2016, Brett Berns and Bob Sarles, USA, 94 min. Narrated by Steven Van Zandt.
"Full of scrappy vitality. Oh, and killer tunes. Sit back and let the music free your soul." — Caroline Ely, Film-Forward
"A fitting and often exhilarating tribute." — Peter Martin, ScreenAnarchy
Bert Berns's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year brought long-overdue recognition to a neglected giant of American popular music, whose contributions as songwriter, producer, and mogul place him on a par with Phil Spector and Berry Gordy. Before his death at age 38, Berns placed over 50 songs on the pop charts, including "Twist and Shout," "Under the Boardwalk," "Here Comes the Night," "I Want Candy," "Piece of My Heart" — the list goes on and on. This fast-moving documentary, jam-packed with great music and juicy anecdotes, is not just a catalog of hits, but also a rounded portrait of a complex personality. Marked for early death by a childhood heart disease, Berns was a driven man, churning out hits, founding the major labels Bang! and Shout Records, consorting with gangsters, and using his mob connections to make nonrefusable offers to recalcitrant associates. Among those testifying to Berns's gifts are Keith Richards (who calls him "one of the greatest songwriters of all bloody time"), Paul McCartney, Van Morrison, Ben E. King, Betty Harris, and Solomon Burke — some of whom note an underlying darkness and emotional depth in Berns's songs that distinguishes them from more disposable pop hits. DCP digital. (MR)
"Seductive, magical...Imagine your favorite online cat video, multiply by hundreds. KEDI is a ravishing beauty." — Ray Pride, Newcity
"Enchanting...I give KEDI four claws up." — Glenn Kenny, The New York Times
Life is close to cushy for the cherished street cats of Istanbul, as seen in this marvelously cat-action-packed look at the purring mascots that have roamed the streets of the ancient capital for millennia, protected, admired, and honored for their beauty and their skill as mousers. In a film that no card-carrying cat lover will be able to resist, director Torun alternates stories of the people who love these independent street dwellers, offering food, nests and hidey-holes, with cat-eye views of life at ground level. Istanbul itself comes in for an atmospheric portrait, from the fabled waterfront to the colorful maze of historic streets. In Turkish with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)
2016, Paolo Virzì, Italy/France, 116 min. With Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Micaela Ramazzotti.
“This high-energy romp is a superb showcase for its two lead actresses…as appealing as its developments are unpredictable.” — Lisa Nesselson, Screen Daily
“A terrific comedy-drama…boasting a deliriously loquacious script together with a rare understanding of how to balance certain Italian caricatures with a grounding sense of realism.” — Jay Weissberg, Variety
Winner of five Donatello Awards, Italy’s Oscar equivalent, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress, LIKE CRAZY is a zany, bittersweet comic showcase for Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (SLACK BAY, LATIN LOVER) as a countess whose insanity is no deterrent to star-crossed adventure. Director Virzì (HUMAN CAPITAL) brings a THELMA & LOUISE spin to this tale of wackily haughty Beatrice, confined in the asylum that was once her family’s grand villa, and Donatella (Ramazzotti), the frail, young Goth suicide-survivor she takes under her aristocratic wing. Magnificently delusional and blithely cunning, Beatrice engineers their escape for a road trip in search of the missing person in Donatella’s life, leading to a string of tragicomic drop-ins on people including her aghast ex-husband and his new wife, and Donatella’s fish-cold mother. In Italian with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)
2016, Katell Quillévéré, France/Belgium, 103 min. With Tahar Rahim, Emmanuelle Seigner.
“Rare depths of personal and sensual detail…sublimely compassionate, heart-crushing.” — Guy Lodge, Variety
“So staggering in its emotional intensity…it will make your heart sore, then soar.” — Andrew Robertson, Eye For Film
The visual poetry of ocean, sky, and the euphoria of first love provides entrée into director Quillévéré’s (SUZANNE, LOVE LIKE POISON) powerfully emotional vision of life balanced on the knife-edge of tragedy, based on Maylis de Kerangal’s internationally acclaimed novel. An accident happens in a flash, and a teenager lies brain-dead, his body paradoxically vital and bursting with youth. A young doctor (Rahim of A PROPHET) must lead the boy’s grief-stricken estranged parents Marianne (Seigner, of VENUS IN FUR) and Vincent (French rapper Kool Shen) to the next step. Sensitive, understated performances and a many-faceted plot take this story out of the realm of mere medical drama and into a metaphysical mystery in which unseen forces cause life to go on in unexpected ways. In French with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)
"There’s so much to savor in this big-hearted doc, whether you’re a classic-film follower, a nostalgia buff, or a fan of old-fashioned romance." — Ken Eisner, Georgia Straight
"Truly charming...The inside-baseball stuff walks hand in hand with a great romance, and this movie winds up being a rather wonderful paradox on the face of it: an educational tearjerker." — Glenn Kenny, Vanity Fair
HAROLD AND LILLIAN is both a great love story and a revelatory slice of Hollywood history. The title refers to Harold and Lillian Michelson: an ex-bombardier with a knack for visualization and an orphan girl with a passion for reading who fell in love and headed for Tinseltown. There they found neither fame nor fortune but extremely productive careers — Harold as a storyboard artist and production designer, Lillian as the movies' top researcher. Often uncredited, they were "secret weapons that nobody talked about but everybody was trying to get," according to producer Stuart Cornfeld. His regard is shared by such luminaries as Danny De Vito (who exec-produced the film), Mel Brooks, Francis Coppola, Alfred Hitchcock, and Mike Nichols, and supported by eye-opening evidence of iconic images from such classics as THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, THE BIRDS, and THE GRADUATE that originated on Harold's drawing pad. Fascinating inside stories of the film biz are interwoven with the tale of a sometimes bumpy but always loving marriage to produce one of the most enjoyable and informative documentaries in recent memory. DCP digital. (MR)
"Pitch-perfect, its comic drollery rooted in character."—J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader
"Warm human drama...Gay shows that it's possible to entertain a crowd and say something significant." — Amber Wilkinson, Eye for Film
TRUMAN dominated the 2016 Goya awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor. The great Argentinian actor Ricardo Darín (NINE QUEENS, THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES) has the role of a lifetime as Julián, a onetime movie star who decides to stop his cancer treatments and face death squarely. The too-often thoughtless Julián, who has burned a lot of bridges in his time, is not about to mellow out now, and he still has unfinished business to attend to — including a last visit from his lifelong friend Tomás (Cámara, Goya-winner for Best Supporting Actor), and finding a home for his beloved dog, Truman. The actors and writer-director Gay (IN THE CITY) skillfully deploy humor and subtlety to paint a candid, unsentimental portrait of a flawed but magnetically vital man. In Spanish with English subtitles. DCP digital. (MR)
2016, Andrzej Wajda, Poland, 98 min. With Bogusław Linda, Bronisława Zamachowska.
