The turn from October to November brings with it chillier air and darker evenings, both very conducive to filmgoing. Ted and Ricky are on hand to run through the various options the Browning Cinema is offering to fill the hunger left by your Halloween binging. November brings a mix of performances from National Theatre Live, including the family-friendly stage version Peter Pan, the classic chamber play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? revived with Imelda Staunton as Martha (the role Elizabeth Taylor made famous), and the Stephen Sondheim musical Follies. Ted’s RKO Classics class continues as the studio transitions into and out of the Howard Hughes’s years with The Best Years of Our Lives, Stromboli, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
Capping a successful run of visiting artists, three films will have directors visiting the Browning Cinema to discuss their films, including Donkeyote (Chico Pereira), More Than a Word (Ken and John Little), and Chosen: Custody of the Eyes (Abbie Reese). Fans of international cinema can look forward to Albert Serra’s The Death of Louis XIV from France about the gangrenous king, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Endless Poetry from Chile about mid-century surrealism in Chile, and Petra Volpe’s The Divine Order from Switzerland about women fighting to receive the right to vote in 1971 Switzerland. Two other films of note include Waiting for Guffman, which will be Rocky-Horror-icized by the South Bend Blaine-iacs, and The Last Waltz, which is a documentary about The Band’s last performance together on Thanksgiving 1976.
To note the time of year when families often join to celebrate (and watch movies), Ted and Ricky close by running through their top three holiday family films, which is to say the films they watched in familial community during holidays that stuck with them (for better or for worse) and analyze the ties that bind both families together and families to the same screen.
