Films

They were never in time to book a gig at Toronto’s The Rivoli, then one day… They weren’t in their time at all. From Matt Johnson (BLACKBERRY) and Jay McCarrol’s cult comedy series comes an adventure 17 years in the making. NIRVANNA sets the flux capacitor for a gut-busting and time-skewing real good time.

In his unorthodox queer romance, Harry Lighton crafts a film about a sadomasochistic relationship that is both transgressive and disarming, starring Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård in fearless performances as a mild young man and his leather-clad dom lover.

A winner of this year’s Cannes Competition Jury Prize, SIRÂT is at once a visceral and metaphysical excursion, in which a man desperately searches for his missing daughter amid a roving raver community in the harsh southern deserts of Morocco.

Fun-loving Pasha works as a nonconformist teacher at the same primary school he attended as a child, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine transforms the school and community he loves from a place of education and self-expression to one of militarization and state ideology. Filmed secretly over two years, this Oscar-nominated documentary shows the impossible choices citizens face when the country they love is in the hands of a ruler who demands it become something they cannot accept.

Musical prodigy, admired and beloved by his many collaborators (not the least of which dubbed him “the fifth Beatle”), keyboardist and songwriter Billy Preston was also troubled, underrecognized and elusive — a closeted gay man raised in a Black church community that stridently condemned homosexuality (or pretended it didn’t exist). Electrifying footage and moving interviews bring the maestro front and center.

This delightfully imaginative film is the timeless story of a resourceful young witch who uses her broom to create a delivery service, only to lose her gift of flight in a moment of self-doubt. The new 4K remaster highlights the great thought and care put into every frame of the film, celebrating the authentic craftsmanship of Hayao Miyazaki’s hand-drawn, animated feature.

NATCHEZ captures an unsettling clash between history and memory in a small Mississippi town — a layered mosaic of people contending with the weight of the past in a place where it is always present. Equal parts amusing and disturbing, we journey through an antebellum tourist destination at a crossroads as it grapples with a deeply troubled history that is so thoroughly ingrained in its present, we’re left to wonder if it’s actually past at all.

QUEEN KELLY should have been a dream collaboration — a glamorous world-famous movie star (Gloria Swanson) and her financier lover (Joseph P. Kennedy) hire the most celebrated director of the time (Erich von Stroheim) to make a groundbreaking independent film. Shot in sequence, but shut down by Swanson after just a few of the scandalous African sequences were filmed, the unfinished QUEEN KELLY has been reconstructed based on von Stroheim’s original scripts.

A middle-aged banker, dissatisfied with his suburban existence, elects to undergo a strange and elaborate procedure that will grant him a new life — but finds that starting over in America is not as easy as it sounds in this cautionary sci-fi tale from director John Frankenheimer.

Gael García Bernal stars as Ferdinand Magellan in this grand, decolonial retelling of the Portuguese explorer’s life and expeditions. A vast, globe-spanning epic from Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz conjures the sublime, suggesting each raindrop and each blade of grass carries a power infinitely greater than Magellan’s self-importance.

From the Oscar-winning director of NAVALNY, a father-to-be who tries to figure out what is happening with the AI insanity. Combining expert interviews, home videos and animations, the film meets this pressing AI discourse with curiosity and heart, clarifying complex ideas while acknowledging how much remains uncertain.

After a friendly alien becomes stranded on Earth, a young boy named Elliott (Henry Thomas) and his little sister, Gertie (Drew Barrymore) endeavor to keep its existence a secret. When E.T. falls ill, young Elliot must help him get back home and avoid abduction by the authorities.

As both director and cinematographer, debut filmmaker Brittany Shyne immerses the viewer in the absorbing rhythms and intimate materiality of African-American farm life in Georgia. As government support for Black farmers dwindles, exquisite black-and-white imagery lovingly captures the rough-worn hands, faces and tools-of-trade of octogenarian patriarchs fighting to preserve their family legacies and century-old homesteads.

