Thursday, Sept. 13 through Sunday, Sept. 16 at 7:15

Sat., Sept. 15 & Sun, Sept. 16 at 4:15 also.


(The two Sunday shows are free for Bennett Street Films Members.)

(PG-13, 113 Minutes, Documentary)
A documentary comparing the highly profitable American health care industry to other nations, and HMO horror stories.

IMDB.com – 8.5 out of 10 stars

Rotten Tomatoes – 92% Fresh

Google – 4.3 out of 5 stars

A snippet from the review that seemed to resonate with me the most:

One may quibble with Mr. Moore’s anecdotal oversimplifications and his xenophilic fantasies, but he has struck a socio-psychic nerve in the body politic, generating a feeling of outrage that seems to be reverberating in every theater.
-Andrew Sarris, New York Observer

Thank goodness!Part of what we were working on was experimenting with an expansion of Bennett Street Films’ activities. I’m here to tell ya that it ain’t gonna happen. Boy was I relieved. I was a little over-ambitious and acknowledging reality before it threw me over a cliff was, it seems, a lucky thing.There are still some changes on our end, but I don’t think they’ll have an impact on you, the movie-goer. For example, you may have seen an advertisement for a Manager/Projectionist in The Mini. (Any takers?) We’re all figuring out how to make some adjustments over the coming months and still have the show go on as usual. Have no fear, it’ll happen.Now, back to figuring out how many Bennett Street Films (and which ones!) we can run over the next few weeks…

There are several projects I have going for/with Bennett Street Films. Most of them are behind the scenes, not ready for announcement yet.We hope to be able to make some interesting announcements in August.That’s the news from…Lake Bennett, where all the people are people and the dogs are too.

Bennett Street Films members can come to either show of Air Guitar Nation on Sunday June 17 and wave your membership card around to get in free. Remember that card. I’m not sure who’ll be selling tickets. Rachel, I think. It won’t be me, as I’ll be 2000 miles away jacking up a house.

Remember, this is Sunday June 17th at 4:15 or 7:15. And please, to be fair to the group, only one person per card per weekend. Thanks!

This film rocks!

Humans. Fun. Both are a little messy. Both are beautiful. I’m not sure what else is in this film!

If you take life, your neighbors and yourself too seriously, this film is not for you.

Otherwise, I can’t recommend it enough!

Air Guitar Nation
(82 Min, Rated R for some language and brief nudity *gasp*)

It’s time to rock and roll – air guitar style! AIR GUITAR NATION is the feature documentary about the year that air guitar swept America – from New York to Los Angeles and then all the way to northern Finland. AIR GUITAR NATION chronicles the birth of the US Air Guitar Championships and the personal journeys of those talented contestants who are vying to become the first World Air Guitar Champion from the United States.

Every August, the Air Guitar World Championships bring thousands of fans all the way to Oulu, Finland to see the world’s best air guitarists battle it out for 60 seconds of mock stardom. For years, the USA was missing in action. Enter the first official US Air Guitar Championships.

What starts as a friendly contest above a New York strip club becomes a battle of naked ambition played out on the national and, ultimately, the world stage. Full of triumph and disappointment, patriotic spirit and political tension – and of course invisible guitars – this tension filled competition quickly turns very real as the contest becomes even more fierce as the contestants work hard to win the title of World Air Guitar Champion.

Full of triumph and disappointment, patriotic spirit and political tension—and, of course, invisible guitars—AIR GUITAR NATION and filmmaker Alexandra Lipsitz take audiences on an inspiring, exhilarating, and ultimately hilarious journey that delves deep to find out what it truly takes to become the best in the world and find the inner meaning of the chant, “Make Air, Not War.”

If you are the type that likes to read what the critics say and write about a movie, check out Rotten Tomatoes. Even the critics giving this show “bad” marks are saying it is fun, funny and entertaining to watch.

Can you beat that? 86% at rottentomatoes.com

And it gets a 7.8/10 at IMDb.com.

