America’s sweetheart Mary Pickford stars as Gwendolyn, the unhappy daughter of wealthy and neglectful parents. When a crisis is started by a bullying and irresponsible servant, the family is forced to rethink what is important to them. The visual invention of talented director…[read more]

Filmed on location in Buffalo, 21 Below tells the compelling and multi-faceted story of one American family in crisis. Pregnant with her first child, Sharon returns to Buffalo in an attempt to repair the relationship between her mother and her younger sister, Karen, who is pregnant with her third child and caring for a daughter afflicted with the…[read more]

John Barrymore and Dolores Costello star in the best version of Abbé Prévost’s oft-filmed Manon Lescaut, the love story of a divinity student (Barrymore) and a beautiful girl (Costello), whose brother (Warner Oland) has sold her to a lecherous aristocrat. One of the earliest sound films (released before The Jazz Singer, also…[read more]

Tati’s beloved Monsieur Hulot finds himself in a futuristic funhouse of modern architecture and traffic jams as his once-familiar Paris progresses uncontrollably. Hulot adapts to his new surroundings like a fish out of water, which of course sets the stage for his charming and…[read more]

One of Hollywood’s great comedy pioneers, producer Hal Roach—a native of Elmira, NY—was renowned for his hilarious two-reel productions and his uncanny knack for spotting brilliant physical comedians. This program highlights his greatest performers, including Stan Laurel, featured in…[read more]

In his final feature film appearance, Tati’s bumbling Monsieur Hulot takes to Paris’s highways and byways. Hulot, employed as an auto company’s director of design, accompanies his new vehicle (a camper tricked out with absurd gadgetry) to an auto show in…[read more]

In a change-of-pace role, Burt Reynolds is a career burglar who takes on aimless young kid (the very funny Casey Siemaszko) as an apprentice. But while the older thief tries to impart everything he knows about life and his business, youthful impatience creates…[read more]

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, this nimble comedy provides a fascinating character study of Raquel (Catalina Saavedra, who also won a Sundance jury prize for her performance), a live-in domestic for a Santiago family for more than 20 years…[read more]

In the strange and wonderful story of a manchild in search of his beloved bicycle, Paul Reubens introduced movie audiences around the world to one of the iconic figures of the 1980s, Pee-wee Herman. First-time feature director Tim Burton and co-writers Reubens…[read more]

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, this nimble comedy provides a fascinating character study of Raquel (Catalina Saavedra, who also won a Sundance jury prize for her performance), a live-in domestic for a Santiago family for more than 20 years…[read more]

Marlene Dietrich stars as Laurence Gerard, a Parisian divorcee who sets her sights on the dashing Count Lerski. Filmed in her native Germany before Dietrich achieved international stardom in 1930’s The Blue Angel, Madame afforded her newfound…[read more]

For the first time since his feature debut, Tati isn’t playing the iconic M. Hulot; nor is he really the star. Instead, the comic master turns an almost documentary eye toward life under the big top. Clowns tumble and acrobats twirl, and in the middle of it all, ringmaster…[read more]

In one of the most intriguing and underrated films of the 1990s, writer/director Forsyth takes us through several thousand years of history to illustrate the eternal human struggle to find peace and happiness. Robin Williams stars in five separate episodes: as a caveman…[read more]

In London, a weary, middle-aged intelligence agent (James Mason in one of his quintessential performances) struggles to save his marriage to a younger woman (Harriet Andersson) while investigating the death of one of his colleagues. John le Carré’s novel…[read more]

Sylvie Testud, one of world cinema’s finest contemporary actresses, stars as Christine, a young woman in a wheelchair who makes a pilgrimage to Lourdes with thousands of others searching for, and receiving, what would appear to be a miraculous cure. Writer/director Hausner, a protégé of…[read more]

In London, a weary, middle-aged intelligence agent (James Mason in one of his quintessential performances) struggles to save his marriage to a younger woman (Harriet Andersson) while investigating the death of one of his colleagues. John le Carré’s novel…[read more]

W.C. Fields plays an inventor with an idea for a shatterproof windshield and a penchant for—what else?—booze. Fields may have been best-known for his cynical twang and gin-soaked wisecracks, but he was also an expert pantomime: His Vaudeville-honed stage skills…[read more]

