Week of April 22 to April 28 (Mann)

What’s on at the Tropic
by Phil Mann

It’s another of those something-for-everyone weeks, with a couple of new movies joining popular holdovers, plus a passel of special events.

SOURCE CODE is from that thriller genre where characters can affect history by various kinds of trans-reality interventions. Think Inception or The Adjustment Bureau. In Source Code Jake Gyllenhaal is part of a secret Army anti-terrorism experiment involving brain transplants. More I can’t say without giving away too much. But once you accept the concept, the movie draws you in and puts you on the edge of your seat. Director Duncan Jones’ last movie was a sci-fi meditation Moon about a man ending a solo tour on a lunar station so Jones knows how to think about things as well as blow them up. With the Source Code he gives us “a gripping action film that also works as poetry.” (San Francisco Chronicle) It’s a “beautifully made, suspenseful techno-thriller,” says the New Yorker.

3 BACKYARDS, on the other hand, is pure reality, the interlocking stories of three neighboring families on Long Island. We’ve got a husband (Elias Koteas) spying on his wife; a starstruck amateur artist (Edie Falco); and a child who should have stayed home (Rachel Resheff).  Director Eric Mendelsohn won the best director award at Sundance for this “exquisite example of calculated execution in pursuit of elusive ideas.” (Variety)

EXODUS FALL opened at the Tropic on Thursday as part of the Visiting Filmmaker Series. It’s now been held over for a limited run, joining three very popular holdovers: THE LINCOLN LAWYER, the Don’t Miss film of the spring WIN WIN and the aforementioned THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU.

The Special Events calendar is headed by a Bruce Springsteen retrospective, THE PROMISE: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town. It’s an amalgamation of music sessions from the late 1970’s leading up to the release of his fourth album, and recent interviews. Like other Springsteen films at the Tropic, it shows off the theater’s superb sound system and acoustics. And it shows off Bruce’s generous nature. He’s donating all the proceeds from the release of this film to non-profit community theaters that show it. A chance to enjoy yourself for a good cause. One show each evening, Friday-Saturday-Sunday.

Monday brings more Everything Elizabeth to the Classics Series, with her 1959 film SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER. Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift share the screen in this adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play about a vicious mother and a troubled girl. Both Hepburn and Taylor were nominated for Best Actress at both the Oscars and the Golden Globes. Neither got the Oscar, but Taylor took home the Globe.

The sound system gets another workout on Tuesday, with another live opera via satellite, this time from the Teatro Regio in Parma, Italy. It’s Rossini’s comedy THE BARBER OF SEVILLE, with Luca Salsi as Figaro and Ketevan Kemoklidze as Rosina. True love triumphs in this clever plot of mistaken identities. Live at 2:00pm EDT (8:00pm in Parma), with a delayed live encore at 7:00pm EDT.

And then on Thursday, it’s the annual Tropic appearance of the KEY WEST SONGWRITERS’ FESTIVIAL, featuring Bridgette Tatum, Danny Myrick, Dallas Davidson, Rhett Akins, Marshall Chapman, Hugh Prestwood & Chris Wallin. Another group will be appearing on the next night. Tickets for the 

Songwriters’ Festival are at KeysTix.com.

For all other tickets go to the regular Tropic box office, or the BuyTix links at TropicCinema.com
Comments, please, to pmann99@gmail.com
[from Key West, the newspaper - www.kwtn.com].