Pete's weekend movie roundup: Memories of movies at Danville's Village Theater, Jack Lemmon times two, and Grease 2.0

The Apartment. The Bay Area's best ice cream. Vagabond. Sing-a-long Grease. And how Bo Derek blocked me from seeing The Black Stallion.

This is the movie that blocked me from seeing The Black Stallion

This week's new movies include Monsters Vs. Aliens, which I have not seen. MVA is one of myriad 3-D animated movies coming out in 2009. It's a trend I guarantee we will be tired of by December. That said, Coraline was pretty amazing. Also out this weekend, and still unseen by me, is the Sundance indie Sunshine Cleaning, starring the intensely likable Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, and Steve Zahn. That cast is worth a ticket buy, for sure. I'm sending two of my best chick flick reporters, Lynne and Lisa, out to the Dome to see it soon. I'll update when I hear what they think.

So what do I recommend this weekend? That's easy. Time to take a drive down to Palo Alto and see Billy Wilder's The Apartment at the Stanford Theatre. This is one of my top 10 fave films of all time, and I try to see it whenever it's shown on a big screen, because the film was shot in Cinemascope and needs that wide projection to be truly appreciated. The Apartment won the Best Picture Oscar in 1960 and stars Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray, all perfectly cast as office workers embroiled in the sexual tensions of mid-century Manhattan. It's like Mad Men with all the wink-wink back-in-the-day references. The Apartment is very of-the-moment—it's funny, sweet, heartbreaking, and just plain great. The Stanford has it playing with a Jack Lemmon/Judy Holliday comedy called It Should Happen to You. Haven't seen it, but would love to check it out. By the way, the perfect chaser to any Stanford experience is a milkshake at the Peninsula Fountain and Grill, just down the street. Best ice cream anywhere!

UC Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive has an absolute kiler French film from the 1980s tonight: Vagabond. I remember going to see this after Roger Ebert raved about it on the old Siskel and Ebert show and being quite disturbed for a long time (always a good sign of powerful cinematic material, with the obvious exceptions of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, Kate Hudson rom-coms, and the Ernest movies).

This has got to be fun: The Castro Theater in SF is showing sing-a-long Grease on Monday night.

So every week I'm going to try to throw some nostalgia into this blog, about the East Bay's neighborhood theaters that aren't with us anymore. (RIP Parkway. We love you.) A reader e-mailed last week about Danville's Village Theater, which was a really cute independent movie house for many years. I only remember seeing one movie there, but it was a doozy: Superman. In hindsight, it was no Somewhere In Time, but still pretty sweet. The only other Danville Village Theater experience I remember is that my mom picked me up after little league practice and we went to see The Black Stallion, but the theater had changed the feature that day to Blake Edwards's 10 and Serial, the R-rated movie about the late 70s hot tubbin' lifestyle in Marin County. So we went home. To this day, I've still never seen The Black Stallion. I have seen 10 and Serial. The cool thing about the Village Theater is that even though it no longer shows movies, it still operates as a community theater for the Role Players Ensemble. Do you have memories of seeing movies at the Village? Please post them in the comments below!

UPDATE: Lynne saw Sunshine Cleaning and said: I loved this movie – one of the best I’ve seen in along time.  It is filled with dark humor, a little bit of quirk, poignancy, and some of the best acting that anyone will ever see. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt were wonderful in this well-rounded movie that tells the story of a family trying to make the best of their life following tragedy.
 
Highly recommended!

Posted at 10:30 AM in Pete's Popcorn Picks | Permalink