Thursday, July 3
Hollywood ’39: The Brightest Stars and Biggest Films of Hollywood’s Greatest Year

The Buffalo International Film Festival is co-presenting a film series in honor of Hollywood’s historically momentous year. It kicked off last week with The Wizard of Oz and wraps at the end of August with Gone With the Wind. Imagine those two epic classics in competition with each other for Best Picture at the 1939 Oscars, and you’ll have a sense of the excitement audiences were experincing during that year in cinema (GWTW won, by the way). But there were plenty other fine, if less extravagantly spectacular, films released in 1939 that were responsible for creating the general consensus among film buffs that 1939 was Hollywood’s greatest year. The series can’t show all of those great films (Stagecoach and Wuthering Heights are notably absent from the list), but the presenters have done a great job compiling a group of films that represent the importance of Hollywood’s watershed year. Frank Capra’s Mister Smith Goes to Washington, starring Jimmy Stewart (pictured) will screen tonight, followed by Boris Karloff in The Man They Could Not Hang on July 17. After that there will be a film every Thursday: The Little Princess, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Babes in Arms, Destry Rides Again, Dark Victory, and the grand finale—a “Southern Plantation BBQ Party Spectacular” and screening of Gone With the Wind. Visit buffalofilmfestival.com for details

7pm. Every Thursday through August 29. Riviera Theater, 67 Webster Street, N. Tonawanda

(692-2113/rivieratheatre.org).