What's On
The Missouri Breaks
This exuberant, wild and wooly western from Arthur Penn features a brazenly transgressive performance from Marlon Brando, while Jack Nicholson underplays masterfully as the cattle rustler he's been hired to eliminate.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Céline Sciamma's queer costume drama -- about a painter covertly studying a young noblewoman who refuses to sit for her portrait -- was voted 30th Greatest Film Ever Made in a 2022 poll, the highest ranking film of the past decade.
Raging Bull
In the throes of a near-fatal drug problem Martin Scorsese made what he believed could be his last movie. Its subject: the Bronx Bull, Jake La Motta, a graceless but indomitable boxer who never quits beating himself up. De Niro has never dug deeper.
Capernaum
Nadine Labaki's Oscar-nominated heart-tugger tells the story of a 12 year old boy who has grown up in the slums of Beirut, and who decides to sue his parents for bringing him into such a world. "An absolute heartbreaker." Peter Howell, Toronto Star
Two of Us
This French love story is as tense and edgy as a thriller. Nina (Barbara Sukowa) has the apartment adjacent to Madeleine's, which is convenient: the women have been secret lovers for decades. Then a stroke renders Madeleine paralyzed, and Nina is bereft.
Woman in the Dunes (35mm)
Teshigahara's collaboration with novelist Kōbō Abe's is vividly strange, erotic and unsettling allegory about an amateur entymologist who is himself ensnared in a trap he only dimly understands.
The Colour of Pomegranates + The House Is Black
This month's Pantheon screening is a double-bill, Sergei Parajanov's extraordinary evocation of the life and work of C18th Armenian poet Sayat Nova, and, The House is Black (22 min), the only film directed by the great Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad.
Fantasia
Walt Disney pushed the boundaries of animation and sound recording when he put together a movie concert: eight classical pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Stravinski et al, each animated in a different style. It's playful, sometimes cute, other times inspired.
Image: © Disney, 1940