"A compelling portrait." — Stephen Dalton, Hollywood Reporter
"A fitting end note to Wajda's career...The film stands as an imposing monument to the memory of a great artist." — Dan Fainaru, Screen Daily
The last film of Poland's greatest director is a deeply personal work, filmed with an old master's economy and precision, in which one embattled artist pays tribute to another. The subject is Władysław Strzemiński (Linda), a painter who was a leading figure in the growth of modern art in Poland. The film concentrates on Strzemiński's last years, beginning in 1949, when the red shadow of Stalinism was engulfing Poland. Stubbornly refusing to toe the Socialist Realism party line, the artist is systemically persecuted — his teaching job terminated, his paintings removed and destroyed, his union card rescinded so that he can't even buy paints. Though a martyr, Strzemiński is no saint. The film presents him with admiration but not sentimentality, most pointedly through his relationship with his neglected teenage daughter, who suffers stoically for her father's ideological sins. The political repression that victimized Strzemiński is far from extinct, either in Poland (where the right-wing Law and Justice Party is now in power) or the rest of the world. As Wajda said in one of his last interviews, "Perhaps now is precisely the time to remind ourselves what those times were like." In Polish with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (MR)
Now in its 18th year, this is the ace of animation compilation shows, prized by industry professionals, students, and fans. It is curated by animation expert and producer Ron Diamond, who has scouted 39 eventual Oscar nominees and 15 winners among the many prize-winners culled from around the globe. This year’s crop of 16 films from 11 nations includes Patrick Osborne's Oscar-nominated road-of-life movie PEARL; Chris Ware's visualization of an Ira Glass story, MIRROR; Alan Barillaro's Oscar-winning Pixar production, PIPER; Kristian Pedersen's moody, near-abstract riff on Norse mythology, BØYGEN; Dina Velikovskaya's African-themed fable, ABOUT A MOTHER; Marc Héricher's fusion of anatomy and gadgetry, CORPUS; Simon Cartwright's Guys Gone Wild horror show, MANOMAN; and Chloé Alliez's wry twist on misogynist clichés, ALL THEIR SHADES. DCP digital. (MR)
Note: The final four films in the program contain adult content.
Stems
2015, Ainslie Hendersen, United Kingdom, 2 min.
“What I love about stop-motion puppets,” says director Ainslie Henderson, “is that they have this inherent sadness about them. They’re like little actors that only ever get to play one role.” And yet – as this brilliant, sad, funny, self-reflective film shows – they make the most of their tiny lives.
Shift
2015, Cecilia Pugliesi & Yijun Liu, USA, 6 min.
Once upon a time, in a fantastical village on the edge of a forest, a proper Victorian lady encounters a wild, free-spirited doppelgänger. Shocked and amazed, she befriends the naked stranger and takes her under her wing. But her well-intentioned efforts to civilize the carefree spirit have some unexpected results in this beautifully designed 3D fable.
Pearl
2016, Patrick Osborne, USA, 6 min
Patrick Osborne's Oscar-nominated road-of-life movie, a poignant and tuneful reflection on the relationship between a musician father and his daughter over the course of many years. From a carefree life together on the road to the strains and compromises brought about by adolescence and a more settled existence, PEARL evocatively shows the transcendent power of love and music – and that ultimately there really is “no wrong way home."
Crin-Crin
2015, Iris Alexandre, Belgium, 4 min.
As the history of animation makes abundantly clear, there are few things as enjoyable as watching silly-looking animals visiting indignities on each other. In this case, a nefarious rabbit and raccoon make off with the tail of a self-regarding horse—while the fiddler in the film uses an appropriated horsehair (“crin” in French) for her own purposes. As wacky mayhem ensues, the four musicians keep the fun going with their virtuoso performance. And, as the cartoon universe has also taught us, crime often pays.
Mirror
2015, Chris Ware, John Kuramoto, Ira Glass, USA, 4 min.
The fraught territory of mother-daughter relations and the ever-present threat of committing a “parenting error” are the subjects of this funny and insightful short from The New Yorker and “This American Life.” Based on an interview conducted by longtime TAL host Ira Glass and visualized by Chris Ware and animator John Kuramoto, MIRROR explores how a parent’s uncensored casual comment might or might not destroy her adolescent daughter for life.
