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CWRU Film Society Spring 2004 Schedule

Old Schedules:

Schedule subject to change without notice. Movie information provided by the Internet Movie Database.

Friday, January 16, 2004 - Saturday January 17, 2004
29th Annual Science Fiction Marathon
Tickets go on sale Friday at 6pm.

Friday, January 23, 2004 7:00pm, 9:30pm, 12:00am
The School of Rock (2003)
Rated PG-13 (108 min.) Director: Richard Linklater
With Jack Black, Mike White, Joan Cusack
Read more about it at the IMDB

Down and out rock star Dewey Finn gets fired from his band resulting in a mountain of debts and depression. He takes a job as a 4th grade substitute teacher at an uptight private school where he discovers Yuki, a 9-year-old guitar prodigy. Dewey decides to use his students to form a band for a "battle of the bands" competition which would solve his financial problems and put him back in the spotlight.

Saturday, January 24, 2004 7:00pm, 9:30pm
L'Auberge espagnole (2002)
Rated R (122 min.) Director: Cedric Klapisch
With Romain Duris, Judith Godreche, Audrey Tautou
Read more about it at the IMDB

As part of a job that he is promised, Xavier, an economics student in his twenties, signs on to a European exchange program in order to gain working knowledge of the Spanish language. Promising that they'll remain close, he says farewell to his loving girlfriend, then heads to Barcelona. Following his arrival, Xavier is soon thrust into a cultural melting pot when he moves into an apartment full of international students. An Italian, an English girl, a boy from Denmark, a young woman from Belgium, a German and a girl from Tarragona all join him in a series of adventures that serve as an initiation to life.

Friday, January 30, 2004 7:00pm, 9:30pm, 12:00am
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Rated R (102 min.) Director: Robert Rodriguez
With Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Johnny Depp
Read more about it at the IMDB

El Mariachi, the hero of El Mariachi and Desperado, continues his adventures in this latest saga set against a backdrop of revolution, greed and revenge. Haunted and scarred by tragedy, El Mariachi has retreated into a life of isolation. He is forced out of hiding when Sands, a corrupt CIA agent, recruits the reclusive hero to sabotage an assassination plot against the president of Mexico, which has been conceived by the evil cartel kingpin Barrillo.

Saturday, January 31, 2004 7:00pm, 10:30pm
Once Upon a Time in the West (1969)
No rating (165 min.) Director: Sergio Leone
With Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards
Read more about it at the IMDB

Morton, the power-hungry owner of a railroad company, hires Frank, a gunfighter without a conscience, to kill anyone who stands in the way of the completion of the railroad. After Frank murders land owner Brett McBain, McBain's widow hires two killers of her own to protect her and gain revenge: a mysterious, harmonica-playing desperado and his rogue sidekick.

Friday, February 6, 2004 7:00pm, 10:00pm
Matrix Revolutions (2003)
Rated R (129 min.) Directors: Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
With Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss
Read more about it at the IMDB

The machine army continues to drill towards Zion. Within hours, they will overrun the population of the Zionites and lay extinction to human kind. Meanwhile, Neo is held captive by the Merovingian at a train station. Trinity and Morpheus set out on a journey to release him from a mysterious train operator. Also, Smith resumes his quest to kill "Mr. Anderson" as he reveals his identity into the real world and continues to replicate his program inside the system of The Matrix, causing it to decay. All hope is placed in the freed Neo, who must travel to the city of the machines in the Logos ship with Trinity and bargain to save each kingdom from destruction by finishing Smith once and for all. But even with his new powers over the sentinels, will he be able to fight them off?

Saturday, February 7, 2004 7:00pm, 10:00pm
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
Rated R (130 min.) Director: Francis Ford Coppola
With Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins
Read more about it at the IMDB

This version of Dracula is closely based on Bram Stoker's classic novel of the same name. A young lawyer, Jonathan Harker, is assigned to a gloomy village in the mists of eastern Europe. He is captured and imprisoned by the undead vampire, Dracula, who travels to London, inspired by a photograph of Harker's betrothed, Mina Murray. In Britain, Dracula begins a reign of seduction and terror, draining the life from Mina's closest friend, Lucy Westenra. Lucy's friends gather together to try to drive Dracula away.

