• After Hours [1985 / Martin Scorsese / 97 min]
Neo Noir, Cult Classic, Black Comedy. An ordinary office worker
named Paul, strikes up a conversation with a woman in a café. She
gives him her number and he follows up with a call and a trip to her
apartment. That is the last normal thing that happens to Paul that
night. His evening is a roller coaster ride of mishaps involving a long
list of eccentric characters.

• Aguirre: The Wrath Of God [1972 / Werner Herzog / 94 min]
A doomed Spanish expedition to the Amazon is commandeered by
the ruthless and insane don Lope de Aguirre and his obsession with
the golden city of El Dorado. Herzog’s up-close direction and often-
improvised scenes give “Aguirre: The Wrath of God” a sense of
immediacy that makes the titular character’s madness even more
pronounced. It also doesn’t hurt that lead actor Klaus Kinski was
actually a ruthless and insane person in real life, either. The movie’s
also weirdly relevant today with its depiction of a group of people
forced to follow a deranged leader who has absolutely no concern for
their safety or desires.

• Bicycle Thieves [1948 / Vittorio De Sica / 89 min]
In postwar Italy a father desperately seeking work is offered a job that requires him to have a bicycle. The family scrapes up money to get his bicycle out of pawn. On the first day of his job putting up posters, the bicycle is stolen. The father and his young son begin a search of Rome to find the bike. Various leads come to naught but the father and son continue the search and learn about each other in the process. The relationship of the father and son evolves and although the circumstances seem tragic one feels the man and his son gained something. The film is considered by critics to be a masterpiece of Italian neorealism film.

• City Of Hope [1991 / John Sayles / 132 min]
Typical of Sayles films, several tales are woven together to tell the
stories behind the story of an old apartment block scheduled for
demolition, to be replaced by a new development. Crooks and crusaders, rich and poor, black and white, duke it out for their piece of the pie.

• Dheepan [2015 / Jacques Audiard / 115 min]
Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) is a Tamil freedom fighter, a
Tiger. In Sri Lanka, the Civil War is reaching its end, and defeat is
near. Dheepan decides to flee, taking with him two strangers — a
woman and a little girl — hoping that they will make it easier for him
to claim asylum in Europe. Arriving in Paris, the “family” moves from
one temporary home to another until Dheepan finds work as the
caretaker of a run-down housing block in the suburbs. He works to
build a new life and a real home for his “wife” and his “daughter”, but
the daily violence he confronts quickly reopens his war wounds, and
Dheepan is forced to reconnect with his warrior’s instincts to protect
the people he hopes will become his true family.

• The Farewell [2019 / Lulu Wang / 100 min]
A young Chinese American woman named Billi learns that her
Grandmother Nai Nai only has a short time to live. The family decides
to all meet in Changchun China for a wedding and spend time with
the grandmother. Nai Nai thinks everyone is just coming for the
wedding. She does not know of the medical diagnosis and the family
is not going to tell her. Billi at first thinks she should be told but is
informed that this is a common Chinese tradition. There are many
interesting and humorous incidents throughout the movie as Billi
comes to terms with her grandmother’s diagnosis and Chinese
cultural traditions. Nai Nai is a delightful character based upon the
director’s own grandmother.

• Five Easy Pieces [1970 / Bob Rafelson / 98 min]
A classic road trip film from California to Puget Sound. Early Jack Nicholson role. Excellent cinematography. Good example of the “New Hollywood” of the late sixties. One of Roger Ebert’s all-time favorite films.

• The Gleaners and I [2000 / Agnès Varda / 82 min]
Agnès Varda’s documentary film The Gleaners and I (2000) explores
the lives of modern-day gleaners—individuals who collect discarded
or leftover items from agricultural fields or urban waste to survive.
The film, which premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival and won
several awards, is notable for its use of a digital camera, marking Varda’s first foray into digital filmmaking. Through interviews with gleaners, artists, and other individuals who repurpose discarded materials, Varda reflects on themes of poverty, sustainability, and the value of what is often overlooked. The film also includes self-reflexive elements, such as Varda filming her own aging process and her interactions with the subjects she documents. It has been recognized as one of the greatest documentaries of all time, ranking eighth in a 2014 Sight & Sound poll and appearing on BBC’s list of the 100 greatest films of the 21st century. Varda’s approach to filmmaking, which she termed “cinécriture” (writing on film), emphasizes the organic and spontaneous nature of the creative process. The film also features a heart-shaped potato and a clock without hands as symbolic elements that reflect Varda’s fascination with the unexpected and the discarded.

