Double Feature

Dr. Strangelove

Perhaps the greatest film ever made about the Cold War, Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb is the seminal political black comedy, skewering militarism, nuclear policy, the Red Scare, masculinity and host of other worthy targets in classic style. Starring Peter Sellers in his legendary trio (overwrought British Captain Mandrake, ineffectual American President Muffley, unhinged ex-Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove himself) and featuring George C. Scott at his most manic, Sterling Hayden stone cold crazy, and Slim Pickens as cornpone as ever, this twisted adaptation of the popular thriller Fail-Safe, co-written by Terry Southern, fearlessly hee-haws at the utter insanity of “mutually ass-ured destruction,” taking down Americans, Soviets, Brits, Nazis and the rest of the world with it.

“Dr. Strangelove seems remarkably fresh and undated – a clear-eyed, irreverant, dangerous satire. If movies of this irreverence, intelligence and savagery were still being made, the world would seem a younger place.” – Roger Ebert

“Beyond any question the most shattering sick joke I’ve ever come across.” – Bosley Crowther, The New York Times

“Perhaps Kubrick’s most perfectly realized film, simply because his cynical vision of the progress of technology and human stupidity is wedded with comedy, in this case Terry Southern’s sparkling script in which the world comes to an end thanks to a mad US general’s paranoia about women and commies. The result is scary, hilarious, and nightmarishly beautiful, far more effective in its portrait of insanity and call for disarmament than any number of worthy anti-nuke documentaries.” – Time Out

Being There

Peter Sellers triumphs in his classic performance as an illiterate gardener who is hilariously catapulted into the fast lane of political power. A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television. After a run-in with a limousine, he ends up a guest of a woman (Shirley MacLaine) and her husband Ben (Melvyn Douglas), an influential but sickly businessman. Now called Chauncey Gardner, Chance becomes friend and confidante to Ben, and an unlikely political insider. (Warner Bros.)