Out of Print explores the importance of revival cinema.
Let's be clear: This is not really a documentary. It's a project, made with Kickstarter coins by someone who loves something and wants you to love it, too.
Producer/director Julia Marchese found her tribe at the New Beverly Cinema, a revival house in Hollywood since 1978. Now she's shamelessly advocating for it, for revival houses in general and their cool-geek audiences, and for the preservation of 35 mm film. She's marshalled an impressive list of New Beverly regulars (the original Beverly was a porno house), including the actors Seth Green and Patton Oswalt, and the directors Kevin Smith, Edgar Wright and Rian Johnson (who chose his first L.A. apartment, he says, for its proximity to the New Bev), to enthusiastically agree with her.
Her devotion is contagious, but the problem is her storytelling: Every time someone says something – The calendar typeface is unchanged! Independent theatres are a haven in our commercialized world! – she simply has 10 other people say it, too. At 20 minutes, it would have been delightful. At 90, it's fan non-fiction.
Johanna Schneller