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Author Archive | Alex Kamody

100 Years of The Athena: City Lights – One Day Only Saturday, February 21st

Director: Charles Chaplin
Writer(s): Charles Chaplin
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill and Florence Lee

Once again cast as the Little Tramp, Charles Chaplin makes the acquaintance of a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill), who through a series of coincidences has gotten the impression that the shabby tramp is a millionaire. A second storyline begins when the tramp rescues a genuine millionaire (Harry Myers) from committing suicide. When drunk, the millionaire expansively treats the tramp as a friend and equal; when sober, he doesn’t even recognize him. The two plots come together when the tramp attempts to raise enough money for the blind girl to have an eye operation.

“A beautiful example of Chaplin’s ability to turn narrative fragments into emotional wholes. The two halves of the film are sentiment and slapstick. They are not blended but woven into a pattern as eccentric as it is sublime.” – Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

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Running Time: 87 Minutes87 MIN
G Rated

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100 Years of The Athena: Steamboat Bill Jr. – One Day Only Saturday, January 31st

Director: Charles Reisner and Buster Keaton (uncredited)
Writer(s): Carl Harbaugh
Cast: Buster Keaton, Tom McGuire and Ernest Torrence

Our 100th Anniversary

The Athena Cinema is celebrating our 100th anniversary in 2015. To celebrate a century of cinema, the Athena is screening 12 unique films that showcase the history and craft of movies over the last 100 years. Starting with the era of silent films, the series takes us through high points of different eras and remarkable films, starring legends such as Charlie Chaplin, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Gene Hackman, Heath Ledger and more. And at the end of 2015, we will honor our roots by closing with the modern silent film, THE ARTIST, which ran at the Athena in 2012. For more information on our 100th anniversary, please visit, https://athenacinema.com/our-100th-anniversary/

Steamboat Bill Jr.

The college-boy son of a hard-bitten riverboat captain proves to be an incompetent milquetoast embarrassment to his riverdog dad — until proving his manhood when a cyclone strikes their small town. Keaton’s last silent under his own creative control is one of his funniest.

 

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Running Time: 70 Minutes70 MIN
Rating: Unrated

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100 Years of Athena: THE ARTIST

Watch Trailer Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Writer(s): Michel Hazanavicius
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo and John Goodman

Hollywood 1927. George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a silent movie superstar. The advent of the talkies will sound the death knell for his career and see him fall into oblivion. For young extra Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), it seems the sky’s the limit – major movie stardom awaits. The Artist tells the story of their interlinked destinies.

“It is pure magic from the first frame to the last.” – Mark Rabinowitz, CNN.com

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Running Time: 100 Minutes100 MIN
PG-13 Rated

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Sustainability Series: ANTARCTICA: A YEAR ON ICE

Watch Trailer Director: Anthony Powell

Antarctica: A Year On Ice is a visually stunning film that lets you experience what it is like to live in Antarctica for a full year, including winters isolated from the rest of the world, while enduring months of darkness in the harshest place on Earth.  Anthony Powell has been working in Antarctica with his wife Christine for many years. After over 10 years of filming, his documentary is now complete.  After screening at numerous festivals around the world and winning multiple awards, it is having a theatrical release in North America starting November 28th.

FREE SHAGBARK SEED AND MILL POPCORN to the first 20 people

Sponsored by University College, Alden Library, Environmental Studies, Sustainability Theme: Arts and Sciences

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Transcultural Encounters & Border Crossings: The Syrian Bride – One Day Only Saturday, January 17th

Watch Trailer Director: Eran Riklis
Writer(s): Suha Arraf and Eran Riklis
Cast: Hiam Abbass, Makram Khoury and Clara Khoury

A family deals with the typical anxieties of a wedding day while also confronting the political turmoil of the Middle East in this drama, a collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers. Hammed (Makram J. Khoury) is a leading political figure in Majdal Shams, a Druze community that has been under Israeli occupation since the late ’60s. Years ago, Hammed arranged for his daughter Mona (Clara Khoury) to marry Tallel (Derar Sliman), who has since become a successful actor in Syria. Hammed has gathered the family together to see Mona off, but the occasion is a bittersweet one — given the combative relationship between Israel and Syria, once Mona crosses the border with her husband, it’s unlikely she will ever be able to return. THE SYRIAN BRIDE is a story about physical, mental and emotional borders, and the strength and will to cross them.

“It is written, directed and acted with real compassion and sympathy for the humanity of its characters, no matter who they are or on what side of these multiple issues they turn out to be.” – Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

“The movie charms while making a bold statement about the borders that governments and individuals construct to keep each other apart.” – John Monaghan, The Detroit Free Press

Film introductions by professors Katarzyna Marciniak and Michael Gillespie.

Sponsored by The College of Arts and Sciences, Making and Breaking the Law Theme, and the Wealth and Poverty Theme.

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Running Time: 97 Minutes97 MIN
G Rated

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Foxcatcher: Last Day Thursday, February 12th

Watch Trailer Director: Bennett Miller
Writer(s): E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman
Cast: Steve Carell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo

FOXCATCHER is a psychological drama directed by Academy Award nominee Bennett Miller (MONEYBALL) and starring Golden Globe winner Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Academy Award nominee Mark Ruffalo, Academy Award winner Vanessa Redgrave and Sienna Miller. The film was written by E. Max Frye and Academy Award nominee Dan Futterman.

