Coming Soon
DOUBLE FEATURE: MR. THANK YOU + SPEED
1936 + 1994
Director
Hiroshi Shimizu
Jan de Bont
Starring
Ken Uehara
Michiko Kuwano
Keanu Reeves
Sandra Bullock
Runtime
76 + 116 minutes
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This double feature screening is dedicated to the spirit of community which inevitably forms on public transportation in all of its reluctant, dysfunctional and quiet glory. Sometimes you have to meditate on the transience of existence, sometimes you have to defuse a bomb. But when you’re all on the bus, you’re all in it together.
MR. THANK YOU
This charming road movie follows a genial local bus driver along his route as he transports a group of travelers, comprising a microcosm of Japanese society, from the far reaches of the Izu peninsula to the train station that links it to Tokyo. Rediscovered in the 1970s, Shimizu’s film, once judged as a failed experiment by a Kinema Junpo critic, is now recognized as a classic, incorporating all the hallmarks of his cinema: the tragicomic tone; the provincial setting; the loose, improvisational narrative; the naturalistic performances; the luminous plein-air cinematography; and the glancing but trenchant observation of social inequality. Shooting entirely on location in his cherished Izu, which he is said to have known “like the back of his hand,” and using a redressed Shochiku studio van, Shimizu fashions a tour of depression-era Japan that deserves mention in the company of Ford’s STAGECOACH and Renoir’s THE CRIME OF MONSIEUR LANGE.
“This chirpy, cheerful bus ride is the Shimizu film that comes closest to a full-scale social portrait of the 1930s. MR. THANK YOU is not a film that smiles through its tears but one that speaks out in anger behind the superficial good humor.” - Alan Stanbrook
SPEED
“Pop quiz, hotshot. There’s a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do?” Dennis Hopper’s psychopathic villain sums up the entire plot of SPEED to cop Keanu Reeves, impromptu bus driver Sandra Bullock, and the audience in one of the most pared-down, straight-ahead action-thrillers of the golden ‘90s. Full of manic exhilaration and iconic set pieces, SPEED will make you believe that a bus can fly.
“Films like SPEED belong to the genre I call Bruised Forearm Movies, because you’re always grabbing the arm of the person sitting next to you. Done well, they’re fun. Done as well as SPEED, they generate a kind of manic exhilaration.” – Roger Ebert
MR. THANK YOU
This charming road movie follows a genial local bus driver along his route as he transports a group of travelers, comprising a microcosm of Japanese society, from the far reaches of the Izu peninsula to the train station that links it to Tokyo. Rediscovered in the 1970s, Shimizu’s film, once judged as a failed experiment by a Kinema Junpo critic, is now recognized as a classic, incorporating all the hallmarks of his cinema: the tragicomic tone; the provincial setting; the loose, improvisational narrative; the naturalistic performances; the luminous plein-air cinematography; and the glancing but trenchant observation of social inequality. Shooting entirely on location in his cherished Izu, which he is said to have known “like the back of his hand,” and using a redressed Shochiku studio van, Shimizu fashions a tour of depression-era Japan that deserves mention in the company of Ford’s STAGECOACH and Renoir’s THE CRIME OF MONSIEUR LANGE.
“This chirpy, cheerful bus ride is the Shimizu film that comes closest to a full-scale social portrait of the 1930s. MR. THANK YOU is not a film that smiles through its tears but one that speaks out in anger behind the superficial good humor.” - Alan Stanbrook
SPEED
“Pop quiz, hotshot. There’s a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do?” Dennis Hopper’s psychopathic villain sums up the entire plot of SPEED to cop Keanu Reeves, impromptu bus driver Sandra Bullock, and the audience in one of the most pared-down, straight-ahead action-thrillers of the golden ‘90s. Full of manic exhilaration and iconic set pieces, SPEED will make you believe that a bus can fly.
“Films like SPEED belong to the genre I call Bruised Forearm Movies, because you’re always grabbing the arm of the person sitting next to you. Done well, they’re fun. Done as well as SPEED, they generate a kind of manic exhilaration.” – Roger Ebert