Monday, January 26 at 7pm
Moonrise Kingdom
Directed by Wes Anderson (U.S., 2012) 94 min. 35MM. With Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand.
Nominated for an Oscar for Original Screenplay, Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola’s quirky tale finds 12-year-olds Sam and Suzy escaping from Camp Ivanhoe and absconding into the wilderness off the New England coast. The pair fall too deep into their cute courtship to care that every adult in their lives is trying to locate them before a dangerous storm makes landfall. Featuring first-time actors Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward as the charming tweens in a budding romance, this off-kilter camp story hints at the Andersonian magic that would follow in films like The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and Asteroid City (2023) (Academy Museum of Motion Pictures notes).
Monday, February 2 at 7pm
I Am Cuba
Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov (USSR/Cuba 1964) 141 min. DCP. With Sergio Corrieri, Salvador Wood, José Gallardo. Spanish and English with English subtitles.
Begun only a week after the Cuban missile crisis, Mikhail Kalatozov’s deliriously beautiful masterpiece was designed to be Cuba’s answer to both Sergei Eisenstein’s propaganda masterpiece Potemkin and Jean-Luc Godard’s freewheeling romance Breathless. But I Am Cuba turned out to be something unique — a wildly schizophrenic celebration of Communist iconography, mixing Slavic solemnity with Latin sensuality. The plot, or rather plots, feverishly explore the seductive, decadent (and marvelously photogenic) world of Batista’s Cuba — juxtaposing images of rich Americans and bikini-clad beauties sipping cocktails poolside with scenes of ramshackle slums filled with hungry children and gaunt old people. Milestone Films first released the film in 1995. Decades later, they have created a brand new restoration from original material. The newly restored I Am Cuba is more ravishing and surreal than ever. Audiences will have no question why this film revolutionized filmmaking in the 1990s and beyond.
Monday, February 9 at 7pm
Out of Sight
Directed by Steven Soderbergh (U.S. 1998) 123 min. DCP. With George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez.
Razor-sharp wit and expertly deployed star wattage—not to mention crackling sexual chemistry between the two leads—were in abundant supply when Steven Soderbergh burst into the mainstream, directing Scott Frank’s ultra-cool adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s 1996 novel. George Clooney is Jack Foley, a career bank robber on the run after breaking out of a Florida penitentiary; Jennifer Lopez is U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco, the no-nonsense law enforcement officer who’s determined to put Foley back behind bars. Alongside a stacked supporting cast that also includes Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Albert Brooks, and Viola Davis in one of her earliest film roles, Clooney and Lopez bring humor and heat to a singularly sexy game of cat-and-mouse as Foley makes his way to Detroit in pursuit of a rumored stash of diamonds, with Sisco in hot pursuit. Edited with wry precision by the legendary Anne V. Coates, Soderbergh’s seventh feature is a master class in smart, ensemble-driven genre filmmaking, and remains a relentlessly entertaining crowd-pleaser nearly 30 years after its release (Film at Lincoln Center notes).