FOXCATCHER tells the story of Olympic Gold Medal-winning wrestler Mark Schultz (Tatum), who sees a way out from the shadow of his more celebrated wrestling brother Dave(Ruffalo) and a life of poverty when he is summoned by eccentric multi-millionaire John du Pont (Carell) to move onto his estate and train for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Desperate to gain the respect of his disapproving mother, du Pont begins “coaching” a world-class athletic team and, in the process, lures Mark into dangerous habits, breaks his confidence and drives him into a self-destructive spiral. Based on actual events, FOXCATCHER is a gripping and profoundly American story of fragile men who pinned their hopes for love and redemption on a desperate obsession for greatness that was to end in tragedy.

“Foxcatcher, one of the year’s very best films, exposes the diseased underbelly of American exceptionalism and knocks the ground out from under you.” – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

“A superbly modulated study of a twisted mind with a career-changing performance by Steve Carell.” – Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter

Closed captioning devices are available for this film. If needed, please ask about it at the concessions counter.

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Running Time: 134 Minutes134 MIN
R Rated

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Wild: Leaving Thursday, February 5th

Watch Trailer Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Writer(s): Nick Hornby, Cheryl Strayed
Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Gaby Hoffmann
Awards: Golden Globe Nomination for Best Actress

With the dissolution of her marriage and the death of her mother, Cheryl Strayed has lost all hope. After years of reckless, destructive behavior, she makes a rash decision. With absolutely no experience, driven only by sheer determination, Cheryl hikes more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, alone. WILD powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddens, strengthens, and ultimately heals her.

“What makes its heroine worth caring about – what makes her a rare and exciting presence in present-day American film – is not that she’s tidy or sensible or even especially nice. It’s that she’s free.” A.O. Scott

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Running Time: 115 minutes115 MIN
R Rated

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The Homesman: Last Day Thursday, January 15th

Watch Trailer Director: Tommy Lee Jones
Writer(s): Kieran Fitzgerald and Wesley Oliver
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Hilary Swank, Meryl Streep

When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task of saving them falls to the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank). Transporting the women by covered wagon to Iowa, she soon realizes just how daunting the journey will be, and employs a low-life drifter, George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones), to join her. The unlikely pair and the three women (Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter) head east, where a waiting minister and his wife (Meryl Streep) have offered to take the women in. But the group first must traverse the harsh Nebraska Territories marked by stark beauty, psychological peril and constant threat.

“A Beautifully Crafted, Absorbing Look At Life in the American West.” -Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter

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Running Time: 122 Minutes122 MIN
R Rated

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The Babadook: Leaving the Athena on December 24th

Watch Trailer Director: Jennifer Kent
Writer(s): Jennifer Kent
Cast: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, and Daniel Henshall

Six years after the violent death of her husband, Amelia (Essie Davis) is at a loss. She struggles to discipline her ‘out of control’ 6 year-old, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), a son she finds impossible to love. Samuel’s dreams are plagued by a monster he believes is coming to kill them both. When a disturbing storybook called ‘The Babadook’ turns up at their house, Samuel is convinced that the Babadook is the creature he’s been dreaming about. His hallucinations spiral out of control, he becomes more unpredictable and violent. Amelia, genuinely frightened by her son’s behaviour, is forced to medicate him. But when Amelia begins to see glimpses of a sinister presence all around her, it slowly dawns on her that the thing Samuel has been warning her about may be real.

“One of the smartest and most effective horror films in years.” – Jordan Hoffman, New York Daily News

“This psychological thriller from gifted first-time filmmaker Jennifer Kent will have you climbing the walls simply by plumbing the violence of the mind. Brace yourself.” – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

 

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Running Time: 93 minutes93 MIN
Rating: Unrated

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Citizenfour: Last Day Thursday, December 18th

Watch Trailer Director: Laura Poitras
Cast: Edward Snowden

CITIZENFOUR is a real life thriller, unfolding by the minute, giving audiences unprecedented access to filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald’s encounters with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, as he hands over classified documents providing evidence of mass indiscriminate and illegal invasions of privacy by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Poitras had already been working on a film about surveillance for two years when Snowden contacted her, using the name “CITIZENFOUR,” in January 2013.  He reached out to her because he knew she had long been a target of government surveillance, stopped at airports numerous times, and had refused to be intimidated. When Snowden revealed he was a high-level analyst driven to expose the massive surveillance of Americans by the NSA, Poitras persuaded him to let her film.

CITIZENFOUR places you in the room with Poitras, Greenwald, and Snowden as they attempt to manage the media storm raging outside, forced to make quick decisions that will impact their lives and all of those around them.

CITIZENFOUR not only shows you the dangers of governmental surveillance—it makes you feel them. After seeing the film, you will never think the same way about your phone, email, credit card, web browser, or profile, ever again.

 Executive Produced by Steven Soderbergh.

“It’s a tense and frightening thriller that blends the brisk globe-trotting of the “Bourne” movies with the spooky, atmospheric effects of a Japanese horror film.”-A.O. Scott, New York Times

“Whether you think Edward Snowden is a hero or a traitor, you should see the riveting documentary “Citizenfour”…”-Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

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Running Time: 114 Minutes114 MIN
R Rated

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