Category Archives: Archive

Love the Bomb April 24th

April 5, 2026 – 4:00 pm

The absurdity of nuclear politics is dialed to an 11 in Dr. Strangelove (1964), Stanley Kubrick’s seriously funny film about dropping the H-bomb. Based on British writer Peter George’s novel Red Alert, which imagines rational and responsible responses to a nuclear accident between the United States and the Soviet Union, in Kubrick’s reimagining, madness and […]

By Lawrence Modern | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

Mr. Hulot returns Nov. 14

October 18, 2025 – 6:17 pm

Back by popular demand—and perhaps by cosmic design—Jacques Tati’s PlayTime returns to the Lawrence Modern Film Series on Friday, November 14. After the laughs we shared over the summer with Mon Oncle, we couldn’t resist bringing Monsieur Hulot back for an encore. Our first attempt at a film series more than a decade ago began […]

By Lawrence Modern | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Lawrence should have a Haystack

October 10, 2025 – 9:46 pm

One afternoon in the summer of 2014, while visiting modernist architect Carol A. Wilson’s home studio in Falmouth, Maine, I mentioned that my wife and I were planning to take a trip up to Acadia National Park the next day. Knowing that I had an interest in modern architecture, Carol said, “You should go check […]

By Lawrence Modern | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Come visit My Uncle Aug. 1st!

July 11, 2025 – 12:30 pm

What happens when your charmingly clueless uncle stumbles into the future—and starts pressing all the wrong buttons? That’s the setup for director Jacques Tati’s French comedy Mon Oncle—the follow-up to his masterpiece, Playtime—where the endearingly inept Monsieur Hulot still finds himself at odds with modern architecture, mechanical efficiency and consumerism in postwar Paris. From Tati’s […]

By Lawrence Modern | Leave a Comment

Film noir meets spaghetti western

March 26, 2025 – 4:00 pm

The premise of Tokyo Drifter (Tokyo Nagaremono, 1966) is simple: a reformed yakuza hitman named Tetsu decides to quit his gang and marry his girlfriend, nightclub singer Chiharu. His boss has other plans. The rest is all bright color, stagy sets, songs, jokes, and a nearly incomprehensible plot. But when the mix is this good, […]

By Lawrence Modern | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment