Runs & Limited Engagements

A film that is in effect the prequel to GREY GARDENS grows out of a nostalgic time capsule of the summer of 1972, composed from home movies shot by Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, and Peter Beard, plus four reels of long-shelved footage of Lee Radziwill's and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's eccentric cousins Big Edie and Little Edie Beale, shot for an abandoned Radziwill project by a crew that included the Maysles brothers as hired hands (they would later return to independently make GREY GARDENS). Revelers on the Montauk beach include Warhol and company, Mick and Bianca Jagger, Truman Capote, assorted Kennedys, and more, but the heart of this documentary trove of memories affectionately narrated by Beard is a more family-style look at the lives of Beale mother and daughter as Radziwill attempts to supervise Onassis-funded renovations to their decrepit East Hampton estate while local officials intent on enforcing the building code circle like buzzards. DCP digital. (BS)

CHIKAMATSU has been overshadowed by the more widely seen epics of Mizoguchi's late period, such as UGETSU and SANSHO THE BAILIFF, but, make no mistake, this is a consummate work from a master filmmaker at the height of his powers. Applied to the more concentrated dimensions of a love story (though with a keen sense of the economic and social factors involved), the exquisite precision of Mizoguchi's mature style is made all the more apparent. Based on a play by the celebrated 18th-century bunraku (puppet-theater) dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon, it tells of two humdrum souls - the weak-willed, conformist artisan Mohei and his master's petulant young wife Osan - who are transformed when a series of unfortunate circumstances propels them down a slippery slope of forbidden love. In Japanese with English subtitles. New 4K DCP digital restoration. (MR)

Please note: This trailer does not have English subtitles. Our screenings of the film will be subtitled in English.

Note: All screenings of CHOSEN: CUSTODY OF THE EYES will be open-captioned.

This absorbing documentary traces the coming of age of a former painter and blogger who is pursuing a path that many will find a strange if not shocking choice for a 19-year-old woman with all the world's possibilities at hand. Heather (a pseudonym chosen to preserve her anonymity) has entered the cloistered Rockford, Illinois, monastery of the Poor Clares, a strict religious order, where she will live and die behind its walls, maintaining silence and encountering outsiders, even family, only through a grille. Working with filmmaker Reese's camera, and with permission from her superiors, Heather creates a contemplative diary of her gradual transition to sisterhood, through the images, sounds, and thoughts of a new life in which voluntary renunciation paradoxically opens up a new world of deep commitment and joy. DCP digital. (BS)

Director Ramsay (WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, RATCATCHER) invades the traditionally male domain of the violent action thriller with a dark unsettling film that turns the genre on its head with psychological depth and metaphysical angst. Joe (Phoenix), survivor of childhood abuse, veteran of Afghanistan, and a rough-edged soul who lives with his dementia-afflicted mother, makes a cash-only living at the kind of odd jobs that involve killing people. His latest commission involves the rescue of the kidnapped pre-teen daughter of a state senator, who is said to be held by a sex-trafficking ring. Ramsay unleashes unimaginable violations of body and spirit, alternating extremes of bloody violence with disorienting poetic reverie, as Joe traverses the shady underworld of dirty politics, white collar crime, and his own tortured imagination. Note: Contains extreme violence. DCP digital widescreen. (BS)

A story that has its roots in the Holocaust comes satisfyingly full circle in a film that is both sobering and winningly whimsical, as 88-year-old Argentinian Abraham Bursztein (Ángel Solá) takes off on his final odyssey to keep a long-ago promise. He may have a bum leg but he's sharp as a tack, and, on the eve of being shuffled off to a nursing home by his adult children, he makes his escape: destination Poland, via Spain and Germany. This foxy grandpa wears his cantankerous neediness like a badge of honor, guilt-tripping a young hipster into doing his bidding, bargaining a discount with a Madrid hotel owner (a lush and maturely lovely Molina) who unexpectedly becomes a love interest, and getting himself into a jam. As Abraham boards a train that will take him through Germany, the story shifts gears into gentle pathos when memory meets reality for a series of encounters that begin the healing. In Spanish, Yiddish, German, and Polish with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (BS)

