Film PricesMinimum Credit/Debit charge of $5.00
- $ 7.50 adults
- $ 6.50 Students and Seniors
- $ 5.50 Matinees
- $ 5 Children 12 and under
Henry Poole is Here - PG - 99 min - Scope
A = Auditorium
S = Screening Room"Henry Poole Is Here" achieves something that is uncommonly difficult. It is a spiritual movie with the power to emotionally touch believers, agnostics and atheists -- in that descending order, I suspect. It doesn't say that religious beliefs are real. It simply says that belief is real. And it's a warm-hearted love story. It centers on a man named Henry Poole (Luke Wilson), who has only one problem when he moves into a house. He is dying. Then he acquires another problem. His neighbor, Esperanza Martinez (Adrianna Barrazza), sees the face of Jesus Christ in a stain on his stucco wall. Henry Poole doesn't see the face, and indeed neither do we most of the time, even if we squint. It's a hit-or-miss sort of thing. Wilson plays Henry as hostile and depressed. Well, he has much to be depressed about. "We hardly ever see this disease in the States," the doctor tells him. "It steamrolls through your system." Patience (Rachel Seiferth), the nearly blind checkout girl at the supermarket, gives him dietary hints when she notices he buys mostly vodka and frozen pizza. Although her glasses are half an inch thick, she's observant: "Why are you sad and angry all the time?" Henry starts hearing voices in his backyard. There is a rational reason for this. He is being secretly recorded by Millie (Morgan Lily), the 5-year-old who lives next door on the other side from Esperanza. Millie's mother is the lovely Dawn (Radha Mitchell), who apologizes for her daughter, brings cookies, also notices how sad and angry Henry is. He is especially angry with Esperanza, warning her to stay out of his yard and stop praying to his bad stucco job. But she has seen Jesus, and cannot be stopped. She brings in Father Salazar (George Lopez), who explains that the church does not easily declare miracles, but keeps an open mind. There are more details, which I must not reveal, including certain properties of the wall. I will observe that the director, Mark Pellington, uses some of the most subtle special effects you've probably seen for some time, to fine-tune the illusion that the face of Christ is really there, or really not there. I will now think of this movie every time I drive through the Fullerton Avenue underpass of the Kennedy Exp., where since April 2005, people have said they can see the Virgin Mary in a wall stain. The thing is, certain miraculous events take place, and the people involved believe it is because they touched Henry's wall. Patience the checkout girl even quotes the formidable intellectual Noam Chomsky, who, she informs Henry, said some things cannot be explained by science. One critic of this film believes it is anti-science and pounds you over the head to believe. Not at all. It is simply that Chomsky is right, as any scientist will tell you. What do I believe? I believe science can eventually explain everything, but only if it gets a whole lot better than it is now and discovers realms we do not even suspect. You could call such a realm God. You could, of course, call it anything you wanted; it wouldn't matter to the realm. Another critic, or maybe it is the same critic, believes the movie is a Hollywood ploy to reach the Christian market. Not at all. Esperanza sees Jesus because the face of Jesus is ready in her mind, supplied by holy cards and paintings. You might see the face of Uncle Sam. No one knows what Jesus looked like. It is also strange that the Virgin's appearances always mirror her holy card image. People from biblical lands at that time would have been a good deal darker and shorter. The movie gets that right: The image is so low on the wall that Jesus must have stood less than 5 feet tall. But I stray, and I do injustice to this film. I fell for it. I believe the feelings between Henry and Dawn. I care about their tenderness and loneliness. I think Millie is adorable. I think Father Salazar has his head on straight. I love Esperanza's great big heart. And I especially admire the way that Henry sticks to his guns. He doesn't believe there's a face on his stucco, and that's that. And no, he doesn't undergo a deathbed conversion. That's because ... but find out for yourself. Review by Roger Ebert, rogerebert.suntimes.com
Encounters at the End of the World - G - 99 min - Flat
A = Auditorium
