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This is an actor’s story. It contains juicy parts and this cast embraces them with passion. Marlon Brando’s raw and honest performance came from another planet in 1951. Vivien Leigh’s performance is grand and just shy of over-the-top, but it works perfectly for her character. Each character has their own agenda and their all moving in opposite directions until they finally collide and explode.

Blanche DuBois (Leigh, GONE WITH THE WIND) is an aging Southern belle who has secrets. She’s losing her grip on reality, but puts up an illusion of a prim and proper lady. She goes to stay with her sister Stella (Kim Hunter, PLANET OF THE APES) in New Orleans taking the streetcar named Desire to Elysian Fields. The sexual electricity in the air shocks her. She’s shocked even more so when she meets Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski (Brando, THE GODFATHER). He is a brutish unsophisticated bully who oozes male sexuality. Stanley doesn’t like Blanche from the start, but his shy, momma’s boy friend Mitch (Karl Malden, ON THE WATERFRONT) takes a liking to the genteel woman instantly.
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The title of this week’s lineup has various meanings in the context of the films presented. 2009 had its share of creature features. In 9, burlap creations where tormented by frightening beasts formed by spare parts. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY scared people with the things that go bump in the night. DISTRICT 9 brought scary looking aliens to South Africa, but they weren’t the scariest creatures in the story. To round out the Fest, there’s another ghost and alien encounter tale to gives you chills and make you think. It’s a unique way to bid the old year goodbye.
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How would you react if you came to realize that your life’s work had done the world harm? That’s how Richard O’Barry feels about his career training dolphins for the TV series FLIPPER. It was that series that started the boom in trained dolphin performances and “swimming with the dolphins” attractions. He believes that his actions have led to the current slaughter of dolphins in Japan.

Because of his guilt, O’Barry has become an activist and he has focused his attention of the Japanese fishing village of Taiji, where dolphin hunters bang on metal pipes in the water to disrupt the dolphins’ sonar and enabling them to lure the water mammals into a secluded cove where they are slaughtered. One of the fishermen once said that if the world ever found out what we were doing, they’d make us stop. So that’s what O’Barry and director Louie Psihoyos set out to do.
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There is a scene in David Lynch’s THE LOST HIGHWAY where a couple receives a videotape of them sleeping in their bed. It is one of the most frightening moments I have ever seen on screen. I always thought someone should make a whole horror film around that concept. Director Oren Peli must be a Lynch fan or psychic.

Presented like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT as found footage, this film tries to capture the things that go bump in the night. Katie (Katie Featherston) has had paranormal activity following her her whole life. She has now moved in with her boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat) and the demonic spirits have found her again. Micah decides to buy a videocamera to film them while they sleep. It captures noises and slamming doors and then things start to get really scary.
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Michael Haneke makes non-traditional thrillers. He loves to play mental mind games with his audience. He doesn’t always give clear answers in the end. He hints at resolutions without spelling things out. It makes his work haunting and memorable, because he engages the audience more and drives us to return to piece things together again and again. His films are for adults who love the challenge of making up their own minds about what a film means or exactly what has transpired. In the end, different audience members could have wildly different theories. That’s what makes it so exciting.

Set in Northern Germany right before the start of World War I, the story takes place in a farming village. The town doctor (Rainer Bock, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS) is badly injured when his horse trips over a hidden wire placed across the path into his property. The police come to investigate asking his daughter Anna (Roxane Duran) if she saw anything, but she saw nothing. She was looking after her younger brother Rudi (Miljan Chatelain). The midwife (Susanne Lothar, THE READER), who works with the doctor, and has helped out at his home since the death of his wife, saw nothing as well.
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This coming of age tale is John Hughes’ best film. I distinctly remember the place I first saw it and the impact that it had on me at the ripe old age of 11. At that age I felt like the movie was speaking directly to me. It had seen my experiences and put them up on the screen. It was telling the truth.

The story brings together five very different students together for a day of Saturday detention. John Bender (Judd Nelson, ST. ELMO’S FIRE) is the metal head troublemaker. Detention is his home away from troubled home. Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald, SIXTEEN CANDLES) is the pretty popular rich girl whose parents use her as a bargaining chip in their ongoing battle of wills. Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez, REPO MAN) is the champion wrestler whose father rides constantly to succeed. Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS) is a straight-A student, who is under constant pressure from his parents and himself to excel in academics. Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy, SHORT CIRCUIT) is a quiet strange girl who does outlandish things to get attention. Watching over these students is principal Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason, DIE HARD), a man who only has contempt for the teens he’s supposed to be guiding.
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In discussing Terry Gilliam’s DR. PARNASSUS, let’s get its footnote in film history over with from the start. It was the film Heath Ledger was working on when he died. Gilliam reworked the script and brought in Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Collin Farrell to play versions of his character in dream sequences. It makes no difference why the choice was made, because it works so well. This is one of Gilliam’s best films.

Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer, SYRIANA) has been in a wager war with Mr. Nick aka the Devil (Tom Waits, SHORT CUTS) for centuries. The mystic doctor was immortal until he gave up his immortality for love. But as deals with the Devil often go, there is always fine print. Now Dr. Parnassus must save five souls before his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole, ST. TRINIAN’S) turns sixteen or the beautiful girl will become property of the Dark Lord.
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Like her film, SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE, Nancy Meyers makes older women desirable. Sexiness is a state of mind for her characters. But age isn’t really the key issue in this film. It contemplates the question of whether a woman and her ex can make a relationship work now that they have both grown up.

Jane (Meryl Streep, JULIE & JULIA) is a successful restaurant owner. She’s been divorced from Jake (Alec Baldwin, TV’s 30 ROCK) for 10 years now. He ended up marrying Agness (Lake Bell, PRIDE AND GLORY), the younger woman he had an affair with when married to Jane. Their son Luke (Hunter Parrish, TV’s WEEDS) is graduating from college and the whole family heads to New York to celebrate. After a night at the bar, Jane and Jake end up in bed. This begins a new love affair where Jane is the other woman.
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Office romances are always tricky affairs. That applies to them on screen as well. With the delightful (500) DAYS OF SUMMER now on DVD and Blu-ray, This Weekend’s Film Festival looks at some great screen office romances. Some of the best romantic comedies involve love in the workplace such as classics like THE APARTMENT and HIS GIRL FRIDAY, as well as contemporary satires like BROADCAST NEWS. This lineup finds shop clerks bickering, sadomasochism, high-powered business partners and a rogue sports agent and the woman that completes him.
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Farmer John has died and a corporation killed him. That’s the premise of Robert Kenner’s eye-opening documentary. What humans eat has changed more dramatically in the past 50 years than it has in all of human existence.

Processed foods are everywhere. On an evolutionary level, humans respond to sugar, salt and fat, which are the chief ingredients in our fast food diets. It’s also more easily available and cheaper than ever before, creating a situation where biological urges to eat whenever food is available supports a detriment to our health. This vicious circle is driven by the corporate desire to increase profits and thus executive salaries.
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