Revisiting the racial battlefield of classic westerns both American (especially THE SEARCHERS) and Australian (especially THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH), SWEET COUNTRY is a riveting, fact-based drama of injustice framed against starkly beautiful widescreen landscapes. Based on real events of the 1920s, the story centers on the pursuit and trial of an Aboriginal farmer who kills a white man in self-defense. Indigenous director Thornton (who also photographed the film) uses the incident to draw a non-simplistic but damning spectrum of a racist society, from the virulent World War I veteran who attacks the accused man to an enlightened but ultimately ineffectual preacher (Neill), with many darker shades of gray in between (including a shrewd riff on the John Wayne image by BREAKER MORANT's Bryan Brown). The film's many powerful scenes include a chilling act of violation conveyed by a gradual gathering of darkness, and an outdoor screening of the pioneer 1906 film THE STORY OF THE KELLY GANG, with the crowd cheering on the bad guys. In English and Arrernte with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (MR)

Five seasons in the gardens and career of Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, creator of Chicago's acclaimed Lurie Garden in Millennium Park, are traced in this lush documentary that blooms with details of Oudolf's other high-profile projects including Manhattan's High Line and the waterfront Battery Gardens. Beginning with an autumn walk through the designer's own sprawling but intricately planted garden in the Dutch village of Hummelo, the film conveys his deep and thoughtful appreciation for botanical life in all its seasons. Oudolf cites Lurie Garden as the turning point in his development as a designer, a project that propelled him to new thinking about ecology and the use of native plants. As the designer undertakes a major new project for a gallery and arts center in southwest England, seen from start to finish, he seeks inspiration from nature in locations including the gloriously bluebonnet-covered hills of West Texas. DCP digital. (BS)

As demonstrated by her previous films on Slavoj Žižek (THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA) and Anselm Kiefer (OVER YOUR CITIES THE GRASS SHALL GROW), Sophie Fiennes knows how to tailor a film to a cultural icon. She rises to the occasion again with this fittingly unconventional portrait of the ageless diva of androgynous glam, Grace Jones. This is no career retrospective filled with archival clips and talking heads. Instead, the tense is immersively present, and our proximity to Jones is all-access. Filmed and edited over a period of twelve years, the film uses as its spine a visit by Jones to her family in Jamaica, where she dines on bami, goes to church, and recalls the abusively strict religious upbringing that helped to define her steely stage persona. These scenes are interwoven with round-the-world glimpses of Jones recording (that's where "bloodlight" comes in), relaxing, negotiating, battling with producers and hotel managers, and performing electrifying live versions of such legendary favorites as "La Vie en Rose," "Pull Up to the Bumper, "Warm Leatherette," and "Slave to the Rhythm" (while twirling a hula hoop!). DCP digital. (MR)

From LUMUMBA to I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO, Raoul Peck has sought to bring complex political issues to vivid, undiluted life. His latest film, a passion project many years in gestation, takes on one of the most influential figures in modern history and finds the sweet spot between a compelling biopic and a substantial treatment of Marx's thought. The film begins in 1843 with Europe on the brink of political revolution. Marx (Diehl) is an impoverished journalist struggling to support his family while his inflammatory writings keep them on the move, from Prussia to Paris to Brussels to London. His path crosses that of wealthy mill-owner's son Friedrich Engels, and, after a contentious first meeting, they join forces to shape a theoretical foundation for the political ferment that is boiling over in Europe. The film bristles with forceful debates and the memorable personalities involved in them. Marx is seen not as a solitary prophet but a thinker whose ideas evolved in dialogue with those around him, including the dandyish Engels (Konarske), Marx's high-born but politically astute wife Jenny (Vicky Krieps of PHANTOM THREAD), Engels's Irish labor-activist wife Mary Burns, and the radical father-figures Bakunin and Proudhon (the latter played with scene-stealing gusto by Dardenne favorite Olivier Gourmet). In German, French, and English with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (MR)

