Every Saturday at 11:30am, Monday at 7pm and Thursday at 9pm, the Charles presents repertory films in DCP format (and from time to time on 35mm film) in The Charles’ original 360 seat theatre.
| Stop Making Sense | Thursday, January 1 |
| Annie Hall | Saturday, January 3 |
| The Last Days of Disco | Thursday, January 8 |
| Crumb | Saturday, January 10 |
| Best in Show | Thursday, January 15 |
| Playtime | Saturday, January 17 |
| Safe | Thursday, January 22 |
| The Lovers on the Bridge | Saturday, January 24 |
| Jacob’s Ladder | Thursday, January 29 |
| Cinderella | Saturday, January 31 |
| L’Avventura | Monday, February 2 |
| Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai | Thursday, February 5 |
| Viridiana | Saturday, February 7 |
| Angel’s Egg | Thursday, February 12 |
| Cabaret | Saturday, February 14 |
| DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN | Thursday, February 19 |
| Dark Passage | Saturday, February 21 |
| Naked Lunch | Thursday, February 26 |
| All That Jazz | Saturday, February 28 |
| La Haine | Thursday, March 5 |
| The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her lover | Saturday, March 7 |
| Predator | Thursday, March 12 |
| The Verdict | Saturday, March 14 |
| Adaptation | Thursday, March 19 |
One of the great live bands of the late 20th century hit the stage with a show designed to make the most of their prowess, add to the impact of the performance, and distract the least from the musicians and songs. They got one of the best and most adaptable directors of the era to film it. Together, they created one of the top f more »
Woody Allen’s Woody Allen shtick hasn’t aged well, to say the least, but you’re really here for the late Diane Keaton, right? In truth, she only embodies the title caricature—big hat, menswear, gawky demeanor, bad driver—for a few minutes here. Otherwise, she’s a remarkably three-dimensional character who, as more »
A slice of life about the courtship rituals of young white affluent Manhattanites about 5 seconds before AIDS changed everything and 10 years before the entire island began bending to their will. Whit Stillman’s comedies of the mannered retain their droll charm, and sharp turns from Chloë Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, and Stillman s more »
You think your family is odd? Meet the Crumbs. Charles is a mentally ill shut-in. Maxon is an ascetic mendicant. Robert is celebrated as one of the 20th century’s great artists and damned for the sexism and racism in his work. Terry Zwigoff’s engrossing documentary not only lays bare R. Crumb’s life, it gets at something deep an more »
Who doesn’t love dogs? Who doesn’t love Christopher Guest’s improvised comedies? A cast of Guest regulars (including Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Michael McKean, John Michael Higgins, Parker Posey, Jane Lynch, and Jennifer Coolidge) embody obsessive dog-show types angling for blue ribbons. Fred Willard arrives late and puts th more »
True story: Jacques Tati shot his wry comedy epic on 70 mm in order to capture every purpose-built mid-century architectural detail, every bit of odd background business, and every sight gag, no matter how broad or subtle. The film’s loving sendup of the modern world still works a half century later because of Tati’s read on peo more »
Todd Haynes’ astonishing second feature has aged a bit, but it’s also deepened and gained in its disturbing power. Julianne Moore’s suburban lady who lunches is such a virtuoso blank that her descent into inexplicable illness and malaise functions as a kind of skeleton-key metaphor, fitting a dozen social ills over the past 30 y more »
Leos Carax faced two nearly insurmountable challenges here: shooting on the Pont Neuf bridge, one of Paris’ major thoroughfares, and making Juliette Binoche look haggard. He rose to the occasion for his breakout, combining documentary grit with classic melodramatic amour as Binoche and the great Denis Lavant play two star-crosse more »
Tim Robbins delivers mail in gritty old NYC, but visions of demons and literal Vietnam flashbacks interrupt his shackup bliss with girlfriend Elizabeth Peña.The this-is-a-true-ish-story frame is kinda dumb, but class-trash peddler Adrian Lyne plays way over his head here and makes no errors as the dread creeps. Endlessly ripped- more »
Yes, it’s a fairytale princess story, but the venerable Disney adaptation also resembles a Tom and Jerry cartoon for a good chunk of runtime as a cartoon cat and a gang of mice wage goofy war. There’s also female undermining and patriarchal machinations. And some stunning hand-drawn animation, of course. -Lee Gardner more »
