For some moviegoers, the most anticipated sequel of the summer of 2013 is not "Iron Man 3" or "The Hangover Part III" but "Before Midnight," the third chapter in a series that began with "Before Sunrise" in 1995 and continued with "Before Sunset" in 2004.

Nine-year gaps between films would sink a studio franchise, but the unforgiving impact of time and the slipperiness of its mysterious mental record, memory, are the very subjects of "Before Midnight." As an old woman in the movie comments: "We appear and we disappear -- and we are so important to some, but we are just passing through."

If the actual apocalypse arrives soon, it will find "This Is the End" a hard act to follow. A rip-roaring fire-and-brimstone comedy with shocks and special effects that are more startling if not more "realistic" than those found in "serious" blockbusters, the movie is vulgar, violent and grotesque in the extreme. It's juvenile in attitude, yet "adult" in language and visual content: It earns its R rating and then some as it depicts the end of the world with such drug-addled, potty-mouthed, over-the-top and below-the-belt enthusiasm that it also might signal Armageddon for a certain type of boys' club comedy. After all, once you've shown audiences an explicitly naked giant Satan striding the burning landscapes of the Hollywood Hills, his molten glans swinging over incinerated palm trees and vaporized swimming pools, what next? You might as well hit restart and inaugurate a series of P.G. Wodehouse adaptations.

From cowboys to killers; from "Scarface" to "Spin & Marty"; from Mouseketeers to Mighty Joe Young -- the nostalgia-oriented Memphis Film Festival, a celebration of classic cinema and vintage television, begins today (Thursday, June 13) and continues through Saturday (June 15) at its new home at the Sam's Town Hotel and Casino in Tunica County, Miss.

Not be confused with the Indie Memphis Film Festival or On Location: Memphis International Film & Music Fest, both of which primarily showcase new, independent cinema, the Memphis  Film Festival has been a Mid-South tradition for some 40 years, and is just about my favorite local movie event of the year.

For the past five years. the festival has returned more or less to its cowboy roots (hence, its current subtitle: "A Gathering of Guns"). Under the leadership of festival chairman Ray Nielsen and Albuquerque-based Boyd Magers, publisher of the Western Clippings newsletter, the event has boosed attendance and attracted visitors from all over the world by spotlighting the Western genre. In other words, contrary to the business models of most entertainment-related enterprises, which prize the new over the classic, it has rejuvenated itself -- and its revenue stream -- by focusing on a type of filmed entertainment that today's TV and movie moguls have all but relegated to Boot Hill.

What I most love about the Memphis Film Festival is its annual roster of stars, most of whom are long past retirement age and all of whom are connected to some of my most cherished movies and television programs. The festival this year is playing host to some two dozen of these celebrity guests; they will participate in public panel discussions, they will meet and greet fans and they will sign autographs in the popular "dealer's room," where vintage posters, stills and other bits of memorabilia are on sale. Even the stars you (and I) aren't familiar with have appeared in amazing cult and A-list films, and have worked with the true legends of Hollywood. You can read about these guests on the festival website, of course; or, read on: I talked to two of them, Robert Loggia and Terry Moore, in advance of their trip to Memphis and Mississippi.

The artists at Japan's genius animation company, Studio Ghibli, have produced 17 feature films since 1986. I have no reservation in saying many of these are masterpieces, and several -- "Kiki's Delivery Service" (1989), "Spirited Away" (2001), to name just two -- are among the great movies of the past several decades.

Most of these films are fantasies, as one would expect, since animation was developed, in part, to bring life to visions -- talking animals, dinosaurs, fairy-tale creatures, superheroes and so on --- that were difficult to realize convincingly in a live-action context in the pre-digital era. Thus, the Studio Ghibli films that have received wide exposure in the U.S. via distribution deals with Miramax and Disney, have showcased witches, demons, monsters, sorcerers, ghosts and other mythical creatures and fanciful beings.

The latest Studio Ghibli production, "From Up on Poppy Hill," is different. It's a relatively modest coming-of-age period piece without any supernatural element whatsover. This probably explains why it is being distributed in America via the Cinedigm Entertainment Group, an art-house company, rather than through Disney, and why it is making its Mid-South debut at 7 tonight (Thursday, June 13) at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art rather than at a Malco cinema, unlike such Studio Ghibli predecessors as "Princess Mononoke" (1997) and "Howl's Moving Castle" (2004).

In 2012, the obviously smart folks who run the prestigious Riverrun International Film Festival in Winston-Salem, N.C., invited me to be a member of the Narrative Feature Competiton Jury.

Accepting the invitation was a pleasure as well as an honor, in part because my jury colleagues included such distinguished individuals as Gregg Kilday, film editor of The Hollywood Reporter, and legendary cinematographer Michael Chapman, a two-time Oscar nominee whose credits include "Taxi Driver," "Fingers," "Raging Bull" and "The Fugitive."

Chapman and I bonded over our mutual love of "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein." (I can't remember how that came up.) But we disagreed over what should be the winning film in that year's highly competitive feature competition, which included significant work by recognized auteurs from around the world, including Andrea Arnold's "Wuthering Heights," Joachim Trier's "Oslo, August 31st" and "Keep the Lights On" by Memphis' own Ira Sachs, to name a few.

