NEWS RELEASE

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EAU CLAIRE — The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire campus film series resumes for the spring semester with a screening of “The Boondock Saints” at 6 and 8:30 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, Jan. 29-Feb. 1 in Davies Theatre.

Fresh-faced Irish-American twins (Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus) are united in an ultra-violent mission from God — ridding Boston of gangsters, criminals and lowlifes. As the body count rises, the brothers became local heroes and draw the attention of an unorthodox FBI special agent (Willem Dafoe), who can’t seem to decide whether to arrest them or join them. “The peculiar mix of earnestness and machismo will not appeal to everyone, but it’s certainly unique and may acquire a cult following” (Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com). A sequel is in the works. UAC Films. U.S. 2000 • 110 minutes • Color • R. Directed by Troy Duffy.

Tickets for this and all the films listed below (except “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” with special ticket pricing described below) are $1 for University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire students and $2 for UW-Eau Claire faculty, staff, and members of the International Film Society. Tickets and IFS memberships are available at the University Service Center, (715) 836-3727.

Other spring semester films presented by the Universities Activities Commission of the UW-Eau Claire Senate and the International Film Society are listed below:

• “Do the Right Thing” will be shown at 6 and 8:30 p.m. Thursday–Sunday, Feb. 5-8 in Davies Theatre. A cast of characters navigates a minefield of sensations over the course of blood-boiling 24-hour period — the hottest day of the year — on one block in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Producer-writer-director-star Spike Lee combines humor, drama, and music in this powerful portrait of urban racial tensions. Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Robin Harris, Samuel L. Jackson, Bill Nunn, Rosie Perez and John Turturro star. UAC Films. U.S. 1989 • 120 minutes • Color • R. Directed by Spike Lee.
• “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” will be shown at midnight, Friday, Feb.6 in the Council Fire Room of Davies Center. When a soon-to-be married couple (Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick) has a breakdown in an isolated area, they must pay a call to the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry). “A fast-paced pastiche of camp, science fiction, rock music, horror, and more camp… The plot is only semi-comprehensible, but the nearly non-stop musical numbers — brilliant conflations of glam-rock and showtunes — and transgressive sexual energy keep things moving” (Keith Phipps, The Onion A.V. Club). An audience participation cult classic and Winter Carnival tradition, with special ticket pricing: $3 for UW-Eau Claire students, faculty and staff and IFS members. Tickets and IFS memberships will be sold at the door as well as the Service Center. UAC Films. U.S. 1975 • 119 minutes • Color • R. Directed by Jim Sharman.
• “Amores Perros” will be shown at 6 and 9 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, Feb.12-15 in Davies Theatre. Three complex stories of love, brutality, betrayal and redemption are linked by the canines that mirror and propel their owners’ existence, and a violent car crash that changes all their lives. With its propulsive rock score, this visceral, Oscar-nominated roller-coaster of a movie conveys the experience of life in Mexico City — a dangerous, passionate metropolis where rich and poor live side by side with a million stray dogs. “The first classic of the new decade, with sequences that will probably make their way into history” (Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times). IFS. Mexico 2002 • 153 minutes • Color • R • In Spanish, subtitled. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.
• “Shadow of the Vampire” will be shown at 6 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, Feb.19-22 in Davies Theatre. “The best of all vampire movies is Nosferatu, made by F.W. Murnau in Germany in 1922,” writes Roger Ebert. “Max Schreck, the mysterious actor who played Court Orlock the vampire, is so persuasive we never think of the actor, only of the creature. Shadow of the Vampire, a wicked new movie about the making of Nosferatu, has an explanation for Schreck’s performance: He really was a vampire.” John Malkovich stars as Murnau; Willem Dafoe is Max Schreck, ravaging the cast and crew who regard him as an overzealous method actor. UAC Films. US + UK + Luxembourg 2000 • 92 minutes • B+W/Color • R. Directed by E. Elias Merhige.
• “Nosferatu” will be shown at 8 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, Feb.19-22 in Davies Theatre. The quintessential silent vampire film. Rather than depicting Dracula as a shape-shifting monster or debonair gentleman, F.W. Murnau’s Graf Orlok (Max Schreck) is a nightmarish creature — the most genuinely disturbing incarnation of vampirism yet envisioned. An atypical expressionist film, Nosferatu was shot on location in the Carpathian mountains, and is infused with the subtle tones of nature: both pure and fresh as well as twisted and sinister. UAC Films. Germany 1922 • 84 minutes • B+W. Directed by F.W. Murnau
• “8 Women” will be shown at 6 and 8: 30 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, Feb. 26-29 in Davies Theatre. The patriarch of a dysfunctional family is found stabbed to death — and the eight women in his life are all suspects. Set in a snowbound cottage in the 1950s, this candy-colored murder mystery stars the top cinema sirens of France. “Here it is at last, the first Agatha Christie musical… The cast is a roll call of French legends. In alphabetical order: Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart, Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Ledoyen, Firmine Richard and Ludivine Sagnier. I dare not reveal a shred of the plot… You have a silly grin half of the time” (Roger Ebert). IFS. France + Italy 2002 • 111 minutes • Color • R • In French, subtitled. Directed by François Ozon.
