The scene, of course, is steeped in the absurd. Were you to wait and see the movie on DVD, chomping on Cheez Doodles, the sight of some rich European dame getting off on a glistening shrimp would look cheap and overcooked—a charge that could, and will, be levelled at the entire film. To which the answer is: Don’t wait. Like any good love story (or horror movie, or Western), Guadagnino’s tale of passions impeded and indulged cannot hope to maintain its dignity except on the big screen, drawing the public gaze—and the public ear. The music of “I Am Love” is by John Adams, and it sets the movie pulsing from the start. The place is Milan, clad in a fur of winter fog, with daylight seized in a permanent dusk. Given the weather, we expect a lamenting adagio, instead of which the percussive, excitable score tells of something bracing and afoot. Behind a wall of snow-burdened pines, the Recchi mansion is a busy hive. The aging patriarch of the family, Edoardo (Gabriele Ferzetti), is celebrating his birthday, and the clan has descended to pay homage. There is his wife, the daunting and impeccable Allegra (Marisa Berenson); their son Tancredi (Pippo Delbono), who is married to Emma, and their three children, Edo (Flavio Parenti), Gianluca (Mattia Zaccaro), and Elisabetta, or Betta (Alba Rohrwacher); plus a number of other relatives, and a young beauty by the Dantean name of Eva Ugolini (Diane Fleri), who has come as Edo’s date. Brave girl.

The casting is carefully done. Betta, for instance, is like an enfeebled Emma, with an even paler complexion, and a redness around the eyes that tells of tears either looming or wiped away. Edo is a pretty boy, but a lightweight beside his chunky father, who in turn is a dullard compared to the old man. So it is that Edoardo rises, at dinner, both to mock his own mortality (“I don’t want to die”) and to announce that he will leave the Recchi business—a venerable, privately owned clothing company—in the hands of his son and his grandson. “It will take two men to replace me,” he says, and the blend of cunning, pride, and folly in his declaration has a Shakespearean density; from this instant, as from Lear’s quizzing of his daughters, disorder is unleashed. How can the Recchi name survive? Who will win the war of generations? And who is that at the door, on this dark night?

It’s nobody—just a young chef named Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), who beat Edo in some kind of race earlier that day. Now the winner has come with a box, which could contain anything from a peace offering to a bomb. In fact, it’s a cake, so exquisite that Edo calls his mother over to meet the shy intruder. Suddenly, we see Emma from above, marooned on the gleaming carpet of her hallway as if on a field of wheat. Here as elsewhere, Guadagnino’s smallest gesture needs to be reckoned with. His camera often stays in rooms once people have departed, or waits for them to drift back in; it’s a way of threatening social occasions with solitude, and this single shot of Emma seems to prepare her, however briefly, for the puppetry of fate. Russian-born, but steeped in Italy, she has struck us, till now, as a woman in command of experience, with her wealth, her household of servants, and the effortless cling of her clothes. Now, however, the strings begin to twitch.

This is the film toward which Tilda Swinton has been tending. Put together the chill of her majesty in “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”; the brunt of her motherly love in “The Deep End”; the leonine wildness that ate her up, in Erick Zonca’s “Julia”; and the awful sense, in “Michael Clayton,” of a woman waiting to buckle beneath the formal demands of a working life—package all that, and you get Emma Recchi, winding the ribbon from a newly unwrapped gift around the spool of her worried fingers. Swinton is one of the producers on “I Am Love,” and the film is unthinkable without her, as Guadagnino inspects that cool, glassy translucence of hers and asks how, and under what conditions, it might smash.

