| Flicks

FLICKS: What They Had opens, FLIFF continues & House of Wax concludes

Posted on 07 November 2018 by LeslieM

By “Cinema” Dave

http://cinemadave.livejournal.com

Relief. The campaign season is over and we can start to think seriously about the upcoming public holidays — Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. For many, it is a time of renewal and a time to reconnect with family and friends. For seasoned citizens, it is a time to confront the challenges of aging, and the collateral repercussions.

Opening this weekend, What they Had is family drama that looks at this subject. There is already Oscar buzz for the performances given by Hilary Swank, Michael Shannon, Robert Forster and Blythe Danner. Danner portrays the matriarch suffering from dementia. When she goes for a midnight walk in a Chicago Blizzard, the son and daughter (Shannon and Swank, respectively) begin to doubt their father’s (Foster’s) competency to care for their mother. The drama will be real and painful, but expect the tender mercy of humor in family discord.

While Halloween created box office records for an October movie release, revenue dropped dramatically on Nov. 1, losing to Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. Despite mediocre reviews, save for Rami Malek’s performance as Freddy Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody was last week’s box office champion. While the biopic follows the Hollywood formula, it is the Rock ‘n Roll sequences that merit seeing this film on the big screen.

Despite the cold and flu bug that has intruded upon The 33rd Annual Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF), the event is going smoothly with successful screenings at the Seminole Hard Rock, Savor Cinema and Cinema Paradiso-Hollywood. Philanthropist Steve Savor received the Marti Huizenga Humanitarian Award, a distinguished honor. Along with her husband Wayne, Marti Huizenga founded FLIFF in the late 1980s from the Las Olas Boulevard headquarters of Blockbuster video. A friendly face at the concession counter, Tina La Boeuf, was named Employee of the Year and received her plaque. For those who earn a plaque from FLIFF, the inscription alone is worth the honor.

This Veterans Day weekend, the fun continues with screenings and the events at Cinema Paradiso-Hollywood, Savor Cinema and NSU Art Museum in downtown Ft. Lauderdale. Viewings are free for those with museum membership for the screenings beginning Tuesday, Nov. 13. On Thursday Nov. 15, the museum will host The Art & Times of Frosty Myers at 7:30 p.m. This also is an opportunity to check out the Glackens and Renoir exhibit that opened last month.

For many years, FLIFF would celebrate the Ft. Lauderdale canals [Intracoastal] as America’s Venice with a morning cruise. With Daylight Saving Time and potential confusion, this event has been transformed into a Sunset Cruise this Monday night, Nov. 12 aboard the Musette. As we have experienced the evening darkness at 6 p.m., this is an opportunity to screen four international short subjects in the dark about a variety of topics, all of them dramatic. For info. on all FLIFF events and screenings, visit www.fliff.com.

This columnist will be hosting the last screening of House of Wax this Friday evening. While he will be donating four of his books in a post screening trivia contest, he will also donate an autographed copy of The Book of Joe written by Vincent Price. Complete with 3-D glasses, last week’s House of Wax screening went extremely well, with people laughing and screaming at the appropriate times. This film is as worthy today on the big screen as it was 65 years ago, before the advent of cell phones, cable television and color television sets.

Happy Veterans Day!

 

Comments are closed.

Advertise Here
Advertise Here