The movie that the strong-willed Chapman was particularly keen on and which ultimately became our Narrative Feature prize-winner was director Júlia Murat's "Found Memories," an Argentine-Brazilian production shot in rural Brazil. While many of the other competing films -- the French-Canadian "Monsieur Lazhar," the Russian "Elena," Hong Kong director Johnnie To's "Life Without Principle" -- went on to receive relatively wide exposure in the U.S., "Found Memories" -- a movie of unusual restraint and delicacy -- was more or less overlooked before it was picked up for distribution by the Film Movement company, source of the features screened monthly in the "Wider Angle" international cinema series at Memphis' Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, 3030 Poplar. 

"Found Memories" makes its Memphis public debut at 6 p.m. tonight (Wednesday, June 12) at the library. Admission, of course, is free. I wish the library had a small auditorium of some sort, but it presents its movies in a meeting room, projected via disc onto a screen, making the experience sort of like watching the film at the house of a friend who has invested in some fancy equipment. It's unlikely, however, that any friend would build a party around a screening of "Found Memories," a movie that requires (and repays) concentration and patience.

The Orpheum's popular Summer Movie Series returns tonight (Friday, June 7) with a twist -- and a bit of a mission.

Instead of the usual grab bag of classic and recent hit movies, the theater has scheduled 18 features that will take viewers on a chronological tour of eight decades of film history, from "The Cameraman" (1928), with Buster Keaton, which screens Friday night, to "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (2001) on Aug. 9.

The timely approach is in recognition of the 85th anniversary of the opulent theater's opening in 1928 on the corner of South Main and Beale, in a phoenix-like return to a site previously occupied by the Memphis Grand Opera House, which had burned down five years earlier.

At 10 tonight (Friday, June 7), WKNO-TV Channel 10 horror host Professor Ghoul and his vampire cat sidekick, Shotzi, will present the television debut of "Daylight Fades," a 2010 made-in-Memphis vampire drama from local production company Old School Pictures.

The screening is a bit of a departure for "Professors Ghoul's Horror School," the horror movie program that debuted a year ago June 1 as a sort of four-decades-later public-television successor to "Fantastic Features" and Sivad.

Typically, the fright-wigged if pedantic professor (played by local comic Mike Degnan) and his wise-acre puppety cat (created, manipulated and voiced by Bard Cole) present such cult or camp genre classics as "White Zombie" (1932) or "Horror Express" (1973). Tonight's pledge-drive program, however, casts a spotlight on Memphis horror and local filmmaking in general. Director Brad Ellis, actors Kim Justis and Dennis Phillippi and other "Daylight Fades" participants will stop by Professor Ghoul's classroom during breaks in the movie, as will Memphis Film Commissioner Linn Sitler, appropriately dressed as the iconic title character in what many consider to be the greatest of all horror movies, "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935).

As a love letter from director to star, the delightful, funny, clever and wise "Frances Ha" surpasses even its most obvious inspiration, Woody Allen's "Annie Hall."

Other sources include Allen's "Manhattan" ("Frances Ha," too, is presented in black-and-white) and the romantic classics of the French New Wave (the movie borrows much of its music from Georges Delerue, known for his work on such films as "Jules and Jim" and "Hiroshima Mon Amour," and from Jean Constantin, who scored "The 400 Blows").

Yet for all its thrifty appropriations, "Frances Ha" is as fresh and contemporary as an episode of Lena Dunham's "Girls" -- an inevitable comparison, thanks in part to the presence of actor Adam Driver in both projects -- or the type of microbudgeted independent films (Joe Swanberg's "Hannha Takes the Stairs," in particular) that brought actress Greta Gerwig to her current level of semi-stardom.

So far this year the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art has hosted the local public premieres of such significant films as "War Witch," Andrea Arnold's "Wuthering Heights," "Holy Motors" and Abbas Kiarostami's "Like Someone in Love."

That was just a prelude. Over the next few weeks, the museum's Dorothy K. Hohenberg Auditorium will function as a sort of alternative art cinema, as the Brooks brings a slew of art/indie/foreign films to town, including three over the next four days alone.

Two of these are Memphis debuts: "Blancanieves," a Spanish spin on the fairy tale of Snow White, which screens at 7 tonight (Thursday, June 6), and "Leonie," a biographical period piece with Emily Mortimer, which shows at 2 p.m. Saturday (June 8). At 2 p.m. Sunday (June 9), the must-see documentary "Room 237" makes a return Memphis appearance.

Here's a look at each of those films:

Reading Judy Blume novels -- 1970's "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret," 1974's "Blubber" -- has been a rite of passage for girls for decades.

Blume's books have sold some 82 million copies during the past 45 years, according to the author's publicist. They also seem to have drawn about that many complaints from parents for their frank treatment of divorce, teen sex, race and other subjects. 

Like Stephen King (too violent) and John Steinbeck (too many "bad" words), Blume consistently has ranked high on the "Most Frequently Challenged Authors" lists compiled annually by the American Library Association, which names writers whose presence on school assignment sheets and classroom book shelves stokes the ire of adults who believe tough subject matter is inappropriate for young minds.

The combination of notoriety and superstar sales success typically is catnip to Hollywood, but the new "Tiger Eyes" is the first of Blume's 21 children's books and Young Adult novels to be adapted into a theatrical feature film. (A couple have been made into TV projects.)