Last Summer In The Garden
2016, bekky O’Neil, Canada, 4 min.
This poetic and philosophical rumination on nature, seasons, cycles, and the unavoidable speed bumps in the road of life uses a first-person narrative and a wash of impressionistic colors in its evocation of gardens, both real and metaphorical. From dead cats and howling coyotes to the miracle of growth and healing, LAST SUMMER IN THE GARDEN recounts one woman’s journey through a joyful, fearful time of death and rebirth.
Waiting For New Year
2016, Vladimir Leschiov, Latvia, 8 min.
This deeply affecting meditation on time, change and the human condition looks at the world through the eyes of a solitary middle-aged woman whose simple tasks – shoveling snow, raking leaves – reflect the changing seasons. We see glimpses of neighbors, a throng of tourists, and a passing tram… all reminders of a world to which she both belongs and yet is separate from. Yet, as she goes uncomplainingly about her work, other forces are at work, which culminate in a beautiful Christmas surprise and a reminder that one never knows what the future holds.
Piper
2016, Alan Barillaro, USA, 6 min.
Alan Barillaro's Oscar-winning Pixar production PIPER began as a test in an effort to develop animation tools that would provide greater flexibility for artists. As the test evolved, he realized there was a story to be told. Inspired by birds he saw while jogging near Pixar, he infused the story of a sandpiper with the emotions he felt as a parent nervously watching my children growing up.
Bøygen
2016, Kristian Pedersen, Norway, 5 min.
An abstract interpretation of the battle between Peer Gynt and the Boyg (a serpent-like troll) in Norse mythology, this compelling study in form, pattern and rhythm immerses the viewer in an alien world that is at once both foreign and familiar. There are things we recognize, or think we recognize, as the abstract shapes constantly shift and reform, yet they remain elusive. Mesmerizing and highly suggestive, this masterful experimental work challenges us to meet it on its own terms.
Afternoon Class
2015, Seoro Oh, South Korea, 3 min.
Have you ever had the experience of being in a classroom and, despite your best efforts, simply being unable to keep your eyes from closing? Of struggling to stay awake and trying mightily to avoid the indignity of having your head collapse onto your desk? Of watching your classmates drop off one by one, and yet doing everything in your power to keep from joining them in blissful slumber? No? Well, it looks a little like this.
About A Mother
2015, Dina Velikovskaya, Russia, 8 min.
In this touching African-themed fable, an ever-resourceful mother attends to her children’s needs, even after they are grown and on their own. Using minimalist black-and-white drawings and iconic images, director Dina Velikovskaya pays tribute to a mother's love, which proves more than a match for life’s many tribulations, large and small.
Exploozy
2016, Joshua Gunn, Trevor Piecham, & John McGowan, USA.
Either highly whimsical or potentially alarming, depending on your point of view, this very funny “explainer video” for the next big thing in animation hits all the key points that give animators nightmares. After all, with machine learning, the cloud, and algorithms (that’s right, algorithms), how can you go wrong?
Inner Workings
2016, Leo Matsuda, USA, 7 min.
This lighthearted cautionary tale, set in the wilds of an archetypal beachside community, offers a timely reminder that life might be meant for more than just deadening routine and missed opportunities. Visualizing the interplay between a man’s overly prudent and fearful brain and his naturally playful heart and spirit, “Inner Workings” celebrates the potential for joy in all of us and encourages us to keep dancing.
Corpus
2015, Marc Héricher, France, 4 min.
Combining Rube Goldberg, human anatomy and a healthy sense of the macabre, this highly accomplished short presents a series of bizarre tableaux that together constitute a single convoluted chain reaction. In other words: balls roll, traps spring, fuses burn, pendulums swing… and key bodily organs do their part as well. Exploring the ambiguous connections between body and machine, the animate and the inanimate, CORPUS also suggests what it might have looked like if Dr. Frankenstein had been an even madder scientist.
Blue
2016, Daniela Sherer, Israel.
In this impressionistic semi-abstract film, the filmmaker explores the pain and pleasure of love, weaving together suggestive, yet mysterious, images that allow for a wide range of interpretations. Accompanied by a lush orchestral composition by Emmy-nominated composer Duncan Thum, BLUE immerses the viewer in a highly personal world of fleeting thought and deep emotion.
Manoman
2015, Simon Cartwright, United Kingdom, 11 min.
Not for the faint of heart, this darkly comic Guys Gone Wild horror show uses highly expressive rod puppets to graphically explore the excesses of unrestrained masculinity. Beginning at a “Primal Scream” therapy session and ending on the roof of a skyscraper, MANOMAN chronicles the brief and rapid descent of its mild-mannered protagonist into the depths of violence and depravity (in a bad way), and suggests that getting fully in touch with one’s basic instincts may not be entirely healthy for the individual or society.
All Their Shades
2015, Chloé Alliez, Belgium, 6 min.
The mysterious ways of women, and all of the many characteristics that make them so lovable, are catalogued at length in this heartfelt and gently satirical paean to the wonders of the female gender. Using a small army of whimsical models and props, and a tongue-in-cheek voiceover narration, director Chloé Alliez’s wry stop-motion short is both quintessentially French and, ultimately, delightfully surprising.
2017, David Leveaux, UK, 200 min. With Daniel Radcliffe, Joshua McGuire.