• Glengarry Glen Ross [1992 / James Foley / 100 min]
A sales contest at a shady real estate office causes desperation,
backstabbing, and betrayal to bubble up among the salesmen.
Oozing misplaced machismo, this adaptation of a David Mamet play
is a pantheon of powerhouse performances. Al Pacino, Alan Arkin,
Ed Harris, Alec Baldwin, Jonathan Pryce, and especially Jack
Lemmon deliver well-realized portraits of men driven to the edge of
sanity and morality by the need to be who they think themselves to
be. Whether intentional or not, Mamet’s script is a seething indictment of the dark side of the male ego as well as the toxic intersection of capitalism and identity.

• Harlan County USA [1976 / Barbara Kopple / 103 min]
2026 will be the 50th anniversary of the release of the film Winner of
the Best Documentary Oscar in 1977. In 1990, the film was selected
for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of
Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
In 2014, Sight and Sound published a list of Greatest Documentaries
of All Time, and Harlan County, USA was ranked 24th, tied with two
other movies.
This film documents the “Brookside Strike”, a 1973 effort of 180 coal
miners and their wives against the Duke Power Company-owned
Eastover Coal Company’s Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan
County, southeast Kentucky. When director Barbara Kopple and her
cameraman Hart Perry showed up on the picket line, the locals were
suspicious of their intentions. Rumors flew that a “hippie crew from
New York” was sniffing around the strike. When she confronted a
striker who told people not to talk to her, she was told: “Girl, you gotta tell people here what you’re doin’.”
Kopple and her crew spent years with the families depicted in the
film, documenting the dire straits they encountered while striking for
safer working conditions, fair labor practices, and decent wages. She
followed them to picket in front of the Stock Exchange in New York
City, filming interviews with people affected by black lung disease,
and miners being shot at while striking. Kopple chose to film the
words and actions of the people themselves and use their voices to
tell the story. The music used in Harlan County USA is integral to
conveying the culture of the miners. It reflects the culture of the
people of Harlan County and shows the power of folk music that was
a living part of their culture. Listening to Florence Reece sing the
song she wrote “Which Side Are You On” is amazing.
When the film was re-released in 2006, critic Roger Ebert praised the
film, writing “The film retains all of its power, in the story of a miners’
strike in Kentucky where the company employed armed goons to escort scabs into the mines, and the most effective picketers were the miners’ wives — articulate, indomitable, courageous. It contains a famous scene where guns are fired at the strikers in the darkness before dawn, and Kopple and her cameraman are knocked down and beaten.”

• Heavenly Creatures [1994 / Peter Jackson / 99 min]
Two teenage girls in 1950s New Zealand form an unbreakable bond that eventually leads them to do the unthinkable. Long before he was given the reins of the “Lord of the Rings” adaptation, Peter Jackson demonstrated his ability to enhance an already-emotional story with fantastic images. Based on true events that shocked a nation, Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey play characters that are simultaneously sympathetic and scary who are locked on a collision course with era’s prevailing attitudes of conformity and emotional repression.

• Hundreds Of Beavers [2022 / Mike Cheslik / 108 min]
A drunken doofus in 19th century Wisconsin becomes a fur trapper to get revenge on the colony of beavers who destroyed his applejack distillery. “Hundreds of Beavers” combines the sensibilities of Harold Lloyd, the physics of Looney Tunes, and the logic of video games into a film that is unlike almost anything else made in the 21st century so far. The visible seams in the DIY digital filmmaking in no way diminish the energy and invention this movie brings to the screen. It’s a rollicking, relentless rush of gags that reaches a ridiculous but somehow entirely appropriate conclusion.

• The Killing Fields [1984 / Roland Joffé / 141 min]
Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterson) is a New York Times journalist
covering the civil war in Cambodia. Together with the local journalist
Dith Pran (Haing S Ngor), they cover some of the tragedy and
madness of the war. When the American forces leave, Dith Pran
sends his family with them, but stays behind himself to help
Schanberg cover the event. As an American, Schanberg won’t have
any trouble leaving the country, but the situation is different for Pran; he’s a local, and the Khmer Rouge are moving in. Also starring John Malkovich, Craig T Nelson, Spaulding Gray, Julian Sands, Bill Patterson, and playwright Athold Fugard.

