Texas Theater film festival

Oak Cliff's Texas Theater, best known as the place where Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended, is conducting its own film festival, offering the public the opportunity to see one of last year's best films, Sin Nombre, on the big screen. The screening will be at 3 p.m., Sunday, May 23, but I must warn you in advance this harrowing tale of a kid trying to escape the clutches of a Mexican gang and a Honduran teenage girl who joins him in a desperate attempt to make it to America is not your typical Sunday afternoon family fare.

Other screenings in the theater's festival are:

• John Carpenter's re-make of The Thing, Thursday, May 13, 7:30 p.m.
• Joel and Ethan Coen's brilliant noir-thriller debut film, Blood Simple, which also introduced me to the immense talents of actress Frances McDormand, Tuesday, May 18, at 7:30 p.m.
• The fascinating double feature of Howard Hughes' Hells Angels along with Martin Scorsese's Hughes biography The Aviator, which deals in its early sections with Hughes' making of Hells Angels, Thursday, May 27, at 7 p.m.  (It needs to be noted here that Hughes was credited with opening the Texas Theater in 1931.)
• Los Cronocrimines, a film I am completely unfamiliar with, but whose description reminds me of this excellent thriller, Sunday, May 30, at 3 p.m.
• The documentary Gimme Shelter about the 1969 Rolling Stones concert tour (they played here at Moody Coliseum the night before Apollo 11 blasted off on that tour) that culminated in infamous Altamont Speedway festival, Thursday, June 3, 7:30 p.m.
• Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's much-praised Amores Perros, which everyone in the world liked more than I, Sunday, June 6, 3 p.m.

But the festival includes more than just movies. According to the theater's Web site, "We'll have music from DJ's, works from area and national artists and performers. You can enjoy it all with a drink from the lobby bar."

And all it takes is a $5 donation (not including the drinks from the lobby bar).  Sounds like a deal to me.