Runs & Limited Engagements

Directed by longtime friend and noted photographer Greenfield-Sanders, this documentary portrait of the great African American novelist is as rich and abundant as the extraordinary woman it depicts. At its heart is a meaty interview with Morrison, a warm but formidable presence as she recalls her remarkable life as a book-crazy girl in an Ohio steel town, a schoolteacher raising two children on her own, an influential editor at Random House, and an author who revolutionized writing about race in America en route to winning the Nobel Prize. The film's perspective is broadened by friends and admirers including Oprah Winfrey, Angela Davis, Sonia Sanchez, and Fran Lebowitz, while, in the manner of Morrison's celebrated anthology The Black Book, a steady stream of archival materials and works by notable black artists (Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, Kara Walker, et al.) evokes the immensity of African American experience to which she gave such eloquent shape. DCP digital. (MR)

Director Broomfield (WHITNEY: CAN I BE ME; BIGGIE & TUPAC) charts the hard, beautiful, and often tortured progress of an evolving lifelong relationship between singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen, the woman who became his muse. In 1960, fledgling writer Cohen meets Norwegian expat Marianne, a single mother, while he’s holed up on the Greek island of Hydra to pen his novel Beautiful Losers. The two become lovers in an affair that waxes and wanes over the next eight years. Discovering his true calling as the creator of angst-ridden ballads, Cohen shoots to international fame and a plethora of temptations and new relationships. The mournful kiss-off tribute “So Long Marianne” hung their breakup out for the world to see, but the truth proved more complex. With a wealth of photos, concert footage, and intimate details of the intertwined lives of Cohen and Ihlen, this is a revelatory documentary that packs an emotional punch. DCP digital. (BS)

Shunji Iwai followed his 2001 cult classic ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU with the acclaimed HANA AND ALICE (2004), centered on the friendship between two high-school girls. Wistful, funny, and gently ironic, THE CASE OF HANA AND ALICE is a stand-alone prequel to the earlier film, detailing how the two friends first met—this time in the form of an animated film, Iwai's first. It begins with 14-year-old Alice's disorienting move from the big city to the boondocks. She finds her new school apparently haunted by the spirit of a boy who mysteriously disappeared and is rumored to be dead. Intrigued by the reclusive girl Hana who lives across the street, Alice barges into her house, and the two join forces to solve the mystery. It soon becomes apparent that the flimsy mystery plot is a pretext enabling Iwai to explore mood, themes of impermanence and aging, and the developing bond between Alice and Hana, culminating in an enchanting all-night ramble after the two junior detectives miss the last train home. In Japanese with English subtitles. ProRes digital. (MR)

A fascinating true case of imposture in 16th-century France has inspired numerous books, an operetta, a West End musical, and at least three films, including this newly restored, long-out-of-circulation 1982 classic. In the village of Artigat in 1549, lowly regarded Martin Guerre disappears, leaving behind a wife (Baye), a son, and a reputation for dishonesty. Eight years later, Martin (Depardieu) unexpectedly returns in a bigger, better, and more loving incarnation. Nobody questions his identity, least of all his delighted wife, until a financial dispute leads to an official inquiry. Featuring superb production design, music, and acting, Daniel Vigne's Oscar-nominated sophomore film (co-scripted by the prolific Jean-Claude Carrière) is a compelling mystery, a twist-filled courtroom drama, a moving love story, and a thought-provoking discourse on themes of authenticity and identity. In French with English subtitles. New 4K DCP digital restoration of the Director's Cut. (MR)

Based on a graphic novel by Fermin Solis, this unique animated feature focuses on a turning point in the career of the great Spanish-born director Luis Buñuel. With his career at a standstill due to the notoriety of his early surrealist classics, Buñuel sets out in 1932 with three of his leftist/anarchist friends to make LAS HURDES, a bracingly confrontational documentary set in an extremely backward and impoverished region of Spain. Using a style of 2-D animation that emphasizes facial expression over fluidity of movement, director Simó draws a complex portrait of Buñuel—haunted by nightmares and childhood memories of his disapproving father, capable of bizarre and callous behavior, but also finding the compassion and humanity that will fuel his growth as an artist. In Spanish and French with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (MR)

The mystery and wonder of the young growing brain are at the core of this engaging documentary, the first of its kind in linking early childhood education with the science and the proof that lifelong success builds critically on the quality of stimulation received between the ages of one and six. No dry study, this film goes where change happens, from the vibrant “Yellow Room” in Highland Park, Illinois, where Ms. Giannini leads her small and eager charges in an exciting search for outdoor bugs, to a free program for working parents in Waco, Texas, where a Hispanic mom joyfully discovers that the simple act of reading to her kids results in a wealth of emotional and intellectual benefits. Bringing animation, humor, scientific research, and a performance by the Cookie Monster into the mix, the award-winning filmmakers (LOUDER THAN A BOMB) delve into the nation’s crisis in early childhood education with positive look to the future. Narrated by Alfre Woodard. ProRes digital. (BS)

