The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, October 19-25
Thelma & Louise (1991)
Directed by Ridley Scott
Remembered as one of the greatest feminist Hollywood films, Thelma & Louise might often be called a “Ridley Scott film” and while that might not be entirely unfair, in the case of this movie, authorship must be extended to Callie Khourie, who not only wrote the screenplay, but also co-produced the film along Scott. Khourie’s Thelma & Louise cleverly combines some traditionally male-driven American genres such as the western, the road movie and the “buddy film.” But Thelma & Louise centers the story on two women, played by Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, who immortalize their title characters.
Arkansas waitress Louise Sawyer (Sarandon) and housewife Thelma Dickinson (Davis) decide to go on a fishing trip to break with their uneventful lives. What was intended as a short vacation, turns into violent escape from the law after Louise shoots and kills a man who attempts to rape Thelma. Aboard their dust-covered ’66 Thunderbird, they try to escape to Mexico while being trailed by an empathetic lawman (Harvey Keitel). Scavenging for enough money, they are pushed to their desperate limits but ultimately liberate themselves from a world where they’ll quickly learn that there is no justice for women. Alejandro Veciana (October 23, 6:45pm, 9:45pm at the Metrograph’s “Queer 90s”)