This series of cinematic two-fers brings us several pairs of features from some of classic and contemporary cinema’s most celebrated directors. Targets and Paper Moon are New Hollywood stalwart Peter Bogdanovich’s acclaimed first and fourth movies; the start of our series of Madison premieres with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud was inspiration enough to bring in a 35mm print of his J-horror gem Pulse; the new DCP restoration of Todd Solondz’ Palindromes, a semi-sequel to Solondz’ Welcome to the Dollhouse, is a good reason to present both films; the legendary Charlie Chaplin is represented by a new DCP restoration of his 1925 silent masterwork The Gold Rush, and a 35mm print of his fascist-skewering wartime classic, The Great Dictator; and American filmmaker Charles Burnett is showcased by two movies, a new restoration of his remarkable debut Killer of Sheep, and a 35mm print of The Annihilation of Fish, a unique romance starring James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave. Originally produced in 2001, Fish did not receive wide distribution until 2025, when it was hailed with some of the best reviews of any films in release.
FRI., 9/5, 7 p.m.
PAPER MOON
USA | 1973 | DCP | 102 min.
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Cast: Ryan O’Neal, Tatum O’Neal, Madeline Kahn
Bogdanovich combines the gorgeous black and white photography of The Last Picture Show and the screwball comedy dialogue pace of What’s Up, Doc? to tell the seriocomic tale of a con man (Ryan O’Neal) and his young charge (an Oscar-winning performance from Tatum O’Neal) on the road and evading the authorities in Great Depression era Kansas and Missouri. Laszlo Kovacs cinematography is incandescent and Alvin Sargent’s screenplay (an adaptation of the novel Addie Pray by Joe David Brown) boasts an authenticity that the lived-in performances serve to highlight. (BR)
THURS., 9/11, 7 p.m.
CLOUD
Japan | DCP | 2024 | 124 min. | Japanese with English subtitles
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Cast: Masaki Suda, Kotone Furukawa, Masataka Kubota
After cashing in on flipping merchandise online, internet grifter Yoshii cashes out and retreats with his ill-gotten gains to an isolated house in the Japanese forest. But Yoshii’s shady past isn’t finished with him, and his dissatisfied customers are determined to settle the score. Japanese master of suspense Kiyoshi Kurosawa delivers a twisty, unpredictable thriller that strikes at the heart of the digital economy. (MK)
FRI., 10/3, 7 p.m.
PULSE
Japan | 2001 | 35mm | 119 min. | Japanese with English subtitles
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Cast: Haruhiko Katô, Kumiko Aso, Koji Yakusho
A ghost story for the dial-up era, this eerie J-horror classic imagines the online world as a portal between the dead and the living. In Tokyo, young people are going missing, as a group of college students are drawn to a website asking “do you want to meet a ghost?” Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s prescient techno-chiller was among the first artworks to recognize the internet as the Pandora’s box of our time. (MK)
SAT., 10/4, 7 p.m.
TARGETS
USA | 1968 | 35mm | 90 min.
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Cast: Boris Karloff, Tim O’Kelly, Peter Bogdanovich
At a Southern California drive-in movie theater, the fates of aging monster movie icon Byron Orlok (Karloff) and psychotic mass shooter Bobby Thompson (O’Kelly) will collide. One of the most compelling and still enduring debuts from a New Hollywood director, Bogdanovich’s Targets is a scary, fascinating piece of Americana. The screenplay intriguingly commingles the real life stories of Texas sniper Charles Whitman and horror movie legend Karloff, who more or less plays himself in one of his final big-screen appearances.
SAT., 10/18, 7 p.m.
WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE
USA | 1996 | 35mm | 87 min.
Director: Todd Solondz
Cast: Heather Matarazzo, Brendan Sexton, Jr., Daria Kalinina
The hero of Solondz’ Sundance Grand Prize winning comedy is 12-year old Dawn Wiener. Dawn, aka Wienerdog, is an awkward outcast navigating a world of relentless bullying, social rejection, and domestic neglect. Welcome to the Dollhouse just might be the cinema’s most authentic depiction of the American middle school/junior high experience, which is to say it is equally funny, disturbing, and cringe-worthy. A 35mm print from the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research will be shown.
SAT., 10/25, 7 p.m.
PALINDROMES
USA | 2005 | DCP | 100 min.
Director: Todd Solondz
Cast: Ellen Barkin, Stephen Adly-Guirgis, Jennifer Jason Leigh
12-year-old Aviva, desperate to have a baby, runs away from home, setting off on a surreal and troubling journey through middle America. In Palindromes, writer-director Solondz’ bold move is to have Aviva played by eight different actors of varying age, race, and gender. The result is a provocative, darkly comic, and unsettling film that skewers the hypocrisies of American family values, faith, and moral absolutism in a post-9/11 landscape. The movie also functions as a partial sequel to Solondz’ breakthrough feature, Welcome to the Dollhouse. A new 4K restoration will be shown.
SAT., 11/1, 7 p.m.
THE GOLD RUSH
USA | 1925 | DCP | 88 min.
Director: Charles Chaplin
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Georgia Hale, Mack Swain
In Chaplin’s most celebrated feature of the 1920s, the Little Tramp is a prospector looking for gold who finds romance with dance hall girl Georgia (Hale). Told on a grand production scale, The Gold Rush contains some of Chaplin’s most celebrated bits of physical comedy, including the dance of the dinner rolls and the consumption of a shoe for dinner. A beautiful new 4K DCP restoration of the original 1925 version, minus Chaplin’s 1942 narration and featuring a reconstruction of Chaplin’s 1942 score, will be screened.
SAT., 11/8, 7 p.m.
THE GREAT DICTATOR
USA | 1940 | 35mm | 128 min.
Director: Charles Chaplin
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie
In one of the screen’s great lampoons of totalitarianism, Charlie Chaplin plays the twin roles of Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator of Tomania, and a poor Jewish barber who’s mistaken for Hynkel. Released only one year before America entered WWII, this is the first film in which Chaplin ever spoke and he makes the most of it, concluding his comic masterpiece with a heartfelt plea for sanity and world peace. Paulette Goddard co-stars in what is surely one of the most deeply personal films of its era.
FRI., 11/21, 7 p.m.
KILLER OF SHEEP
USA | 1977 | DCP | 81 min.
Director: Charles Burnett
Cast: Henry Gayle Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy
The life of a working class family affected by unemployment in the Watts district of Los Angeles is poetically evoked by writer/director Burnett in his feature debut. A landmark in American independent filmmaking, Burnett’s lyrical, elliptical style is marked by a frequently perfect matching of music to his haunting images. One of the first films elected to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, Killer of Sheep will be shown in a new 4K restoration from Milestone Films.
FRI., 12/5, 7 p.m.
THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH
USA | 2001 | 35mm | 108 min.
Director: Charles Burnett
Cast: James Earl Jones, Lynn Redgrave, Margot Kidder
In a Los Angeles boarding house, the eccentric Poinsettia (Redgrave), who believes she’s romantically involved with Puccini, meets a Jamaican widower (Jones) still grappling with his own delusions. As their unlikely connection deepens, the two forge a tender, offbeat romance. The first wide release of filmmaker Burnett’s neglected 2001 feature proved to be one of the most significant and entertaining cinematic events of 2025. A newly struck 35mm print will be shown! Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation in collaboration with Milestone Films. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.