Film Comment Double Feature

Benoît Jacquot: Villa Amalia + Deep in the Woods

Villa Amalia (2009): Benoît Jacquot reteams with Isabelle Huppert for this beautifully realized story of a woman in free fall after discovering her husband is having an affair.

Deep in the Woods (2010): Isild Le Besco and Nahuel Perez Biscayart are extraordinary in this feverish tale of a grotesque 19th-century amour fou between a middle class village girl and a mesmerizing, feral vagabond.

Alfred Hitchcock: Frenzy + Stage Fright

Frenzy: More gruesome and graphic than Psycho, this often terrifying suspenser about a sex killer at large deploys Hitchcock’s Wrong Man plot standby one last time.

Stage Fright: The Master of Suspense hoodwinks the audience with an outrageous rule-breaking narrative device in this backstage murder mystery featuring Marlene Dietrich and Jane Wyman.

David Zucker: BASEketball + Ruthless People

BASEketball (David Zucker, 1998): Trey Parker and Matt Stone combine basketball and baseball to invent a new national sport: Baseketball. After achieving superstar status as pro-athletes, they must battle to prevent the ideals of the NLB from being undermined. Journey psyche-outs abound.

Ruthless People (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, 1986): In this black comedy, millionaire Danny DeVito plots to murder obnoxious wife Bette Midler, but embittered former associates Judge Reinhold and Helen Slater kidnap her first. Bill Pullman’s film debut.

Howard Zieff: Hearts of the West + Slither

A Film Comment Double Feature!

Howard Zieff’s underrated 1975 comedy about the early days of Hollywood western filmmaking Hearts of the West, starring Jeff Bridges and Alan Arkin, on a double bill with his 1973 caper comedy Slither, in which James Caan demonstrates his comedic chops.

Larry Cohen: The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover + Special Effects

Writer-director Larry Cohen in person!

Legendary indie genre auteur Larry Cohen presents a double-feature of sordid (and legitimately thought-provoking) entertainment!

Paul Newman: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof + The Long, Hot Summer

Paul Newman x 2 for Valentine’s Day! First, Newman plays drunk, dissolute Brick, husband to sultry Maggie the Cat (Elizabeth Taylor), in director Richard Brooks’s lively adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play, co-starring a torrential Burl Ives as cancer-stricken patriarch Big Daddy. Then, Newman swaggers into town as a roughneck drifter who makes an unlikely match for the wholesome daughter (Joanne Woodward, Newman’s future wife) of a Mississippi bigwig (Orson Welles). Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury co-star in Martin Ritt’s sumptuous CinemaScope take on stories by William Faulkner.

Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 + Something Wicked This Way Comes

Fahrenheit 451: Truffaut’s sole foray into English language filmmaking and science fiction is a cool, stylish adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic allegorical novel about a world where books are forbidden and firemen are tasked with starting fires not putting them out.

Something Wicked This Way Comes: An underappreciated adaptation of Bradbury’s 1962 novel about a sinister traveling carnival, from director Jack Clayton (The Innocents).

Robert Zemeckis: I Wanna Hold Your Hand + Used Cars

I Wanna Hold Your Hand: A frenetic comedy about four girls’ scheme to meet the Beatles prior to their legendary 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Used Cars: In this caustic, rapid-fire satire, two used-car dealerships fight a battle royale, with Kurt Russell, Jack Warden and a 70s character actor who’s who.

Stacy Keach: The Ninth Configuration + End of the Road

Steven Soderbergh in person to introduce End of the Road! Q&A with Stacy Keach via Skype!

The Ninth Configuration (William Peter Blatty, 1980): Stacy Keach is the new head of a remote insane asylum for U.S. military personnel—or is he? With Scott Wilson, Ed Flanders, Jason Miller. and Moses Gunn.

End of the Road (Aram Avakian, 1970): Catatonic mental patient Keach begins a new life as a college teacher in this darkly comic John Barth adaptation written by Terry Southern. With James Earl Jones and Harris Yulin.