S = Screening RoomRead the title of "Encounters at the End of the World" carefully, for it has two meanings. As he journeys to the South Pole, which is as far as you can get from everywhere, Werner Herzog also journeys to the prospect of man's oblivion. Far under the eternal ice, he visits a curious tunnel whose walls have been decorated by various mementos, including a frozen fish that is far away from its home waters. What might travelers from another planet think of these souvenirs, he wonders, if they visit long after all other signs of our civilization have vanished? Herzog has come to live for a while at the McMurdo Research Station, the largest habitation on Antarctica. He was attracted by underwater films taken by his friend Henry Kaiser, which show scientists exploring the ocean floor. They open a hole in the ice with a blasting device, then plunge in, collecting specimens, taking films, nosing around. They investigate an undersea world of horrifying carnage, inhabited by creatures so ferocious, we are relieved they are too small to be seen. And also by enormous seals who sing to one another. In order not to limit their range, Herzog observes, the divers do not use a tether line, so they must trust themselves to find the hole in the ice again. I am afraid to even think about that. Herzog is a romantic wanderer, drawn to the extremes. He makes as many documentaries as fiction films, is prolific in the chronicles of his curiosity and here moseys about McMurdo, chatting with people who have chosen to live here in eternal day or night. They are a strange population. One woman likes to have herself zipped into luggage, and performs this feat on the station's talent night. One man was once a banker and now drives an enormous bus. A pipefitter matches the fingers of his hands together to show that the second and third are the same length -- genetic evidence, he says, that he is descended from Aztec kings. But I make the movie sound like a travelogue or an exhibit of eccentrics, and it is a poem of oddness and beauty. Herzog is like no other filmmaker, and to return to him is to be welcomed into a world vastly larger and more peculiar than the one around us. The underwater photography alone would make a film, but there is so much more. Consider the men who study the active volcanoes of Antarctica, and sometimes descend into volcanic fumes that open to the surface, although they must take care, Herzog observes in his wondering, precise narration, not to be doing so when the volcano erupts. It happens that there is another movie opening today in Chicago that also has volcanic tubes ("Journey to the Center of the Earth"). Do not confuse the two. These men play with real volcanoes. They also lead lives revolving around monster movies on video, and a treasured ice-cream machine and a string band concert from the top of a Quonset hut during the eternal day. And they have modern conveniences of which Herzog despairs, like an ATM machine, in a place where the machine, the money inside it and the people who use it, must all be air-lifted in. Herzog loves these people, it is clear, because like himself they have gone to such lengths to escape the mundane and test the limits of the extraordinary. But there is a difference between them and Timothy Treadwell, the hero of "Grizzly Man," Herzog's documentary about a man who thought he could live with bears and not be eaten, and was mistaken. The difference is that Treadwell was a foolish romantic, and these men and women are in this god-forsaken place to extend their knowledge of the planet and of the mysteries of life and death itself. Herzog's method makes the movie seem like it is happening by chance, although chance has nothing to do with it. He narrates as if we're watching movies of his last vacation -- informal, conversational, engaging. He talks about people he met, sights he saw, thoughts he had. And then a larger picture grows inexorably into view. McMurdo is perched on the frontier of the coming suicide of the planet. Mankind has grown too fast, spent too freely, consumed too much, and the ice cap is melting, and we shall all perish. Herzog doesn't use such language, of course; he is too subtle and visionary. He is nudged toward his conclusions by what he sees. In a sense, his film journeys through time as well as space, and we see what little we may end up leaving behind us. Nor is he depressed by this prospect, but only philosophical. We came, we saw, we conquered, and we left behind a frozen fish. His visit to Antarctica was not intended, he warns us at the outset, to take footage of "fluffy penguins." But there are some penguins in the film, and one of them embarks on a journey that haunts my memory to this moment, long after it must have ended. Note: Herzog dedicated this film to me. I am deeply moved and honored. The letter I wrote to him from the 2007 Toronto Film Festival is at rogerebert.com. Review by Roger Ebert, rogerebert.suntimes.com
Man on Wire - PG-13 - 94 min - Flat
A = Auditorium
