Hampton Roads Cinephiles

DATE/LOCATION CHANGED: I am moving this event to Friday at 6pm at my apartment near Town Center Virginia Beach**, since the library will be closed tomorrow on account of the weather. (I'll bump the movie I was going to show in that time slot to another time.)**

I will DM the address to people who are RSVPed the day before.

If you cannot make it to the new date/location, please UNRSVP.
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My mother recommended this movie. She said it was three hours long and about Chekhov and cars, and I would like it. We will be in the Cloud Room on the 2nd floor.

RATED: Not Rated / 16+

RUNTIME: 179 minutes

SYNOPSIS (via Criterion.com): Only Ryusuke Hamaguchi, with his extraordinary sensitivity to the mysterious resonances of human interactions, could sweep up international awards (including the Oscar for Best International Feature) and galvanize audiences everywhere with a pensive three-hour movie—presented in nine languages and adapted from Haruki Murakami stories—about an experimental staging of an Anton Chekhov play. With Drive My Car, the Japanese director has confirmed his place among contemporary cinema’s most vital voices. Two years after his wife’s unexpected death, Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) arrives in Hiroshima to direct a production of Uncle Vanya for a theater festival and, through relationships with an actor (Masaki Okada) with whom he shares a tangled history and a chauffeur (Toko Miura) with whom he develops a surprising rapport, finds himself facing up to his emotional scars. This quietly mesmerizing tale of love, art, grief, and healing is ultimately a cathartic exploration of what it means to go on living when there seems to be no road ahead.

BLURBS:
"Here's the best movie you never heard of, a flat-out masterpiece from Japan that's a frontrunner to win the foreign-film Oscar and maybe pull a 'Parasite' and compete for Best Picture. Why not? It's enthralling from first scene to last." - Peter Travers, ABC NEWS

"At two hours and 59 minutes, there is an endurance factor, but this is as patient and sensuous as movies get." - Max Maller, Chicago Reader

"The length of the film is daunting, but it's also a thoroughly engrossing piece of art that's sexy and thoughtful." - Esther Zuckerman, Thrillist

We'll be on the 2nd floor in the Cloud Room, to the left as you get off the elevator/stairs. I wanted to get this first masterpiece by Alain Resnais on the schedule some how; OTOH I started watching Last Week at Marienbad at one point, but it is a truly bizarre movie.

Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) directed by Alain Resnais

RATING: Not Rated (Abe adds, “Some nudity, and scenes depicting war violence and carnage that may be disturbing”)

RUNTIME: 90 minutes

SYNOPSIS (via Criterion.com): A cornerstone of the French New Wave, the first feature from Alain Resnais is one of the most influential films of all time. A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a brief, intense affair in postwar Hiroshima, their consuming mutual fascination impelling them to exorcise their own scarred memories of love and suffering. With an innovative flashback structure and an Academy Award–nominated screenplay by novelist Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima mon amour is a moody masterwork that delicately weaves past and present, personal pain and public anguish.

BLURBS:
"'Hiroshima Mon Amour' will always be too studied a masterwork for some tastes. But Riva's performance, chief among its triumphs, remains electrifying." - Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

"That rare movie in which present and past meld in every frame to convey a sense of time obliterated, or a dream having a nightmare." - Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

"Written by Marguerite Duras, the long, meandering, philosophical conversation between the two lovers has a mesmerising effect, connecting in their different agonies of war. [...] An exquisitely beautiful and harrowing meditation on war and love." - Kate Muir, The Times (UK)
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Last Year at Marienbad (1961) directed by Alain Resnais

RATING: Not Rated

RUNTIME: 94 minutes

SYNOPSIS: Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais’ epochal Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad) has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.

BLURBS:
"The poster child of cinematic modernism, one of those early-'60s event films that seemed to break every rule classical Hollywood ever codified." - Budd Wilkins, Slant Magazine

"Profoundly mysterious and disturbing, a para-surrealist masterpiece whose nightmarish scenario appears to have been absorbed from Buñuel and Antonioni and transmitted onward to Greenaway." - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"Remains one of cinema's glorious enigmas, endlessly compelling and intriguing." - Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

With Hosoda, the plot might be great or it might be middling; but I have every confidence that this film will at least be spectacular to look at. Let's see it on the most impressive type of screen available in these parts.

RUNTIME: 112 minutes

RATED: PG-13

SYNOPSIS: From visionary Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Mamoru Hosoda (MIRAI) comes a powerful, time-bending animated adventure about SCARLET, a medieval-era, sword-fighting princess on a dangerous quest to avenge the death of her father. After failing at her mission and finding herself gravely injured in the “Otherworld,” she encounters an idealistic young man from our present day who not only helps her to heal but shows her the possibility of a future free of bitterness and rage. When confronted again by her father's killer, Scarlet faces her most daunting battle: can she break the cycle of hatred and find meaning in life beyond revenge?

BLURBS:

"'Scarlet' might be [Mamoru Hosoda]'s most narratively ambitious work to date, adapting and warping one of the most famous tales ever told, adding new layers of complexity, and centuries of new, invaluable context." - William Bibbiani, The Wrap

""Scarlet" is at its best when it puts the narrative aside and lets the atmosphere take center stage. When it does, it's a ride worth taking." - Matt Schley, Japan Times

"The dragon's fearsome appearance, combined with composer Taisei Iwasaki's thrumming score, makes for an unforgettable theatrical viewing experience." - Belen Edwards, Mashable