Friday, February 13, 2004 7:00pm, 9:30pm, 12:00am
Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
Rated R (97 min.) Director: Ronny Yu
With Robert Englund, Ken Kirzinger, Monica Keena
Read more about it at the IMDB

Freddy Krueger explains that the present children of Elm St. have no memory of him, and if they don't know he exists, he can't enter their dreams to kill them. Ingeniously, he reaches out to Jason, the brutish death machine from Camp Crystal Lake, to go on an Elm Street killing spree, hoping a lot of gory murder will jog the town's memory. Jason is up to the task, quickly dispensing with teenager after teenager in suburban homes, cornfields, medical labs and, of course, the forest. Freddy grows jealous over Jason's body count, and so must intervene, setting off a battle royale between the two highly adored slasher heroes across dreamworlds and realities.

Saturday, February 14, 2004 7:00pm, 9:30pm
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
No rating (102 min.) Director: Howard Hawks
With Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charles Ruggles
Read more about it at the IMDB

Couples Night! Couples pay only $5 instead of $3 a piece A nonstop profusion of hilarious calamities, coincidences, and misunderstandings ensue when an accident-prone heiress turns a sheltered scientist's life upside down. Dr. David Huxley is a straitlaced paleontologist juggling three important events at once: the arrival of an extremely rare bone needed to complete his brontosaurus skeleton; a meeting to ask for a million dollars for his museum from a wealthy donor; and his impending marriage to the humorless Miss Swallow. Into David's life comes Susan, a free-spirited young woman who seems to bring trouble wherever she goes. Thanks to Susan, David finds himself involved in one ridiculous situation after another, and soon the two are prowling around a country estate looking for the missing dinosaur bone, hunting for a lost pet leopard named Baby, and somehow falling in love.

Friday, February 20, 2004 7:00pm, 9:30pm, 12:00am
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Rated R (111 min.) Director: Quentin Tarentino
With Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu
Read more about it at the IMDB

A female assassin, The Bride, is attacked on her wedding day. Dead are her soon-to-be husband and unborn child. However, she doesn't die. Four years later, she wakes up from a coma looking for revenge. Although her ultimate target is her former boss, Bill, it's quite clear that The Bride is saving the best for last. Before she can track him down, she must methodically take out the minions who ruined her life.

Saturday, February 21, 2004 7:00pm
Seven Samurai (1954)
No rating (206 min.) Director: Akira Kurosawa
With Takashi Shimura, Toshira Mifune, Yoshio Inaba
Read more about it at the IMDB
Sponsored by The Aikido Club

Set in 16th Century Japan, Akira Kurosawa's epic follows the plight of a defenseless farming village that lives in constant fear of marauding bandits. The farmers know that when their crops are harvested, the thugs will attack, so four men go to town in hopes of employing samurai to fight for them. However, the poor villagers can merely offer payment in the form of shelter and a daily bowl of rice, and initially only Kambei, a brave elder samurai, and his eager young apprentice, Katsushiro, take up their cause. Encountering various nomadic warriors on the streets, they slowly put together his team of swordsmen, recruiting Shichiroji, Gorobei, Heihachi, and Kyuzo. Finally, Kikuchiyo, a scruffy wanderer who has been trailing them, completes the small band of ronin. However, upon reaching the village, the samurai learn that the farmers fear them as much the enemy. Despite the tensions, Kambei and his men slowly train the peasants to defend their village. Eventually the warriors launch a preemptive strike against the bandits, and begin a series of intense conflicts that culminates in a rain-soaked final battle.

Friday, February 27, 2004 7:00pm, 10:00pm
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Rated PG-13 (138 min.) Director: Peter Weir
With Russell Crow, Richard Stroh, Paul Bettany
Read more about it at the IMDB

Set during the Napoleonic Wars, Crowe is Patrick O'Brian's Captain "Lucky" Jack Aubrey, renowned as a fighting captain in the British Navy, and Paul Bettany is ship's doctor Stephen Maturin. Their ship, the Surprise, is suddenly attacked by a superior enemy. With the HMS Surprise badly damaged and much of his crew injured, Aubrey is torn between duty and friendship as he pursues a high-stakes chase across two oceans, to intercept and capture his foe. It's a mission that can make his reputation or destroy Lucky Jack and his crew. In the course of the characters' epic journey, the movie travels the world from the coast of Brazil to the storm-tossed waters of Cape Horn, south through ice and snow, to the far side of the world, and to the remote shores of The Galapagos Island.

Saturday, February 28, 2004 7:00pm, 10:30pm
Scarface (1983)
Rated R (170 min.) Director: Brian De Palma
With Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer
Read more about it at the IMDB

An update of the 1932 film, Scarface follows gangster Tony Montana and his close friend Manny Ray from their trip on the Cuban Boat Lift for refugees to their arrival in Miami. After killing a powerful Cuban figure, Montana and company leave their refugee camps and roam around the U.S trying to make a legitimate living. Unsuccessful in their ventures, Montana and Ray resort to selling cocaine to dealers around the world. Tony's rise is quick, but as he becomes more powerful, his enemies and his own paranoia begin to plague his empire.

