FILM

Alamo Drafthouse Mason (Katy) presents Big Screen Classics: ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE.  Presented in a High-definition digital restoration!

Like a rich Bordeaux from a good vintage, some films age well, delicately maturing and growing more sophisticated with each passing year. There is a wealth of cinematic gems out there, gathering dust in the annals of time. Enter Big Screen Classics - a place where we celebrate all of the accomplishments in movies over the past 100+ years. Here you'll see the crème de la crème of old movie magic.  You'll always be amazed at the riches of cinema history at Big Screen Classics.

This series also encompasses our Digital Classics Series. The newest advancement in digital movie technology involves the painstaking restoration and preservation of classic films using computer technology. The films are then printed onto 4K or 2K digital drives, providing the clearest and brightest image possible using our state-of-the-art digital projectors. Whenever an archive or a studio announces a new digital restoration, we rush to bring it to the Alamo.

Jimmy Stewart stars in Frank Capra’s masterpiece of Christmastime despair, a tale you’ve seen countless times but must see again.

Stewart plays banker, family man and general mensch George Bailey. Bailey is a clever man with big dreams, but his ambitions are always thwarted by his compassion and the townspeople of Bedford Falls who take advantage of it. The film captures this intense conflict perfectly, and all the credit belongs to Stewart, whose career-topping performance here is too often overlooked in all the holiday merriment.

Stewart as Bailey goes from compassionate to overwhelmed to drained in a fury he never repeated. When the assistance of an Angel shows him what life would have been like if he had never been born, Bailey sees that sometimes sacrifice has its own rewards. It is no wonder that this, a very strange movie about money, about morality, about sacrifice, is so damned superlative about so many things.

It is the most Christmassy, the most inspirational, and certainly the most heartwarming, of all Hollywood output during the Golden Age. Frank Capra’s Yuletide yarn is touching, and will bring you to tears for a good portion of its two-plus hour running time. With its perfect winter setting, good cheer, and strong family and community message, this film is the quintessential representation of the Christmas Spirit in the cinema, and it is meant to be enjoyed over and over again.