Repertory cinema takes a bit of a back seat in this month of LGBT Pride, but what the Castro Theatre programmers are serving up from June 11-17 is nothing to sneeze at.
Hatari! (1962) Dubbed "the Grey Fox of Hollywood," Indiana-born director Howard Hawks (1896-1977) was a Tinseltown pioneer before the movies could talk and long after they had run out of witty things to say. "Hatari!," Swahili for "Danger!," is a unique Hawks-eye view of a big-game hunter (John "Duke" Wayne, at his most deliciously macho) who land rovers across the African plain trapping big animals for Western zoos.
Chatting with director/film historian Peter Bogdanovich, Hawks explained that even beyond his classic screwball comedy classics (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday), his films were often a mix of pleasures that offered audiences permission to laugh. "The comedy crept up on people �" they weren't told to laugh. And the more dangerous, the more exciting, the easier it is to get a laugh." I still fondly remember a usually dour Unitarian Church-raised gay roommate who laughed his guts out at the sight of the prim Katharine Hepburn parading her pet leopard, Baby, on a leash along the sidewalks of New York. (6/11; plays with 1981's African-set wildlife drama Roar.)
Say Anything & High Fidelity (1989 & 2000) This John Cusack-turns-49 double bill is an extra candy-flavored treat for fans already gorging on his turn channeling Brian Wilson along with Paul Dano in Bill Pohlad's Love & Mercy.
Say Anything features a 20-something Cusack acing Cameron Crowe's writer/director debut. Cusack's Lloyd Dobler is a well-meaning martial-arts-aspiring/boombox-wielding screw-up whose pursuit of high school's class brain Ione Skye has a truckload of unexpected consequences. Cusack's real-life sister Joan plays his movie sis here.
High Fidelity Hold on to your $12 Castro seat (with possible door prizes) as Cusack morphs into romantic loser Rob, who uses his catbird seat at a barely surviving Chicago record store to chart the ups and mostly downs of his love life. Store sidekicks (Jack Black and Todd Louiso) add misanthropic riffs. (both 6/12)
Sing-along Sound of Music You know the drill: follow the bouncing ball across the Castro screen. (6/13, 14)
I'm So Excited Spanish master Pedro Almodovar is at the controls in this madcap simulated flight scheduled to fly a rowdy human cargo from Madrid to Mexico City. The highlight is a queer male flight-crew disco lip-synching to the title song. It's as if the Gotham subway-hijack thriller The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 had been reconstructed for the screen by a Spanish Mel Brooks.
Wild Tales (2014) Almodovar disciple Damian Szifron offers six shorts on similarly perilous themes. (both 6/16)
North by Northwest (1959) A fabulous twin spin with the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock illustrates both why the British-born/American-naturalized cinema genius was so on top of his game in the 1950s, and how the message got a little mangled by the 70s. North by Northwest is one of eight features Hitch pulled off with either the suave Cary Grant or the versatile Jimmy Stewart in the lead role.
Grant is supposed to have complained to Hitchcock that the Ernest Lehman script �" in which his ad-man character, Roger O. Thorhill, is kidnapped, forced to ingest huge quantities of bourbon, lied to by a beautiful femme fatale (Eva Marie Saint), pursued by a killer crop-duster pilot, and finally has to duke it out with a suspicious effeminate bad guy on top of Mount Rushmore (literally inside Lincoln's nose) �" made absolutely no sense. But that's exactly the point of this brilliant cold war-era adventure/dark comedy, reportedly partially inspired by the Shakespearean notion of a protagonist being "mad North by Northwest."
Family Plot (1976) This final entry in the Hitchcock canon is no less cleverly plotted (a reprise screenwriting contribution from Ernest Lehman) or acted than his 50s gems, but lacks the high-wattage star power of a Grant or a Stewart. Instead, he directs a quirky ensemble of grade A character actors: Barbara Harris, Bruce Dern (Laura's dad), William Devane and the inimitable Karen Black, who gallantly and hilariously stood by her man Jack Nicholson in perhaps the most iconic 70s rebel-anthem flick, Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces. Family Plot, with its fake spiritualist and madcap bad-driving scenes, stands out for perhaps Hitch's oddest ensemble, a quartet of great actors, all possessing "eye power." And to top it off, it ends on a wink from the super-smart Harris. (both 6/17)
More info: castrotheatre.com.