Notes From The Program Director | Week of June 16th, 2023

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Notes From The Program Director

Week of June 16th, 2023

Melissa Tamminga

Rich Text

Newsletter for June 16-June 22, 2023

Hello, friends!

I’m delighted to say, due to audience demand, we get to keep Eight Mountains, You Hurt My Feelings, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse around for one more week, but if you don’t want to miss them, be sure to stop by the cinema before June 23: June 22 is the last day to see all three films. The stark reality of having only two screens means that in order to make way for other films that we’ve booked and that have firm opening dates, we often have to let go of beloved films before we’re quiteready to say goodbye. The good news, however, is we can look forward to our new space on Grand, where three additional screens will give us the ability to play more of the films we love for longer periods of time. To be sure, there’s always a chance we may be able to bring some of these films back to our screens later in the summer, so stay tuned, but the constantly moving pieces of the film industry mean nothing is guaranteed. In the meantime, I’d urge you to grab the chance to see these three marvelous films while we’ve still got them!

In addition to those films, we’ve got a plethora of special events this week that we’re excited to share with you:

First up, we have for Father's Day weekend the now-classic baseball movie, Field of Dreams from 1989, playing June 17 (1:30 pm) and June 18 (5 pm). Bellingham and Seattle baseball fans will remember just how exciting 1989 was, with Ken Griffey Jr. (who played with the Bellingham Mariners in 1987) beginning his career with the Seattle Mariners, and some of my fondest high school memories are of traveling with my dad to see the youthful and outrageously talented Griffey play that year. But like the pleasure of seeing him play, the movies also brought the joy of baseball to the big screen, and Field of Dreams was both an audience favorite and critical hit. It’s a film that unashamedly wears its heart on its sleeve, and it’s a film more than worth re-watching, 34 years later. I love what Roger Ebert wrote in his original 4/4-star review:

"Movies are often so timid these days, so afraid to take flights of the imagination, that there is something grand and brave about a movie where a voice tells a farmer to build a baseball diamond so that Shoeless Joe Jackson can materialize out of the cornfield and hit a few fly balls. This is the kind of movie Frank Capra might have directed, and James Stewart might have starred in -- a movie about dreams. . . . Field of Dreams will not appeal to grinches and grouches and realists. It is a delicate movie, a fragile construction of one goofy fantasy after another. But it has the courage to be about exactly what it promises. ‘If you build it, he will come.’ And he does."

I’m also delighted to have The Matrix returning to the big screen as a part of our Pride month films. We’ve got two series running this Pride month, Transcendent Love Stories and Hidden in Plain Sight: The Visual Language of Trans Cinema, and The Matrixkicks off that second series. Hidden in Plain Sight, a series inspired by film critic and author Willow McClay, explores camouflaged representation within the history of transgender film through screenings of The Matrix and Under the Skin, and Willow--whose upcoming 2024 book, Corpses, Fools and Monsters: An Examination of the Trans Film Image, I can’t wait to read--will be giving us an introduction to Under the Skin, where she discusses the difficulties trans audiences have faced in searching for representation on screen. Under the Skin, she explains, did not set out to offer trans representation, but trans viewers recognized themselves on screen in ways that other films that offer more overtly trans representation did not do, partly because they were so deeply problematic, if not outright offensive. Willow’s introduction is a must-watch--her work has profoundly impacted the way I watch movies--and The Matrix, playing this week, will get us started on the journey, and we have the pleasure and privilege of pairing The Matrix with an introduction from our very own Boone Farrell, Pickford projectionist. The Matrix blew everyone’s minds in 1999-- there was a time “before The Matrix” and “after The Matrix” in cinema history--but Lana and Lilly Wachowski were closeted transgender women at the time they made the film, and looking back and understanding the film as a visual expression of what the Wachowskis could not say in words, is essential now. I eagerly await hearing Boone’s introduction and the discussion of some of these things and seeing the film on the big screen again, for the first time since 1999.

Not to be overshadowed by The Matrix, however, is Moonlight, playing Thursday, June 22 at 8:30, as part of the Transcendent Love Stories series, a film that is much quieter on the surface than The Matrix but no less dazzling to the mind, heart, ear, and eye. Moonlight, which appropriately landed a spot on Sight and Sound’s once-a-decade list of Best 100 Movies of All Time, was a breakout film for Barry Jenkins, who’d made the phenomenal Medicine for Melancholy a several years prior, but his tremendous talent was finally recognized with Moonlight, and it deservedly won Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor and was nominated for Best Directing, Editing, Cinematography, and Score at the Oscars. Moonlight is an achingly beautiful, a coming-of-age tale, where every shot and sequence will either break the heart or make it soar and where the emotions become so tightly enmeshed with those of the main character -- played with stunning brilliance by three different actors -- it’s difficult to leave the cinema and him behind when the credits roll.

In honor of the Juneteenth holiday -- which celebrates the day enslaved people in Texas finally learned that they were free, June 19, 1865, two years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation -- we’re screening Miss Juneteenth, a film by Channing Godfrey Peoples that did not have a chance at the big screen due to the pandemic but is one of the best films that came out during that early pandemic time period, and it’s a true pleasure to bring it to the Pickford now. Film critic Angelica Jade Bastien beautifully encapsulate what makes the film so special:

"Miss Juneteenth is a film defined by its gentle beauty and simplicity as it charts the life of Turquoise Jones, who’s navigating the choppy waters of motherhood, being poor, and pouring her own dreams into her daughter, Kai, who is reluctant at best about participating in the Miss Juneteenth pageant that Turquoise herself won as a teenager. The stakes in some ways may seem low. Will Kai win the pageant? Will the relationship between Kai and Turquoise break under the strain of the complications between them? Will Turquoise choose love with the men before her or a different track entirely? But Peoples treats her characters with a sincerity that gives them heft. The film itself struck me for the depth of feeling it engenders, the beauty of Black life it swims in, and its specificity. This is what I yearn to see on the screen as a critic and viewer: evocative portraits of Black life that shirk expectations in favor of simple beauty and psychologically rich characterization."

Finally, Wes Anderson fans, rejoice! Asteroid City is finally here! We open the film with a couple of special sneak-peek previews on Thursday, June 22, 7 pm and 9:30 pm. I’ll have more to say about this film next week when it officially opens, but for now, let’s just say, this is The Wes Anderson Film of Wes Anderson Films, and those who love his delightfully unique signature style and tone will not be disappointed. It’s a film, too, like so many Anderson films, where the aesthetics are so much fun that the emotion and the depth of the themes can sneak up on you, and you’re suddenly surprised to find yourself in tears, and then, in a deeply contemplative state when the credits roll. I’m already eager to see it again and perhaps figure out exactly how Wes works his particular brand of magic.

See you at the movies, friends!

Melissa