Six Classic Movies at Rialto Cinemas Cerrito

Hello, fellow movie lovers!

We just got word from Rialto Cinemas that they will be showing several more classic movies at the Cerrito from mid-October through early November. They are:

Stop Making Sense (1984)

October 16 – 18, 3:45, 6:00, and 8:30 pm

This is the 40th anniversary restoration/reissue of what is considered by many critics to be the greatest concert film of all time. Directed by Jonathan Demme and featuring the Talking Heads.

Tickets are available online or at the box office.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Monday, October 23, 3:30 and 7:00 pm

Directed by David Lean and starring Alec Guinness, William Holden, Sessue Hayakawa, and Jack Hawkins. Winner of the Academy Awards for best picture, best lead actor, best director, and best adapted screenplay, and nominee for best supporting actor. Like many David Lean films, this one is best seen on the big screen.

Strangers on a Train (1951)

Tuesday, October 24, 3:30, 6:00, and 8:30 pm

Directed by the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, Strangers on a Train is about a man roped into a murder plot he didn’t agree to. Starring Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, and Robert Walker as amoral sociopath Bruno Antony.

The Shining (1980)

Wednesday, October 25, 3:30 and 7:00 pm

Directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, and Danny Lloyd. Kubrick’s entry in the horror genre is a truly unnerving film experience. It doesn’t have as much violence as many modern horror films, but the cinematography, sound design, acting, editing, and direction make this a scarier movie than many more graphic films.

Beetlejuice (1988)

Monday, October 30, 3:30 and 9:00 pm
Tuesday, October 31 3:30, 6:00, and 8:30 pm
Wednesday, November 1, 3:30 and 9:00 pm

Directed by Tim Burton, starring Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, and Winona Ryder. An inverted ghost story, in which the ghosts want to get the living out of their home instead of the other way around. Michael Keaton’s over-the-top performance as the title character is not to be missed.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Monday, November 6 3:30, 6:00, and 8:30 pm
Tuesday, November 7 3:30, 6:00, and 8:30 pm
Wednesday, November 8 3:15 pm

Directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and Peter Sellers playing three roles. A cold-war satire about the risks of nuclear annihilation. Nominated for Academy Awards for best picture, best actor, best director, and best adapted screenplay.

Buying Tickets

Admission to all of these classics will be $9, except for Stop Making Sense, for which Rialto will charge their regular prices. Currently, only tickets for Stop Making Sense are on sale. You can buy them online or at the box office. Please check the Rialto Cinemas Cerrito website as the dates for the other films approach. Moviegoers are strongly advised to buy advance tickets at the box office or online, as the movie may sell out.

There’s Still Time to See “I Went to the Dance” (AKA “J’ai été au bal”)

Les Blank’s, Maureen Gosling’s and Chris Strachwitz’s “I Went to the Dance” had folks dancing at the Rialto Cinemas Cerrito on the night of Thursday, September 14.

It attracted a crowd of fans of Cajun and Zydeco music, and of Les Blank and Chris Strachwitz, late musical and filmic entrepreneurs who were based out of El Cerrito.

The movie has several more Bay Area shows. Catch it if you too enjoy hearty roots music. It will play at several independent cinemas, including the Elmwood in Berkeley, Roxie in San Francisco, the Lark in Larkspur, and Rialto Cinemas Sebastopol, some of them through September 21. Several screenings of the movie will feature live entertainment.

The El Cerrito show was special because it featured a performance by the band of Eric and Suzy Thompson, performing Louisiana music of the style portrayed in this wonderful, and recently restored, movie.

The movie is both a detailed history of the development of this French-language music and a toe-tapping entertainment. And yes, people were dancing to the music of Eric and Suzy and their band.

Also on hand during the event were Anthony Matt, who headed the restoration of this and other Les Blank films, Les’s son Harrod, a noted artist in the art car movement, Maureen Gosling, Les’s co-filmmaker on many projects, and Susan Kell and Chris Simon, collaborators on this and other films with Les Blank (as well as filmmakers on their own.)

There were so many high points to this event, but one of them surely was Harrod Blank thanking Eric and Suzy for a gift they had given his father shortly before his death in 2013.

“They did something that was so special for my father that I will never forget,” Harrod said, “and that was, as he was dying in his bed, about three days out, they performed for him, and it was absolutely beautiful.”

A review of the Barbie experience from Dave Weinstein, Friend of the Cerrito Theater:

Sure, streaming may be fast and easy, but nothing can beat being in a movie theater when the lights dim and a really fun film comes on and you feel part of a real audience, some of them friends, many of them neighbors.

Seeing ‘Barbie,’ a wacky, fun fantasy about a girl’s toy that is at the same time a critique of partriarchy, brought this home. First, it was great to see a film sell out—day after day—at our favorite movie theater. The pandemic wasn’t good for movie theaters, or for the movie going experience.

It put many out of business in Berkeley and (at least temporarily) closed the Albany Twin. And audiences have often been thin in the theaters that remained open. (Not so on the Albany Twin’s final night in operation, which my wife and I also attended. Ah, but that evening was tinged with sadness, as the crowd was there to bid farewell to a neighborhood institution, as well as to catch a film.)

No such sadness prevailed during the showing of ‘Barbie.’ Fans, some in pink, many of them young girls, lined up outside, chatting and expectant. My wife and I talked to a young couple, new to town, who settled in alongside us—our usual spots in the first row.

They said they love El Cerrito and the Rialto Cinemas Cerrito.

The audience was polite, quiet—except when we all laughed. It was the wonderful, peaceful mood in the theater, a sense of return to something good. No more mask mandates (and no rules against masks either!), no more social distancing. It was just a fine feeling.

Here’s hoping more and more people rediscover the joy of attending real movies in real theaters. See you at the movies.

Dave Weinstein