Friday, March 5, 2004 - Saturday, March 6, 2004
No movies due to Spring Break

Friday, March 12, 2004 - Saturday, March 13, 2004
No movies due to Spring Break

Friday, March 19, 2004 7:00pm, 10:00pm
21 Grams (2003)
Rated R (125 min.) Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
With Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts
Read more about it at the IMDB

This is the story of three gentle persons: Paul Rivers, an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English emigre, Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife, happily married and mother of two little girls, and Jack Jordan, an ex-convict who has found in his Christian faith the strength to raise a family. They will be brought together by a terrible accident that will change their lives. By the final frame, none of them will be the same as they will learn harsh truths about love, faith, courage, desire and guilt, and how chance can change our worlds irretrievably forever.

Saturday, March 20, 2004 7:00pm, 10:30pm
Amores perros (2000)
Rated R (153 min.) Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Iarritu
With Emilio Echevarra, Gael Garca Bernal, Goya Toledo
Read more about it at the IMDB

Three interconnected stories about the different strata of life in Mexico City all resolve with a fatal car accident. Octavio is trying to raise enough money to run away with his sister-in-law and decides to enter his dog Cofi into the world of dogfighting. After a dogfight goes bad, Octavio flees in his car, running a red light and causing the accident. Daniel and Valeria's new-found bliss is prematurely ended when she loses her leg in the accident. El Chiro is a homeless man who cares for stray dogs and is there to witness the collision.

Mystic River will not be shown.
Friday, March 26, 2004 7:00pm, 10:00pm
Big Fish (2003)
Rated PG-13 (125 min.) Director: Tim Burton
With Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup
Read more about it at the IMDB

The story revolves around a dying father and his son, who is trying to learn more about his dad by piecing together the stories he has gathered over the years. The son winds up re-creating his father's elusive life in a series of legends and myths inspired by the few facts he knows. Through these tales, the son begins to understand his father's great feats and his great failings.

Saturday, March 27, 2004 7:00pm, 9:30pm
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
No rating (97 min.) Director: Michael Curtiz
With James Cagney, Pat OBrien, Humphrey Bogart
Read more about it at the IMDB

Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connolly were tough kids who grew up together in the toughest part of New York Hell's Kitchen. Early on, Rocky gets sent to reform school, where he learns how to be a first class criminal. Jerry, who had escaped from the law, goes straight and becomes a priest. As adults, they reunite in the old neighborhood: Jerry works with the kids who, like he and Rocky, could end up on either side of the law. Rocky has returned looking for a safe place to stay till he can get back into his old racketeering organization, something that his old partner isn't anxious to have happen. Lots of rapid fire wisecracks, roughhousing and gunfire ensues.

Alien: The Director's Cut will not be shown.
Friday, April 2, 2004 7:00pm, 10:00pm
Miracle (2004)
Rated PG (135 min.) Director: Gavin O'Connor
With Kurt Russell, Patricia Clarkson, Noah Emmerich
Read more about it at the IMDB

The inspiring story of the team that transcended its sport and united a nation with a new feeling of hope. Based on the true story of one of the greatest moments in sports history, the tale captures a time and place where differences could be settled by games and a cold war could be put on ice. In 1980, the United States Ice Hockey team's coach, Herb Brooks, took a ragtag squad of college kids up against the legendary juggernaut from the Soviet Union at the Olympic Games. Despite the long odds, Team USA carried the pride of a nation yearning from a distraction from world events. With the world watching the team rose to the occasion, prompting broadcaster Al Michaels' now famous question, to the millions viewing at home: Do you believe in miracles? Yes!

Saturday, April 3, 2004 7:00pm, 9:30pm
Lost in Translation (2003)
Rated R (102 min.) Director: Sofia Coppola
With Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Akiko Takeshita
Read more about it at the IMDB

Bob Harris is an American film actor, far past his prime. He visits Tokyo to appear in commercials, and he meets Charlotte, the young wife of a visiting photographer. Bored and weary, Bob and Charlotte make ideal if improbable travelling companions. Scarlet is looking for "her place in life," and Bob is tolerating a mediocre stateside marriage. Both separately and together, they live the experience of the American in Tokyo. Bob and Charlotte suffer both confusion and hilarity due to the cultural and language differences between themselves and the Japanese. As the relationship between Bob and Charlotte deepens, they come to the realization that their visits to Japan, and one another, must soon end. Or must they?

