In a summer filled with tent-pole fantasy/sci-fi/horror franchise films and sequels, and kiddie-minded animated comedies, there isn’t a lot of … well, humanity.
May is always a busy month for movie lovers at the Flint Institute of Arts. Not only is the museum’s Friends of Modern Art film series continuing, but May also brings the annual Karen Schneider Jewish Film Festival of Flint to the FIA Theater.
During my years of teaching film appreciation classes at the Flint Institute of Arts, no course attracted as high an attendance as the one I led on the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock. While Hitchcock (amazingly) won no competitive Academy Awards during his half-century career, “The Master of Suspense” did win the respect of the film-going public – and the admiration of filmmakers like François Truffaut.
The push to promote the “summer” movie season’s initial blockbuster didn’t start during the Super Bowl telecast. But if you’d been living under a rock prior to football’s Big Game, you were informed via ample buys of incredibly costly ad time about Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Need something to do on Valentine’s Day weekend with your wife, husband, partner, date, parent, close buddy or miscellaneous Significant Other? Hollywood hopes you’ll celebrate by going to the movies, although some V-Day weekends are more consumer-friendly than others.
One of the best stories – maybe the best – to emerge from Flint in recent years has been that of “T-Rex” – aka Claressa Shields, the tenacious teen who rose from Vehicle City obscurity to become a pioneering Olympic boxing champion.
I was recently in an intense discussion – is there any other kind about movies? – regarding the millennial generation’s equivalent to the Star Wars films in terms of popularity and influence. This was an intense discussion not only because it was about movies, but because I, as a hipster-wannabe college student in 1977, so vividly recalled being caught up in the Zeitgeist of the original Star Wars.
For lovers of alternative/non-mainstream cinema, the best part of the year is just beginning. Perhaps we’ve journeyed to Traverse City to visit that city’s ever-growing film festival, or are awaiting a trip to Canada to one of the continent’s biggest cinematic events, the Toronto International Film Festival, which has become kind of the unofficial launch of awards season. The Toronto festival turns 40 this fall; I was first there when it was less than half that age, and Roger & Me was the talk of the town.
The month of May I can live with. It isn’t a summer month, and the kiddies are weeks ahead of escaping school. But if the Powers That Be in Hollywood really want to kick off the “summer” movie season in May, as they have in recent years … then okay. The line is drawn.
Film is supposed to entertain and enlighten; it isn’t created to make you hungry, although with The Search for General Tso, that is a plus.
