Weekly Film Agenda: Summaries & Superficial Judgements Edition

Attention local film patrons, geeks, students, snobs, enthusiasts: Cambridge's endangered Brattle Theatre is looking for volunteers to write for their Film Notes series. They'd like to see 800-1,000 word essays that "avoid the plot summaries and superficial value judgments of newspaper criticism," to be distributed at screenings and posted on their web site: "Anything from a personal recollection of the first time you saw Vertigo to an abridged academic paper on its critique of the male gaze is encouraged."

Wednesday 5/24

Downside Up
North Adams native Nancy Kelly's documentary on how a 19th-century factory became MassMOCA and how her industrial ghost town became a refuge for contemporary art in wilds of western Massachusetts.
Revolving Museum, Lowell
6:30 pm, free
Downside Up: IMDB | web site | trailer

The Gay Divorcee
Upon hearing some recent gossip about an acquaintance, Bostonist quoted the old adage, Every time a somebody gets divorced and comes out, an angel gets its wings. Which has absolutely nothing to do with Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers' first starring collaboration, the 1934 musical comedy The Gay Divorcee.
Brattle Theatre
7:15 pm, $9 (double feature with Royal Wedding at 5:15 & 9:30 pm)
The Gay Divorcee: IMDB | trailer
Royal Wedding: IMDB | trailer

Thursday 5/25 through next week

X-Men: The Last Stand
...The X-Men franchise, on the other hand? Hot thespian-on-thespian action.
Many times at many theaters
X-Men: IMDB | web site | trailers

Spirit of the Beehive (El Espíritu de le colmena)
A film about two little girls who see Boris Karloff in Frankenstein in a tiny Spanish town just after the Civil War, and what happens when they go out looking for the Monster afterwards.
Museum of Fine Arts, Remis Auditorium
2:30 pm Thursday, 4 pm Saturday, 11 am Sunday, and next weekend, $7-$9
Spirit of the Beehive: IMDB | A.O. Scott

Monday 5/29

Science On Screen: Forbidden Planet
A classic vision of our glorious future with robots, invisible monsters, short skirts, and 1950s design. Robotics professor Rodney Brooks will be on hand to provide expert commentary. He's the director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the author of a paper entitled "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control"—you may recognize him from Errol Morris's documentary of the same name.
Coolidge Corner Theatre
7 pm, $9.50
Forbidden Planet: IMDB | trailer

Tuesday 5/30

Sorry, Haters
Director Jeff Stanzler will be present at the Chlotrudis Society's screening of his controversial lo-fi film featuring Robin Wright Penn as a vindictive television executive, Abdel Kechiche as a cab driver with a brother in Guantánamo, and some unsettling, Hitchcockian plot twists.
Brattle Theatre
7 pm, $10
Sorry, Haters: IMDB | web site | Roger Ebert | trailer

Nick Edwards contributed to this post.