The Savoy Theater

THE SAVOY THEATER
26 Main Street
Montpelier, VT 05602

  • Recording:
    802-229-0509
  • VT toll-free recording:
    800-676-0509
  • Savoy office:
    802-229-0598
  • Downstairs Video:
    802-223-0050
  • VT toll-free DV phone:
    800-898-0050
  • Email:
    film@savoytheater.com

 

Coming Soon


Frozen River

Coming Soon

Chris Knight, National Post,


It's rare these days for a movie to find new and relevant hot-button issues to push, but this first film from writer/director Courtney Hunt manages just that. When was the last time you saw a movie that dealt with smuggling illegal Chinese and Pakistani immigrants into the United States across - wait for it - the unguarded "border" of a First Nations reserve that straddles American and Canadian territory?

Ray is played by Melissa Leo, an actress with more than 60 film and TV credits to her name whom you probably still wouldn't recognize on the street. She has zero glam in this role as an impoverished woman in upstate New York, working at a dollar store where she can barely afford to shop. The directional signs along the highway into Massena tell you all you need to know about the place: It features industrial plants and a bridge to Canada.

When Ray's husband up and vanishes, she half-heartedly goes looking for him, but instead runs across a young First Nations woman (Misty Upham) who's trying to make off with his car. While it's difficult to believe that someone could almost accidentally engage in cross-border smuggling, this is essentially what happens to her. But when she sees the money to be made in ferrying people across a river in the trunk of her car, she wants in on the action. After all, she's saving up for a double-wide trailer for her boys to live in, and at her dollar-store salary that's going to take until hell, like the river, has frozen over.

Hunt's screenplay portrays the culture clash of whites and natives without resorting to cliché or pandering. There are no noble savages in this film, and the whites are neither colonizers nor missionaries; everyone is just trying to pull themselves a rung or two further up the ladder. They're not very high up to begin with. There is mistrust, animosity and racism from both sides, sometimes directed at the poor foreigners unlucky enough to have been caught in these smugglers' nets.

FROZEN RIVER received a lot of buzz at this year's Sundance, and ultimately won the Grand Jury Prize for domestic drama. It features some stunning cinematography, particularly shots of Ray's car crawling down the slushy banks of the river and out into the snowy abyss. Best of all, it never gets preachy, pressing those hot buttons with the lightest of touches.

  • Rated R; 97 minutes.

 

Trouble the Water

Coming Soon

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times,

  • If Kimberly Roberts, the dynamo at the center of the documentary TROUBLE THE WATER, wasn’t a big woman with a great big mouth, her video images of Hurricane Katrina and the floodwaters that washed away her world in 2005 might have ended up as just another pixelated smear on YouTube. Happily for her and the rest of us, the filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, both of whom have done time working with Michael Moore, realized that Ms. Roberts was a dream of a documentary subject.

    Ms. Roberts is such a charismatic figure that she might have overwhelmed this movie. But Mr. Deal and Ms. Lessin have the big picture in mind, not just a personal portrait. Working with the editors T. Woody Richman and Mary Lampson, they have created an ingeniously fluid narrative structure that, when combined with Ms. Roberts’s visuals, news material and their own original 16-millimeter film footage, ebbs and flows like great drama.

  • Not Rated; 94 minutes.

 

Happy-Go-Lucky

Coming Soon

Dan Jolin, Empire Magazine,

  • Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is a London primary school teacher. After her bike is stolen she gets driving lessons, but her teacher, Scott, turns out to be a bit of a nut. She begins learning flamenco. One of the kids in her class has problems at home. And all the while, she barely stops smiling…

    It is a fairly common misconception that crying on demand is one of the hardest things an actor can do. It’s not. Sneezing convincingly, for example, is tougher. As is laughing. And by that we mean proper laughing - laughing with your eyes, to paraphrase Roald Dahl, rather than with your mouth. In this sense, Mike Leigh regular Sally Hawkins delivers a remarkable performance as Poppy, a woman who greets every situation with a smile, a joke and a guffaw, as if she’s hooked on nitrous oxide.

    Towards the end of the film, her flatmate advises her, “You can’t make everyone ’appy all the time,” to which she replies, “Yeah, but there’s no ’arm in tryin’.” Some would disagree, and that’s the driving dynamic of Leigh’s latest film: in an insular, insecure urban society, what do we make of someone like Poppy? She certainly challenges the assumptions of those who encounter her, from a snooty bookshop clerk to unhinged driving instructor, to us, the audience. She’s not stupid, she’s not naive, she’s not even self-deceptive - we uncover no dark soul broiling beneath the gleaming smile and dizzy mannerisms.

  • Still, those who only know Leigh by his (unfair) reputation as a miserablist might be surprised to find that ultimately, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY is a genuine feelgood film. Mike Leigh draws a bravura performance out of Sally Hawkins, and she in return makes Poppy one of Leigh’s best characters yet - up there with the likes of Vera Drake or Beverly from Abigail’s Party. There’s a good chance that you’ll wish you could face all life’s tribulations 'Poppy-style.' You might even be tempted to give it a go — after all, there’s no ’arm in tryin’.

  • Not Rated; 94 minutes.