Continuing the precedent set last semester by alternating innovative, albeit a little obscure, international filmmaking with more mainstream arthouse successes, Mac Cinema's schedule for Spring '03 looks to be their best yet! (I happened to select a number of the titles.) The term boasts an out-of-print American classic, a diverse international sampler, and––just in time for spring––a revival of Hitchcock's Vertigo.

Please don't view this page as another public service announcement from a privately-maligned, publicly-ignored student group (or, if you do, at least be thankful that it isn't four pages long), but as a list of 11 varied recommendations from your friends at Mac Cinema. All films will be screened in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall on Friday and Saturday nights at 7:30 and 10 p.m.

The schedule is as follows:

February 7–8: Code Unknown. Beating the U's "official Twin Cities premiere" by a few weeks, the semester kicks off with Michael Haneke's brilliant, virtually indescribable drama which, sadly, never got a full U.S. release. Juliette Binoche stars as a Parisian actress dating a war photographer and connected—in ways that take at least a few viewings to completely figure out—to a teacher of deaf students from Mali, an illegal immigrant from Rumania and an aging farmer in the south of France. What Haneke's film is really about, though, is the culture shock which the Western world currently faces in this age of technological advances and breakdown of old national divisions. Not just one of the best films of our time, but one of the best films about our time, stylistically daring and deeply heartfelt.

February 14–15: The Celebration. The first film––and to many, the best-made according to the controversial Dogme 95 manifesto (which "forbids" conventional plots and filmmaking technique in favor of a messy, more "authentic" approach), this is Thomas Vitenberg's dark comedy about a family reunion that turns quickly into a disaster. The Celebration––which boasts as subject matter child abuse, alcoholism and family dysfunction––seems to reflect the old saying that art doesn't have to be in good taste.

February 21–22: Nine Queens. This Argentinian thriller was one of the most successful foreign films to be released here last year, though Jonathan Rosenbuam of the Chicago Reader has claimed that it actually beats Hollywood at a lot of its tricks. It's a story about con men, so be prepared for plot twists.

February 28–29: Killer of Sheep. Charles Burnett's debut film received so much acclaim since its initial release in 1977 that it became one of the first ten films selected for preservation by the Library of Congress. (As a way of giving back to the populace, the Library of Congress subsequently did nothing to distribute the film or make it readily available). This story of a young slaughterhouse worker living in the Watts project of Los Angeles marked the introduction of Burnett's poetic-realist style and a landmark for all independent African-American filmmaking.

March 7–8: Black Cat, White Cat. Yugoslavian director Emir Kusturica may be the greatest living comic filmmaker (for further proof check out his 1995 Palme d'Or winner, Underground) and this 1999 film may be his most out-of-control. Kustrica's farce about a gypsy wedding on the Danube River (shot beautifully, by the way) contains everything that a great comedy should: slapstick, a clever score, unexpected plot twists, a giant hog eating, an abandoned automobile and an obese woman pulling a nail out of a wooden board with her buttocks.

March 28–29: What Time is it There? Another great contemporary comedy, albeit a far subtler one, this 2001 film is the most recent by Taiwanese minimalist Tsai Ming-liang. Tsai's style—a combination of long takes, meticulous mise-en-scene and subdued performances from non-professional actors––has been compared to everyone from Antonioni to Buster Keaton, yet his films truly belong to no one but himself. In this anti-romance (between a laconic Taipei watch salesman and a shy, beautiful tourist visiting Paris), almost every scene is simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking.

April 4–5: Vertigo. The most richly, achingly, beautifully disturbed romance the cinema has ever produced. To quote Dave Kehr, this is "one of the landmarks––not merely of the movies, but of 20th-century art." If you haven't seen it at least half-a-dozen times, for God's sake, go.

April 11 & 12: Fat Girl. Controversial French filmmaker Catherine Breillat's 2001 feature depicts rather frankly the sexuality of girls in their early teens, and if that isn't reason enough to go to a movie, I don't know what is. The film played for roughly 3 days last spring at the (sadly) now-defunct Suburban World Theater; watch it while eating a sandwich to pay your respects to that beautiful venue.

April 18–19: 23. A recent German thriller that never got a widespread U.S. release, this sounds like a cross between Darren Aronofsky's Pi and the sub-genre of paranoid political thrillers that was popular in the 70s. In the film, a 19-year-old computer hacker stumbles upon a conspiracy plot that involves the use by international spy groups of the number 23 on countless everyday products. In the end, it turns out that the number was placed there by industrialists sent here from another planet––No, wait, that's John Carpenter's They Live.

April 25–26: Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner). Pure filmmaking and a great adventure story, this 2001 feature was also the first movie made entirely by Inuits. While purportedly based on a centuries-old myth, the film has a feeling more immediate than almost any other recent film thanks to a gifted use of digital video (You will feel like you are watching this movie on a frozen tundra), intimate performances from non-professionals, and an understanding of epic narrative that seems tied more closely to oral storytelling traditions than cinema or literature.

May 2–3: Bowling for Columbine. Even though everybody at Macalester and their mom will have had a chance to see this at the Lagoon by the time it comes here, nobody ever said you shouldn't see a good movie twice. Finish off the semester getting provoked by Michael Moore's impassioned and (contrary to what its detractors may say) ultimately open-ended documentary. Obscure piece of trivia: Moore was born and raised in Flint, Michigan, a former industrial center for General Motors.

Mac Cinema titles and showtimes may be subject to change. Sorry.