The declining years of an aging Yakut couple are measured against a backdrop of encroaching environmental devastation in this stunningly photographed drama filmed in the far northern Russian republic of Sakha. Nanook and his wife Sedna live a spartan, self-sufficient existence amid a seemingly unpopulated expanse of ice and snow. The man's name pointedly evokes Robert Flaherty's 1922 classic NANOOK OF THE NORTH, but Milko Lazarov's film emphasizes the fragility of the way of life that Flaherty sought to preserve on celluloid. Spring is coming earlier each year, the reindeer are disappearing, and jet trails streak the sky. Nanook is losing his memory, and Sedna's health is on the wane. The couple are also troubled by the acrimonious departure of their daughter Ága, whom they have lost contact with. A search for the lost daughter provides the framework for the film's last act, which moves from intimate tragedy to a vast apocalyptic vision. In Yakut with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (MR)

Inspired by Eric Klineberg’s book, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Helfand (BLUE VINYL) takes a hard, personal, and often quirky look at the inequity of natural disaster, beginning with her family’s own experience of Hurricane Sandy. She ultimately zeroes in on Chicago’s shockingly inadequate response to the deadly July 1995 heatwave, during which the city morgue overflowed with the sudden deaths of 726 citizens, largely the elderly and people of color from the city’s impoverished South and West Side. This audacious look at natural disaster American-style starts with the stark premise that a zip code can be an accurate predictor of life or death when nature unleashes its worst. With increasing frequency and force, climate change sets the agenda for hurricanes, floods, heat waves, and such, but systemic neglect, deep poverty, and political expediency have already drawn the line between the survivors and the doomed, even before disaster strikes. DCP digital. (BS)

In the eyes of many critics, the best adventure film of the year isn't a Hollywood epic starring Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt but this taut and thrilling British documentary about a group of determined women storming a male-dominated stronghold some thirty years ago. After a troubled youth, rebellious misfit Tracy Edwards discovered her passion in sailing. Finding the yacht-racing establishment unreceptive to women, she assembled the first all-female crew to compete in the grueling Whitbread Round the World Race. The hazards of the ocean (captured in on-board video footage) are matched by the mockery of the press, while friction between the intense Edwards and her crew gives way to solidarity in the face of adversity. DCP digital. (MR)

A souped-up '55 Chevy occupied by a stone-faced driver (Taylor) and his mechanic (Wilson of the Beach Boys) and a sparkling new GTO piloted by a loquacious loner (Oates) cross paths on the back roads of the American West. Bringing along an enigmatic young hitchhiker (Laurie Bird), the two cars set out on a race to the East Coast, but what at first seems like a white-knuckle, high-stakes contest morphs into something more abstract as the racers stare down an endless highway, reckoning with their addiction to the constant momentum of the road. Featuring a beautifully spare script by experimental novelist Rudy Wurlitzer, TWO-LANE BLACKTOP was never destined to be the post-EASY RIDER youth-market hit the studio hoped it would be. Instead, it has endured as one of the preeminent cult items of its era, a one-of-a-kind existentialist road movie. 35mm widescreen. (CW)

Winner of Best Director at the 2018 Tokyo International Film Festival, this first feature puts a poignant slacker-comic twist on the bloodthirsty yakuza genre, with an added side of shy romance. Twenty-something Kazuhiko (Minagawa), a terminally introverted college grad, lives with his parents and has never had a girlfriend. He’s never held a job, either. A confluence of circumstances scores him a lowly janitorial position in a bathhouse and a fateful meeting with perky but socially stunted former classmate Yuri (Yoshida). Just as life is looking brighter, an ill-advised peek at the after-hours activities of his boss and a punky co-worker lands Kazuhiko in hot water, making him the helpless pawn of gangsters in a new more deadly line of overtime work. Presented in collaboration with Asian Pop-up Cinema. In Japanese with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (BS)

This twisty diversion opens with Abel (Garrel), a thirtysomething journalist, absorbing a series of gut-punches: His long-term girlfriend Marianne (Casta) announces that she's pregnant...by his best friend Paul…and they're getting married in a few days. Eight years later, following Paul's death, Abel and Marianne hook up again, but two new characters complicate the picture: Marianne's son Joseph, who confides to Abel that Marianne murdered Paul, and Paul's now-grown kid sister Eve (Depp), who has nurtured a lifelong crush on Abel and will stop a nothing to win him away from Marianne. Scripted by the indefatigable Jean-Claude Carrière (THE TIN DRUM, numerous Buñuel classics), actor Garrel's second film as director displays an appreciation for the perversities of human nature and a deft juggling of tones, as the film walks a tightrope between rom-com, film noir, and black comedy. In French with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (MR)