a musical, with songs that made this one of my favorite 80s big-screen treats. This is a special "Director's Cut," complete with a 23-minute restoration of the film's original over-a-cliff ending. (7:20 p.m.)
eXistenZ (1999) David Cronenberg outdoes himself with a 1999 production that revels in its cyber-sexual weirdness. With Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh. (9:45 p.m.)
Scary Cow: Locally Made Short Film Festival This annual event is sponsored by the Scary Cow Short Film Co-op. Doors open at 2 p.m. Further info and tickets at scarycow.com. (3/7)
Triple Feature (3/8): Doctor Zhivago (1965) Soviet dissident Boris Pasternak's bold romance novel pissed off a post-Stalin Kremlin and became the basis for David Lean's best post-Lawrence of Arabia epic. Five Oscars came to the creative team that runs us through a bitter Russian winter in that greatest of the country's treasures, the trans-Siberian railway. Complementing the tragic lovers, never-better Omar Sharif and Julie Christie, is a scenery-chewing villain (Rod Steiger). (200 min., intermission, 1 p.m.)
Reds (1981) Warren Beatty seduced an early-80s nation of filmgoers with a cinema romance-manifesto that implicitly challenged Reagan-era pieties. Beatty is American Communist John Reed, who romances fellow lefty Louise Bryant, in a mid-career peak from a post-Woody Allen Diane Keaton. This 195-minute opus is slyly subverted by an awesome Jack Nicholson cameo as the rambunctious American playwright Eugene O'Neill. (35 mm, intermission, 5 p.m.)
Trailer Apocalypse! (2015) Reportedly the greatest collection of movie ads �" those miniature pitches that begin with the phrase, "In a world �"" (9 p.m.)
Double Feature (3/9): Wild (2014) by Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club). Reese Witherspoon is tough gal who recovers from a serious life meltdown by taking an 1,100-mile hike up the Pacific Coast Trail. With a bravura turn by Laura Dern as Witherspoon's tough babe of a mom, it's like a companion piece to Sean Penn's Into the Wild, about a young lad (Emile Hirsch) who loses his way in a similar outdoors adventure (2:30, 7 p.m.)
A Most Violent Year (2014) J.C. Chandor (Margin Call) puts us in a chaotic New York City, 1981. Abel and Anna Morales, a married couple of tough cookies out to earn their piece of the rock with a small but ambitious fuel-oil company. Oscar Isaac reveals a tough core as a struggling "businessman" combining immigrant grit with a page or two snatched from the Mafia playbook. (4:40, 9:10 p.m.)
Double Feature (3/10): Foxcatcher (2014) Bennett Miller directs Steve Carell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo in a dark story of the tragic relationship between an eccentric millionaire and two champion wrestlers. (2:30, 7 p.m.)
Whiplash (2014) Damien Chazelle directs this drama set in the shark-infested waters of an elite New York music academy. Andrew (Miles Teller), an aspiring jazz drummer, finds a mentor, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), who offers keys to the kingdom at a steep price. "Here, kid, join my little coven of talented but mostly spineless wimps, and I'll not only turn you into a seasoned pro on the horn �" a future Buddy Rich or Charlie Parker, perhaps �" but make a man of you in the bargain." The bargain ranges from enduring profanity-laced lectures to physical pummelings in the classroom. It's those first slaps across the boy's face that clue us in that Chazelle isn't remaking Mr. Holland's Opus.
Double Feature (3/18): Moonrise Kingdom (2012) Wes Anderson turns his unique comic sensibility to the misadventures of two teens lost during a New England summer-camp romp. The thrill lies in the deadpan comic turns from its all-star ensemble, especially a non-tough-guy turn from Bruce Willis and a delightful, jazz-like performance from a laidback Bill Murray. (7 p.m.)
Badlands (1973) Loosely based on a real-life crime spree, Terrence Malick�s auspicious 1973 debut gives us a cocky Martin Sheen as a James Dean-styling serial killer who seduces his dim girlfriend (Sissy Spacek) on a murderous jaunt across the Great Plains after shooting her Pop and burning down the family homestead. (8/25. 8:50 p.m., with Days of Heaven)
Double Feature (3/19): The Imitation Game (2014) The personal life of closeted WWII-era British mathematical whiz Alan Turing (his brilliance exposed Nazi Germany's wartime secrets) would have been unexceptional if it weren't for the Victorian-era laws that turned "poofs" into dangerous outlaws. Benedict Cumberbatch, as Turing, projects an extraordinary anti-charisma. (2, 7 p.m.)
Mr. Turner Under British auteur Mike Leigh, gifted character actor Timothy Spall gives an uncompromising portrayal of 19th-century landscape painter Joseph Mallard William Turner. In Spall's hands, Turner emerges as a complex and memorably tragic figure, building on contemporary notions of artists as wastrels and failed adults. (4:10, 9:10 p.m.)
Double Feature (3/22): Some Like It Hot (1959) Billy Wilder's take on the Jazz Age finds two unemployed musicians (Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis) resorting to outrageous desperate measures to avoid being rubbed out by gangsters. Still one of the best mainstream cross-dressing masterpieces, enhanced by one of Marilyn Monroe's dizziest turns, as the saucy singer Sugar Cane.
The Seven Year Itch (1955) Billy Wilder used to boast that he was the only director to survive two turns of duty with Monroe. In this mid-50s farce, Marilyn sparks the fantasy reveries of a middle-aged office worker (basset hound-faced comic actor Tom Ewell) during a long hot New York summer. This is the film that features Monroe's moment where her skirt is propelled heavenward from the warm air blast from a subway street-grating. The scene reportedly sent Monroe's then-hubby, baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, into a fit of jealous rage.
Info: castrotheatre.com