In another of his quintessential outsider portrayals, Paul Newman is young attorney Anthony Lawrence, who, having grown up poor, now places money above all else as he tries to climb the social ladder in the City of Brotherly Love. His ambition is put to the test…[read more]

Utterly uncompromising in its portrait of a crude and corrupt man filled with self-loathing and desperate for transcendence, Bad Lieutenant tells the lurid story of a lapsed Catholic cop bent on suicide through three major vices: drugs, sex, and gambling…[read more]

At the beginning of this low-key and very funny comedy of errors, our hero, Hyuk-Jin, gets terribly drunk with his buddies after being dumped by his girlfriend. Pressured to accept an invitation for a weekend getaway with his friends, he arrives in a cold, distant…[read more]

MacIntyre (Peter Riegert), a young Houston oil executive, is dispatched by his corporate head (Burt Lancaster) to a tiny Scottish coastal fishing village. Mac’s mission to purchase the town in order to build a refinery is thwarted by the charming and quirky locals, including a…[read more]

In this spellbinding adaptation of Marilynne Robinson’s much-acclaimed novel, two orphaned sisters (played by Sara Walker and Andrea Burchill) are driven apart as they share their ramshackle house with their eccentric aunt (Christine Lahti in a remarkable performance) in the Pacific Northwest of the…[read more]

This program of short films from the pioneering days of cinema puts the spotlight on a genre that’s been with us almost as long as the medium: the Western. We begin with the legendary and influential THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (Edwin S. Porter, US 1903, 12 min.); Western icon Gilbert M. “Broncho Billy” Anderson stars in…[read more]

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s on-screen husband and wife feast on love, lust, and betrayal in this tale of cut-throat ambition on Wall Street, filmed two years after the stars’ real-life marriage in Las Vegas. Drawn from the epic novel by John O’Hara, and…[read more]

Neither a sequel to nor remake of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant, director Werner Herzog delivers his contemporary variation on the film noir genre in this story of a corrupt cop in post-Katrina New Orleans. Herzog’s fever-dream story is driven by an…[read more]

When their mutual friend is killed by a big shot gambler (Robert Shaw), two professional con men (Robert Redford and Paul Newman) try to get even by pulling off a big sting on the killer. Funny, complex, and filled with numerous twists, this Oscar®-winning Best…[read more]

A railway worker (Miroslav Krobot) in a dank and decaying port town witnesses a crime while stationed on a tower and then finds himself caught up in the aftermath. Tilda Swinton co-stars as the hero’s wife in the most recent feature from Hungarian master Béla Tarr (Satantango, Werckmeister Harmonies), a…[read more]

After living with an overbearing mother her whole life, an unmarried 35-year-old teacher (Joanne Woodward) gets a chance at romance with a handsome suitor (James Olson) from the big city. Paul Newman made his debut behind the camera directing his wife…[read more]

A year after picking up Hollywood’s first Best Picture Oscar® for Wings, legendary director Wellman turned to this rollicking saga of hobos on the lam. In what was probably her finest Hollywood feature, the magnificent Louise Brooks hops freight trains…[read more]

Paul Newman directed, produced, and stars as the central character in this adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel about a family of rugged individualists facing soul-searing challenges in Oregon lumber country. Henry Fonda, Lee Remick, and Richard Jaeckel…[read more]

Hailed as the one of the greatest antiwar films of all time, this gripping adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic WWI novel hasn’t been seen at its original length since 20 minutes were cut immediately after the film’s 1930 premiere. Luckily, this version—originally intended for foreign-language markets and beautifully restored by the…[read more]

Paul Newman, in the performance that finally provided him the elusive Best Actor Oscar®, reprises his role as “Fast” Eddie Felson, poolshark anti-hero of The Hustler. Older and much more cynical, Eddie has become the type of person he once…[read more]

Robert Englund is the original Freddy Krueger, who, in the first two chapters of his enormously popular horror film saga, inhabits the nightmares of several all-American teenagers (including Johnny Depp in part one), most of whom don’t wake up. By killing their children, the vengeful Freddy is out to settle the score against the…[read more]