It seems safe to say that the Venn diagram of people who frequent independent cinemas and cat lovers is, if not a circle, pretty darn close to one. It seems only fitting, then, that Cambridge’s premiere rep house would dedicate an entire week to our feline friends. From Friday through Thursday, The Brattle Theatre runs a series dubbed “Cat Fancy: A Feline Film Feast,” collecting more than a dozen cat-centric opuses, spanning decades and genres and ranging from well-known classics to deep-cut obscurities. The headliner, understandably, is Gints Zilbalodis’ Oscar-winning epic “Flow” (2024), which screens multiple times in a double feature with Ceyda Torun’s appropriately cuddly Istanbul street-cat documentary “Kedi” (2017). Many of the selections are lighthearted, including Hayao Miyazaki’s animated classic “Kiki’s Delivery Service” (1989, screening in dubbed and subtitled versions) and a whimsical double feature of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “Amélie” (2001) and the 1958 Jimmy Stewart/Kim Novak witch-com “Bell, Book and Candle” (the latter holds a special place in this writer’s heart, as it provided the name of my own cat, Pyewackett). But there are also late-night screenings of a bevy of horror and exploitation epics with titles such as “Eye of the Cat” (1969) and “The Night of a Thousand Cats” (1972). Seen-it-all cinephiles should make a point of catching some truly rare screenings, including Vojtěch Jasný’s Czech New Wave cult hit “The Cassandra Cat” (1963) and a double feature of the animated rarities “Cat City” (1986) and “Felidae” (1994). For a full run-down of titles and screening times, open yourself a can of Fancy Feast and check out The Brattle’s website.
Two very different but equally important films celebrating 50th anniversaries can be caught this week on the big screen. On Thursday, The Brattle’s “Women in the Waves” celebration of female new wave filmmakers reaches its crescendo with Chantal Akerman’s seismic “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” (1975), a three-hour-plus epic detailing the daily life of a frustrated housewife in minute detail. “Jeanne Dielman” made a splash in 2022 when it reached the top of Sight and Sound magazine’s decennial Greatest Films poll; it’s best experienced without distraction on the big screen, so even if you have a Criterion Channel subscription you may want to make an appointment for this one. On the other end of the stylistic spectrum, the Somerville Theatre has the new 50th anniversary restoration of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975), which opens in regular rotation Friday. You probably don’t need me to tell you how great “Jaws” is, but it’s still a wonder to behold with a crowd just as rapt as they would have been half a century ago. And if you love shark cinema but are “Jaws”-ed out, stick around for the Somerville’s late-night showings this weekend of the new Japanese oddity “Hot Spring Shark Attack” (2024), which looks to do exactly what it says on the tin.
If you’re a film fan still mourning the passing of the great David Lynch (which is to say, if you’re a film fan), there’s a good chance you’ve had a chance to see most of the filmmaker’s canonical classics on the big screen this year, from “Eraserhead” (1977) to “Mulholland Drive” (2001). On Thursday, however, the Somerville hosts one of Lynch’s more rarely screened features on 35 mm. “The Straight Story” (1999) is an oddity in Lynch’s catalog in many ways: a G-rated Disney release telling the quiet, human story of an old man (an Oscar-nominated Richard Farnsworth) who makes a cross-country trip on his ride-on lawnmower to visit his dying brother (Lynch regular Harry Dean Stanton). While there’s little of the pop-surrealism most people think of when they hear the word “Lynchian,” the film brings to the forefront the humanity and unironic love of Americana that underscores much of the director’s work, and Lynch himself considered it his “most experimental film.” If you’ve never seen it (or haven’t seen it on the big screen), now’s the time to fill in the gap.
One of the most fascinating and ambitious cinematic achievements of the decade so far gets its belated theatrical due beginning next week at the Harvard Film Archive. Conceived as a BBC miniseries but expanded to an “anthology” of five simultaneously released feature films, Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” series presents a series of snapshots chronicling the experience of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in London at different points across the 20th century. Released at the height of the pandemic in November 2020, all five films screen for free at the HFA through September and October. The series starts Monday with perhaps the most ambitious of the series, the ’70s-set courtroom drama “Mangrove” (2020). Based on a real-life case of a Black-owned restaurant terrorized by local police, the film is far more riveting and socially relevant than Aaron Sorkin’s concurrently released “The Trial of the Chicago Seven” (2020) and features a killer soundtrack and a movie-star performance from Letitia Wright as civil rights leader Altheia Jones-LeCointe. The series continues through August (with repeat presentations of each film), culminating in a guest lecture from McQueen on Oct. 21.
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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