Curious George
The adventures of Curious George, a very inquisitive monkey, and his best friend, the Man in the Yellow Hat. (1 hr. 30 min.)
The adventures of Curious George, a very inquisitive monkey, and his best friend, the Man in the Yellow Hat. (1 hr. 30 min.)
Curtis Plummer — a down-on-his-luck former high school football star — turns his niece, Jasmine, into the quarterback of the local team, the Minden Browns, and gets his stride back when he becomes the team coach. With Curtis as their new leader and their pigtail-wearing star player, this team of misfits wins its way to the Pop Warner Super Bowl and the small city of Minden, Illinois, is ignited with team spirit, town pride and the glory it once knew.
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Often considered the crown jewel in a highly acclaimed and prolific film career, ANNIE HALL is Woody Allen’s only film to have won the Academy Award for Best Picture. This recognition, however, is not what makes the film significant. ANNIE HALL marks the beginning of the second phase of Allen’s career as a filmmaker, abandoning the slapstick of SLEEPER and BANANAS for more thoughtful comedies (and eventually dramas) that explored human relationships and psychology. Allen’s capacity as a creative filmmaker had also grown with the film, as he utilized creative subtitles, split screens, and animation, as well as evincing a sophisticated understanding of the potential of editing and camera movement for comic effect–consider the cutaway to Allen’s character Alvy Singer, as seen through the eyes of “Grammy Hall” during the dinner sequence, or shortly afterward the slow pan to Alvy in the passenger seat of a car driven by Annie’s unhinged brother Duane.
The film is a brutally honest assessment of the prospects of a relationship between two very different people. Allen’s Alvy is (like the filmmaker himself) an introverted, neurotic intellectual and a complete mismatch for Diane Keaton’s vivacious, flaky Annie Hall. Although the romance is undoubtedly the center of the film, it affords Allen the opportunity to contrast his beloved New York culture with that of the Midwest, where Annie comes from, and Los Angeles, which tempts Annie with the possibility of fame and success as a singer. The city of New York itself plays an important part for the first time in an Allen film, with a great deal of location shooting that serves to highlight the city’s character and atmosphere. Finally, the many comedic cameos peppered through the film–from Truman Capote to Paul Simon to media theorist Marshall McLuhan–pay tribute to the deserved reputation that Allen had gained for himself. (1 hr. 33 min.)
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Director JirĂ Menzel and novelist Bohumil Hrabal teamed up with Oscar-winning results for the classic CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS, and this Czech film repeats their pairing. I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND follows Jan Dite through his life which, as a man living in 1930s Czechoslovakia, has more than its share of highs and lows.
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Pretty but poor, Andie (Molly Ringwald) is a good student who develops a crush on Blane (Andrew McCarthy), the sensitive, well-born preppie. But Blane runs with a fast crowd of haughty rich kids, the kind of clique Andie and her new wavy best friend Duckie (Jon Cryer) can’t stand. Going against her fretting father (Harry Dean Stanton), peer pressure and social expectations, she decides to date him. But their big plans for the senior prom ultimately fall apart when Blane heeds his friend Steff’s (James Spader) warning to “quit slumming.” Will Blane find the courage to claim what he really wants and give up the so-called friends he doesn’t need?
This classic 1980s teen film from the master of the genre, writer-producer John Hughes features plenty of great ’80s pop tunes from the Psychedelic Furs, The Smiths, Echo and The Bunnymen, New Order, and more. The continued success of Hughes’ films and actors ushered in the era of the “brat pack” and teen films as pop culture. (1 hr. 37 min.)
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