#lagoon theater

[chaddavisphotography]

"ICE OUT NOW!" in the windows of the Landmark Lagoon Cinema. Uptown Minneapolis January 29, 2026

More of my coverage: Photos: ICE IN MINNEAPOLIS

[skjam]

The Big C and Weeds

8/12/2010

The Lagoon had a special free showing of two Showtime series last night. Given my apartment has no AC, and the movie theater does, I chose to attend. Even better, Showtime gave all attendees a coupon for free popcorn and soda pop! ( I just took the pop as by coincidence Target gave out free popcorn at the Diversity Council Health Fair the same day.) I *think* the free showing was because The Big C is set in St. Paul, and a number of people there were extras. It took me until the Porky's scene to realize where the setting was supposed to be. The show is about a St. Paul high school history teacher who's diagnosed with terminal cancer, and her attempts to deal with her impending mortality. The wacky supporting cast makes this difficult. The character that rang truest was the cranky neighbor who never smiles. "Weeds", on the other hand, seems to have ranged far afield from its roots of "desperate suburban housewife turns to marijuana growing to make ends meet." I'm guessing this episode is the season premiere, as it opens with one of the characters doing something that would resolve a cliffhanger. Satisfying as that looked, the action has consequences, and the rest of the episode is about fleeing them. Pretty funny, but some characters just made me cringe. All in all, a pleasant diversion on a boiling hot day, but not enough to make me finally get cable.

(2022 update: later someone combined these shows to make Breaking Bad.)

[samuelandthewilburbots]

Black and White Lagoon NYE

(Lagoon and Hennepin, Minneapolis, 12/31/14)

[trololololointhedungeon]

OH MY GOD THAT WAS AMAZING INFINITY/10 WOULD RECOMMENd *MATT CLOSEUPS *ENORMOUS KNIGHTS MOSH *TIGHT PANTS *SERIOUSLY THE CROWD WAS SO INTO IT *TROLLIN MATT DURING UNDISCLOSED DESIRES *I STILL CAN'T GET OVER HOW INCREDIBLE THEY ARE LIVE *FALSETTO *PHALLIC-GUITAR PELVIC THRUSTS *SWEET JESUS IS IT DECEMBER YET BECAUSE TAKE MY MONEY

[trololololointhedungeon]

I BOUGHT TICKETS THIS MORNING TO SEE MUSE'S CONCERT DVD IN MINNEAPOLIS TONIGHT. WOOOOOO!!!

[tccinephile]

The Quiet Tension of Martha Marcy May Marlene

   This dreamy social thriller addresses issues of identity, civilization and family with a calm hostility that chilled me to the bone. Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) from writer/director Sean Durkin is a slow burn. It has all the elements of a thriller but they seem to rest below the surface of the troubled mind of Martha (Elizabeth Olsen). Olsen handily plays a young woman seeking a family, and instead finds she’s lost and wrong in a world of hostility.

            For those viewers looking for a sensationalized Lifetime style movie, about a young girl in the clutches of a hippie cult, this is not your film. It takes the subject more seriously and takes it to a more cerebral space. This film has no safe space for Martha. When she seeks refuge in her sister’s home she finds a different kind of hostility and control, no better than that of the “family” she just left. In the thriller this could have been, the sister would have been the caring understanding safety that Martha needed to mend the wrongs wrought upon her by the offending cult. But this film deals with more than the melodrama of cults and abused women; it deals with primarily ideas.

            One idea is identity. Martha is introduced to the film audience multiple times. First we are shown her as a mother/sister/daughter figure in a household that is different from what we as “everyday Americans” know, but seems safe and loving. We then see her flee this household as a scared and hunted creature. Her choice to run also gives the audience a sense of her strength and determination. The film then shows another Martha once she reaches the “safety” of her sister’s house. There is yet another Martha we get a glimpse of on her brother-in-law’s boat. She is a constantly revolving cast of Marthas, Marcy Mays and Marlenes. She is often being told what she should do and what she can do, but never finding a way on her own for fear of being rebuked.

            She is also wrestling with a core dilemma of humanity, to put it bluntly, civilization. It is clear that she was somewhat abandoned earlier in her life, though that is never fully explained, and that she seeks an example to live her life by. She soon meets the charismatic leader of this cult/family/commune, Patrick, and accepts the way they live. Everything is shared: beds, lovers, chores, children, food, affection, talent, clothes and violence. The group is offering the freedom of pure existence, but they are funding it with robbery, death and coercion. Martha can’t pay this price and flees.

            The world and way of living she finds refuge in, her sister’s house and life, is what Americans would call the normal way of life. But what the film makes clear is that there is just as much coercion in this way of life as there is in the cult family. Durkin achieves this through small scenes of action followed by rebuke. Martha nonchalantly disrobes to take a swim. Seeing her naked sister swimming in a not so private lake Lucy (Sarah Paulson), her sister, panics and orders her out of the lake yelling, “What is wrong with you?” In another scene, Martha sits perched on the kitchen counter and her sister restrains herself, asking only that she not put her feet on the counter. And yet another scene, Martha wears the same drab unisex clothes everyday and her sister responds by putting her into a lovely pink dress, and unlike Martha, Lucy thinks that this look is a vast improvement.  

            There are larger transgressions of civilized protocol that I felt a physical reaction against. Martha at one point enters her sister’s room and lies down on the bed while Lucy and Ted are having sex. The pain of misunderstanding and confusion on Elizabeth Olsen’s face brings a sensitivity of empathy toward Martha. She can’t assimilate back into civilization. Or she could but neither Lucy nor Ted is willing or patient enough to be the ones to help her reach that state. Lucy never once presses Martha further for information about her life in the two years she has been gone. The only thing she can think to say to her sister when she has transgressed a cultural taboo is, “What is wrong with you?” It pushes Martha further into her confusion and paranoia.

            Sorry if it sounds like I am being harsh on Lucy and Ted, I don’t mean to be. I think their characters were situated just so as to have no place for Martha and the ideas she represents. During a dinner scene Ted asks Martha what her plans are for her future, Martha has no response that Ted wants. She talks of existing and Ted says that he would love to go to the south of France and just exist. But there, in his idea of lounging around in the south of France, is the disconnect, Ted imagines existing like it is a vacation, Martha sees it as working to feed and cloth yourself but nothing beyond that. Existing, expressed in contrast to the way Ted and Lucy live, means no lake house and penthouse in the city, no closet bursting with clothes options, no T.V., no movies, no job, no responsibilities beyond the health and well being of you and your family, no computers, no email, no excess of food, I could go on, but basically none of the excesses and conveniences of modern life. This is not what Ted thinks of as existing in the south of France.

            Ted and Lucy are different humans who have made different decisions about what is the “right” way to live. Martha has some of her own ideas, but can’t separate them from the ideas put in her head by her cult family. She lives in a state of constant lost and confusion, with no home to call her own. The film was a bleak portrayal of the state outside civilization, and ends with her cornered in a car headed to a mental hospital and being followed by what we are to assume are her cult family. She is an animal trapped by two forces that would dominate her. This film was a beautiful and frightening story of human coercion and need for contact, community and understanding.