Sweet! I don’t know about you, but if I made a rockumentary that did that well, my air-Fender would splinter into 10,000 pieces on my air-Marshal amp! Heh!

I was surprised. After booking it with a ho-hum expectation (which is how it performed at the box office) I ended up watching Miss Potter twice. So did many other folks last weekend. Everyone coming out really seemed surprised and delighted. I didn’t hear any bad comments what-so-ever. Of course many who dislike a show keep that to themselves as they rush out the door privately fuming that they “spent five whole dollars on that!”

In the films, Beatrix (may I be so bold as to use her given name?) explains that although there may be more profit in developing her land, surely there’s more value in farming it. And opting for, perhaps, more value than profit on the one screen this coming weekend we decided to hold over Miss Potter so those who missed Potter could have another opportunity to enjoy the beautiful Isle of Man scenery, the magic and the sweetness of Beatrix Potter’s story.

I highly recommend it to all Bennett Street Films members. For what that’s worth.

It looks like I’ve not explained on this site any sort of followup to the news about the 2007 mini-movie mixer. As you may or may not know, it did not happen. Not even close.We had, wait, let me count them…uhm…one…Yes. We had precisely one entrant to the mini-movie mixer. Complete and utter failure to ‘get the word out’, I’d say. I think we’ll set up a future Mixer and have a real long call for entries and send out a reminder every so often.Or something.

(unrated, 101 Minutes, Turkey/France)

Sun, April 22 at 1:30
Mon, April 23 at 6:30

Synopsis (watch trailer here):

Winner of the prestigious Fipresci Award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, CLIMATES is internationally acclaimed writer-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s sublime follow-up to his Cannes multi-award winner DISTANT. Beautifully drawn and meticulously observed, the film vividly recalls the cinema of Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni with its poetic use of landscape and the incisive, exquisitely visual rendering of loneliness, loss and the often-elusive nature of happiness.

During a sweltering summer vacation on the Aegean coast, the relationship between middle-aged professor Isa (played by Ceylan himself) and his younger, television producer girlfriend Bahar (the luminous Ebru Ceylan, Ceylan’s real-life wife) brutally implodes. Back in Istanbul that fall, Isa rekindles a torrid affair with a previous lover. But when he learns that Bahar has left the city for a job in the snowy East, he follows her there to win her back.

Boasting subtly powerful performances, heart-stoppingly stunning cinematography (Ceylan’s first work in high definition) and densely textured sound design, CLIMATES is the Turkish filmmaker’s most gorgeous rumination yet on the fragility and complexity of human relationships.

(unrated, 106 Minutes, Iraq/English)

Sun, April 15, 2007 at 1:30
Mon, April 16, 2007 at 6:30

Synopsis:

Shadow Distribution is proud to present the US theatrical release of THE SITUATION, a film by Philip Haas, starring Connie Nielsen (GLADIATOR, BROTHERS), Damian Lewis (KEANE, BAND OF BROTHERS), and Mido Hamada.

Combining elements of thriller, romance, and war movie, THE SITUATION, set exclusively in Iraq and the first U.S. feature film to deal with the occupation, dramatizes one of the countless human stories that lie behind the headlines of the current war. When a group of American soldiers throw an Iraqi boy off a bridge in Samarra, the incident sets off a chain of events that exposes the deep rifts among the Iraqis in Samarra and results in yet another cycle of violence between the insurgents and the corrupt Iraqi police.

Anna (Connie Nielsen) is an American journalist who decides to write a story about the assassination of an Iraqi leader whom she admires. At the same time, she is pulling away from a relationship with Dan (Damian Lewis), an American intelligence official who thinks the war can be won with hearts and minds, and towards Zaid (Mido Hamada), a young Iraqi photographer who shows her there are people, rather than sides, in the conflict. As she tries to make sense of the half-truths of Iraq, she gets caught up in the violence and finds her life in danger.