Runs & Limited Engagements

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Cynthia Nixon conjures up the spirit of poet Emily Dickinson in a tart, feisty performance, as a woman who pursues her muse with single-minded passion, defying nineteenth-century norms, even as she lives out her life in the sun-filled house and blooming garden of her childhood home in Amherst. Director Davies (SUNSET SONG, THE DEEP BLUE SEA) evokes wild emotion, contrariness, and discipline in portraying the inner life of the artist, yet depicts a lively and colorful engagement with a world circumscribed by family relationships, close female friendships, and secret but suppressed longings for romantic love. DCP digital widescreen. (BS)

The spirits of Chaplin and Tati live on in the films of the Brussels-based couple Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon, who have carved out a distinctive niche with their delightful mixtures of fairy-tale artifice, offbeat romance, and beautifully choreographed physical comedy. Based loosely on the creators/co-stars' own first encounter, and graced with lovely Paris locations, LOST IN PARIS is breezier and more naturalistic than their previous films (THE ICEBERG, RUMBA, THE FAIRY). Summoned from the snowy wastes of Canada by her beloved Aunt Martha (the late Emmanuelle Riva), adorably gawky Fiona (Gordon) arrives in Paris only to discover that Martha has disappeared. In short order, Fiona falls into the Seine, attracts the amorous attentions of the Boudu-like bum Dom (Abel), and follows Martha's trail to a coffin in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Highlights include a dashing tango by the just-met couple, a hilarious impromptu eulogy by Dom, a deft cameo by Pierre Richard (THE TALL BLONDE MAN WITH ONE BLACK SHOE), and a cliffhanger climax atop the Eiffel Tower. In French and English with English subtitles. DCP digital. (MR)

Tarkovsky's visionary blend of science fiction, philosophy, and poetry centers on a Bermuda-Triangle-like region known as the Zone, created by the impact of a mysterious extraterrestrial object. An eerie hybrid of industrial wasteland and primeval forest, where mirages and mind-bending traps await the unwary traveler, the Zone has been placed off-limits, but guides known as Stalkers have special mentalist powers that enable them to lead illegal expeditions into its interior. STALKER is the story of one such expedition, in which a guide leads a writer and a scientist in search of a Room which, it is rumored, has the power to grant one's innermost desires. In Russian with English subtitles. New 4K DCP digital restoration. (MR)

The spirit of modern art comes alive in this critically acclaimed tour de force featuring Cate Blanchett in thirteen different roles. Based on an art installation by German artist Rosefeldt, the film presents an all-star lineup of manifestos from major 20th-century art movements. Each one is rendered as a performance piece vitalized by Blanchett's inspired characterizations and Rosefeldt's canny selection of richly visualized settings whose effect ranges from evocative to ironic to spectacular. Among the highlights are Blanchett as a funeral eulogist haranguing mourners with a Dadaist diatribe, a newscaster debating conceptual art with a rain-drenched weather reporter, an imperious Russian choreographer imparting Fluxus to a chorus of shiny xenomorphs, and a schoolteacher instructing fifth-graders with snippets of Brakhage, Jarmusch, and Dogma 95. Far from didactic classroom lectures, however, Blanchett and Rosefeldt's inventive tableaux are invigorating, provocative, and often hilarious. DCP digital. (MR)

DRIFTLESS is a feature-length, poetically-versed documentary film which immerses the audience in a world of wildness, seasonal shifts, liminal space, loss, and redemption. It follows the first year of fellow artist and filmmaker Mica O'Herlihy's gender transition, and the last year of living on and operating their farm in Wisconsin, as they are forced to sell and move across the country in order to search for safety and community. ProRes digital. (Gina Kelly)

This screening is presented in association with The Low-Res Thesis Presentation, an annual exhibition at Sullivan Galleries that showcases work by Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts students graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Low-Res Thesis Presentation is open to the public at Sullivan Galleries, July 14 - 30.

The exile years of Jewish Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (Hader), leading up to his suicide with his second wife Lotte (Aenne Schwarz) in Brazil in 1942, are chronicled in six symbolic segments illustrating a crisis of conscience that never abated. Abandoning his beloved Austria in 1934, at the height of his worldwide fame, Zweig is seen fomenting controversy among fellow writers for declining to denounce the Hitler regime, even as he establishes a new life in the safety of Latin America, a continent he comes to love. Zweig’s ex-wife and confidante (Sukowa) takes a pivotal role in deepening the burden of pain, when others look to her as an intermediary to secure his help. In German, English, Portuguese, French, and Spanish with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (BS)

Part oral history, part jam session, part back-roads odyssey, I AM THE BLUES journeys to the Delta country of Mississippi and Louisiana to seek out some of the last and most authentic practitioners of the quintessential African American art form known as the blues. Illustrious bluesman Bobby Rush serves as our unofficial tour guide, but the emphasis is on lesser-known Chitlin' Circuit veterans like Jimmy "Duck" Holmes, LC Ulmer, Barbara Lynn, Lazy Lester, Henry Gray, and Carol Fran. There are no big concerts and few onstage performances — most of this intimate film takes place in juke joints, front porches, parking lots, and pickup trucks, where we join the musicians as they hang out, swap stories, recall the past, and spontaneously perform spellbinding music that seems inseparable from their surroundings. DCP digital. (MR)

When New Jersey parents Maria and Mike McQuay observed that their young son with autism became calm and focused in the family pool, they founded a swim team, the Jersey Hammerheads, at a local Y, recruiting a multicultural group of other boys on the autism spectrum. A decade later, the now co-ed team thrives as a unique confidence-building program that produces a remarkable range of social and therapeutic benefits for the swimmers, some who have become champions in the Special Olympics. Director Stolman zeroes in on three teens, Mikey, Robert, and Kelvin, and their parents, charting the emotional journey of families challenging the limitations that society places on their children. “When I’m swimming I feel normal,” says Mikey. DCP digital. (BS)

Over the course of a half-century, Barbet Schroeder has fashioned one of the most intriguingly eclectic filmmaking careers, marked by a recurring fascination with situations and characters that challenge moral assumptions, including a bloodthirsty dictator (IDI AMIN DADA), a filthy-rich murder defendant (REVERSAL OF FORTUNE), and a teenage hit man (OUR LADY OF THE ASSASSINS). AMNESIA is a deeply personal project, returning to the Ibiza location of Schroeder's first film MORE and featuring a central character based on his own mother. The story begins in 1990; Martha (Keller of MARATHON MAN and FEDORA) is a German musician living in self-imposed exile in Ibiza who, following World War II, completely renounced her native land. Her self-righteous isolation is challenged by the fall of the Berlin Wall and by a romantically charged friendship with Jo (Riemelt), a young German DJ who moves in next door. The title refers to a famous Ibiza nightclub of the era, but another meaning emerges when Jo's mother and grandfather (Ganz) arrive for a visit that will awaken the ghosts of the past. In English and German with English subtitles. DCP digital. (MR)