Jeff Who Lives at Home

(14A) coarse language, substance abuse
Running time: 82 minutes
USA / English
Playing in Screen 1
WATCH THE TRAILER  |  more info (IMDb)

Starring Jason Segal, Ed Helms, Susan Sarandon; directed by Jay and Mark Duplass (CYRUS).

On his way to the store to buy wood glue, Jeff looks for signs from the universe to determine his path. However, a series of comedic and unexpected events leads him to cross paths with his family in the strangest of locations and circumstances. Jeff just may find the meaning of his life...and if he's lucky, pick up the wood glue as well.

"A goofy, sweet comedy about estranged siblings who work their way back to brotherly love in the course of a daylong, very shaggy caper of coincidences." —Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly)

"You come to like Jeff and even to admire him. The aura of holy foolishness that hangs around him is not just bong exhaust: he turns out to be the hero of a disarmingly sincere spiritual fable." —A.O. Scott (New York Times)

Bully

(PG) Coarse language
Running time: 100 minutes
USA / Documentary
Playing in Screen 1
WATCH THE TRAILER  |  more info (IMDb)

Bully follows five kids and families over the course of a school year. Stories include two families who have lost children to suicide and a mother awaiting the fate of her 14-year-old daughter who has been incarcerated after bringing a gun on her school bus. With an intimate glimpse into homes, classrooms, cafeterias and principals’ offices, the film offers insight into the often cruel world of the lives of bullied children.

"The best social documents on film do more than show you what's wrong in the world - they make it personal. Bully does that with a passion." —Peter Travers (Rolling Stone)

"BULLY forces you to confront not the cruelty of specific children - who have their own problems, and their good sides as well - but rather the extent to which that cruelty is embedded in our schools and therefore in our society as a whole." —A.O. Scott (New York Times)

Damsels in Distress

(PG) sexual content, language may offend
Running time: 99 minutes
USA / English
Playing in Screen 2
WATCH THE TRAILER  |  more info (IMDb)

Starring Greta Gerwig, Analeigh Tipton and Adam Brody; directed by Whit Stillman (THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO, METROPOLITAN).

Set on the campus of a former women's college now overrun with lunkhead Roman-frat boys, Whit Stillman's comeback comedy is wobbly and borderline twee, but it deepens as it goes along and becomes rich. The initial conceit is a beaut: to upend Heathers and Mean Girls by turning the central trio of insouciant alpha-hotties into do-gooders who march into dorms, pull students off their suicidal ledges, and put them in tap shoes to sing and dance. Pretending to be people they aren't, these youngish characters are hurt, exposed. But Stillman, the most charitable of satirists, allows these poseurs to pick themselves up and find a better pose. (David Edelstein, Vulture)

"A film that raises laughs even with its end credits, Whit Stillman's whimsical campus comedy Damsels in Distress is an utter delight." —Leslie Felperin (Variety)

"It's delightful and a little bewildering to find a 2012 comedy that evokes a world that exists only in the novels of P.G. Wodehouse." —Roger Ebert

"Even were it not so delightful, Damsels in Distress, set at a fictional upper-crust college, would deserve a watch for its dialogue alone. —Jeannette Catsoulis (NPR)

West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson

Saturday May 19 @ 4:00pm
Sunday May 20 @ 4:00pm

(G)
Running time: 95 minutes
Canada / English language
Directed by Peter Raymont and Michèle Hozer
Playing in Screen 2
Official Website

Famed for his strikingly lyrical paintings of the Canadian landscape, Tom Thomson is one of the key figures in the history of Canadian art and a shaping influence on our national mythology — and something of a myth himself after his mysterious death at the age of thirty-nine, at a time when his art was reaching its peak. Thomson went missing in Ontario's Algonquin Park on July 8, 1917, his body discovered eight days later floating face down in Canoe Lake; the exact cause of death has never been determined. In this rich and exhaustive new documentary, Peter Raymont (Shake Hands with the Devil) and Michèle Hozer (Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould) explore Thomson's enduring legacy and mystery through never-before-seen works by the artist and evocative footage of the landscapes that inspired him.

"As gorgeous as the iconic artist’s paintings... West Wind is a great story of a great artist" —Chris Cobb (Ottawa Citizen)

Cinematica Classic Movies

• Full Cinematica Lineup for May and June

Cinematica is a new repertory program at The Screening Room. Enjoy classic movies the way they were meant to be seen: on the big screen! Cinematica Admission is only $6.

GLEN OR GLENDA (1953)

Friday May 18 @ 9:30pm
Directed by Ed Wood
Starring Ed Wood, Bela Lugosi, Dolores Fuller
65 minutes / Not rated

A David Lynch favorite, GLEN OR GLENDA stars Wood as more or less himself: a transvestite seeking approval in an indifferent world. The picture is especially noteable for its utterly unique combination of progressive politics and inexplicable dream sequences. A good case could be made for this as some kind of outsider art film.

ARTHOUSE ESSENTIALS:
THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957)

Wednesday May 23 @ 7:00pm
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Starring Max Von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bibi Andersson
96 minutes / B&W / Swedish with English subtitles / PG

THE SEVENTH SEAL is regarded as a key to the emerging self-awareness of art cinema. Yet despite its setting in plague-striken medieval Sweden and featuring Death himself as a character, I've never found THE SEVENTH SEAL as grim or negative as its reputation would suggest. In fact, the film appears to be as much about the small joys of life as it is about death, as the scene when the knight (Von Sydow) offers warm thanks for the hour of peace spent with Jof, Mia, and their infant child.