“Joe Dante at the Movies” at BAM

Joe Dante’s films brim with anarchic, inventive energy, and are indebted to (and a celebration of) the cartoons, comics and creature features that animated his childhood. Dante got his start working for Roger Corman, cultivating an appreciation for unpretentious ingenuity and a sharp satirical streak. His subversive forays into science fiction, fantasy, and horror deliver genre thrills while also coming laced with cutting critiques of American society and pop culture. This retrospective brings together Dante’s film and television work with unsurprisingly offbeat favorites hand-picked by the director.