S = Screening RoomOn the morning of Aug. 7, 1974, after months of preparation and years of dreaming, a French daredevil named Philippe Petit stepped into the sky above Lower Manhattan. For almost 45 minutes he ambled back and forth on a metal cable strung between the towers of the World Trade Center, a feat of illegal tightrope walking that, according to a New York Police Department sergeant who recounted Mr. Petit’s act of physical poetry in dry press-conference prose, would more aptly be described as dancing. For many years after, Mr. Petit’s stunt was a cherished footnote in the annals of New York history, one of the touchstones of a crazy, awful, glittering era in the life of the city. The destruction of the twin towers in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, revived the memory of that earlier aesthetic assault on the buildings, which is now the subject of “Man on Wire,” James Marsh’s thorough, understated and altogether enthralling documentary. Wisely, Mr. Marsh, who based his film on a book Mr. Petit published in 2002, never alludes to Sept. 11. That would have been both distracting and redundant, since it’s impossible, while watching a movie so intimate in its attention to the towers, not to be haunted by thoughts of their fate. But it is also worth recalling that the trade center inspired more love posthumously than while it stood. Mr. Petit was an exception. A zealous, daring wire walker — the French word funambule is a more lyrical, as well as a somewhat more ridiculous-sounding term — he conceived a passion for the structures even before they were built. As he recalls it (and as Mr. Marsh imagines the scene in one of many witty, unobtrusive re-enactments), the young Mr. Petit was flipping through a magazine at a doctor’s office when he saw an article about plans to construct the two tallest skyscrapers in the world side by side at the bottom of Manhattan. In his mind, and then in a series of sketches and diagrams, he drew a simple line connecting the buildings and imagined himself perched atop it. What kind of person would think of such a thing? How would he go about accomplishing it? Why? Those are the questions that preoccupy Mr. Marsh, whose earlier films include the semidocumentary “Wisconsin Death Trip” and the fictional feature “The King.” The first question is answered largely by Mr. Petit’s own testimony. In his 50s, he is elfin and energetic, a beguiling combination of showboat, idealist and con man. And in his early, outlaw years, before the twin towers walk brought him fame and a measure of legitimacy, he combined an exalted sense of artistic mission with a street criminal’s sense of serious mischief. Accordingly, “Man on Wire” is constructed like a heist movie, in the manner of “Rififi” or the revived “Ocean’s Eleven” franchise. Though Mr. Petit was alone on the cable that August morning, his walk in the sky was the result of a conspiracy of true believers and casual adventurers. In his two previous acts of guerrilla funambulism — at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris and on the Harbor Bridge in Sydney — he relied on the logistical and moral support of several friends, including his lover, Annie Allix, and his faithful sidekick, Jean-Louis Blondeau. In interviews, they and some of Mr. Petit’s other confederates — including two American goofballs and Barry Greenhouse, a flamboyant insurance executive who served as the all-important inside man — reconstruct their project, which they referred to at the time as “the coup,” in fascinating detail. There were engineering problems and also challenges that seem to belong to the world of espionage, as well as the inevitable tensions that arise when a group of people pursue a dangerous goal. Why did they do it? Rather than risking banality by addressing this question head-on, Mr. Marsh allows the answer to be at once self-evident and profoundly mysterious. A work of art is its own explanation, and “Man on Wire” leaves no doubt that Mr. Petit’s coup deserves to be called art. Mr. Blondeau, a sensitive and cerebral foil to the impish Mr. Petit, chokes up when he recalls watching his friend step out over the abyss. “The important thing is that we did it,” he says. And without making any grandiose claims, this lovely, touching film demonstrates that the World Trade Center sky walk was an important event. The proof is in the emotions — amusement, amazement, awe — evoked by those images of a tiny human figure balancing above a void. Also gratitude. It is easy to imagine that, in contemplating the scale and solidity of those brand-new towers, Mr. Petit saw them at least partly as the vehicle of his own immortality (whether or not he survived the crossing). No one looking up at the New York sky on a hazy morning 34 years ago and seeing a man on a wire could have suspected that the reverse would turn out to be true. Review by A.O. Scott, movies.nytimes.com
Click here for a printable movie schedule.
Click here for a past films.
The Golden Globes The Internet Movie Database Internet Archive: Movie Collection
(Fast Connection Required)Turner Classic Movies If you have a favorite Movie Resource, please send us an email and let us know. If our distinguished review panel agrees, the link to the resource will be added to our list.
Myrna Loy Center
15 North Ewing
Helena, Montana 59601
Office: (406) 443-0287 Fax: (406) 443-6620
myrnaloy@mt.net
Copyright © 2000-2007, Myrna Loy Center. All rights reserved.
Privacy Notice
