The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, August 19-25
My Dinner with Andre (1981)
Directed by Louis Malle
Long before he voiced a neurotic toy dinosaur, Wallace Shawn co-wrote and starred in this unlikely classic. The plot sounds like an one-act play: Shawn and Andre Gregory, a well-known theater director, meet at an Upper West Side restaurant and, well, they eat and talk. Gregory recounts tales of his travels: being buried alive in Poland, hallucinating mystical beasts in England. Shawn prefers the simple pleasures of his small social bubble and even smaller apartment. Roger Ebert once marveled that the film was entirely devoid of clichés, a feat that has as much to do with its meticulous editing as it does with its script. A.J. Serrano (August 22, 4:30pm, 9:30pm at BAM’s “Indie 80s”)