An advanced prototype robot child named David (Haley Joel Osment) is programmed to show unconditional love. When his human family, unprepared for the consequences, abandons him, David embarks on a dangerous quest to become a real boy. Steven Spielberg helms this futuristic story, the brainchild of Stanley Kubrick, who died before he could bring it to the big screen.

Keith Jarrett’s legendary performance in January 1975 nearly didn’t happen. KÖLN 75 dramatizes how the concert was conceived and orchestrated by the efforts of a teenage up-and-coming concert promoter (Mala Emde) and nearly stymied when the Bösendorfer Imperial Grand promised to the pianist (John Magaro) was nowhere to be found.

“Northwest Passage” — The small northwest town of Twin Peaks, Washington is shaken up when the body of the Homecoming Queen, Laura Palmer, is discovered washed up on a riverbank, wrapped in plastic.

An astronaut crew crash-lands on a planet in the distant future where intelligent talking apes are the dominant species, and humans are the oppressed and enslaved.

A happily engaged couple (Zendaya, Robert Pattinson) is put to the test when an unexpected turn sends their wedding week off the rails. Co-starring Mamoudou Athie, Alana Haim, Hailey Gates and Zoë Winters. Directed by Kristoffer Borgli (DREAM SCENARIO, SICK OF MYSELF). Exclusive 35mm Engagement

A celebration of life filled with raw honesty, surreal bursts of imagination and brazen irreverence, ANDRÉ IS AN IDIOT shows us what it really means to live happily, truthfully, and hilariously. In this Sundance award winning documentary, André Riccardi sets out to chronicle his final journey after receiving a diagnosis he could have prevented, through comedic vérité storytelling and fantastical stop-motion interludes.

Bandmates and best friends Josie, Valerie and Melody find themselves in the midst of massive, multibranded success — as well as a fiendish plot to remake the minds of the world’s youth into zombielike consumers. A candy-colored skeptical musical adventure for everyone!

Past and present collide in this sly psychodrama by German auteur Christian Petzold, as Laura (Paula Beer), a young woman from Berlin, survives a countryside car crash before she gradually enters the fold of a mysterious family. MIROIRS NO. 3 continues the filmmaker’s thematic exploration of trauma, memory, myth and identity in a tale that is simultaneously haunted and enchanted.

The iconic gender-exploding rock sensation and enduring cult classic big-screen adaptation of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s stage musical about an “internationally ignored” but divinely talented rock diva, characterized by Mitchell as inhabiting a “beautiful gender of one.”

A group of scientists are dispatched to investigate the world's first theme park with actual live dinosaurs. Genetic manipulation, chaos theory, and family tensions are explored, and the state of visual effects in the movies was changed forever.

Steven Spielberg brings every strange turn to vivid and tactile life in this complex Cold War story of the 1962 exchange of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Soviet agent Rudolph Abel (Mark Rylance), negotiated by James Donovan (Tom Hanks).

An unconventional work in every way, KOYAANISQATSI wordlessly surveys the rapidly changing environments of the Northern Hemisphere, in an astonishing collage created by director Godfrey Reggio, cinematographer Ron Fricke and composer Philip Glass.

“Traces to Nowhere” — Agent Cooper enjoys the comforts of the Great Northern Hotel. Bobby Briggs and Mike Nelson are released from jail. Doctor Hayward hands over the autopsy report on Laura Palmer.
“Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer” — Ben Horne's brother, Jerry, arrives in Twin Peaks; together they travel to One Eyed Jack's and meet with the madam, Blackie O'Reilly. Audrey leaves a clue for Cooper. Deputy Hawk finds a bloody towel near the crime scene.

A happily engaged couple (Zendaya, Robert Pattinson) is put to the test when an unexpected turn sends their wedding week off the rails. Co-starring Mamoudou Athie, Alana Haim, Hailey Gates, and Zoë Winters. Directed by Kristoffer Borgli (DREAM SCENARIO, SICK OF MYSELF).

Genki Kawamura’s Dante-inspired spin on Kotake Create’s cult game traps Arashi star Kazunari Ninomiya in a looping, sterile subway where one mistake resets everything. A purgatorial thriller born from on-set collaboration, EXIT 8 fuses gameplay logic with razor-sharp, emotionally charged cinema.

