The Great Dictator and Body Heat

Sunday 9/13

This week's Catapult house film screening:

8 p.m.- 10:05
Chaplin- The Great Dictator

Charlie Chaplin plays dual roles in this prescient twist on the immortal prince-and-the-pauper tale: look-alikes Adenoid Hynkel -- Tomania's anti-Semitic ruler -- and an amnesiac Jewish barber. After 20 years in a hospital, the barber goes home, oblivious to the plight of Tomania's Jews. Soon Hynkel cracks down on them … but a case of mistaken identity gives the unassuming barber a chance to make an impassioned speech for a return to democracy.

10:05 p.m.-11:20 (as the night gets dark):
Lawrence Kandan- Body Heat

Still regarded as one of the steamiest movie's of all time, Body Heat is a fantastic exponent of how noir has developed. In a sizzling-hot Florida coastal town, attorney Ned Racine (William Hurt) becomes involved with the sultry Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) -- and schemes a way to get her wealthy, much-older husband (Richard Crenna) out of the picture. Ned's knowledge of legal matters may enable both conspirators to escape scot-free -- and Matty is craftier than anyone ever dreamed. Lawrence Kasdan directs this throwback to the early days of film noir. Ted Danson and Mickey Rourke co-star.

City Lights/ Jules and Jim

Sunday 8/29

First film screening/projection of the year, here, at Catapult house:

Chaplin- City Lights
87 minutes.


Ebert description:
If only one of Charles Chaplin's films could be preserved, ``City Lights'' (1931) would come the closest to representing all the different notes of his genius. It contains the slapstick, the pathos, the pantomime, the effortless physical coordination, the melodrama, the bawdiness, the grace, and, of course, the Little Tramp--the character said, at one time, to be the most famous image on earth.

Then next Sunday, 9/6:
Jules and Jim

VHS description:

Jules and Jim is the ultimate menage-a-trois, and certainly one of the most poetic films of the French New Wave. The film tells the story of a friendship between two artists- one Austrian (Oskar Werner), the other French (Henry Serre)- and their mutual love for the same woman, Catherine (Jeanne Moreau). Spanning two decades, this pure love affair between Jules, Jim and Catherine is temporarily interrupted by the Great War, but continues on into the 1930s when it ends suddenly and tragically.