“Fizzes with life…the casting is clever.” — Susannah Clapp, Observer
“Leveaux’s cast serve the high-brow antics and music-hall larks, the nods to Beckett and hints of Beyond the Fringe brilliantly.” — Dominic Cavendish, Telegraph
Against the backdrop of "Hamlet," two hapless minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, take center stage. As the young double act stumble their way in and out of the action of Shakespeare’s iconic drama, they become increasingly out of their depth as their version of the story unfolds. Daniel Radcliffe (HARRY POTTER, THE WOMAN IN BLACK), Joshua McGuire (THE HOUR) and David Haig (FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL, THE WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION) star in Tom Stoppard’s brilliantly funny situation comedy, marking the 50th anniversary of the work that made the young playwright a name overnight. (Description courtesy of NT Live)
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"Touching tribute to the artist and his milieu...though visually expansive, the film feels emotionally intimate." — Chris Packham, Village Voice
"Visually exciting." — Sheri Linden, Los Angeles Times
Julian Schnabel, the maverick American painter and filmmaker as well known for his outsize personality as for his grand-scale work, is the subject of this insider profile charting a career now in its fifth decade. Home movies, interviews with family members and friends including Al Pacino, Willem Dafoe, Laurie Anderson, Bono, and Mary Boone, supplement a peek inside towering pink Villa Chupi, Schnabel’s extravagant West Village digs, and generous sequences of the artist at work at multiple points in his career. Behind-the-scenes footage of the making of feature films BASQUIAT, BEFORE NIGHT FALLS, BERLIN, and Oscar-nominated THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY trace the painter’s self-taught transition to filmmaking. DCP digital. (BS)
2017, Niki Caro, Czech Republic/UK/USA, 127 min. With Jessica Chastain, Daniel Brühl.
"Niki Caro has the rare ability to elevate what could be emotionally manipulative schlock to earnest art...she delivers a singular, thrilling portrait, filled with surprises and moving performances." — April Wolfe, Village Voice
"A show-stopping performance from Jessica Chastain...Caro unspools an evergreen tale about the clarifying power of empathy to diffuse fear and hatred." — Katie Walsh, Chicago Tribune
Niki Caro (THE WHALE RIDER) reinvigorates the Holocaust drama and the World War II story in general with the distinctively feminine perspective of this tense and moving tale based on an incredible true story. Jessica Chastain is already attracting Oscar buzz for her tough and tender performance as Antonina Zabinski, who, together with her husband Jan (Johan Heldenbergh), is running the idyllic Warsaw Zoo when the Nazis take over in 1939. Working now under the command of German zoologist Lutz Heck (Brühl), the couple manage to hide hundreds of Jewish refugees — Jan smuggling them in a garbage truck while Antonina plays the dangerous game of using Heck's attraction to her as a means of diverting his suspicions. DCP digital widescreen. (MR)
2016, Albert Serra, France, 115 min. With Jean-Pierre Léaud.
“Surely the most beautiful film at Cannes 2016.” — Jonathan Romney, Sight and Sound
“Easily the most gripping film I saw in Melbourne…Much as certain novels can be described as page-turners, this film is incontestably a frame-turner.” — Jonathan Rosenbaum, Film Comment
Director Serra (QUIXOTIC, BIRDSONG) continues his project of reinventing the period film in his most accessible and classically satisfying work to date. A legendary historical figure is portrayed by a legendary actor (Léaud in a magnificently concentrated performance), but the film shows, in precisely selected details, how even an absolute monarch must bow to the weight of time and fleshly decay. Stricken with gangrene, the Sun King struggles — gallantly, grouchily, poignantly — to maintain his royal bearing, as his every gesture is scrutinized by anxious courtiers and his well-meaning but bungling doctors attempt to keep him alive. In French with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (MR)
"The most important movie of the year so far...enthralling and provocative without turning into didacticism." — Eric Kohn, Indiewire
"Life-altering...you would be hard-pressed to find a movie that speaks to the present moment with greater clarity and force." — A.O. Scott, The New York Times
In 1979, the eminent African American author and public intellectual James Baldwin wrote a 30-page proposal for a book on three slain civil rights leaders — Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. — who had been his friends. The book remained unfinished at Baldwin’s death in 1987, but his surviving notes form the core of this provocative, compelling documentary. Those notes are interwoven with excerpts from other Baldwin writings (all powerfully voiced by Samuel L. Jackson), public speeches, talk-show appearances, news footage, and movie excerpts (from KING KONG to ELEPHANT) to fashion a wide-ranging but lucidly focused consideration of racism in America that is as startlingly and soberingly relevant today as it was in Baldwin’s time. DCP digital. (MR)
“Brilliant, haunting…moving, original, quirky and suspenseful.” — Hannah Brown, Jerusalem Post
“Emotionally resonant…strong performances.” — Oktay Ege Kozak, The Playlist
Two sisters team up to unravel a dark secret from their family past in this moving tale based on an incident from the life of choral composer Ella Milch-Sheriff, who also composed the film’s memorable soundtrack. Following a Berlin concert, an elderly woman shouting a horrifying accusation violently accosts Sephi (Rieger), a talented but shy music student and soloist. Back home in Tel Aviv, sister Nana (Tagar), an investigative journalist unhappily married to a man with a wandering eye, begins to search out the clues that connect a cellar in Poland during WWII, their father’s missing wartime diary, and a stranger who arrives with a special interest in Sephi. Director Nesher (THE MATCHMAKER, THE SECRETS) deftly connects the historical and the spiritual through a story of dramatic highs and lows that match its majestic strains of classical choral music. In English, German, Polish, and Hebrew with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)
“Breezily entertaining…Bill Nighy is a complete hoot.” — Allan Hunter, Screen Daily
“The charming, rousing WWII romance THEIR FINEST is a film that openly stumps for two causes: the value of women in the workplace, and the power of cinema to tell stories that people need to hear.” — Noel Murray, The Playlist
Danish auteur Scherfig (ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS) leapt over language and culture barriers with the greatest of ease in her multi-Oscar-nominated AN EDUCATION, and she deftly tackles another echt-British subject in this heartfelt, humor-filled tale of love, moviemaking, and emerging feminism in wartime London. Welsh transplant Catrin (Arterton) stumbles into a job in the filmmaking division of the Ministry of Information, where she crosses swords with cynical fellow-writer Buckley (Claflin). As an antidote to dry propaganda films, they collaborate on a juicy potboiler depicting derring-do at Dunkirk, but, between the Blitz and the bureaucrats, it’s a constant struggle to keep the project on track. The superb supporting cast includes Richard E. Grant, Jeremy Irons, Eddie Marsan, Helen McCrory, and especially Bill Nighy, who nearly steals the film as a gloriously vain actor given a chance to revive his flagging career. DCP digital widescreen. (MR)
2016, Danièle Thompson, France, 117 min. With Guillaume Canet, Guillaume Gallienne.
