This is a bi-coastal edition of Screenings in the Bay, because in just two days Philadelphia's Unnamed Film Festival kicks of its third year at the Proscenium Theatre at the Drake! You can find the lineup, guests, and special events at UnnamedFilmFestival.com.
However, things will not be stale on this side of the coast for those who cannot make it. The highly anticipated addition to the Conjuring universe, The Nun, will be opening for early screenings this Thursday, with a wide release Friday. Joining it, on VOD for us SF area folks, is Mara, which features a familiar name among its cast. Javier Botet, who was the most recent Slender Man will be reprising the role of creepy figure in the shadows, so I'm definitely interested.
Also this week, Let the Corpses Tan opens at the Alamo Drafthouse. In addition to an AWESOME title, the actual film looks very interesting. An Overlook field trip will definitely need to happen before the film's time at the Drafthouse is up.
The Roxie has two huge names screenings this week: first the Film School Rejects will be hosting nearly 20 year anniversary of Cruel Intentions this Thursday, and Perfect Blue will be celebrating its actual 20th anniversary with screening starting Friday.
Opening This Week
Early Screenings Thursday 6th (1hr 36min)
Opens Friday 7th
Horror/ Mystery/ Thriller (IMDB)
When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows are sent by the Vatican to investigate. Together they uncover the order's unholy secret. Risking not only their lives but their faith and their very souls, they confront a malevolent force in the form of the same demonic nun that first terrorized audiences in "The Conjuring 2," as the abbey becomes a horrific battleground between the living and the damned.
Select Theatres/VOD Friday 7th (1hr 46min)
Crime/ Horror/ Thriller (IMDB)
From a producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious comes this shock-filled descent into fear. After a man is seemingly strangled in his bed, criminal psychologist Kate Fuller (Olga Kurylenko) interviews the sole witness, the victim's eight-year-old daughter, Sophie. When asked to identify the killer, Sophie says, "Mara". As Kate digs into the case, she unearths a community of people who claim to be tormented by a shadowy menace, a centuries-old demon who kills her victims as they sleep.
Terror Tuesday
Tuesday 4th @ 9:50pm (1hr 35min)
Horror (IMDB)
In this suspense-thriller, a young girl falls victim to a high priest of a satanic cult and her distressed father calls on an occult novelist to save her from being sacrificed. The father's dirty little secret is that he turned her over to the priest in the first place.
Weird Wednesday
Wednesday 5th @ 10:05pm (1hr 20min)
Comedy/ Sci-Fi (IMDB)
This rather warped but stylish little black comedy tells the story of Ricky Coogin, an avaricious, spoiled star who becomes the official spokesperson for the enormous Everything Except Shoes corporation without realizing that they are deliberately and irresponsibly marketing Zygrot-27, a deadly chemical fertilizer in Third World countries. To market the toxic green ooze, the actor is sent to Santa Flan, a small Latin American country with his best friend Ernie. The two are pursued by the actor's biggest, most obnoxious fan, Stuey Gluck. There Ricky meets American environmental activist Julie. He keeps his identity from the pretty girl secret for a time and the three of them travel together to Ricky's engagement. The trouble really begins when they stop to see Elijah C. Skuggs' roadside freak show.
Thursday 6th @ 6:30pm & 9pm (1hr 32min)
Friday 7th @ 3:40pm, 7:25pm & 9:40pm
Thriller (IMDB)
Belgian filmmakers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani trade in the crushed velvet and creeping shadows of their giallo-worshiping first two films (Amer, The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears) for blistering sun, creaking leather and raining bullets in this glorious homage to 1970s Italian crime films. After stealing a truckload of gold bars, a gang of thieves absconds to the ruins of a remote village perched on the cliffs of the Mediterranean. Home to a reclusive yet hypersexual artist and her motley crew of family and admirers, it seems like a perfect hideout. But when two cops roll up on motorcycles to investigate, the hamlet erupts into a hallucinatory battlefield as both sides engage in an all-day, all-night firefight rife with double-crosses and dripping with blood. Based on a classic pulp novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette and featuring music by Ennio Morricone, Let the Corpses Tan is a deliriously stylish, cinematic fever dream that will slamfire your senses like buckshot to the brain.
Rewind Wednesday
Wednesday 5th @ 7pm 2hrs 1min)
Drama/ Mystery/ Thriller (IMDB)
In 15,000 B.C., a strange creature attacks a caveman. Cut to present day, when a boy at the same North Texas spot falls into a pit and is contaminated by a black substance. When a bomb threatens the Dallas Federal Building, special FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) locate the device but are unable to prevent the explosion. The agency blames Mulder and Scully for the disaster, subjecting them to lengthy interrogations while trying to sever their partnership. In a bar, conspiracy theorist Kurtzweil (Martin Landau), a friend of Mulder's father, tells Mulder about the group behind the explosion, the cover-up of the boy's death, the bodies of four infected rescue workers removed from the Federal Building, the secret government, and the forthcoming plague. Mulder and Scully set out to find answers, and their investigation becomes a foray into the fantastic.
Midnight Madness
Friday 7th @ 11:55pm (1hr 39min)
Drama (IMDB)
This film centers on Johnny, a man who has it all; great friends, a good job, and a gorgeous fiancée named Lisa. But Lisa's innocent act masks the fact that she's looking to bring Johnny down, and her manipulations are tearing Johnny apart. As Lisa informs her cancer-ridden mother, Claudette, that Johnny hit her (and he did not hit her, that is bullshit, he did not!), Johnny's best friend, Mark, finds his resistance to Lisa's seductive charms weakening. Meanwhile, local orphan Denny looks up to Johnny, and needs the older man's help after the teen rips off a drug dealer. What kind of drugs? It doesn't matter. Then guys play football in tuxedos, because you can play football anywhere.
Film School Drop Outs Present
Thursday 6th @ 7pm (1hr 37min)
Drama/ Romance (IMDB)
Kathryn and Sabastian, two wealthy, manipulative teenage stepsiblings from Manhattan's uppercrust, conspire in Cruel Intentions, a wickedly entertaining tale of seduction and betrayal. The stakes are high when the duo agrees upon a deliciously diabolical wager of sexual conquest without consequences. The pawns? The naïve Cecile Caldwell and the virginal Annette Hargrove.
Friday 7th @ 9:15pm (1hr 21min)
Horror/ Anime (IMDB)
Mima was a pop idol, worshiped by the masses until fashion dictated otherwise. In order to salvage her career, she is advised to drop music and pursue acting. A soap opera role is offered but Mima's character is less clean cut than desired. Regardless, she agrees and events take a turn for the worse. She begins to feel reality slip, that her life is not her own. She discovers (imagines) her identical twin, a mirror image that hasn't given up singing. Internet sites appear describing every intimate detail of her life and a figure stalks her from the shadows. Her friends and associates are threatened (and killed) as Mima descends into a dangerous world of paranoid delusion. She fears for her life and must unravel fact from illusion in order to stay alive. Perfect Blue represents a major change from traditional anime subject matter, analyzing the pop icon phenomenon, fame and its psychological impact on the performer.
-Huntress
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