Kimball Summer Movies

Already seen The Dark Knight three times, and not quite game for the musical renderings of Mama Mia? Head on down to the Kimball Theatre in Merchants Square for a fresh take on cinema. With the $6 student rate, tickets are cheaper than at Regal Cinemas in New Town. Plus, you don’t have to drive!

Depending on your tastes, the Kimball has several great choices to keep your entertained before everyone finally joins us back in Williamsburg. Not to mention, a date at the Kimball would be a great way to welcome your beau back to town! Smuggle in some Wythe’s candy, and enjoy some award-winning films.

Flight of the Red Balloon, 6:45 and 8:45 p.m. Aug. 1-10. Hou Hsiao Hsien’s (“Three Times” and “Café Lumiere”) “Flight of the Red Balloon” is a charming homage to the 1956 French classic by Albert Lamorisse and an intimate portrait of a unique Paris family. Juliette Binoche stars as Suzanne, an accomplished puppeteer who hires a Taiwanese nanny (Song Fang) for her gentle seven-year-old son Simon (Simon Iteanu). With love, patience, good humor and lyrical long takes, Hou Hsiao Hsien captures the ups and downs of a chaotic household. French with subtitles. Not rated.

Reprise, 7 and 9 p.m. Aug. 10-17. The freewheeling passion of youth and the unpredictable perils of fate are both the subject and the breathtaking form of Joachim Trier’s lean and kinetic journey through friendship, love, madness and creativity. Two friends, Erik (Espen Klouman-Hoiner) and Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie), are taken down different paths in life when one becomes a literary success and the other remains unpublished. Trier captures the way life takes off at rocket-speed in the beginning of adulthood—and the what-ifs and why-nots that both drive and haunt us as the unbridled hopes of youth come to a screeching halt. Winner for Best Direction, Best Film and Best Screenplay at the 2007 Amanda Awards, Norway. Norwegian with subtitles. Rated: R.

Then She Found Me, 6:45 and 8:45 p.m. Aug. 15-24. Academy Award–winning actress Helen Hunt makes her feature directorial debut with this adaptation of Elinor Lipman’s best-selling novel about a Philadelphia schoolteacher (Hunt) whose long-lost birth mother (Bette Midler) reappears at the very moment her daughter is careening into a midlife crisis. Abandoned by her husband (Matthew Broderick) and still grieving the death of her adoptive mother, the emotionally fragile teacher enters into a relationship with a student’s father (Colin Firth) just as her biological mother, an eccentric talk show host, appears on her doorstep attempting reconciliation. Winner of the Audience Award at the 2008 Palm Springs International Film Festival. Rated: R.

Son of Rambow, 7 and 9 p.m. Aug. 24-31. “Son of Rambow” is a hilariously fresh and visually inventive take on friendship, family, film heroes and the death-defying adventures of growing up in the video age. The story takes place in 1980s Britain, where young Will Proudfoot is raised in isolation among The Brethren, a puritanical religious sect in which music and TV are strictly forbidden. When Will encounters his first movie, a pirated copy of “Rambo: First Blood,” his imagination is blown wide open. Filmed in a creatively madcap, homemade style with a mostly amateur cast and wry, comic-tinged nostalgia, creative visionaries Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith manage to capture both the agony and the giddy ecstasy of a camcorder childhood with humor, poignancy and a rousing dose of cinematic panache. Rated: PG-13.

Mister Lonely, 6:45 and 8:45 p.m. Aug. 29-Sept. 4. When a Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) living in Paris falls for a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) during a performance at a retirement home, the love-struck pair retreats to a seaside castle in the Scottish highlands populated by a commune of reclusive impersonators. Michael and Marilyn find the commune preparing for their first-ever gala—a lavish affair featuring appearances by Abe Lincoln, the Three Stooges, Buckwheat, Shirley Temple, Madonna, Sammy Davis Jr. and Charlie Chaplin. Not rated.

For more information, contact the Kimball Theatre box office at 757.565.8588 or visit www.kimballtheatre.com.