The Impossible Dream

Photo by Ted SoquiThe best local resources for catching up with cinematic obscurities remain the city's outstanding revival and repertory cinema venues — the New Beverly Cinema, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the American Cinematheque (with its recently added second home at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica) and, most of all, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, which rarely fails to impress with the depth and breadth of its programming. However, for those unwilling to wait patiently for the next local screenings of Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole or Nicholas Ray's brilliant Bigger Than Life (with James Mason as a cortisone-addicted schoolteacher), or who want to sink their teeth into the early films of Taiwanese director Edward Yang (Yi Yi) or who may merely wish to catch up with recent international film festival favorites months (or sometimes even years) before a U.S. distributor finally comes aboard, there do exist means to such ends. Henceforth, and in the strictest of confidences, a user's guide to seeing the movies you can't see.