Starting Friday, local moviegoers will have their pick of two brand new restorations of occasionally overlooked classics. Jane Campion’s Palme d’Or-winning “The Piano” (1993), which screens Friday through Monday at the Brattle Theatre, is a landmark of ’90s arthouse cinema, featuring timeless performances by Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin (both of whom took home Oscars) as well as the late, great Sam Neill. Very different, but no less influential, is Michael Mann’s “Manhunter” (1986), which screens in a brand new director’s cut at the Somerville Theatre Friday and Saturday. For much of the ’90s, “Manhunter” was known largely as the answer to the trivia question “What was the first screen appearance of Hannibal Lecter?” But as Mann’s profile as an auteur has risen, so has “Manhunter” grown in esteem, thanks to Mann’s neon-nightmare ambiance and terrifying performances by Brian Cox (as Dr. Lecter) and the late Tom Noonan (as the tattooed “Red Dragon” killer). If by any chance you haven’t seen either, now is your perfect chance, as neither has ever looked as good.
The Harvard Film Archive continues its series “The Cold Heart Is More Precious Than Diamonds: The Cinema of Graham Greene” this week with more classic adaptations of the great novelist’s work. Friday brings a 16mm screening of “The Heart of the Matter” (1953), which stars Trevor Howard (previously of the Greene-penned “The Third Man”) as tortured antihero Harry Scobie. Sir Alec Guinness takes center stage Saturday in “Our Man in Havana” (1959), a delightful spy caper set on the eve of the Cuban revolution. Also on Saturday is a true oddity: “The Stranger’s Hand” (1954), an Italian expansion of a sketch Greene wrote as an anonymous entry in a magazine’s “Write Like Graham Greene” contest (he came in second). On a more serious note is Monday’s “Went the Day Well?” (1942), a chilling bit of speculative fiction about a small English village which is quietly captured by Nazi forces. “Went the Day Well?” was produced in the midst of World War II, and the urgency of its message can easily be felt– now, perhaps, more than ever.
On Saturday, the Somerville Theatre’s summer “Midnight Specials” series concludes with a 30th anniversary screening of one of the more consequential indie debuts of the 1990s. Upon its release, “Bound” (1996) was received as part of the “erotic thriller” wave of the ’80s and ’90s, thanks to its steamy turns from Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly as a pair of female criminals who fall in love and embark on a daring mob heist. But “Bound” also announced the arrival of the filmmaking team of Lana and Lilly Wachowski, who would go on to conquer the world with the scifi smash “The Matrix” (1999), and break down further barriers a few years later when both came out as transgender. Today, “Bound” is held up as a classic of queer cinema, both for its boundary-pushing onscreen representation and as the debut of its trailblazing directors.
The Brattle’s repertory series “Keep Watching the Skies: Aliens in the 1950s” comes to a close Monday and Tuesday with a double feature of classic invasions. Don Siegel’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956) is one of Hollywood’s great fables. A sleepy California town suddenly finds itself host to a mysterious crop of enormous seed pods which replace its citizens with exact doubles, lifelike in every way except for their chilling lack of emo1tion and drive for conformity. Released at the height of the Cold War, “Body Snatchers” still inspires debate as to whether its invaders represent the threat of Communist invasion or the McCarthyite reactionaries who sought to drive out “subversives.” It’s paired with the equally surreal “Invaders from Mars” (1953), a technicolor nightmare in which a young boy finds all the trusted adults in his life taken over by an alien intelligence. And if those films whet your appetite for extraterrestrial madness, come back to the Brattle Thursday for Paul Verhoeven’s satirical extravaganza “Total Recall” (1990), screening as part of the theater’s “When Carolco Was King” series.
It’s the first week in September, which also means the beginning of the Kendall Square Cinema‘s latest month-long series. Its latest “Retro Replay” series, titled “It’s a School Thing,” kicks off Tuesday with “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1986), the ultimate comic wish-fulfillment fantasy for any student who’s chafed against the uptight authority figures in their lives (what better way to begin the school year). On Wednesday, the Kendall begins its “Filmmaker Focus” on dueling divas Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman (neither of whom are “filmmakers” in the strictest sense, but let’s just go with it). Sandy gets the first round pick with “Demolition Man” (1993), the gloriously cheesy sci-fi beat-em-up which pairs the actress against Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. Even in this admittedly silly context, Bullock holds her own, setting the stage for a typically eclectic month of favorites and obscurities.
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