Pete's picks for 4th of July weekend

Celebrate Independence Day with America's greatest invention: the cinema!

I'm looking forward to having a day off to catch up on some movies that have snuck past me, starting with Michael Mann's new gangster picture, Public Enemies. Can't wait to see Johnny Depp's take on John Dillinger. And while I'm at it, let me recommend the great Warner Bros. gangster films of the 1930s, which are available in beautiful box sets and at your local public libraries. James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart...now those guys were movie stars.

The best of the best is Cagney's White Heat, but The Roaring Twenties, The Public Enemy, Angels With Dirty Faces, and Scarface are all really, really great. On Friday, July 3 at the Castro Theater, they're having a wonderful double feature of John Garfield in They Made Me A Criminal and Cagney and George Raft in the gripping Each Dawn I Die.

Speaking of Cagney, the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto has a killer double feature this weekend: Yankee Doodle Dandy and Footlight Parade. The latter features some of the nuttiest Busby Berkeley choreography ever. Well worth the drive to see on the big screen.

Livermore's indie Vine Cinema continues its series of free family movies with showings of Shrek the Third everyday at noon this week. Gotta tip my hat to that! Have a great holiday everyone!

Posted at 04:21 PM in Pete's Popcorn Picks | Permalink