Magic Lantern: Getting back to the non-mainstream

Above : Andres Riseborough stars in “Please Baby Please.” (Photo/Music Box Films)

On Friday, the Magic Lantern Theatre will open a pair of movies that hark back to a time half a century ago when the Spokane movie palace first defined itself.

That definition? As a place that was determined to show movies that didn’t fit mainstream tastes. Not always, anyway.

In any event, the two movies the Lantern is opening – “Triangle of Sadness” and “Please Baby Please” – are far from mainstream fare.

“Triangle of Sadness” : Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund (“Force Majeure,” “The Square”) gives us a tale about what happens when a ship bearing a group of ultra-rich passengers sinks, and the survivors have to find a way to survive on a remote island.

Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post wrote, “As always with Östlund, his most profligate flights of fancy tack close enough to reality to ring queasily true.”

Stephanie Zacharek of Time magazine had a different view. “You can fully agree that most ‘haves’ are dreadful, and that the ‘have nots’ deserve much more out of life, and still be exhausted and bored by ‘Triangle of Sadness’ and its quirky acidity.”

“Please Baby Please” : Musician-turned-filmmaker Amanda Kramer imagination runs wild in this fantasy exploration of a newly married couple’s fascination with a “West Side Story”-type gang of greasers.

Wendy Ide of Screen International wrote, “Any film which features Demi Moore breathily vamping her way through an appreciation for her dishwasher and which permits Andrea Riseborough to deliver a performance as gloriously OTT (over the top) as this one has plenty to recommend it.”

For argument’s sake, Slant Magazine critic William Repass wrote, “The film’s unapologetic level of artifice is at once the source of its pleasures and limitations.”

I’ll update as the week progresses.