Hudson Valley Crucial Viewing September 12-September 25

After taking such a long hiatus from regularly sending out the Crucial Viewing newsletter to you all, we hope you’ll indulge us this week with a bit of self-promo. As Brian mentioned in the last newsletter, the last few months have been consumed by preparations for the opening of two new theater projects that we’re involved in. Upstate Films new space opens next week, and we’re incredibly excited to be able to partner with them to curate and present repertory film there on a weekly basis. Our first showing is on Wednesday, September 24th (more about that below). Besides that, Community Theater’s opening weekend looms! If you didn’t make it out for Singin’ in the Rain, well you’re in luck. We have not one, not two, but three repertory offerings for you in the inaugural weekend of the theater, and we hope you’ll make it out for them. Brian, Greg, and the rest of the team at Community (friends and family to KFF) have been hard at work and hopefully you can feel the love when you go out to see your first movie there. So, this week, it’s all in the family. Without further ado, let’s get to the movies.

Sidney Lumet’s DOG DAY AFTERNOON
Community Theater, Catskill – Opens Friday, September 12

I’ve written about Sidney Lumet’s tense, frenetic crime film Dog Day Afternoon in the newsletter before, but like any great film, there’s always more to say. Something I love about Al Pacino in this film is the particular gentleness on display, hidden beneath and between the more frantic, desperate notes of his performance. It was that depth of performance that made the production determined to sign Pacino to the project, in spite of the fact that he backed out multiple times before production began. Pacino was also one of the first major stars of 70s Hollywood to “play gay” in a larger production. The film is deeply empathetic, even going as far as framing Sonny, Wojtowicz’s stand-in character, as more rational than reports of the true story imply. Dog Day Afternoon is such a testament not only to cinema’s ability to tell deeply human stories, but also its ability to memorialize moments in time. Lumet captures a particular moment in New York, one that has been framed, rewritten, retold, and obsessed over by Hollywood for decades. The grit of the city in the 70s has always been a point of fascination, and the snapshot Dog Day provides, holed up in a botched bank robbery, feels like a perfect entranceway to understanding the times it was made in. This is the first film in Community Theater’s “Spirit of ‘76” series, and I personally can’t imagine a better way to start it off. (1975, 126min)

John Lasseter’s TOY STORY 
Community Theater, Catskill – Opens Friday, September 12

I, like everyone else on this godforsaken Earth, have (unfortunately) become incredibly susceptible to the time-wasting extravaganza that is Instagram reels. Because this is a safe space, I will tell you that often when I am gearing up to write this very newsletter I find myself opening my phone to pull up this actor’s wikipedia or some film’s IMDB page only to blink and realize one whole hour has passed while I have mindlessly scrolled through recipes, memes, and mysterious missives from the internet accidentally. It is addictive. Social media is changing our brain chemistry. HOWEVER, every once in a while, that rare, mindless scrolling will unearth lovely little gems of information that I am delighted to come across. What does this have to do with the film that made Pixar a household name? Well, I saw a clip of Tom Hanks talking about voice acting. After scouring the internet I have found the interview that this clip was from for all of your viewing pleasure. I think you should watch it, and maybe it will remind you of the magic of animation, the sheer amount of love that was poured into this art form, in a moment where a full-length CGI picture was practically unproven. I am not so cold-hearted that I am not affected by listening to Tom Hanks’ talk about the learning process and the joy of this production. You can hear it! Toy Story, for all the criticisms we can have about its franchise-ment, its plays at nostalgia baiting the millennial parents who now have kids, etc etc, is just a good movie. It perfectly exemplifies what made Pixar into the powerhouse animation studio it is today. It understands emotional beats, it has an exceptionally tight script, it is funny, it is charming, and it still can make me cry. Perhaps you, reading here, are one of those young parents who remembers this movie from your childhood, and would like to bring your children to see it on the big screen. Perhaps you are like me, and need to inject some wholesome emotionality into your life. Fear not, we can provide this for you, in an incredibly large room where you can hide in your own row if you need privacy to feel things. See you there :) (1995, 81min)

John G. Alvidsen’s ROCKY 
Community Theater, Catskill – Opens Sunday, September 14

I have a bit of a process every time I write these newsletters. As I’m sure you can imagine, a lot of that process is pretty boring. I pull up the movies Wiki article, I pull the IMDB, sometimes I also pull up the wikis for the director or the lead actors. I collate some information, I look for fun facts. If I’m feeling particularly stumped on how to start, perhaps I’ll check if Roger Ebert reviewed it, or Pauline Kael, or Richard Brody. Very rarely do I allow myself to check aggregate websites or Letterboxed because I think that it poisons the well of my own ability to tell you my thoughts. Other people on the internet, I humbly admit, are much funnier than I am when it comes to talking about movies. I am not here to tell you jokes (though I do try). I am here to tell you the truth about good movies. The truth about Rocky is that it’s kind of a hard movie to write about. It’s so ubiquitous, even the top reviews on Letterboxed are kind of just people saying what the movie is about and going “I don’t know why, but it’s so good.” And that is the thing, it’s so good. Rocky is the blueprint for all the sports movies you love. John G. Alvidsen did it first, and did it best, and we’re all just chasing that high. It’s got emotional highs, it's got emotional lows, it's got Sylvester Stallone whispering “moo” to the carcass of a cow in a meat locker. It has the training montage of all training montages. A undertale story about a down on his luck boxer in Philadelphia has become an indelible cultural image for multiple generations of men and women alike. I didn’t watch Rocky for a really long time because I don’t love Stallone and it didn’t seem like my kind of “boy” movie (you know what I mean.) And then I watched it and it clicked and here we are today. You should come out for it, and then go home and immediately watch Rocky IV and just marinate in a series that understands the assignment. I don’t make the rules, I just make recommendations. (1976, 120min)

Pedro Almodovar’s ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER
Upstate Midtown, Kingston – Sunday, September 21, 7:30pm; Wednesday, September 24, 7pm

I’m often surprised by how few people have been exposed to much of Pedro Almodovar’s filmography. His films have received international acclaim throughout his career, and his ability as a director to deftly move between genres across his filmography is rare for a director of his scope. Though he is most well-known for his work in contemporary melodrama, I was first exposed to him through his horror picture The Skin I Live In. But isn’t that a perfect example of his appeal as a director? His career has such wide-ranging scope but is easily identified by his particular, sumptuous visual design, his excellent stories, and his deeply emotive relationship to femininity, womanhood, family, and trauma. All About My Mother was hardly early in his career as a filmmaker, but it is the film that made him a household name for film buffs worldwide, winning more awards at the time than any other film produced by the Spanish film industry. The story is as simple as it is complicated – a woman grieving her son and reconnecting with her past, a film about motherhood, while also being a deep meditation on gender, on transness, on desire and found family and choice. Almodovar particularly captures the unique culture of queerness in Barcelona at the time, and does so with deep empathy and understanding. In a moment where we are particularly interested in cataloguing films that relate to, portray, and understand the realities of marginalized people, of those most often forgotten by this industry, Almodovar deserves a seat at the table, especially for this film. (1999, 104min)