• “Tape” will be shown at 6 and 8:30 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, March 4-7 in Davies Theatre. Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard and Uma Thurman star in this articulate real-time drama (adapted by Stephen Belber from his stage play) about three high-school classmates reunited ten years later at a seedy Michigan motel. “There is literally no room for fancy pans, tracking shots or special effects. Just emotional fireworks… Talky, but it crackles with dark, cynical humor and searing insight into the corners of the human psyche” (Washington Post). UAC Films. US 2001 • 86 minutes • Color • R. Directed by Richard Linklater.
• “Bound” will be shown at 6 and 8: 30 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, March 11-14 in Davies Theatre. Two women (Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon) team up to swindle a mobster (Joe Pantoliano) out of a cool $2 million. “There’s real talent behind Bound, and it’s obvious from the first shot… Sure to be described as the first mainstream Hollywood film to put a lesbian relationship at its center without the relationship itself being the point of the story… the debut film of the Wachowski brothers is not some routine noir knockoff with a gal gimmick. It’s a complex, satisfying piece of entertainment, a succession of unexpected, outrageous scenes” (San Francisco Chronicle). UAC Films. US 1996 • 113 minutes • Color • R. Directed by Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski.
• “City of God” will be shown at 6 and 8:30 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, April 1-4 in Davies Theatre. Shockingly violent film about the poverty, greed, danger and crime in a housing project built in the 1960s on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. “The movie traces the neighborhood’s decline over a decade and a half, from a sun-baked shantytown of earth-colored bungalows where the children while away the days in soccer games and petty thievery into a shadowy slum teeming with armed adolescent warriors… The latest and one of the most powerful in a recent spate of movies that remind us that the civilized society we take for granted is actually a luxury” (The New York Times). IFS. Brazil + France + US 2002 • 130 minutes • Color • In Portuguese, subtitled. Directed by Kátia Lund and Fernando Meirelles.
• “Straw Dogs” will be shown at 6 and 8:30 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, April 15-18 in Schofield Auditorium. A young American mathematician (Dustin Hoffman) and his English wife (Susan George) move to a Cornish village, seeking a quiet life as he works on his thesis. Beneath the seemingly peaceful isolation of the pastoral village lies a savagery that culminates in a bloody battle to the death. Sam Peckinpah’s most disturbing film deals with two themes: that violence is sometimes inescapable, and that violence is necessary to the achievement of manhood. UAC Films. UK 1971 • 117 minutes • Color • R. Directed by Sam Peckinpah.
• “The Man Without a Past” will be shown at 6 and 9 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, April 22-25 in Davies Theatre. Academy Award nominee and winner of the Best Actress and Grand Jury Prizes at Cannes, this deadpan comedy showcases Finnish writer-director Aki Kaurismaki’s distinctive mix of stoical melodrama and minimalist cool. Shortly after arriving in Helsinki, a stranger (Markku Peltola) suffers a near-fatal mugging that erases his memory. He staggers to a harborside shanty town where he finds friendship among the homeless — and a restrained but heartfelt romance with a poker-faced Salvation Army worker (Kati Outinen). “Like the great films of the 1930s and early ‘40s, it is at once artful and unpretentious, sophisticated and completely accessible, sure of its own authority and generous toward characters and audience alike — a movie whose intended public is the human race” (The New York Times). IFS. Finland 2002 • 97 minutes • Color • In Finnish, Subtitled. Directed by Aki Kaurismaki.
• “The Professional” will be shown at 6 and 8:30 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, April 29-May 2 in Davies Theatre. A professional assassin (Jean Reno) becomes the reluctant guardian of a 12-year-old girl (Natalie Portman) bent on avenging her family’s slaughter by a psychotic cop (Gary Oldman). Uncut international version, with 24 minutes of footage added. “These are incomplete people, and through harmonious relationships between love and revenge, life and death, they find a semblance of balance and happiness that eludes them individually — not that these relationships are ever meant to end happily. Not bad for an action movie, eh?” (DVD Verdict). UAC Films. France + US 1994 • 133 minutes • Color • R. Directed by Luc Besson.
• “Sweet Sixteen” will be shown at 6 and 9 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, May 6-9 in Davies Theatre. A heartbreaking coming-of-age drama about Glasgow teenager Liam (Martin Compston), who wants a better life for himself and his mother after she gets out of prison. He sees a home for sale and sets out on a dead-end scheme to buy it. “The path from youth to adulthood hardens into a vise for Liam, gripped by an oedipal crisis beyond his understanding or control, as Loach plumbs the consequences of personal choice in a context where most choices are already foreclosed, and people’s well-earned anger only turns upon themselves” (Village Voice). IFS. UK + Germany + Spain 2002 • 106 minutes • Color • Subtitled • R. Directed by Ken Loach.
• “Better Luck Tomorrow” will be shown at 6 and 8:30 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, May 13-16 in Davies Theatre. A group of overachieving Asian-American students conforms to the popular image of smart, well-behaved Asian kids, but although they have ambition they lack values, and step by step they move more deeply into crime. “Justin Lin, who directed, co-wrote and co-produced, here reveals himself as a skilled and sure director, a rising star… Better Luck Tomorrow is not just a thriller, not just a social commentary, not just a comedy or a romance, but all of those in a clearly seen, brilliantly made film” (Roger Ebert). UAC Films. US 2002 • 98 minutes • Color • R. Directed by Justin Lin.

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JS/NW

Judy Berthiaume, Director
UW-Eau Claire News Bureau
Schofield 201
(715) 836-4741
newsbur@uwec.edu

Updated: January 22, 2004