"CÉZANNE ET MOI offers a pungent, demystifying portrait of the rowdy late-19th-century Parisian art world... Mr. Gallienne, who dominates the film, gives an electrifying portrait of Cézanne." — Stephen Holden, The New York Times
"A touching evocation of friendship, brotherly competition and artistic courage at the cusp of a new century." — Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
The stormy but enduring bond between two giants of French culture is the focus of this graceful dual-biopic of Paul Cézanne (Gallienne of YVES SAINT LAURENT) and Émile Zola (Canet of TELL NO ONE), whose friendship began in childhood in the sun-drenched hills of Aix-en-Provence but fluctuated wildly as they pursued different paths toward artistic glory. The film begins in 1888, with an outraged Cézanne confronting Zola about the thinly veiled portrait of him as a failed genius in the novel "The Masterpiece." Flashbacks fill in their complex relationship, with emphasis on the contrasting personalities of the temperamental outsider Cézanne and the reserved burgher Zola. Director Thompson (JET LAG, AVENUE MONTAIGNE) recounts this lifelong love-hate affair with rich period detail and psychological insight, taking a cue from Zola’s insistence that "The Masterpiece" was as much a portrait of himself, with his secret fears and repressed longings, as it was of Cézanne. In French with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (MR)
2017, Cristián Jiménez and Alicia Scherson, Chile, 80 min. With Jorge Becker, Gabriela Arancibia.
“Evidence that Chile is a hotbed of talent behind and in front of the camera.” — Bradley Warren, The Playlist
“Witty and poignant…rippling playfully into themes of solitude, love, companionship and the multiple dangers of male insecurity.” — Jonathan Holland, Hollywood Reporter
A lonely house-sitter adrift in an early mid-life crisis sheds his slacker identity like a snakeskin and assumes the persona, résumé, and lifestyle of his absent host, but with a new sympathy-grabbing back-story. Humor lies just under the troubled surface as boyish forty-something Martin makes himself comfortable in the upscale home by marking his territory in rude and outlandish ways. While in search of the missing family cat he hooks up with neighbor Pachi, a single mother. An erotic idyll plays out over the weeks of Martin’s tenure in the house, his lover mightily impressed with this supposed divorced professor and the closet full of expensive clothes left by his ex. The time of reckoning draws near, and neither Martin nor his hosts are quite what they appear. Winner of Best Film and the Grand Jury Prize at the recent Miami Film Festival. In Spanish with English subtitles. Note: Contains nudity and sexual activity. DCP digital. (BS)
2016, Steve James, USA, 88 min.
“Gripping real-life legal thriller with an appealing Chinese-American twist…both an affirmation and an indictment of the American Dream.” — Stephen Dalton, Hollywood Reporter
“An exemplary piece of filmmaking…it’s the human face that tells the story.” — Tom Charity, Sight & Sound
How did Abacus, a small family-run bank, become targeted by the feds to take the fall for the 2008 financial crisis when the Wall Street giants tiptoed away so handily, asks award-winning filmmaker Steve James (HOOP DREAMS, THE INTERRUPTERS) in this affecting David vs. Goliath chronicle. Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey, banker hero of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, served as the role model for New York Chinatown lawyer Thomas Sung when he founded a community-friendly bank in the 1950s, serving an insular, bank-shy immigrant population. In 2010, his staff discovered and reported irregularities perpetrated by one mortgage manager, bringing down the wrath of the Justice Department, and making Abacus the sole bank to face federal charges in the wake of the financial crisis. Nineteen employees are led away in chains before TV cameras, and the resulting five-year media circus and show trial expose suspiciously glaring inequities in the government case. DCP digital. (BS)
Friday, June 16 at 8:15 PM: Director Steve James and producer Mark Mitten will be present for audience discussion. The discussion will be moderated by film critic Steve Prokopy.
Saturday, June 17 at 7:45 PM: Director Steve James and producer Mark Mitten will be present for audience discussion.
Sunday, June 18 at 5:15 PM: Director Steve James and producer Mark Mitten will be present for audience discussion.
Tuesday, June 20 at 8:00 PM: Director Steve James and producer Mark Mitten will be present for audience discussion. This screening is a Movie Club event.
2016, Emil Ben-Shimon, Israel, 96 min. With Evelin Hagoel, Igal Naor.
