After Sunset: The Life and Times of the Drive-In Theater Review

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(More customer reviews)"After Sunset: The Life & Times of the Drive-In Movie Theater" has less to do with the history of drive-in movie theaters than it does with exploring the sentimentality of the time of their peak. While the telling the history of the subject and exploring the "essence" of it does not strike a good balance (it does not tell much history--for example, it does not even say who invented the drive-in movie theater) this documentary has its heart in the right place.
Featuring interviews with John Carpenter, Samuel Z. Arkoff, John "Joe Bob Briggs" Bloom, stories of drive-in memories and commentaries create a picture of a bygone era. Director Jon Bokenkamp aslo interviews drive-in owners and others on the road while traveling with a group of friends. They are traveling back to the director's small hometown in Nebraska where he has orgnaized an event for 4th of July, screenings of movies and other various activities at a drive-in movie theater. Albeit this story structure does not hit the right balance of telling the history of drive-ins and capturing their essence in their peak, it is a fun 45 minutes looking at people's unending fascination with outdoor movie theaters--which illuminate this love brightly, like some neon marquees of some remaining drive-ins still standing today.

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Nearly 63 years after its conception, the drive-in theater stands as one of America's last great icons. It represents an entire era of American culture ranging from the space race and the automobile to the emergence of the teenage and movies like Beach Blanket Bingo. But now, in the age of the multiplex and bottled water, the drive-in theater is nearly gone... it's a dinosaur. With hopes of better understanding the past, filmmaker Jon Bokenkamp leads his ragtag crew across the American West. Using drive-in theaters as their map, these four young men search for a simpler time. Talking to those who built and lived the drive-in theater, they give a true picture of what the era of the outdoor theater was all about. Whether you have ever been to a drive-in or not, still frequent a remaining one, or simply recall with fondness those starry nights of popcorn and two-bit love, you'll find After Sunset to be a unique new film about one of the great icons of 20th-century ! America. Featuring interviews with director John Carpenter, author Michael Wallis, Hollywood movie mogul Samuel Z. Arkoff (producer of Beach Blanket Bingo), and satirist and social critic John Bloom (aka Joe Bob Briggs)."A wonderful evocation of a distinct piece of Americana." - Leonard Maltin, film critic

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