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The Feast of "Stephen"

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If you're a Christian, you might know "The Feast of Stephen" as St. Stephen's Day (the 26th of December) when young men dress up in vaguely nightmarish straw costumes and wander around the town playing alarming music while carrying a dead bird. This is not about that. If you're a Doctor Who fan, you might know The Feast of Stephen as the first ever Doctor Who Christmas episode (broadcast on Christmas Day in 1965).  This is not about that either. For our purposes this week, The Feast of Stephen  concerns a small but pivotal character in the beloved Noël Coward/David Lean classic Brief Encounter .  Brief Encounter is remembered today as perhaps the most famous unconsummated love affair in cinema history. Released in 1945 (but without so much as the slightest hint of a war or its effects) it tells the story of two (married) individuals who meet by chance on a train platform and proceed to teeter on the brink of having an affair for a few weeks. They do not, in fac...
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Exit, Pursued by a Bear: the Movie

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The Winter's Tale is not Shakespeare's most famous play. It doesn't have a balcony scene, and no one gets turned into a donkey. There are no introspective graveyard scenes with human skulls, and no one, at any point, longs for a horse at any price. But The Winter's Tale secures its position in the Shakespearian canon for at least one reason. It features what is beyond a shadow of doubt the most exciting, nerve-tingling, action-packed edge-of-your-seat, adrenaline-pumping Stage Direction in the history of theatre. ANTIGONUS Come, poor babe: I have heard, but not believed, the spirits o' the dead May walk again: if such thing be, thy mother Appear'd to me last night, for ne'er was dream So like a waking. To me comes a creature, Sometimes her head on one side, some another; I never saw a vessel of like sorrow, So fill'd and so becoming: in pure white robes, Like very sanctity, she did approach My cabin where I lay; thrice bow'd before me, And gasping...
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Not Every Apocalypse Is About YOU

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  Please note that this week's film is in Spanish , with English subtitles   A man wakes up in a strange woman's bed, the morning after a drunken one-night stand. He's groggy and hungover. So is she. Neither of them has a clear memory of meeting, much less... anything else. Everything is extremely awkward. Still, it could be worse. I mean it's not like there's been an alien invasion or anything... Oh. Wait. The Aliens-Invade-Earth genre is practically as old as cinema itself.  Aliens have come in all shapes and sizes. They have come in rockets; they have come in saucers. They have come in peace; they have come in human form.  Sometimes they have come for our women. But one thing has been generally universal. When the aliens come, the story is always about them . Almost always. Extraterrestrial is probably the least alien-invasion film you will ever see. Yes, the flying saucers have arrived, but no, the film isn't about that. Written and directed by Nacho Vigalon...
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The Gay Peasant and His Faithful Friend

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Regular attendees of my Thursday-night film screenings might remember the season I presented back in 2022 dedicated to Ordinary Ladies . The idea behind the Ordinary Ladies season had been to showcase films featuring female characters who did not fit into any of the usual cinematic "feminine" tropes. They were not the customary sex goddesses or temptresses or damsels in distress; they were (to coin a phrase) Ordinary Ladies with their own personalities and motivations and story arcs. They were (I argued at the time) distinct from the "vixens & floozies & sexy chanteuses" that one often encounters in classic cinema. I selected a dizzying variety of films for the Ordinary Ladies series (and had a lot of fun doing so) but one title I did not screen under that banner is the one I plan to show this week. Gilda is many things, but ordinary is not one of them. As a film it positively drips with sexuality and subtext. As a character , she... positively drips with ...
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