A woman disappears on a barren Mediterranean islet during a yachting jaunt. Her fiance (Gabriele Ferzetti) and her best friend (Monica Vitti) search for her. The mystery lies not in the disappearance, but in what happens to those left behind, as director/co-writer Michelangelo Antonioni crafts one of the richest texts of mid-cen more »
Jim Jarmusch transposes Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï to urban East Coast America for this genre gem. Forest Whitaker tools up as a taciturn hitman who follows the ancient honor code of feudal Japan, bringing him into conflict with his employers, the local Mob. Isaach de Bankolé’s ice cream man and the RZA’s bumping score b more »
How does that saying go about good deeds? Silvia Pinal’s nun-to-be loathes her creepy old uncle (Fernando Rey) but nonetheless consents to visit him one last time before she takes her final vows. What ensues represents one of Luis Buñuel’s most thoroughgoing savagings of the Catholic Church, and that’s saying something. -Lee Gar more »
A boy shouldering a cross-shaped weapon wanders a war–ravaged waste. A young girl cradles a round belly — in fact, it’s a large egg hidden under her dress, an egg she’s convinced is special. Writer/ director Mamuro Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) and illustrator Yoshitaka Amano (Final Fantasy) teamed up for this terse mindblower, nev more »
Everybody’s broke, people are being rounded up on the streets, and Nazis are on the rise. Yes, it’s Germany between the world wars, the setting of Bob Fosse’s screen adaptation of the Broadway smash. The ambisexual bed-hopping at the heart of the plot is au courant, too, though the film is at its louche best on the grotty stage more »
Madonna was never going to be a great actress, but she’s undeniable as a screen presence. She shot to stardom while Susan Seidelman was shooting this downtown romp with Rosanna Arquette as a Jersey housewife whose amnesia leads to her swapping lives with the Material Girl’s title wastrel. Lots of fun, not least for Manhattan pre more »
Humphrey Bogart stars, though you don’t see his face for a third of the film. Delmer Daves shot the early reels from Bogart’s character’s POV—a bold gambit/ gimmick that helps enliven this solid noir. After plastic surgery, Bogart tries to prove his innocence with the help of Lauren Bacall. Several tense sequences and a kindly c more »
Turns out you can film pretty much any novel, though apparently there are limits to how queer you make it. David Cronenberg’s take on William S. Burroughs’ subterranean classic leans into surrealism, squalor, and ick as Peter Weller’s authorial stand-in infiltrates a nightmare demimonde undercover as a straight guy. If nothing e more »
Womanizing workaholic substance-abusing chainsmoking Bob Fosse transformed his decline into one of the great American films, as clear-eyed about death, creativity, and denial as any movie ever made. You might not imagine Roy Scheider as the star of a musical, but then it’s tough to imagine a director making a film about his own more »
It’s reductive to call it the French Do the Right Thing, but not inaccurate. Vincent Cassel, Saȉd Taghmaoui, and Hubert Koundé star as three young men living in a Parisian slum in the wake of an uprising. A friend lying near death after a beating by police and a cop’s lost gun complicate matters. Director Mathieu Kassovitz’s sil more »
Peter Greenaway’s prickly cinema finally hit big with arthouse audiences here. Food and sex will do that. Everybody despises Michael Gambon’s vile gangster, but he holds money and violence over restaurateur Richard Bohringer, just violence over wife Helen Mirren. That doesn’t prevent her from pursuing an affair in the restaurant more »
Lumetland is full of courthouses and bars and unappealing apartments, with the occasional posh paneled room just to make the regular Joes feel inferior. Paul Newman is a serious Lumet guy, a clay-footed lawyer with scotch for blood who gets a chance to turn it all around and blows nearly every shot at it. You’ve seen it all befo more »
That this movie ever existed, much less continues to, seems like some fake Wikipedia entry that will get taken down any minute. Nicolas Cage plays screenwriter/director Charlie Kaufman, who was hired to adapt Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief. He did. That’s the film you’re watching. But it’s mostly about Kaufman’s inability more »
