Teen classic ‘Fast Times’ at 35
“Fast Times at Ridgemont
High”: Perhaps the most critically underappreciated career of a female director in Hollywood is that of Amy Heckerling, who had an excellent run of success. The endlessly hilarious and intelligent high school comedy “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” was her debut; she would go on to direct “Johnny Dangerously,” “National Lampoon’s European Vacation,” the first two “Look Who’s Talking” movies, and “Clueless.” Future director Cameron Crowe wrote “Fast Times,” and the film was the anthem for high school angst before John Hughes would come to corner that market. Fathom Events is celebrating the 35th anniversary — can it have been that long ago? — with nationwide screenings on Sunday, July 30, and Wednesday, Aug. 2, including on about two dozen Bay Area screens. The all-star cast includes Sean Penn (“Hey bud, let’s party!”), Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold and small roles for future stars Eric Stoltz, Nicolas Cage, Anthony Edwards and Forest Whitaker. For theaters, tickets and information, go to www.fathomevents.com.
Women’s Troubles: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar: The name Almodóvar joins that of Chaplin, Hitchcock, Fellini and Godard, among others. The names themselves conjure up a certain kind of film, and their films are instantly identifiable as theirs. They basically have created their own genres. An Almodóvar film is centered on women and how their frailties often turn to strengths. The eightfilm retrospective at the Berkeley Art Museum’s Pacific Film Archive begins at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 27, with his 1988 breakthrough “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” and runs through Aug. 31. The series includes his latest film, “Julieta” (Aug. 5) and his 1980 debut, “Pepi, Luci, Bom, and Other Girls Like Mom” (Aug. 12). “All About My Mother” (Aug. 19) and “Volver” (Aug. 31), both with Penélope Cruz among the ensemble cast, are movies that pay tribute to the power of writing and imagination: Both are inspired by plots by a novelist (Marisa Paredes, who is in “All About My Mother”) that are explained in Almodóvar’s earlier “The Flower of My Secret.” BAMPFA, 2155 Center St., Berkeley. (510) 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.
“Maurice”: Pam Grady has a nice appreciation of perhaps Merchant-Ivory’s biggest risk as filmmakers coming up in Sunday’s Chronicle, but heads up: the 4K restoration of the 1987 adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel opens Friday, July 28, in a limited art house run. Written around 1914, then promptly stuffed into a drawer, the novel’s purpose was to help Forster deal with his own homosexuality. It wasn’t published until after his death in 1970. Producer Ismael Merchant and director James Ivory were riding high after their breakthrough film, the Oscar-nominated boxoffice hit “A Room With a View,” but although most filmmakers would play it safe, they took a risk in making a film with a homosexual theme as the HIV/AIDS epidemic became a national story. Ivory, who is gay, pushed to make this film, starring Hugh Grant, James Wilby and Ben Kingsley, and that says something about his artistic commitment. Predictably, ’80s audiences were not kind — it made about onetenth the box office take of “A Room With a View.” It seems as if it were made for these times. At Landmark’s Opera Plaza Cinema, 2261 Fillmore St., S.F. (415) 561-9921; and Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas, 2230 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. (510) 644-2992. www.landmarktheatres.com.