Belcourt Midnight Movie: The Fifth Element

Is it the blue octopus diva gowned in Jean-Paul Gaultier threads? Is it Gary Oldman as a villainous pipsqueak Frankensteined out of Elvis, Hitler and H. Ross Perot? Is it those cool lizard dudes with the Barbarella-style laser guns; Chris Tucker as a Prince clone hosting an intergalactic talk show; or the fact that years before anyone had heard of Barack Obama, this French sci-fi whatsit presented a black man as U.S. president--and it's Tiny Lister from the Friday movies? No, the reason we love Luc Besson's gloriously insane 1997 extravaganza is that it contains every single one of these incompatible elements, and four dozen more that'll leave you staring goggle-eyed at the screen. Bruce Willis is the futuristic cabbie who shelters holy innocent Milla Jovovich (in duct-tape bra) from evil Tricky and Oldman's minions; if you've never seen this on the big screen, it's worth going just for the vertiginous shot of Jovovich swan-diving off a ledge into about 200 stories of flying-car traffic--a moment just waiting for the application of updated 3D technology.
Sat., June 6, midnight; Sun., June 7, midnight, 2009