The answer is almost a joke. What could and, to any other Recchi, should have been a mere detail—a commoner, stopping by with a cake—moves from the wings of the drama to center stage. Emma tastes Antonio’s food; she falls for its creator; she catches sight of him on the street, and tracks him without thinking, like a childish spy; they become lovers; they are discovered; things fall apart, and what began in the snow, in the bosom of the family, ends up with a rain-ruined figure standing in an empty church. Yet “I Am Love” is not a punitive film. It seeks no vengeance on the rich, though it stares, unsurprised, as the rudderless Recchis, after Edoardo’s death, dash themselves on the rocks of a quick profit. If there are traces of Visconti here, they refer not to “The Damned,” which belabored a grand and screwed-up family as it slid into the clutches of Nazism, but to an earlier, more pitying film like “Rocco and His Brothers,” in which lust chewed up another family in a doomy Milan. In the same spirit, Guadagnino stays at Emma’s side as she tumbles from grace, refusing to heckle or deride. And, frankly, given the tumble, you see his point.” (Anthony Lane, The New Yorker)

We are very excited to screen one of Janus’ brand new 35mm prints of House!

Please make note of the ratings information for each film.

Godzilla Vs. The Sea Monster
On a remote island, a group of dastardly revolutionaries are plotting to take over the world using the overwhelming power of Ebirah, a gigantic crustacean under their control. Seeing no other choice, two clever castaways decide to rouse Godzilla and have him challenge the sea monster to a duel to the death. This film is not rated but is appropriate for ages 10+.

Big Trouble In Little China
Directed by thrill master John Carpenter, this edge-of-your seat adventure stars Kurt Russell as Jack Burton, a tough-talking, wisecracking truck driver whose hum-drum life on the road takes a sudden supernatural tailspin when his best friend’s fiancee is kidnapped. Speeding to the rescue, Jack finds himself deep beneath San Francisco’s Chinatown, in a murky, creature-filled world ruled by Lo Pan, a 2000-year-old magician who mercilessly presides over an empire of spirits. Dodging demons and facing baffling terrors, Jack battles his way through Lo Pan’s dark domain in a full-throttle, action-riddled ride to rescue the girl. Co-starring Kim Cattrall, this effects-filled sci-fi spectacle speeds to an incredible, twist-taking finish. This film is rated PG-13.

Audition
Deceptively innocent at first, Takashi Miikes Audition finds Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi, Suicide Club, The Grudge), a middle-aged widower of many years, urged by his teenage son and his film producer friend Yasuhisa Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura, Ichi The Killer) to get out and start dating again. To help Aoyama meet women, Yoshikawa devises a plan to hold a fake audition for a leading lady. Reluctantly agreeing, Aoyama auditions 30 young hopefuls and falls for the silent beauty of Asami (model/actress Eihi Shiina), a former ballerina with a dark past. Their courtship veers from quiet romance to psycho nightmare, realizing a sadistic breach of contract between filmmaker and audience of which Hitchcock could only dream. This film is not rated and is NOT APPROPRIATE for under 18. It is excessively violent.

Showtimes:
Godzilla vs The Sea Monster: 12:00pm – 1:15pm
Big Trouble In Little China: 2:00pm – 3:40pm
Audition: 4:00pm – 6:00pm

Tickets:
Adults: $8 per screening or $20 for all three
Students/Seniors: $6 per screening or $15 for all three
Children/Members: $5 per screening or $10 for all three
Please note that the discount for purchasing tickets to all three films will be calculated at check out. You will have the opportunity to add multiple tickets to multiple shows to your order before you check out. We recommend that you buy your tickets online so as to avoid all fees and a potential line at the box office.

Things to remember:
There will be a 45 minute break between films 1 & 2 for lunch; and a 20 minute break between films 2 & 3.

Free passes and discounts are not valid toward the purchase of marathon tickets ($10 – $20), but can be used towards the purchase of a single ticket for a single screening. Thanks for your understanding.

It begins with no clear warning. It seems to come out of nowhere. In a matter of minutes, episodes of strange, chilling deaths that defy reason and boggle the mind in their shocking destructiveness, erupt in major American cities. What is causing this sudden, total breakdown of human behavior?For Philadelphia high school science teacher Elliot Moore what matters most is finding a way to escape the mysterious and deadly phenomenon. (Twentieth Century Fox)

“[It is] a movie that I find oddly touching. It is no doubt too thoughtful for the summer action season, but I appreciate the quietly realistic way Shyamalan finds to tell a story about the possible death of man.” (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times)

