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Event Details

Sunday Afternoon at the Movies - Movie Screenings

Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 4:30pm
Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 4:30pm
Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 4:30pm
Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 4:30pm
Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 4:30pm

Ojai Playhouse, 145 E. Ojai Ave., Ojai

Event Description

The Ojai Film Society screens independent films each Sunday at the Ojai Playhouse.

The Sunday Movie Series is as follows:

The Maid
February 21, 2010
Reversing the roles of servant and the served, Sebastian Silva's winning new film The Maid finds the matriarch of a bourgeois Chilean household happily doing the dishes for her live-in servant Raquel, played by Catalina Saavedra, and is later called upon to come to her rescue when the maid passes out while serving breakfast.

It should be said upfront that The Maid is neither a comedy in the conventional sense nor are we witnessing a simple case of role reversal. The relationship between Raquel and the family she has catered to for 20 years is far more nuanced. The film’s discomfortingly funny first half flirts with the unease of a suspense film as Raquel resorts to mortifying stratagems to wipe out the new domestics hired to ease her burdens, but whom she views as competition.

Both the film and its protagonist effect a change in tone with the incursion of the third new maid Lucy, a good-humored, bighearted gal who courageously offers Raquel unqualified friendship. Raquel undergoes a dramatic change, but when Lucy announces she wants to leave will Raquel be able to sustain her positive new outlook?

Silva’s partly autobiographical story is filmed in the house where he grew up. A favorite among critics, The Maid was recently nominated for a 2010 Independent Spirit Award and won the Grand Jury Price at Sundance in 2009.

Me and Orson Welles
February 28, 2010
It’s New York, 1937 and young Richard Samuels (Zac Efron) is bored with school. He becomes a denizen of Broadway, dreaming of an acting career. During one of his haunts he encounters a theater company outside the Mercury Theatre and starts chatting with Orson Welles (Christian McKay) who is re-imagining Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as a ‘30s-era Fascist dictator. This is Welles before War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane.

McKay, in a breakout performance, bears an uncanny resemblance to Welles, who is portrayed as a bullish womanizer having an affair with the show’s leading lady while his wife is distracted with her pregnancy. Though Richard is a horrid actor, he plays on Welles’ vanity and lands the role of Lucius. He also falls under the spell of the spirited and conniving production assistant, Sonja (Claire Danes), a sometime lover of Welles.

Welles moves through the troupe like a shark, feeding on anyone weaker than him. He showers the actors with praise then crushes them with brutal criticism. Roles are expanded and abandoned at will. Welles and Sonja heap betrayals on Richard who learns some hard life lessons. But as the curtain closes, Richard finds hope in the unfailing optimism of his new love, Greta.

Director Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles is a backstage pass to the formative years of one of the most quirky, outrageous and gifted directors in the history of cinema.

March 7 Academy Awards – No Screening

An Education
March 14, 2010
Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a 16-year-old London schoolgirl bound for Oxford when a chance encounter sends her life in a new direction. One rainy day she is offered a ride home by David (Peter Sarsgaard), a 30-something businessman. In a later “chance encounter” he asks her out.

Before long David has introduced Jenny to the glamorous world of expensive restaurants, concerts and her ultimate dream, a trip to Paris. She is infatuated with the sophistication of David and his friends. But in her naiveté and yearning to escape the confines of her self-proclaimed “boring” middle class life, she fails to appreciate that all is not what it appears. Actions have consequences and all things in life come with a price. In Jenny’s case she gets “An Education” in the ways of the world.

An Education is a film that captures a defining moment in a young woman’s life and is a showcase for some of the finest acting of the year. As Jenny, Carey Mulligan gives the type of performance that launches stars and some have already dubbed her a new Audrey Hepburn. As David, Peter Sarsgaard gives a subtle and memorable dimension to Jenny’s patient and slow-motion mentor/seducer. Equally impressive is Olivia Williams, as Miss Stubbs, the spinster teacher who is far wiser than Jenny realizes. Winner of the Sundance 2009 Audience Award, An Education lingers in the mind and should not to be missed.

Broken Embraces
March 21, 2010
A man lives, loves and writes in darkness. Fourteen years before, he was in a brutal car crash on the island of Lanzarote. In the accident he lost not only his sight, but also the love of his life, Lena (Penélope Cruz).

This man (Lluís Homar) goes by two names: Harry Caine, a pseudonym he uses to sign his literary works and his real name, Mateo Blanco. Blanco is a movie director, but after the accident, the man feels Mateo Blanco has died along with his beloved Lena, and so he continues his life only as Harry Caine, the writer.

In the present day, Harry is an active, attractive blind man who has developed all his other senses in order to enjoy life. He lives thanks to his writing and the help he gets from his faithful former production manager and her son, Diego, his secretary, typist and guide. Harry has erased any trace of his first identity. But while Diego is convalescing from an accident, he remarkably gets Harry to tell him the story of Mateo Blanco, and thus the story unfolds.

Broken Embraces is the fourth film that director Pedro Almodovar has made with his muse Penélope Cruz. This melodramatic film noir, full of twists and reversals, jealousy and revenge, is at once devastating and euphoric, amusing and dismaying.

Precious
March 28, 2010
Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) is an inner city teenager who is a poster child for the ravages of poverty and parental indifference. Weighing close to 300 pounds, friendless and semi-literate, she has borne two children sired by her own father and is under the oppressive thumb of a mother who subjects her to constant cruelty.

It is difficult to imagine how one could start life more disadvantaged. But through an unlikely turn of events she is thrown a lifeline. Is her life magically transformed? No. But despite her crushing disadvantages a small light glows within her and we see the first faint glimmer of hope as she begins the long and uncertain journey to recast her fate.

Precious is host to two of the most memorable performances of the year. For newcomer Sidibe, her role as Precious is a stunning big screen debut. Her mother Mary, played by Mo’Nique, is one of the most poisonous creations to ever appear on screen. Nevertheless, Mo'Nique has managed the difficult task of giving Mary, a derelict parent and repository of true evil, a subtle human dimension. It is the type of mesmerizing performance sure to attract Oscar attention.

All dialog in films from non-English speaking countries will be presented in its original language accompanied by English subtitles.

Tickets: General Admission $9, Seniors, Students $6 OFS Sponsors: Free