“Charming…unapologetically warmhearted…performed by a cast of practiced farceurs.” — Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
“A deceptively simple nuanced comedy tackling some heady issue without ever becoming a polemic.” — Simi Horwitz, Film Journal
A wickedly funny battle of the sexes, characterized by dirty tricks and Lysistrata-like maneuvers, begins with the collapse of the women’s balcony in a small, dilapidated Jerusalem synagogue. With the aging rabbi ailing, and the building unusable for want of expensive repairs, the easy-going congregation falls under the spell of a charismatic firebrand of a new rabbi, who preaches to the somewhat leery men that their luck will change if only their wives will wear headscarves. Under the guise of comedy, director Ben-Shimon takes a smart and universal look at extremism, when happy marriages hit the skids, neighbors are at odds, and best friends fall out in the course of a women’s rebellion led by feisty Ettie (Hagoel), a wife who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. In Hebrew with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)
"Part compelling history, part remarkable aesthetic experience, it’s a complete astonishment from beginning to end.”—Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
"Bill Morrison's magnum opus...One would be hard-pressed to think of a film more haunting." — Ela Bittencourt, Reverse Shot
It's been called "the King Tut's tomb of silent-era cinema." In 1978, bulldozers accidentally unearthed hundreds of long-lost silent films that had been buried in the frozen ground of Dawson City, Yukon. As in his earlier films such as DECASIA and THE MINERS' HYMNS, Bill Morrison ingeniously uses archival footage to explore the territory between history and poetry. Haunting, decay-filigreed fragments of the resurrected silent films form the link between parallel histories of early cinema (born of a highly flammable substance, cellulose nitrate) and Dawson City, a Gold Rush boomtown whose brief heyday attracted a remarkable assortment of adventurous souls, including authors Jack London and Robert Service, future film director (and unsolved murder victim) William Desmond Taylor, entrepreneurs Daniel and Solomon Guggenheim, movie theater magnates Sid Grauman and Alex Pantages, and brothel-owner Friedrich Trump, grandfather of the current President of the United States. DCP digital. (MR)
2016, Stéphane Brizé, France, 119 min. With Judith Chemla, Yolande Moreau.
"Exquisitely moving...a haunting study of class, tragedy, and time." — Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice
"A moving, beautifully modulated adaptation...By the film’s end, audiences will feel as if they’ve seen one of the rare visualizations of a 19th-century novel that doesn’t merely follow a plot but captures depth of character." — Jay Weissberg, Variety
Director Brizé's follow-up to his acclaimed THE MEASURE OF A MAN might seem an abrupt change of pace, shifting his focus from a victim of contemporary downsizing to a high-born woman of the early nineteenth century, but this adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's first novel achieves a comparable immediacy in depicting a character stripped of her illusions as she is buffeted by forces beyond her control. Jeanne (Chemla), the only daughter of an aristocratic Norman family, places her faith in her dashing young husband, her priest, her best friend, and her spoiled son, only to weather a series of betrayals and disasters that lead to the conclusion, "Life is never as good or as bad as you think." Brizé avoids the stuffiness of costume drama through an energized, immersive style built on handheld camerawork, a 1.33:1 frame, ellipses, abrupt transitions, and flashbacks and flash-forwards that demonstrate that happiness and heartbreak are never far apart. In French with English subtitles. DCP digital. (MR)
2016, Joseph Cedar, Israel/USA, 117 min. With Richard Gere, Lior Ashkenazi.
“Gere delivers one of the most impressive and nuanced performances of his career.” — Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
“Compulsively watchable…a spellbinder that features Richard Gere in one of his best performances ever.” — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
Richard Gere teams up with director Cedar (Oscar-nominated FOOTNOTE) for a bravura performance as Norman Oppenheimer, a slippery, smalltime New York hustler whose sleight-of-hand skills as a social climber bring him into the precarious proximity to power. Gere has never been better in conjuring up the energy and complexity of a character so ingratiatingly magnetic and yet so pitiable in his hubris. An obnoxiously charming streetwise loner with a graying air of threadbare respectability, Norman is a “fixer” who works nebulous deals, drops names, and shuffles imagined connections to the movers and shakers. An impulsive and extravagant favor for a low-level politician visiting New York would seem to promise a payoff in spades three years later when the man is elected Israeli prime minister. DCP digital. (BS)
2016, Gillies MacKinnon, UK, 98 min. With Gregor Fisher, Ellie Kendrick, Eddie Izzard.
“Whimsical and dreamy…what makes the film so pleasurable is the humor and lyricism with which it tells its rousing story.” — Geoffrey Macnab, Independent
“Wry and acerbic without ever resorting to crude caricatures…offers a true taste of Scotland that’s well worth acquiring.” — Eddie Harrison, The List
This sprightly remake of the beloved 1949 Ealing Studios classic (aka TIGHT LITTLE ISLAND), said to be based on a true story, is colorfully drenched in the atmosphere, traditional tunes and craggy landscape of the Hebrides, with the added twist of an intriguing new subplot. A disaster of sorts strikes the remote Scottish island of Todday when WWII prohibitions result in a whisky drought. As the villagers contemplate the horror of going without “the water of life,” a fortuitous shipwreck puts 50,000 cases of the precious amber elixir within striking distance. Only the stern pastor of the island’s only church and the pompous British home guard commander (Izzard) stand in the way. The local postman, his two winsome marriageable daughters, and a host of memorable cohorts lead a wacky midnight heist. DCP digital. (BS)
Chicago-based filmmaker and scholar Citron, whose 1984 meta-documentary DAUGHTER RITE is a classic of feminist cinema, centers her latest film on a box of over 2,000 snapshots that had belonged to Norma and Virginia, a lesbian couple who lived together for nearly 50 years in East Rogers Park. These artifacts provide a fascinating window into the Chicago lesbian community of the pre-Stonewall era — a vanished world of bars, dances, parties, and beach outings which was hidden from mainstream society and later disdained by many post-Stonewall lesbians, but which Citron, in her first-person narration, seeks to decode and reclaim as a vital, neglected part of her own history and the history of all lesbians.
