It’s a Repertory Round Up this week on Screen Time. While the rest of the world is getting themselves a fresh squeeze of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”, some of the greatest movies of all time are playing at a New Orleans cinema just down the street.
AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (R)
The Prytania Cinema Club is getting spooky for the Halloween Season and kicking off September with one of the greats of the genre. “An American Werewolf In London” combines modern comedic sensibilities with the most innovative makeup effects in history to create the platonic ideal of a crowd-pleaser with bite.
When two American college students backpacking through the Scottish countryside do not heed the local warning to “stay off the moors”, they learn quickly that the curse of the werewolf is no simple superstition, but a ravaging, rampaging monstrosity from which neither can easily be relinquished. Directed by John Landis (“Animal House”) and featuring the greatest werewolf transformation sequence of all time by the inimitable Rick Baker (“Men In Black”), “An American Werewolf In London” crystalizes the finest form of glossy, studio horror; funny, bloody, and an all-around great time at the movies.
“An American Werewolf In London” is playing at Prytania Theatres at Canal Place on September 8 and 11 for $6 tickets.
INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE (R)
One of the great New Orleans films is coming to The Broad Theater this week. “Interview With The Vampire” is a film that has grown in esteem over the past thirty years, not just for the high camp value of Tom Cruise’s preening, delicious Lestat, Brad Pitt’s smoldering Lewis, or the sumptuous production design that turned the clock back on our fair city, but for the delightfully goofy queer adjacent bravado tucked within this bloody historical epic. I have a friend who once made t-shirts that read “Make Dracula Sexy Again” and I believe that Director Neil Jordan (“The Company of Wolves”) would resoundingly agree. Maybe you saw it on a date night in 1994 or on some ratty VHS at a friend’s house; either way, it’s never a bad time to check back in with Anne Rice’s lovingly lustful creatures of the night.
“Interview With The Vampire” is playing at The Broad Theater on September 11.
CORALINE (PG)
Stop motion animation is the last great form of filmmaking that harkens back to the Georges Méliès (Google Him) style of cinema as grand illusion. One of the form’s greatest champions is also one of its most easily forgotten. Henry Selick is not a name that most of you know but you assuredly love one if not several of his films. He was the director of “A Nightmare Before Christmas”, which has criminally been attributed solely to Tim Burton in the memory palace of time, along with “James and The Giant Peach”, 2022’s wonderful, but underseen “Wendell & Wild”, and in 2009 his arguable masterwork, “Coraline”.
Born from the pages of Neil Gaiman’s children’s story and celebrating its fifteenth anniversary this year, “Coraline” is the tale of a young girl, tired of her humdrum parents, tricked into a magical alternate reality lorded over by her sweet as candy “Other-Mother”. She is soon to learn however that looks can be deceiving as she tumbles headlong into an adventure as scary as it is heartwarming, as inventive as it is effective, and as eternal as only the best cinema can be.
An incredible film for parents to share with their kids for the first time, “Coraline” might be the best film screening in New Orleans theaters this week. Check it out while you still can.
You’ll be glad you did.
“Coraline” is showing at Prtyania Theatres Canal Place for a limited engagement.
