Last Chance Movies

Last Chance Movies

“Grand Master: The Films of Stanley Kubrick”--The American Cinematheque’s retrospective ends Saturday with the documentary “Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures” and the director’s last film, “Eyes Wide Shut.” The latter, completed just before his death and starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as a married couple who stumble onto the edge of a terrible moral abyss, is a strange, somber and troubling meditation on jealousy, obsession and (yes) sex and death. More European than Hollywood in tone, it’s half brilliant, half banal but always the work of a master director whose output has gotten increasingly distant and self-involved over the years, and not always to our benefit.... But when Kubrick, as in the dark and unnerving film-within-a-film orgy scene that is “Eyes Wide Shut’s” centerpiece, cuts words to a minimum and uses pure cinematic technique to go to the core of his emotions, what results has the powerful, lacerating impact of inescapable nightmare. This is finally a film that is better at mood than substance, that has its strongest hold on you when it’s making the least amount of sense.

From the review by Kenneth Turan

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“Grand Master: The Films of Stanley Kubrick” at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 466-3456. “Lolita,” today, 7:30 p.m.; “Paths of Glory” and “Full Metal Jacket,” Friday, 7:30 p.m.; “A Life in Pictures,” Saturday at 5 p.m.; “Eyes Wide Shut,” Saturday, 8:30 p.m. $6 to $8.

Also closing this weekend:

“The Last Night of Ballyhoo”--Alfred Uhry’s 1997 Tony Award-winning play about a Jewish family in the deep South, circa 1939, ends Saturday at the Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach, (562) 494-1014.

“Fools”--Neil Simon’s zany trifle about 19th century villagers cursed with foolishness ends Sunday at the Blue Sphere Alliance at the Lex, 6760 Lexington Ave., Hollywood, (323) 957-5782.

“How the West Was Worn”--The exhibit examining the influences, traditions and history of Western attire ends Sunday at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, 4700 Western Heritage Way, L.A., (323) 667-2000.

“Disruptive Directors of British Television”--Screenings of work by Alan Clarke, Stephen Frears, Mike Leigh, Ken Russell and others end Saturday at the Museum of Television and Radio, 465 N. Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 786-1000.