This Thursday marks Art House Theater Day, a nationwide initiative celebrating independent and alternative movie houses across the country, and while we here at Film Ahead of course understand that every day is Art House Theater Day, this one in particular is cause to celebrate. Launched in 2016 by Art House Convergence, Art House Theater Day brings exclusive programming to more than 150 independent movie theaters across the country, hosted by ambassadors Sean Baker and Samantha Quan (the husband-and-wife filmmaking team behind last year’s Best Picture-winner “Anora”). It should go without saying to readers of this column that the local home of Art House Theater Day is Cambridge’s own Brattle Theatre, where you can catch a new 4K restoration of Lily Tomlin’s one-woman show “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” (1991) with a special prerecorded introduction by Tomlin herself. The only thing better than celebrating Art House Theater Day is supporting your local art house the other 364 days of the year.
Few past or present comedy aficionados need to be acquainted with “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975), which kicks off a 50th anniversary run at The Brattle from Friday through Sunday. Though not their first feature (that would be 1971’s sketch film “And Now For Something Completely Different”) or their most sustained narrative (an honor that likely goes to 1979’s “Life of Brian”), “Holy Grail” is arguably the British comedy troupe at their peak, a series of razor-sharp comic set pieces centered on King Arthur (a never-better Graham Chapman) and his Knights of the Round Table. Though rightly remembered for its innumerable classic lines (from “I’m not dead yet!” to “We are the knights who say ‘Ni!’”), “Holy Grail,” co-directed by Pythons Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam, is often overlooked as one of the most visually sumptuous comedies ever made. Gilliam would, of course, go on to become one of cinema’s great fabulists with such films as “Brazil” (1985) and “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” (1988), while Jones, an Oxford-educated medieval historian, brought a level of historical accuracy rare even among straight epics. And if you’ve got a hankering for some Python but have already seen “Holy Grail” a zillion times, The Brattle’s Friday Film Matinee this week is Jones’ rarely screened live action adaptation of “The Wind in the Willows” (1996), which reunites most of the troupe along with a host of other British comedy legends.
The Somerville Theatre’s “Great Remakes” series continues Monday with a film many might not realize is a remake at all. Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” (2006) likely needs no introduction in these parts, a Best Picture-winner ranked frequently among the best Boston films of all time. But Scorsese drew inspiration from a film from a very different part of the world: Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Hong Kong gangster film “Infernal Affairs” (2002). While Lau and Mak likely never heard of Whitey Bulger, the fundamentals of their story of dueling moles in the criminal underground should ring a bell to any Scorsese fan. The films screen back to back (“The Departed” at 6:45 p.m., “Infernal Affairs” at 9:30 p.m.), allowing viewers to decide who spun the tale better.
The Brattle continues its “Altmania” celebration of maverick auteur Robert Altman with three of the director’s most iconic films. On Monday, catch “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” (1971), Altman’s dreamy Western about a small-time outlaw (Warren Beatty) and a British madam (Julie Christy) who build a frontier town around their high-class bordello. Tuesday brings a double feature of the director’s best work with the great Elliott Gould: “The Long Goodbye” (1973), which casts Gould as a contemporary Californian burnout version of hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe, and “California Split” (1974), which casts Gould and George Segal as a pair of increasingly desperate gambling addicts. Alternately, for extra credit, you can pop over to the Landmark Kendall Square Cinema and pair “The Long Goodbye” with the Coen Brothers’ “The Big Lebowski” (1998) for a makeshift double feature of sublimely stoned L.A. noir riffs!
Is “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” (1965) the best movie ever made? Perhaps not, but while watching it, it’s difficult to think of a better one. A trio of kung-fu loving, drag-racing go-go dancers (Lori Williams, Haji and the incomparable Tura Satana) go on a crime spree in the desert, first tormenting and kidnapping a square young couple, then insinuating themselves into a wheelchair-bound rancher’s family in hopes of stealing his buried treasure. Directed by sexploitation kingpin Russ Meyer (whose “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” [1970] screened at the Somerville last month), “Faster, Pussycat” is unlike just about anything you’ve ever seen, shot in eye-popping black-and-white and filled with outrageously quotable dialogue (“What’s your point?” “My point is of no return, and you’ve just crossed it!”). It screens Wednesday as part of the Somerville Theatre’s “Summer Camp” series, and should be considered required viewing for anyone with an interest in cult cinema.
While we try to limit the scope of this column to the confines of Camberville, we would be remiss if we failed to mention a pair of films from Cambridge directors screening at this year’s Woods Hole Film Festival, which begins its 34th installment Saturday. “The Arborist,” a chilling ghost story from local director Andrew Mackenzie Mudge, screens at The Falmouth Academy’s Simon Center on Aug. 1, while “Simple Machine,” an intriguing documentary short from Cantabrigians Sara Hendren and Brian Funck, is included in the “Moving Forward” shorts program this Sunday. It’s a reminder that films that originate in our backyard can travel far and wide.
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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