Thrifty Somervillians will likely have noticed an absence in the ecosystem in recent months. The great High Energy Vintage, one of the city’s most essential stops for funky and unique finds, experienced a devastating fire in September, forcing the store to close its doors until the owners can rebuild. Fortunately, while High Energy may be down, it’s not out: The folks behind it hope to reopen sometime this spring, and they’ve currently got a spot in the Chartreuse Microbus Collective pop-up (in the old Porter Square Books storefront) and in assorted area markets. Of particular note for this column is the store’s continuing Disasterpiece Theater series of so-bad-they’re-good VHS-era screenings, which returns Thursday to the Capitol Theatre in Arlington with the “beloved” ’80s kiddie schlockfest “Mac and Me” (1988). If you have never seen “Mac and Me,” imagine a feature-length version of the Reese’s Pieces scene from “E.T.” A small boy befriends a hideous rubber alien who instantly develops a taste for McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and every other brand of the time that could afford a few minutes of product placement. It is, perhaps, the cinematic equivalent of a truly great thrift store find, at once hilariously tacky and utterly unforgettable. High Energy will return; this disasterpiece will help tide us over in the meantime.
The infamous X-rated 1979 epic “Caligula” was rereleased last year in an unconventional “Ultimate Cut,” constructed entirely from unused footage in an attempt to restore the film to screenwriter Gore Vidal’s original vision. On Thursday, “Caligula” is reborn yet again as the version screens from a newly struck 35 mm print at The Brattle Theatre. We wrote about the Ultimate Cut when it premiered at the Somerville Theatre last summer, but the timing of its return feels fortuitous; not to belabor an obvious political point, but it must be said that a film about a petty, demented god-king-emperor carries a certain relevance it may have lacked a few months ago. In any event, the film screens thanks to The Brattle’s 35 mm Film Fund, which helps keep honest-to-god celluloid running through the theater’s projectors. If we’re going to live in Caligula-style depravity for a little while, at least we can indulge in the best possible moviegoing experience.
The Brattle hosts the local premiere runs of a pair of new, thematically linked documentaries starting Friday. First up is Johan Grimonprez’s electrifying “Soundtrack to a Coup d’État” (2024), which tells an outrageous true story involving both a CIA-backed coup in the Democratic Republic of Congo and such jazz legends as Louis Armstrong and Abbey Lincoln (for more on this one, see Tom Meek’s review). “Soundtrack” is paired with Raoul Peck’s “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” (2024), a sobering and illuminating look at one of South Africa’s most vital political artists. Born in Pretoria in 1940, Cole galvanized the anti-apartheid movement with his landmark 1967 photo book “House of Bondage,” in which he captured in stark black and white the atrocities visited upon the country’s Black population by white colonizers. An understandably troubled soul, Cole eventually made his way to America, where he trained his lens first on the Jim Crow South, then on the streets of Manhattan. The arc of “Lost and Found” concerns the whereabouts of Cole’s archives, which went missing during his lifetime, only to reappear mysteriously in a Swedish bank vault in 2017. But Cole’s photographs take center stage; Cole even narrates, in a sense, as LaKeith Stanfield reads from the photographer’s journals and correspondence. Both films present stirring views on the power of art in the face of oppression, opening Friday and running through Tuesday.
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On a lighter note, the Landmark Kendall Square Cinema’s “And the Best Picture Goes to …” series continues Tuesday with one of the most satisfying and purely entertaining winners of the titular award in the Academy’s history: 1973’s smash hit caper “The Sting,” which reunited Robert Redford and Paul Newman with their “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” director, George Roy Hill. Newman and Redford once again play a pair of raffish outlaws – this time con artists in Depression-era Chicago – who set their sights on the icy crime boss (Robert Shaw) who killed Redford’s partner. The joy of the film is in watching the unfolding of the duo’s scheme, which has to rank among the most elaborate ever put on screen, and in watching the easy charisma of two of the most charming stars in Hollywood history.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
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