July 18-24, 2025

Hello, friends! 

As the countdown to the opening of our new venue on Grand Ave. begins in earnest, we have a gorgeous buffet of films in the meantime to keep us both entertained and well-fed at the Pickford-Bay St. mothership: Tatami, Familiar Touch, and Superman all continue, with more chances to see each of them before they leave, and joining them, we have three terrific new films, The Life of Chuck, 28 Years Later, and The Last Class.

For those familiar with Mike Flanagan’s work (The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass) and those familiar with the king of horror, Stephen King, it might be a surprise to know that The Life of Chuck, directed by Flanagan and based on a King short story, is not a horror film. It is, in fact, quite the opposite, a warmly upbeat film that contains not one but two show-stopping dance numbers and that reminds us of just how precious life is. 

It begins eerily enough, set in a world where apocalyptic things are happening -- the entire state of California has fallen into the Pacific, sinkholes are opening up in the middle of towns, and wildfires rampage across the country–but it doesn’t leave us in that apocalypse. Instead, we go back in time and trace the life of one particular person named Chuck, who doesn’t seem particularly special, but whose life, with all his particular heartaches and particular joys, is, in fact, special, just like every human being who lives a life on earth. And through the prism of Chuck’s one precious life, mortal though it is, the film offers a reflection on just how rare and joyful a thing it is to be alive, even in the face of the end of the world. 

Flanagan’s film, cast perfectly, with Tom Hiddleston in the lead and Mark Hamill, Jacob Tremblay, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, and Carl Lumbly in supporting roles, is a deeply humanist film, shining a spotlight on the fierce joy of living and offering a reflection on our mortality and on the ways in which our life makes our morality meaningful.

Also new to our screens, 28 Years Later makes a striking pairing with The Life of Chuck. As a follow-up to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s previous film together (the ground-breaking 28 Days Later), 28 Years Later is, of course, a horror film, and so it is radically different in form and tone to The Life of Chuck. But while 28 Years Later has the same kinds of viscerally intense, edge-of-your-seat horror action sequences that its predecessor did, it also offers a beautifully striking and profoundly moving reflection on human mortality.  

For all its visceral horror--a story set in a world where all but a few people in England have been infected by a “rage-virus” and where survival for the uninfected depends on killing the rage-crazed infected--there is a contemplative center in the film, where the young protagonist, Spike (played with absolute brilliance by Alfie Williams), must himself face what mortality means for him and for his beloved family. 

The film is, firmly, a genre-film, but it has the philosophical and thematic confidence to openly reference Shakespeare, namely, Hamlet, and the famous setting of the “to be or not to be” speech, and it pulls it off with both grace and power.  While Hamlet grasped the skull of the king’s jester, Yorick, and opined on death, our young hero, Spike, grasps a skull, too, and comes face to face with the meaning of the world he’s living in, a world like ours, where death is the norm. It’s the first horror film in my memory where the emotional punch of a scene led to tears: I didn’t expect to need tissues for 28 Years Later, but as it turned out, I did. 

Plenty of horror films rely wholly on the intensity of their terrors to thrill and grip an audience, but fewer films can pull off the intensity of the terror while also leaving its audience with a great deal to contemplate and to feel. 28 Years Later does both, and as it is the first film of a planned trilogy -- the second is already set to be released in January of 2026 -- it is all the more exciting to experience.

I’m also very pleased to say The Last Class, a documentary about professor, author, and former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, has finally made it to our screens. It is, perhaps, the most-requested film we’ve had of late from you, our Pickford patrons, so I think it needs little introduction from me. It is the kind of film I think many of us are feeling the need for these days, where we are looking for voices to guide us through the chaos of what is happening and perhaps offer us a path forward. 

Reich, as a public intellectual, is one of the few to offer something like that. In the film, he “ruminat[es] on income inequality, the shaping of public opinion by media and political messages, the democratic process, the importance of publicly funded education,” but perhaps more importantly, as Matt Zoller Seitz puts it in his review, he offers us hope. Seitz writes, “it’s heartening to hear a major figure in American political history talking about the future as if it might actually happen. As Reich approaches the final phase of his teaching career—indeed, his life—he spends increasingly large percentages of his time trying to convince students not to be defeatist about trends in economics and world governance. . . . He seems troubled when he talks about what he sees as the consensus fatalism of his pupils. He says some of them describe themselves as part of ‘the last generation,’ as in ever. He asked them, ‘Are you so laden with a sense of doom that you think everything will end?’ Their responses confirmed that they didn’t think ‘the world will survive in anything close to [the condition] in which it now exists.’ Pushing back against that became his most important mission. ‘Pessimism is fine,’ he says. ‘Cynicism is not.’”

Join us for this special film today, Sunday, Monday, or Thursday.

Finally, we’ve got two very special events this week: The Muppets Take Manhattan and this quarter’s Storyteller’s Seasonal. 

 The Muppets Take Manhattan is the first in our new Kid Pickford series, where we’re celebrating beloved family and children’s films from the 1980’s (our upcoming films include The Princess Bride, Labyrinth, and Return to Oz).  The solo directing debut from Frank Oz, The Muppets Take Manhattan is pure Muppet delight, where the Muppet crew tries to make it big and get their musical produced on Broadway and they run into a few bumps -- and a few stars, including Joan Rivers, Lizza Minnelli, and Gregory Hines -- along the way. 

Join us for the one-of-a-kind wit and pathos that only the Muppets have on Saturday (1:30 pm), Sunday (10 am), or Wednesday (11 am).  Tickets cost just $7 at Kid Pickford pricing.

And this quarter’s Storyteller’s Seasonal is back! Join us on Thursday evening for this hour-long event that consists of 5-minute films submitted from filmmakers from our area. The Seasonal is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate and cultivate the visual storytelling of filmmakers at all levels and to provide a venue where these storytellers can share their ideas in a supportive, fun, and low-pressure environment. All are welcome to submit films -- see the Storyteller’s Facebook page for more info -- or to come see the filmmaking talents of our community.  Tickets are just $7. 

See you at the movies, friends!

Melissa