Told over eight chapters, this visceral investigative essay documentary from director Valerie Veatch is an urgent excavation of the philosophical, cultural and political forces driving the global A.I. boom.

A man witnesses UFOs in the night skies and — along with a single mother who believes her son has been abducted — begins an obsessive quest for the truth. Meanwhile, government agents track evidence that will lead mankind to the greatest discovery of all.

Live at the Belcourt: How Music Helped Us Rebuild traces the return of live music to our historic stage during our early, uncertain years as a nonprofit arts center. As we worked to rebuild audiences and stabilize the organization, local organizers, promoters and artists stepped forward, bringing concerts back to the theatre and restoring energy and community engagement. In the process, the 1925 Hall’s stage became an early home for a rising movement of artists who reshaped the city’s musical identity for a new century.

Steven Spielberg’s purposeful modern-day retelling of H.G. Wells' novel War of the Worlds is grand sci-fi spectacle and a key player in post 9/11 pop culture. Tom Cruise stars as Ray Ferrier, an ordinary man who summons extraordinary courage to protect his children when a global army of alien invaders set their sights and their devastating war machines upon Earth and the entire human population. Screening in 35mm

Part of Music City Mondays and Staff Picks and programmed by Ellen, who says: “A KNIGHT’S TALE has always stood out in my mind as an instant classic. Not only is the dreamy Heath Ledger the protagonist, but every character is perfectly cast, the one-liners rattle around in your head and always solicit a giggle, and the soundtrack is banger after banger!”

“Rest in Pain” — Cooper meets with Audrey, who confesses to leaving him the note about One Eyed Jack's. Cooper tells Truman he can't remember who the killer was in his dream, but insists the dream is a code to solving the crime.
“The One-Armed Man” — Cooper questions Dr. Jacoby, who suspects Leo Johnson is the killer. Gordon Cole, Cooper's supervisor, calls in with Albert's report. Josie Packard spies on Ben Horne and Catherine Martell. Hawk tracks down the One-Armed Man.
“Cooper’s Dreams” — Cooper and company have tea with the Log Lady, who tells them there was a third man following after Leo and Jacques the night Laura died. At Jacques Renault's cabin Cooper, Hawk, and Truman find Waldo the bird.

After accidentally murdering the love of his life, Jeffrey Franken decides to reanimate her with the help of a drug named Supercrack — and the body parts of a dozen streetwalkers. Frank Henenlotter’s bad taste triumph revels in sublime camp, gloopy gore and neon-soaked dreamscapes.

From Morgan Neville, Academy Award-winning filmmaker of 20 FEET FROM STARDOM and WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR, comes LORNE — an unprecedented, behind-the-scenes glimpse of Lorne Michaels, the man who built Saturday Night Live, the inimitable empire of comedy, shaping television and culture for generations.

Set during the height of Stalin’s Great Terror, the great Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s pitch-black absurdist tale concerns an idealistic government-appointed prosecutor who sets out to expose the mistreatment of a dissident Bolshevik writer who has been jailed and tortured without evidence of wrongdoing. Loznitsa constructs his story with a patient yet unmistakable sense of mounting dread, focusing on the devastating minutiae that allows fascism to function in our world.

The deranged granddaughter of the infamous Robert Wiene creation from his silent classic THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI performs outrageous experiments on her psychosexually disturbed patients at the C.I.A. (Caligari Insane Asylum).

Accompanied by his feisty, independent ex-flame Marion Ravenwood, archaeologist Indiana Jones embarks on a thrilling quest to locate the mystical Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do — dodging traps, snakes, and treachery along the way.

During a mission to Mars, American astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead and left behind. But he’s still alive. Against all odds, Watney must find a way to contact Earth in the hope that scientists can devise a rescue plan to bring him home.

