Yes, it's got The Shower Scene. But Hitch's confident control of the medium suffuses every other moment of the film as well: Shadows and headlights flickering in the night. Softly sympathetic psychopathy. Stuffed birds, black lingerie, dark sunglasses. And those strings, always those lilting strings, drawing you down the road to doom.

Russell's Frisco trip goes to hell when his friend's fiancée – and even worse, his truck – is kidnapped. To rescue both he descends into the seedy side of Chinatown, squaring off with an evil sorcerer in a genre-mixing kung fu fantasy action comedy that’s ridiculous in all the best ways. Intro by Marc Longenecker, Film Studies.

A “One Book, One Middletown” Community Event, co-sponsored by Friends of the Wesleyan Library. “One Book, One Middletown” is a program of the Middletown Rotary Club, CT Humanities’ Center for the Book, Russell Library and the City of Middletown.

“One Book, One Middletown” is a local effort organizing a series of community events in relation to a specific written work. This year’s selection is Ernest Cline’s novel Ready, Player One, a sci-fi adventure that includes BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA among its impressive (obsessive?) catalog of 80’s pop culture references and also shares the overall spirit of the film. However, knowledge of the book is by no means necessary to enjoy the film or the introductory remarks.

Additional links:

http://www.middletownrotary.org/OneBook.cfm

http://russelllibrary.org/news_events/obom.html

In the Brit troupe’s deliciously blasphemous triumph, the poor lad born a few stables down from Jesus spends his life getting mistaken for the Messiah. Jokes about stonings, crucifixions, and proper Latin come fast and furious, all leading up to the catchiest philosophical maxim ever set to melody.

An elderly couple visit their children in Tokyo. From this simple scenario Ozu builds a work of earthshaking emotional import, framing with quiet observational precision the fear of looming mortality and the toll taken by modernity on tradition. Named the greatest movie of all time by SIGHT AND SOUND’S recent poll of film directors.