I Vitelloni

Five young men linger in a postadolescent limbo, dreaming of adventure and escape from their small seacoast town. They while away their time spending the lira doled out by their indulgent families on drink, women, and nights at the local pool hall. Federico Fellini’s second solo directorial effort (originally released in the U.S. as The Young and the Passionate) is a semiautobiographical masterpiece of sharply drawn character sketches: Skirt chaser Fausto, forced to marry a girl he has impregnated; Alberto, the perpetual child; Leopoldo, a writer thirsting for fame; and Moraldo, the only member of the group troubled by a moral conscience. An international success and recipient of an Academy Award® nomination for Best Original Screenplay, I vitelloni compassionately details a year in the life of a group of small-town layabouts struggling to find meaning in their lives.

At Muenzinger Auditorium

Mamma Roma

After many years working in the streets of Roma, the middle-age whore Mamma Roma (Anna Magnani) saves money to buy an upper class apartment, a fruit stand and retires from the prostitution. She brings her teenage son Ettore (Ettore Garofolo), who was raised alone in the country, to live with her, and Ettore becomes her pride and joy. However, the boy that does not want to study or work, joins to idle friends, has a crush on a bitch, and Mamma Roma uses her best but limited efforts to straight Ettore and make him an honest man. However, her past haunts her with tragic consequences.

At Muenzinger Auditorium

Goodbye Dragon Inn

A screen's-eye view of the last audience at a moldering movie palace, these adventures of the cinephile, captured in their meandering, hopeful, voyeuristic glory by Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang, unfold at the pace of wordless observation. By turns funny and melancholy, there is about the picture a feeling of irrecoverable loss. What's lost is more than just time for the watchers, it's true experience. Good bye, Dragon Inn is a chronicle of the way in which memories are made and the act of love at the heart of the consumptive act of cinema. Almost avant-garde in its approach, Tsai is unapologetic in his vision: static long-shots and extended takes rule the day. It's a trance and a chant, a ritual of filmmaking that evokes the ritual of film-watching--and one of the most unique, perceptive pictures concerning why we love the movies since Fellini's 8 1/2. Source: Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central.

At Muenzinger Auditorium

The River

At Muenzinger Auditorium

The Iron Giant

In the small town of Rockwell, Maine in October 1957, a giant metal machine befriends a nine-year-old boy and ultimately finds its humanity by unselfishly saving people from their own fears and prejudices.

At Muenzinger Auditorium