We still haven't fully recovered from Episode III and Batman Begins is already here, with War of the Worlds showing up any moment and Fantastic Four shortly thereafter. It's enough to make you forget that there's intelligent life out there beyond the universe of the summer blockbuster.
The best way to keep all this in perspective is to drink plenty of water, always wear a hat outdoors, and make regular trips during the summer months to local venues like Tampa Theatre and Sunrise Cinemas, where quality foreign, independent and classic cinema continues to be the norm rather than the rare exception. Something else that might just help preserve your cinematic sanity during the depths of summer is to check in every now and then with the various local film series that continue to program an interesting and eclectic mix of movies that most multiplexes wouldn't touch.
Some of the Bay area's better film series are on summer hiatus – Sleep of Reason, Movies That Move, and the International Cinema Series at Eckerd College – but there's still a lot of movie love going on over the next few months, if you know where to find it.
You might begin by checking out Café Cinematheque International, a new series being hosted by Sunrise Cinemas in Tampa. Every month, Café Cinematheque showcases a recent foreign film, and although the series' first few offerings have been less than impressive (it takes more than subtitles to distinguish a mediocre foreign film from a mediocre Hollywood movie), things are looking up.
Café Cinematheque's selection for Wed., June 22, is Moolaadé, the most recent film by the brilliant, 83-year-old Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene, a man often referred to as the father of African cinema. Sembene's Moolaadé is a wise, witty and richly nuanced slice of African village life that just incidentally tackles the immensely off-putting subject of female genital mutilation.
This is one of the strongest statements yet from an artist who has over the years dazzled us with his ability to make powerful yet entertaining cinema out of such topics as colonialism, class struggle and Islamic imperialism in Africa. Incidentally, Sembene's equally effective Faat Kine – a Joan Crawford-ish woman-on-her-own melodrama politicized and transplanted to Africa – will play at Café Cinematheque later in the year.
Other offerings in the series include the one-of-a-kind Argentinean film Lost Embrace (July 20), a delightfully frenetic slice of life in a Buenos Aires shopping mall. On Aug. 24, there's Silent Waters, a political drama revolving around the emergence of Islamic extremism in Pakistan, followed on Sept. 28 by the acclaimed French-Armenian co-production Vodka Lemon.
Upcoming titles include a pair of Holocaust dramas from France – Voyages and Almost Peaceful; the well-intentioned but over-earnest Iranian political satire Secret Ballot; and a less than stellar Chinese film called Shadow Magic. Café Cinematheque is still a somewhat hit-and-miss affair, but the good stuff – like Moolaadé – is well worth investigating. The series' $10 admission also gets you some light refreshments and a post-screening discussion.
A film series of a very different stripe, Tampa Theater's enormously popular Summer Classic Movie Series, will be in the house every Sunday at 3 p.m. through the end of September. A restored print of the Oscar-winning Jimmy Stewart comedy Harvey shows up on June 19, followed by the one-and-only Citizen Kane on June 25-26, and The Sting on July 3. And that's just for starters.
There's nothing quite like sitting in the middle of a packed house at Tampa Theatre and basking in The Wizard of Oz (July 9-10), but groovin' on the eye-popping colors and bygone Americana of Vincent Minelli's Meet Me in St. Louis (July 17) doesn't fall far behind. Then there's Brando burning up A Streetcar Named Desire on July 24; a restored print of Spielberg's E.T. on July 31; and Grease on Aug. 7, complete with an audience costume parade.
Watching Spencer Tracy, Kate Hepburn and Sidney Portier in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner on Aug. 14 might just ease some of the pain inflicted by Ashton Kutcher in Guess Who; while James Dean, Cary Grant and John Wayne all live again in restored prints of Rebel Without a Cause (Aug. 21), His Girl Friday (Aug. 28) and Stagecoach (Sept. 4).
And finally, Johnny Depp be damned, the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory returns to Tampa Theatre in all its cavity-inducing glory on Sept. 10-11. The screenings will feature another of those fabulous audience costume parties and the- concession stand will be selling Wonka Bars, five of which will include Golden Tickets entitling the recipient to all sorts of special prizes. Does Tampa Theatre know how to throw a party or what?
Meanwhile, over on the Pinellas side of the Bay, the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival has inaugurated its own Summer Film Series, screening gay-oriented movies on the fourth Wednesday of every month at St. Petersburg's Palladium Theatre. The series, which is co-sponsored by The Sundance Channel, was designed to give viewers a taste of what to expect at the upcoming TIGLFF, and will run right up to the date of the next festival in early October.
Much like TIGLIFF itself, the Summer Film Series is very much a social event, so arrive early for the 6 p.m. happy hour and then stick around for movies like 29th and Gay (June 22), Star Crossed (July 27), Better than Chocolate (Aug. 24), and Bear Cub (Sept. 28).
One of the more intriguing programs around, during the summer or at any other time, is the Dali Museum's Dali & Beyond Film Series, which continues to serve up cinematic surrealism at its best every other Thursday evening at 6 p.m. The Dali's remaining June film is an elegantly mesmerizing ghost story from Japan: the masterful Ugetsu (June 16).
July is devoted to Fritz Lang classics, with the visionary sci-fi epic Metropolis showing up on July 7 and Lang's brooding tale of murder and mob mentality, M, on July 21. "Childhood's Dark Carnivals and Cauldrons" is the theme for August, with the 1983 Ray Bradbury adaptation Something Wicked This Way Comes on Aug. 4 and Nicolas Roeg's brilliant bedtime story The Witches on Aug. 18.
There's a long, hot summer ahead of us, but film series like the Dali's – and the ones presented by Sunrise, TIGLFF and Tampa Theatre – will make it breeze by.
lance.goldenberg@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Jun 15-21, 2005.