The Admiral Theatre’s Independent Film Series is about second chances. It’s great for bringing out the small-budget surprises and Sundance Film Festival favorites to the forefront in the fall.
It’s like an aftershock after the earthquake of summer releases.
Now headed into it’s third year, the Admiral series reflects on the best independent movies released in the past year and puts them back on the big screen for one last time. And so it goes monthly (other than December and February), filling the void until next summer’s blitz.
Movie-goers can get a $25 flex pass that gains admittance to any/all of the films in the series, otherwise it’s $7 a show.
This year’s series is kicking off at
7 p.m. Oct. 5 with a fine piece of melancholy perseverance by Keri Russell (Jenna), Jeremy Sisto (Earl) and cast in the Southern small-town movie “Waitress” (2007), rated PG-13, created by the late actress-turned-director Adrienne Shelly.
Though you wouldn’t expect it by Russell’s cheerful demeanor, Jenna, a truck stop restaurant waitress, is dissatisfied, on the verge of loathing her life. The pale blue uniform is her only respite from a cruel and controlling husband — Earl.
Getting the feeling that she is treading water in the middle of nowhere, Jenna cooks up plan after plan for her escape, then she finds out that one night of drunken recklessness with Earl has yielded her pregnant.
Her waitress sisters — Becky played by Cheryl Hines and Dawn played by Shelly — try to help keep her chin up while Jenna tries to get out of there by winning $25,000 in a local pie-baking contest.
All the while her emotions are metaphorically released through her pies like the egg, cheese and ham quiche creation that she calls the “I Don’t Want Earl’s Baby Pie.”
She might also be baking an “I’m In Love With the New OB-GYN In Town Even Though We Are Both Married Pie.”
Despite the downtrodden, melancholic premise of the romantic comedy, some reviewers have likened the spirit of “Waitress” to that of “Little Miss Sunshine” — which was incidentally one of last year’s features of the Admiral’s Independent Series.
November, the last Independent Film Series feature of 2007 at the Admiral, will take cinema-goers to Buenos Aires, Argentina where a wealthy woman and her live-in housekeeper’s time-tested routine is tested by economic crisis in a movie that seems much deeper than it’s simple title — “Live-in Maid.” That show, directed by Jorge Gaggero will be at 7 p.m. Nov. 2. Not Rated.
Also slated for the 2008 portion of the series are:
• Jan. 4, 2008 — “La Vie En Rose” (2007) directed by Oliver Dahan looks into the tumultuous life of the iconic French singer Edith Piaf (played by Marion Cotillard) whose signature song was “The Life in Pink,” thus the title. Rated PG-13
• March 7, 2008 — “God Grew Tired of Us: The Story of Lost Boys of Sudan” (2006) winner of both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival chronicles three Sudanese boys who come to America to escape genocide and help their community. Rated PG.
• April 4, 2008 — “The Boss of it All” by Lars Von Trier, said to be one of Von Trier’s funniest works examines the loopholes of the corporate structure as the owner of an IT firm creates a fictional “boss” to take the rap for any unpopular but necessary steps. Not Rated.
More to be announced upcoming, check What’s Up and www.admiraltheatre.org for updates.
