‘CELEBRATE BROOKLYN!’
Prospect Park Bandshell, 9th Street and Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, 718-855-7882, celebratebrooklyn.org
July 8 PRODIGAL SON (Sammo Hung, 1982) With DJ IXL and DJ Excess scratching an original score.
July 21 PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (Rupert Julian, 1925) Live score by the Alloy Orchestra. Still the only version of Gaston Leroux’s Gothic-lit romance worth watching, thanks to silent film’s primitive likeness to the historical silliness of the story and Lon Chaney’s Herculean achievements in self-torture. ATKINSON
July 29 THE SOUND OF MUSIC (Robert Wise, 1965)
August 4 TARZAN THE APE MAN (W.S. Van Dyke, 1932) Live score by Mocean Worker.
‘MOVIES UNDER THE STARS’
Pier A Park, 1st Street and Sinatra Drive, Hoboken, New Jersey, 201-420-2207
June 1 GARDEN STATE (Zach Braff, 2004) Best-known for his role as a retarded quarterback, anhedonic actor-waiter Andrew “Large” Largeman (Zach Braff) comes home to New Jersey for his mom’s funeral. Why hasn’t he spoken to his folks in nine years—and what’s with all the mood stabilizers? Braff’s triple threat has a patient way with information. The tragic backstory fills in gradually, and the slow reveal feels accurate rather than merely suspenseful. Then there are the goofier, permanent gaps: After an evening of detached debauchery, Large finds “BALLS” inexplicably Magic Markered on his forehead. PARK
June 8 BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON (Beeban Kidron, 2004)
June 15 SUPER SIZE ME (Morgan Spurlock, 2004) Appetite suppressant, frat boy stunt, and anti-corporate head butt, Spurlock’s self-starring documentary records the amusingly horrifying consequences of the director’s 30-day McDonald’s-only diet. The film, which exerts the gross-out fascination of reality TV’s muckier specimens, has nothing new to say about America’s fast-food addiction and obesity epidemic, but there’s no denying its grotesque effectiveness as a work of public health advocacy. Fighting grease with grease, it’s a film that has its severely taxed heart in the right place. LIM
June 22 HOTEL RWANDA (Terry George, 2004)
June 29 THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES (Walter Salles, 2004)
July 6 SPIDERMAN 2 (Sam Raimi, 2004)
July 13 THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (Joel Schumacher, 2004)
July 20 MILLION DOLLAR BABY (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
July 27 THE AVIATOR (Martin Scorsese, 2004) Scorsese, our foremost moviemaking cinephile, cannonballs into old Hollywood to tell the story of one Howard Hughes, billionaire, briber, star fucker, plane crasher, occasional movie producer, and all-around neurotic shit storm. Gigantic, blustery, and stuffed with cameoed details (Cate Blanchett’s riff on Katharine Hepburn makes her the dead legend’s avatar), it’s a biopic paradigm—and an American-dream-gone-rancid tale bidding to complement Raging Bull. ATKINSON
August 3 FINDING NEVERLAND (Marc Forster, 2004) Johnny Depp gives an unusually subdued performance as J.M. Barrie, who in befriending a young widow (Kate Winslet) and her four sons, received the inspiration for his 1905 play Peter Pan. Inhabiting a green, empty England in endless Edwardian summer, Marc Forster’s first film since Monster’s Ball raises all manner of red flags with its surfeit of loaded themes—beatifying illness, bereft children, escapist fantasy, the enshrining of boyhood—but overall practices a tasteful restraint. WINTER
August 10 HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (Alfonso Cuarón, 2004)
August 17 SHARK TALE (Bibo Bergeron, Vickey Jenson & Rob Letterman, 2004)
August 24 SHREK 2 (Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury & Conrad Vernon, 2004)
August 31 ROBOTS (Chris Wedge & Carlos Saldanha, 2005)
‘RIVER FLICKS’
July 6-August 26, Pier 54, West 13th Street and West Side Highway; and Pier 25, North Moore Street and West Side Highway, 212-533-PARK, hudsonriverpark.org
PIER 54
July 6 SLACKERS (Dewey Nicks, 2002)
July 13 BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (Stephen Herek, 1989)
July 20 THE BIG LEBOWSKI (Joel Coen, 1998) Perfectly stylized and pleasingly discombobulated, this Coen brothers jape is rich with comic cameos, albeit drawing heavily on Jeff Bridges’s charm as a Kahlúa-swilling old hippie introduced shopping for munchies in a flannel bathrobe. The Big Lebowski intermittently references The Big Sleep but this wacky series of L.A. adventures featuring a stoned slacker as a surrogate Philip Marlowe is pure pop rumination—so relaxed as to be nearly free-associative. HOBERMAN
July 27 UP IN SMOKE (Lou Adler, 1978)
August 3 CLERKS (Kevin Smith, 1994)
August 10 ANIMAL HOUSE (John Landis, 1978)
August 17 FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (Cameron Crowe, 1982) The seminal, over-fondly-remembered brat pack fave, notable today only as Sean Penn’s first big blip on the cultural scan, and for Phoebe Cates’s generation-traumatizing nude scene. ATKINSON
August 24 DAZED AND CONFUSED (Richard Linklater, 1993) No less structuralist than Slacker—expressing a fierce muddle of memories rather than a rambling paranoia—this mini-masterpiece about 1970s Texas high school kids inhabiting their self-defined universe is one of the most rewatchable films of its decade, capturing its time and place with anthropological care. ATKINSON
PIER 25
July 8 DADDY DAY CARE (Steve Carr, 2003)
July 15 WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (Mel Stuart, 1971)
July 22 BACK TO THE FUTURE (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)
July 29 THE SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS MOVIE (Stephen Hillenburg, 2004) No Pixar? No problem! An unstoppable good-mood generator, this resolutely 2-D vehicle has more yuks than Shark Tale and enough soul to swallow The Polar Express whole. It’s a kids’ movie that deigns to understand what kids want to see—hysterical amplifications of kid-like behavior and the making fun of oldsters, rather than the pop-cult winking and cruddy nostalgia that said oldsters presumably favor. To wit: When King Neptune (Jeffrey Tambor) discloses his shiny pate, onlookers shriek, “Bald! Bald!” and “My eyes!” PARK
August 5 ELLA ENCHANTED (Tommy O’Haver, 2004)
August 12 THE IRON GIANT (Brad Bird, 1999) One of the most thoughtful animated fables in the American canon, this Cold War-set, Ted Hughes-derived tale about an inexplicable defense-reflex robot and a (naturally) fatherless boy has, at least, a stirring final 10 minutes that erase memory of decades of Disney. ATKINSON
August 19 SHARK TALE (Bibo Bergeron, Vickey Jenson & Rob Letterman, 2004)
August 26 HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (Alfonso Cuarón, 2004) The Hogwarts territory being familiar, well-trod, and surprise-free, Cuarón’s mild upkick in pacing and texture makes this the best of a lumbering franchise; the consults to Mike Leigh’s Rolodex only help as well. ATKINSON
‘SOCRATES SCULPTURE PARK/MOVING IMAGE FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL’
Socrates Sculpture Park, Vernon Boulevard and Broadway, Long Island City, Queens, 718-956-1819, socratessculpturepark.org
July 6-August 31 Outdoor screenings every Wednesday.