“Stray Dog is an early collaboration with Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura. Kurosawa and Mifune would go on to make 16 films together before a falling out occurred during the making of Akahige (Red Beard). On an especially hot summer day, a young homicide detective named Murukami (Mifune) has his pistol stolen on a crowded bus. His attempts to find it are unsuccessful until he is teamed up with the older, wiser detective Sato (Shimura). They discover the gun is being used for increasingly dangerous crimes. What appears on the surface to be a traditional film noir becomes an allegory of postwar Japan. Guns are scarce under American control, and the stolen gun becomes an emblem of lost power. The rookie cop soon realizes that both he and the man he is hunting are veterans of the war and actually have much in common. He and the hunted are both stray dogs, separated only by a thin line of morality.” (Ted the Fiddler)

“One of the most influential films ever made, the idea was taken from Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s story “In the Grove.” A rape and a murder are committed in a wooded area near the Rashomon gate, but four different versions of the incident from four different witnesses emerge at the trial. Whose version is true? And, what is truth? This film launched Kurosawa’s international career and Toshiro Mifune’s along with it. It’s said that this film was the reason the Academy Awards created the Best Foreign Film category, and it was in fact awarded an honorary Oscar in 1952 because the category did not yet exist.” (Ted the Fiddler)

Though the thriller is in the hands of a different filmmaking team this time led by Swedish director Daniel Alfredson and screenwriter Jonas Frykberg, they’ve kept the searing intelligence and ruthless bent that turned the first book’s adaptation, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” into an international box office hit and having a strong run in the States, still in theaters four months after its release.

Most importantly, though, the franchise’s secret weapon is back with brilliant young Swedish actress Noomi Rapace again channeling the alienated, unwilling to be broken tough chick that Larsson envisioned and Rapace imbues with such eerie authenticity. Veteran actor Michael Nyqvist returns too as the serious, and seriously sensual journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, who continues to be as intrigued by the enigmatic Lisbeth as the rest of us.

In a smart move, the filmmakers have stripped the dense complications of Larsson’s plotting and sprawling cast of characters down to the bare essentials to focus almost exclusively on Lisbeth’s current travails. For all the delicious pleasure to be found in the juicy side stories that have kept fans worldwide enthralled, they serve the book, not the film and “The Girl Who Played With Fire” is stronger for their loss.

With Lisbeth’s fate hanging by a slender thread as the narrative centerpiece, Alfredson is better able to ratchet up the stakes and deliver a stomach-churning ride as that single life twists in the wind. And ratchet he does.

As the film opens, Lisbeth has slipped back into Stockholm after disappearing for a while into international shadows after the loose ends of “Dragon” were tied up. She’s made some keen investments with money skimmed off the bad guys’ accounts and acquired new digs that will allow her to live there undetected.

Before there is time to wonder why all the secrecy still, her photo is splashed across the tabloids as a suspect in the cold-blooded execution of a freelance writer under contract to Blomkvist’s Millennium magazine. Making matters worse, in an apartment across town, her court-appointed guardian has been blown to bits by the same gun. The murder of the journalist is a mystery, but the other, Nils Bjurman (Peter Andersson) will leave you wondering about Lisbeth’s innocence — she’s been blackmailing him since he raped her months ago, a key plot point in her saga from the start and a notorious scene in the first film so viscerally brutal it had some in the audience heading for the exits.

Just how these murders intersect, and how Lisbeth has been dragged into the mess that somehow also involves the Eastern European sex trade, Swedish state secrets and terrifying psychiatric profiling make up the potboiling puzzle. Alfredson and cinematographer Peter Mokrosinski, who worked together on the 1993 Swedish crime drama, “The Man on the Balcony,” create a tense, moody pallet for Lisbeth to race through as she searches for clues to clear herself and ferret out the man who’s been trying to destroy her since she was a child.

Watching Rapace burrow deep inside Lisbeth’s damaged mind, body and soul is its own sort of twisted pleasure. It is a character fully exposed: the dragon inked from shoulder blades to bum, muscles encasing her body in wiry knots; furtive glances, never holding on a face unless it’s someone she is about to deliver from this life; so vulnerable that it’s heartbreaking when you see it; so slight she should get lost in crowds; holding the screen with the force of those dark undercurrents flowing through her.