Followed by LEFTOVERS (2014, Michelle Citron, USA, 23 min.), described by Citron as an experimental documentary, which uses a paint-by-numbers motif to recount the last years of Norma and Virginia, nearly completely isolated save for a neighbor who cared for them and, after their deaths, discovered the photographs that inspired these two films. Both in DCP digital. (MR)
June 23 at 8:00 PM and June 28 at 8:15 PM: Director Michelle Citron will be present for audience discussion at both screenings.
2016, Frédéric Mermoud, France/Switzerland, 89 min. With Emmanuelle Devos, Nathalie Baye.
“An elegantly lean, low-temperature thriller…a Chabrol-like slow burn.” — Guy Lodge, Variety
“The kind of psychological thriller that could’ve been written by Patricia Highsmith…classy and classical.” — Boyd van Hoeij, Hollywood Reporter
In this low-key suspense tale based on Tatiana de Rosnay's novel, an unsettling stalking game driven by obsession plays out when Diane (Devos), a bereaved mother, acts the sleuth in search of the hit-and-run driver she believes killed her teenage son. Director Mermoud (ACCOMPLICES) mediates the darkness of intentions with sunny, hard-edged brightness as the story traverses Switzerland’s Lake Geneva between Lausanne and the resort town of Évian, where Diane clumsily targets a mild-mannered middle-aged beauty consultant (Baye) and her fitness instructor partner, posing as a buyer for their recently repaired vintage chocolate-colored Mercedes, then feigning an increasingly cloying friendship. In French with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)
2017, James Macdonald, UK, 200 min. With Imelda Staunton, Conleth Hill.
“One of the greatest feats of acting I have witnessed.” — Paul Taylor, Independent
“Most wickedly entertaining, most viciously nasty, most incrementally harrowing…central to the shut-up-and-listen, sit-up-and-watch power of the piece is Imelda Staunton.” — Dominic Cavendish, Telegraph
In the early hours of the morning on the campus of an American college, Martha, much to her husband George’s displeasure, has invited the new professor and his wife to their home for some after-party drinks. As the alcohol flows and dawn approaches, the young couple is drawn into George and Martha’s toxic games until the evening reaches its climax in a moment of devastating truth-telling. Imelda Staunton (VERA DRAKE), Conleth Hill (GAME OF THRONES, THE PRODUCERS), Luke Treadaway (THE HOLLOW CROWN), and Imogen Poots (JANE EYRE) star in this new production of Albee’s landmark play. DCP digital. (Description courtesy of NT Live)
SPECIAL PRICES: $14 GENERAL • $8 MEMBERS /STUDENTS
Please note that our normal matinee discount prices will not apply at 2:00 pm matinees of these special screenings.
2017, Abby Ginzberg and Ken Schneider, USA, 47 min.
At a time when the question of immigration is at the forefront of the national agenda, this documentary portrays the human face of ethnic roundups, registries, incarceration, and deportation through a moving historical look at the forced internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Co-directors Schneider and Ginzberg (AGENTS OF CHANGE, SOFT VENGEANCE) mark the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, signed by President Roosevelt in 1942, by putting a wealth of photographs by artists including Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams at the center of the film, revealing the heartbreaking reality of the measure. Interviews include actor George Takei (STAR TREK), who was incarcerated along with his family. DCP digital. (BS)
Monday, June 26 at 6:00 PM: Co-director Abby Ginzberg will be present for audience discussion, joined by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams, authors of Un-American: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II, and Jean Mishima, who was incarcerated as a child at Gila River, AZ.
"James Ivory's superb screen translation of E.M. Forster's 'Maurice' is not some condescending sociopolitical commentary on homosexuality...It's woozy, unadulterated romance, an intoxicating tuxedo-ripper set against the elegant priggishness of England's post-Edwardian gentry." — Rita Kempley, Washington Post
"Passionate yet civilized, candid yet dignified, MAURICE is among the few genuinely romantic gay films ever made and a landmark of the genre." — Dale Winogoura, Frontiers
In the 1980s, the producer-director team of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory achieved renown for their acclaimed series of intelligent, elegant literary adaptations, three of the them based on E.M. Forster works. Coming between A ROOM WITH A VIEW and HOWARDS END, MAURICE is based on a 1914 Forster novel that went unpublished until 1971 because of its explicitly homosexual theme. Set in pre-World War I Britain, the story centers on the relationship between Cambridge students Maurice (Wilby) and Clive (Grant), whose platonic love affair is later broken off by Clive for fear of severe social and legal consequences — consequences that are risked by Maurice when he is wooed by a passionate servant lad (Rupert Graves). The film is enlivened by a sharp sense of satire (conveyed by such superb supporting players as Simon Callow, Denholm Elliott, and Ben Kingsley) aimed at the prudery and conformity of British society, which, as one character notes, "has always been disinclined to accept human nature." MAURICE's mainstream provenance might cause one to overlook its importance in the evolution of gay cinema — it was one of the rare films of its era to portray homosexuals who are not doomed, sinister, or pathetic. New 4K DCP digital restoration. (MR)
"Thoroughly charming...a touching, soaring switcheroo." — Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
“This dazzling, gleaming daydream is anime at its best.” — Robbie Collin, Telegraph