Director Bozon (LA FRANCE, TIP-TOP) specializes in freewheeling genre mash-ups; this time he mixes a volatile cocktail of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic horror trope and the teacher-tames-the-rowdy-classroom tradition of BLACKBOARD JUNGLE and DANGEROUS MINDS. Huppert plays Mme. Gèquil, a meek high school science teacher mocked by her multiethnic students, poorly supported by her preening principal (Romain Duris), and patronized by her house-husband spouse (José Garcia). Then a massive jolt of lab-enhanced lightning unleashes her dormant Mrs. Hyde - a glowing, instant-justice-dispensing wraith by night; a newly confident, innovative teacher by day. Former film critic Bozon tips his cap to Frank Tashlin and Jerry Lewis, but underneath the wacky comedy is a sharp critique of the class-conscious French educational system. In French with English subtitles. DCP digital. (MR)

Considered a milestone of both the blaxploitation and vampire genres but too contrary to nest comfortably under either label, GANJA AND HESS (which never uses the word "vampire") was acclaimed at Cannes, then butchered and badly distributed before finally emerging as a revered cult classic. Elegant anthropology professor Dr. Hess Green (Jones of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD) is infected with a blood-hunger curse through an ancient African dagger wielded by his assistant (Gunn), who soon commits suicide. The assistant's assertive wife Ganja (Clark) shows up, initiates a passionate affair with Hess, and joins him in blood-drinking bliss until his religious awakening comes between them. Characteristically for Gunn, the plot accounts for only a fraction of the film's rich tapestry. Shifting gears every few minutes and packed with disturbing and provocative images, GANJA AND HESS is a disorienting and haunting experience. Spike Lee's 2015 remake DA SWEET BLOOD OF JESUS only enhanced critics' memories of the more potent original, and this new 4K restoration follows decades of truncated versions and fuzzy transfers. New 4K DCP digital restoration. (MR)

This documentary portrait of iconic makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin explores the triumph of his meteoric career and the tragedy of his untimely death. Following a painful, bullied youth in rural Louisiana, Aucoin fled to New York at the age of twenty, and quickly rose to fame as a brilliant innovator who transformed a behind-the-scenes fashion profession into a recognized art form. An early activist who refused to hide his identity as a gay man, Aucoin forged a path for acceptance as he accumulated career accolades and achievements, including eighteen consecutive Vogue covers. His vast and loyal roster of clients included Cher, Janet Jackson, Nicole Kidman, Sarah Jessica Parker, Tina Turner, and his childhood idol Barbra Streisand. Director Bartok brings warmth to this story told in part by the supermodels and stars who came to know and cherish him through his passion for beauty, including Christy Turlington Burns, Naomi Campbell, Isabella Rossellini, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and more. Includes exclusive fashion-world footage, family photos, and home movies. DCP digital. (BS)

This hard-hitting neo-noir rips the lid off a seething cesspool of systemic corruption in a Chinese resort town after a motel maid spies on a local official who checks in with two inebriated 12-year-old schoolgirls in tow. Mia (Wen), a drab, low-level cleaner and undocumented immigrant with everything to lose, becomes the reluctant center of a skewed investigation when her illicit cellphone footage of the damning evidence becomes the hot property sought by all parties. Director Qu (BLACK COAL, THIN ICE) exposes the many sides of the story, from the self-serving response of the girls' parents, fearful of public opinion and eager for readily proffered payoffs, to the labyrinthine dodges of the police. Irony rules in the film's dark view of pervasive misogyny, of which the town's tawdry seaside monument, a reproduction of the 26-foot "Forever Marilyn" sculpture with skirt flying aloft, is a telling symbol. In Mandarin with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)