‘The Witches,’ with Anjelica Huston, still casts a delicious spell
Disney’s “The BFG” may be just around the corner, but there is no better or truer Roald Dahl adaptation than “The Witches,” Nicolas Roeg’s spry and macabre thriller about a plucky lad, his formidable grandmother and the evil society of undercover hags they encounter during an English seaside holiday.
Starring a supremely malevolent Anjelica Huston (who won the 1990 best actress prize from the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. for her work in this film and “The Grifters”), “The Witches” notably earned Dahl’s scorn for its “utterly appalling” ending. Yet in its unapologetic embrace of the grotesque and its refusal to infantilize its young audience, Roeg’s film is fully in keeping with the author’s sensibility. You’ll never look at a mouse — or a bowl of soup — quite the same way again.
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‘The Witches’
Where: Cinefamily, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles
When: Friday, June 17, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $12; free for members
Info: www.cinefamily.org
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