A Roman Orgy

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All September MoMA here in New York is having a Roman Polanski retrospective. (I can already hear the oncoming thunk of fingers on keyboards offering up opinion pieces on his sordid personal life, hooray) They are showing no less than seven movies that I adore, along with several more that I have a healthy affection for. Adrien Brody will be introducing the movie he won his Oscar for, The Pianist, a week from tonight, and from there it runs up until the end of the month.... I suppose it'll all be capped off by his latest film Carnage opening the New York Film Festival on September 30th (which isn't playing at MoMA, but hey same city I guess).

I try to catch Rosemary's Baby whenever I can but there are so many other choices here I might have to set the Woodhouses aside this time. I am only one man, and with NYFF right on this things heels I can only spread myself so thin, movie-wise! Likewise I saw Repulsion on the big screen just a few months ago, and I am pretty sure I saw The Tenant in a theater in the past couple of years too.

But you know what I've never seen on a big screen? Chinatown. I've literally got a wave of goosebumps riding up and down my arms at typing that. Same goes for The Fearless Vampire Killers, which is such marvelous fun. And then there the early films, Knife in the Water and Cul-de-Sac, whose sharp-contrast black-and-white photography will presumably look glorious projected large.
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And then I wonder what seeing Frantic or Death and the Maiden or Bitter Moon this way will do for my sturdy like if not quite exaggerated love of those movies and suddenly I am at the theater every damn night! Remember how I was talking about the crazy wealth of good cinematic options here in NYC the other week? It continues, it seems.
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