Washington, D.C., 2054. Murder has been eliminated, and the guilty are punished before any crime has ever been committed. All evidence to convict is seen by “Precogs,” three psychic beings whose visions of murder have never been wrong. And no one works harder for the Justice Department’s elite Precrime unit than its top man, Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise). Until he becomes its number-one suspect…

“I'm gonna get you high today, 'cause it's Friday; you ain't got no job... and you ain't got s#!t to do.” After being fired on his day off, down-on-his-luck Craig Jones (Ice Cube) has to help his friend Smokey (Chris Tucker) figure out a way to pay back the brutal drug dealer whose weed they smoked. Screening in 35mm

“Realization Time”— Audrey cons her way into working at the perfume counter where Laura worked and discovers that it's being used as a recruitment post for One Eyed Jack's. James, Donna and Maddy plan to lure Jacoby away from his office.
“The Last Evening”— Audrey is hired at One Eyed Jack's, but is caught in a trap when her father arrives. Cooper gets Jacques Renault to reveal the details of Laura's last night in the cabin. Deputy Andy saves Truman's life and apprehends Renault.

Palestine, 1936. As villages across Mandatory Palestine rise against British colonial rule, Yusuf drifts between his rural home and the restless energy of Jerusalem, longing for a future beyond the growing unrest. Director Annemarie Jacir moves her story forward at pace, balancing plot lines, tones and character motivations against shaping forces of economics, politics and identity.

A freelance art restoration specialist receives a tantalizing proposition from the heirs of an ailing painter: apprehend and complete a series of long-abandoned paintings from their father’s London home, and receive a third of the profits from the sale of the paintings following his imminent death. Michaela Coel and Ian McKellen make a brilliant pairing in Steven Soderbergh’s incisively witty chamber comedy about art, commerce and avarice.

Few classics of Indian cinema are as exhilarating as Ramesh Sippy’s 1975 hit SHOLAY, a delirious four-course meal of action, musical numbers, Indian cinema’s most iconic actors and jaw-dropping widescreen 70mm cinematography. Riffing off Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, Akira Kurosawa’s Samurai films, and classic westerns, the film follows two ne’er-do-wells asked to rid a village of a notorious bandit. (New 4K Restoration of the Original Cut)

Grace Glowicki writes, directs and gives a barkingly daring lead performance in this bizarre, performance art-coded, gender-bending lo-fi Frankenstein comedy about a lonely gravedigger who will do anything to build the perfect man. Preceded by a live opening set from U.S. Girls, who scored the film.

Desperate to flee Calcutta’s rat race, four friends drive to a sylvan guesthouse in one of India’s rural “tribal lands” where they mix with the locals. Filled with some of director Satyajit Ray’s most indelible characterizations and lavish images, the film touches on masculine vulnerabilities and Indian class divisions with the graceful complexity of a master at his peak.

While on vacation in Poland, a British tourist (Charli xcx) breaks away from her doting boyfriend (Will Madden), reuniting instead with an old friend (Lena Góra) in this idiosyncratic postcard romance of serendipity and synchronicity.

Fearlessly ambitious, scathingly funny and thoroughly original, this satirical tale of a telemarketer in alternate-present Oakland loudly heralds the arrival of a fresh filmmaking talent in writer-director-musician Boots Riley.

In the days following October 7, jazz musician Y. and his wife surrender themselves and their art to Israel's social, political and military elite and become entrusted with a mission — to compose a new national anthem. Fierce, maximalist and intentionally confrontational, this incendiary work from Israeli director Nadav Lapid (SYNONYMS) is a blistering exploration of nationalism, art and identity.

When an aimless young punk accidentally stumbles into the intense world of vehicular repossession, he gets caught up in the search for a 1964 Chevy Malibu which may or may not be carrying the corpses of several extraterrestrials in its trunk.

May the 4th be with you. Always. The Rebels scatter after the Empire attacks their base on the ice planet Hoth. Han Solo and Princess Leia are pursued by Imperials, while Luke trains with Jedi Master Yoda. But when Luke battles Darth Vader, he learns the shocking truth of his past. Iconic score from John Williams + May 4th = an otherworldly edition of Music City Mondays.

Part of Staff Picks and programmed by Jessie, who says: “Grab your best friend — time to fall in love with PRETTY WOMAN all over again! In true Vivian fashion it would be ‘a big mistake, HUGE’ to miss on the big screen."