• Network [1976 / Sidney Lumet / 121 min]
2026 will be the 50th anniversary of the release of the film. Network is a 1976 American satirical black comedy drama film directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Paddy Chayefsky. In this lauded satire, veteran news anchorman Howard Beale (Peter Finch) discovers that he’s being put out to pasture, and he’s none too happy about it. After threatening to shoot himself on live television, instead he launches into an angry televised rant, which turns out to be a huge ratings boost for the UBS network. This stunt allows ambitious producer Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) to develop even more outrageous programming, a concept that she takes to unsettling extremes.
Widely considered to be one of the greatest films ever made, Network received widespread critical acclaim, with particular praise for its screenplay and performances. At the 49th Academy Awards, Network became the second film (after A Streetcar Named Desire) to win three acting Oscars, the last to do so until Everything Everywhere All at Once, and the last, as of the 97th Academy Awards, to receive five acting nominations. It was also the eleventh of fifteen films (to date) to receive nominations in all four acting categories. Best Actor winner Peter Finch became the first posthumous acting winner, having suffered a fatal heart attack in mid-January. With only five minutes and two seconds of screentime, Beatrice Straight set a record for the shortest performance ever to win an acting Oscar (Best Supporting Actress). Paddy Chayefsky won his third solo writing Oscar for Network, a record that remains to this day. In 2000, Network was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. In 2002, it was inducted into the Producers Guild of America Hall of Fame as a film that has “set an enduring standard for American entertainment”. In 2005 the Writers Guild of America voted Chayefsky’s screenplay one of the 10 greatest in history. In 2007, the film was 64th among the 100 greatest American films as chosen by the American Film Institute.

• Odd Man Out [1947 / Carol Reed / 116 min]
Described as a British film noir, Odd Man Out is set in Belfast,
Northern Ireland. James Mason stars as prison escapee Johnny
McQueen who has been in hiding. The Nationalist Irish Organization
he is a member of (assumed to be the IRA but never named) wants
him and his men to pull off a robbery. From the beginning there is a
sense that Johnny should stay out of it, another man even offers to
take his place, but Johnny is determined. The robbery goes wrong
and Johnny is wounded and on the run. Various groups and people
are looking for him, some with nefarious plans. He struggles to
survive, slipping in and out of shadows. The woman he loves
searches for him, hoping she finds him before the police.

• On Becoming A Guinea Fowl [2024 / Rungano Nyoni / 95 min]
This black comedy drama opens with a Zambian woman, Shula, finding her Uncle Fred’s body on an empty road in the middle of the night. As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family – wounds the elders would much rather ignore. Filmmaker Rungano Nyoni’s tells a surreal and vibrant story about reckoning with the lies we tell ourselves and about the silence that keeps families from breaking, but only in superficial ways, and with devastating consequences. This film while dark has very funny moments as it explores death and cultural rituals, the conflict between the Fred’s sisters who mourn him and the nieces who were abused by him, as well as the class issues between Fred’s family of origin and the family of his very young wife. This beautifully shot modern fable peels back layers of silence and shame and comments on the very real cost of being vocal in a society that rewards silence.

• The Red Violin [1998 / François Girard / 131 min]
A red-colored violin inspires passion, making its way through three
centuries over several owners and countries, eventually ending up at
an auction where it may find a new owner. The Red Violin greatly
employs the use non-linear storytelling to convey a complicated but
understandable story. The film also uses high, well-managed
production value to create a very believable but imaginative world.
The Red Violin is also a historical move covering multiple cultures
and time periods from the 1680s in Italy to the 1990’s in Montreal.
The Red Violin encompasses so many different aspects of world
culture and history with a throughline connecting it all seamlessly,
enhancing the elements of its cinematic properties and making it
much more accessible for an audience to spend more time in an
otherwise complicated movie.

Join us each month on the dates below at The Venue (21 S. Broadway) for in-person screenings of our 2026 selected films.  Doors open at 6:30 pm and the film begins promptly at 7 pm.  If you haven’t become a subscriber yet, you may join our organization by making a $70 donation under the “Subscribe” tab on this site.  Your $70 donation underwrites our film series and gives you access to our monthly in-person screenings.  If you’d like purchase an individual ticket to a single screening for $10, you can do so under the “Box Office” tab. Our theater screenings occur on the third Wednesday of each month in 2026.