Friday, April 9, 2004 7:00pm, 9:30pm, 12:00am
American Splendor (2003)
Rated R (101 min.) Directors: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
With Chris Ambrose, Joey Krajcar, Josh Hutcherson
Read more about it at the IMDB

Harvey Pekar is a file clerk at the local VA hospital. His interactions with his co-workers offer some relief from the monotony, and their discussions encompass everything from music to the decline of American culture to new flavors of jellybeans and life itself. At home, Harvey fills his days with reading, writing and listening to jazz. His apartment is filled with thousands of books and LPs, and he regularly scours Cleveland's thrift stores and garage sales for more, savoring the rare joy of a 25-cent find. It is at one of these junk sales that Harvey meets Robert Crumb, a greeting card artist and music enthusiast. When, years later, Crumb finds international success for his underground comics, the idea that comic books can be a valid art form for adults inspires Harvey to write his own brand of comic book. An admirer of naturalist writers like Theodore Dreiser, Harvey makes his American Splendor a truthful, unsentimental record of his working-class life, a warts-and-all self portrait. First published in 1976, the comic earns Harvey cult fame throughout the 1980s and eventually leads him to the sardonic Joyce Barber, a partner in a Delaware comic book store who end ups being Harvey's true soul mate as they experience the bizarre byproducts of Harvey's cult celebrity stature.

Thursday, April 8, 2004 7:00pm
Blue Vinyl (2002)
No rating (98 minutes) Directors: Daniel B. Gold, Judith Helfand

With humor, chutzpah and a piece of vinyl siding in hand, Daniel Gold & Judith Helfand's award-winning Blue Vinyl sets out in search of the truth about vinyl, America's most popular plastic. Helfand's parents' decision to "re-side" their house with this seemingly benign cure-all turns into a toxic odyssey that most ordinary homeowners would never dare to take. A detective story, an eco-activism doc and a rollicking comedy all rolled into one --- it's a journey you can't afford to miss.

Saturday, April 10, 2004 7:00pm, 10:00pm
Ed Wood (1994)
Rated R (127 min.) Director: Tim Burton
With Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker
Read more about it at the IMDB

Ed Wood tells the story of "the worst director of all time", Edward D.Wood, Jr. Often clad in a angora sweater, pumps, and a skirt, the eccentric director produced Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 From Outer Space during the 1950s. He also nurtured a friendship and cast the aging and unemployed horror star Bela Lugosi in his low budget horror and science fiction films.

Friday, April 16, 2004 7:00pm, 11:00pm
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)
Rated PG-13 (210 min.) Director: Peter Jackson
With Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen
Read more about it at the IMDB

While Frodo and Sam continue to approach Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring, unaware of the path Gollum is leading them, the former Fellowship aid Rohan and Gondor in a great battle in the Pelennor Fields, Minas Tirith and the Black Gates as Sauron wages his last war against Middle-Earth.

Saturday, April 17, 2004 7:00pm, 9:00pm
Ice Age (2002)
Rated PG (81 min.) Directors: Carlos Saldanha, Chris Wedge
With voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary
Read more about it at the IMDB

Back when the Earth was being overrun by glaciers, and animals were scurrying to save themselves from the upcoming Ice Age, a stupid sloth named Sid, a woolly mammoth named Manny, a saber-toothed tiger named Diego, and an acorn-loving saber-toothed squirrel named Scrat are forced to become unlikely heroes. The four reluctantly come together when they have to return a human child to its father while braving the deadly elements of the impending Ice Age.

Friday, April 23, 2004 7:00pm, 10:00pm
Mystic River (2003)
Rated R (137 min.) Director: Clint Eastwood
With Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon
Read more about it at the IMDB

Childhood friends Jimmy Marcus (Penn), Sean Devine (Bacon) and Dave Boyle (Robbins) reunite following the death of Jimmy's oldest daughter, Katie (Rossum). Sean's a police detective on the case, gathering difficult and disturbing evidence; he's also tasked with handling Jimmy's rage and need for retribution.

Saturday, April 24, 2004 7:00pm, 9:30pm
Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
Rated R (107 min.) Director: George Armitage
With John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Alan Arkin
Read more about it at the IMDB

Martin Blank is a freelance hitman who starts to develop a conscience, which causes him to muff a couple of routine assignments. On the advice of his secretary and his psychiatrist, he attends his 10th year High School reunion in Grosse Pointe, Michigan (a Detroit suburb where he's also contracted to kill someone). Hot on his tail are a couple of over-enthusiastic federal agents, another assassin who wants to kill him, and Grocer, an assassin who wants him to join an "Assassin's Union."