Japan’s biggest box office hit of 2016, YOUR NAME enhances the rising-star status of anime director Shinkai (JOURNEY TO AGARTHA), widely considered to be the artistic heir to Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki. Mitsuha, a teen girl living in a quiet mountain town, itches for the excitement of the big city. Taki, a lad in far-off Tokyo, juggles a hectic schedule of classes, part-time job, and social life. One day they wake up in each other’s bodies, with all the attendant funny and poignant confusion. Through hauntingly beautiful hand-drawn animation, Shinkai creates an evocative story suggesting mystic forces, touching on down-to-earth environmental disaster, and weaving a tentative romance in which two young strangers hope to find each other across time and space. Voices by Ryûnosuke Kamiki and Mone Kamishiraishi. In Japanese with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)
"Finally, the indie hipster romantic comedy/monster movie mash-up we’ve all been waiting for... a unique and bizarre and surprising and original piece of filmmaking." — Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
"Bristling, deliriously serious, explosively funny, and rich with wicked suggestiveness at every turn." — Ray Pride, Newcity
The pitch would be: RACHEL GETTING MARRIED meets GODZILLA. Writer-director Vigalondo, whose Spanish mind-boggler TIMECRIMES (2007) announced his ability to combine genre thrills with art-house smarts, comes up with even more audacious concept in his first English-language film. Hathaway, in a career-recharging performance, plays Gloria, a drink-all-night, sleep-all-day trainwreck. After her fed-up Manhattan boyfriend (Dan Stevens) kicks her out, she slinks back to her hicksville hometown, where she reconnects with childhood friend Oscar (Sudeikis), now a bar-owner. Meanwhile, in Seoul, South Korea, a gigantic kaiju-like creature is terrorizing the city. The connection between the two plotlines is best left for the viewer, like the astonished Gloria, to discover, as the film boldly expands a you've-gotta-be-kidding gimmick into a resonant trope that evokes female empowerment, American imperialism, drone warfare, Internet memes, the collateral damage of alcoholism, and that evergreen horror-film favorite, the rampaging Id — all without losing sight of the everyday emotional warfare at its core. DCP digital widescreen. (MR)
"The genius of John Coltrane comes to life in an elegantly crafted documentary that can hook jazz novices as well as connoisseurs." — Owen Gleiberman, Variety
"A movie on a mission...Prepare to be dazzled." — Kelly Vance, East Bay Express
The first comprehensive documentary on the saxophone giant, CHASING TRANE begins in 1957, with Coltrane at a crossroads: he has just been fired from the Miles Davis Quintet for repeated drug use. Charlie Parker's heroin-hastened death two years earlier indicated one path to follow. Instead, after going cold turkey, Coltrane experienced a spiritual and musical awakening that took him to the farthest reaches of jazz and beyond, including such milestones as his crossover hit "My Favorite Things," his church-bombing elegy "Alabama," and his soaring 1964 album "A Love Supreme." Director Scheinfeld (THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON) chronicles this amazing journey with never-before-seen photographs and home movies; stunning performance footage; and Denzel Washington voicing Coltrane's words. In addition, a wide-ranging host of admirers (including Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Heath, McCoy Tyner, Carlos Santana, Common, John Densmore, Cornel West, and Bill Clinton) speak feelingly of the personal importance of Coltrane's music to them. As Santana says of Coltrane, “Some people play jazz. Some people play reggae. Some people play blues. He played life." DCP digital. (MR)
1953, John Huston, USA, 95 min. With Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones.
"The resulting film does, indeed, feel like it’s being made up as they go along — in the best possible way...The new 4K restoration is a revelation." — Jason Bailey, Flavorwire
"It may be the funniest mess of all time." — Pauline Kael
This legendary, ahead-of-its-time, and still divisive film can be now be seen for the first time in its original form, thanks to a crisp new 4K restoration that tosses out a cumbersome tacked-on narration and restores about five minutes of footage excised by censors and nervous producers. Dissatisfied with the existing script, director Huston teamed up with rising literary star Truman Capote, and they proceeded to rewrite the script on a day-to-day basis, turning a semi-serious saga of colonial exploitation into a madcap amorality tale tailored for a disjointed postwar world in which everything is up for grabs. Like several of Huston's more serious classics, DEVIL serves up an assortment of ill-matched scoundrels embroiled in an absurd quest — in this case, for untapped uranium deposits in British East Africa. A bemused Bogie leads a cast whose clashing styles only add to fun, including Peter Lorre, Robert Morley, Gina Lollobrigida, and, nearly stealing the show, Jennifer Jones as a kooky blonde with an overactive imagination. DCP digital. (MR)
“A compelling portrait of the chef as tortured artist.” — Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter
“Comparable to watching a veteran robber pull off one last heist, and the ending cuts like a knife.” — Michelle Da Silva, Now
He rose to fame as the handsome, urbane pioneering chef of the New American Cuisine in the Seventies, and the culinary partner of Alice Waters at San Francisco’s groundbreaking farm-to-table Chez Panisse. A self-made legend, he struck out on his own with the acclaimed restaurant Stars. Then, at the height of his celebrity, chef Jeremiah Tower simply disappeared to live as a recluse for more than two decades. He reemerged in 2014, tackling the ill-fated challenge, many called it folly, of reviving Manhattan’s Tavern on the Green. Director Tenaglia’s documentary traces Tower’s tumultuous career as a perfectionist, with a surprisingly intimate look at his personal life, from neglected childhood to pan-sexual kitchen adventures and contentious professional relationships. Interviews include Anthony Bourdain, Martha Stewart, and Mario Batali. DCP digital. (BS)
