Outer Space and Inner Minds
A film scandalous in its day, a classic thriller and a visitor from outer space are among new offerings at Daylesford’s Phoenix Cinema.
Regarded as risque in the extreme at its 1967 debut, `The Graduate’ is now seen as the first candid look at sex in the suburbs.
With then-new Simon and Garfunkel music (“The Sounds of Silence”), a predatory Anne Bancroft seducing a young university graduate (Dustin Hoffman) and mythical moments (“Plastics!”) `The Graduate’ is seen as a central achievement of filmmaking in the 1960s.
It screens at the community-owned and operated cinema at 2pm today (Friday, June 12, at 4.30 tomorrow and Sunday and at 2pm on Monday and Friday).
That adorable, pot-bellied creature from outer space is back tomorrow at 2pm with the showing of ‘E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial’.
Sentimental, but not overly so, it has outstanding performances by the young cast.
Twenty years after the film’s first release Steven Spielberg put out a special anniversary edition with computer alterations to E.T.’s facial expressions that were not at first available.
From outer space to the inner-mind we travel with Jodie Foster as a classy shrink in `A Private Life’ (tonight and Sunday at 7, Monday at 4.30, then Thursday at 7).
When Foster learns that one of her patients has suicided, she comes to suspect murder.
There are weird byplays with a cheap hypnotherapist “transporting:” Foster to the Nazi occupation where her estranged son is among Hitler’s militia.
In spite of some anti-climaxes, the film works, according to critics, through Foster’s natural charisma.
`The Sheep Detectives’ has delighted audiences as the woolly investigators help a hapless young cop in his bumbling inquiries (tomorrow, 11am).
At that time next day a friendship between two women lies at the heart of this painstaking account of a mining disaster that killed 29 men in New Zealand in 2010. `Pike River’ includes a superstar Kiwi politician playing herself without charge (Sunday and following Saturday at 11am, then next day at 7pm).
Jack Nicholson won the only Oscar as a cynical, wisecracking snoop who displays decency in `Chinatown’ (4.30 Thursday) . Roman Polanski’s genius as a director brings together miscreants , oddballs and victims, with Nicholson’s nose bandage playing a rivetting (pun unintended) part.
Back in 1974 the marvellous combination of director Roman Polanski and stars Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway combined for `Chinatown’ (Thursday, 18 June, 4.30pm). One critic found the best part of it is “the golden script”. Apart, that is, from Nicholson’s nose!
At 7pm that day the screen lights up for David Lean’s `Lawrence of Arabia’, which dramatically explores the uniting of diverse Arabi tribes. Said Winston Churchill of Lawrence “I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time.”
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