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Fountain Announces Schedule for July

The Mesilla Valley Film Society at the Fountain Theatre
Located in the Fountain Theatre, one block south of the plaza, at 2469 Calle de Guadalupe, Mesilla, NM.

Regular Show Times:
Evenings at 7:30
Sundays at 2:30 and 7:30
Ticket Prices:
Regular – $7.00
Senior/Student – $6.00
Member – $5.00
Child – $5.00
Wednesdays – $5.00
CineMatinee:
Saturday at 1:30 ($4 Regular, $1 Member)
Special Showings
Times and admission price as announced.
Telephone: (575) 524-8287

July 3-9
Is Anybody There?
Dir: John Crowley, (UK), 2009, 95 min.
In English.
It’s fitting that Michael Caine is cast here as a magician. At 76, he’s using the lessons of a long career to show how it’s done in Is Anybody There? Caine’s magician — the Amazing Clarence — is losing his gifts. Sleight of hand doesn’t work so well when your hands (and memory) are shaky. Widower Clarence drives his van to an English retirement home, where time weighs heavily, even on the youngish couple running the place. Their 10-year-old son, Edward (a very fine Bill Milner), is so obsessed with death, he tapes last gasps of guests. Blending humor and heartbreak in a performance that makes a small movie a richly satisfying one, Caine truly is magic. Peter Travers, Rolling Stone.

July10-16
Rudo y Cursi
Dir: Carlos Cuaron, (USA/Mexico), 2008, 103 min.
In Spanish, w/English subtitles.

Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna re-team after their breakthrough performances in the evocative road saga, Y Tu Mama Tambien. They’re a couple of rubes recruited from a banana plantation to play professional soccer. Rudo y Cursi (tough and corny) is an undeniably entertaining rags-to-riches-to-rags comedy. Rudo (Luna) and Cursi (Bernal) are brothers who play soccer for their village team. A slick agent recruits the pair to play pro soccer in Mexico City. Sibling rivalry provides a consistent source of humor and their antics verge on slapstick .Rudo’s longtime goal is to play with a famous soccer team, while Cursi has nurtured a pipe dream of becoming a singer. Rudo, a record-breaking goalie, blows his money in gambling schemes, while Cursi becomes a one-hit wonder. Bernal’s hilarious Spanish rendition of Cheap Trick’s I Want You to Want Me in ranchera style is a highlight. Claudia Puig, USA Today.

July 17-23
Goodbye Solo
Dir: Ramin Bahrani, (USA), 2008, 91 min.
In English, French.
Goodbye Solo, moving and mysterious, begins with a conversation between a taxi driver and his passenger, who proposes an unusual business arrangement. Solo (Souleymane Sy Savane), the driver, is a Senegalese man living in Winston-Salem, N.C., working and charming his way toward a share of the American dream. His demeanor is effortlessly warm and disarmingly friendly. The man in the back seat is William (Red West), a white Southerner 30 years older than Solo, wants to arrange a trip to a place called Blowing Rock. It’s a long drive into the mountains, and William is offering a lot of money. “What are you going to do, jump off?” Solo asks jokingly. William’s silent response unnerves him. Solo is driven not only to try to save William, but also to know him. I can’t think of anything else to call the quality of exquisite attention, wry humor and wide-awake intelligence that informs every frame of this almost perfect film. A.O. Scott, NY Times.

July 24-30
The Merry Gentleman
Dir: Michael Keaton, (USA), 2008, 110 min.
In English.

The first shot in The Merry Gentleman, an austere, nearly pitch-perfect character study of two mismatched yet ideally matched souls, is of actor Michael Keaton, sitting on a park bench.—He is Frank Logan, who when not wielding a gun is sitting at a sewing table in a men’s custom clothing shop.—He flickers to life when he meets Kate Frazier (Kelly Macdonald), a runaway battered wife. He’s hunkered down on a rooftop and peering through a gun scope when he suddenly sees a brightly illuminated woman standing in a window and holding her hands, palms up, in what appears to be a gesture of supplication. They strike up a friendship. While joy seems too remote, too far out of reach, they seem to bring each other comfort. Mr. Keaton succeeds in being true to something the movies tend to forget: that other people’s relationships are often mysterious. Manohla Dargis, NY Times.

July 31-Aug 6
Shoot the Piano Player (classic)
Dir: Francois Truffaut, (France), 1960, 92 min.
In French, w/English subtitles.
François Truffaut’s marvelously atmospheric 1960 Parisian noir Shoot the Piano Player, is a fine—display of the young director’s burgeoning talent. Legendary French singer Charles Aznavour gives his best screen performance as the embittered dive-bar pianist, Charlie, who has retreated into gutter-level obscurity and cares only about the little brother he’s raising. Between the two thugs chasing his no-account older brother, the tomboy waitress who knows his secret and the prostitute next door, who occasionally throws him a freebie, life is going to challenge hard-bitten Charlie to get over his long-dead wife and give a crap about this crazy world again. Shot in a fluid, freewheeling style that pays tribute to the American art forms Truffaut loved best — B-movies and jazz — Shoot the Piano Player is nonetheless a distinctively postwar Parisian creation, cold-blooded and sentimental and wounded and whimsical, all at the same time. Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com.

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