The violence, which is a signature of the books and remains a central component of the films, is extreme with faces and bodies bruised and bloodied in ways likely to make you cringe. There are bits from the last film seeded in to fill in some blanks, including a reprise of that notorious rape, but this time we’re spared all but a few frames. Instead, the horror is experienced through Blomkvist’s reaction as he watches the DVD that captured the crime, a technique that might have served the first film as well.

Delivering most of the bone-crunching action in “Fire” is a hulking blond menace named Niedermann (Micke Spreitz), on a rampage unleashed by the nefarious Alexander Zalachenko (Georgi Staykov). There are hints they’ll be back for the final chapter in the fall, a relief since as satisfying as “The Girl Who Played With Fire” is, it leaves you longing for more.” (Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times)

In the year 1586, a village under constant attack from bandits hires seven Ronin to help them defend themselves. A simple enough story, but within that framework Kurosawa weaves a tale of honor, justice and camaraderie with stunning visual fluidity and power. It has no CGI, no surround sound, and it’s not even in color, yet it will sweep you along in ways you can’t begin to imagine. If it looks familiar today, that’s because it has served as inspiration for countless films following in its shadow. Roger Ebert even argues that with this one film, Kurosawa gave birth to the genre conventions that have employed action heroes for the last 50 years. (Ted the Fiddler)

Originally intended to be made in the 40’s, Kurosawa’s version of Macbeth was long delayed, partly by Orson Welles’s own production that was underway. In this reimagining of Shakespeare’s classic, the setting is transferred to feudal Japan, a decision that yields new insight into a familiar story. Many of Kurosawa’s period films are very Noh in style, resulting in a fascination with the tiniest or grandest of movements and a minimum of dialogue. The weather plays a major role in creating the mood, and the growing claustrophobia of the Macbeth character’s paranoia and delusion. Isuzu Yamada’s turn as Lady Macbeth has a stillness that draws us in as she pulls the strings and pushes the buttons that fuel her husband’s madness. It all comes to a climax that builds to a level of intensity unmatched in cinematic history. (Ted the Fiddler)

During a sweltering 1988 Iowa fortnight, a loquacious fellow named Jack Rebney wrote and appeared in a series of industrial films touting the eponymous manufacturer’s line of recreational vehicles. Whether it was the heat, the swarms of insects or Rebney’s own hair-trigger temper that got the best of him is unclear, but a four-minute assemblage of outtakes prepared by the vengeful crew find the huckster swearing an eloquent blue streak as he flubs lines and swats flies.

“Willya do me a kindness?” is one of the few printable catchphrases to have emerged from the tape, known most commonly as “The Angriest Man in the World.” Legend holds that director Spike Jonze gifted friends with dubs over the holiday season, and since it was uploaded in 2005, chunks of Rebney’s blustery tirades have seeped into popular culture (Ben Affleck quotes the rant in “Surviving Christmas,” of all films).

As Steinbauer prepares to track down the elusive Rebney, he considers other victims of viral videos, including the poor “‘Star Wars’ Kid,” whose uncoordinated swings with a fake lightsaber were uploaded by “friends,” and Aleksey Vayner’s video resume “Impossible Is Nothing,” which was posted without his knowledge and subsequently spoofed by Michael Cera. Academic Douglas Rushkoff and helmer Alan Berliner also weigh in on the phenomena.

When Rebney finally is located in a Sierra Nevada cabin, the pic strains to accommodate the deeper issues stirred by the discovery. At first mild-mannered, Rebney, now nearly blind from glaucoma, appears to play up to his rep via an at-times awkward irascibility. Even more uncomfortable is a trip to the traveling Found Footage Festival in San Francisco, where Rebney is fawned over like a rock star by self-consciously in-the-know twentysomethings.

By inserting himself into the process, Steinbauer gets points for being brave enough to stick with the story. Yet there are as many questions as answers at the fade, most involving Rebney’s lone friend and true feelings about his fame.” (Eddie Cockrell, Variety)