FILM SCREENINGS

Beetlejuice

1988. USA. Directed by Tim Burton. Screenplay by Michael McDowell. With Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Catherine O'Hara, Jeffrey Jones, Glenn Shadix. A recently deceased small-town couple are required to haunt their own house for 125 years, but when they are unable to frighten the insufferable urbanites who move in, they hire a “bio-exorcist” to reclaim their home. The director’s cynical version of hell as a bureaucratic waiting room is leavened by such sophomorically gruesome delights as shrunken heads and flattened corpses, creating an atmosphere that shuttles between the world-weary attitudes of adulthood and the unbridled imaginative possibilities of youth. 92 min.