Melnitz Movies


Upcoming Screenings

THE SUN
Tuesday, November 24 @ 7:30pm

In the last days of August 1945, as the Japanese prepare to surrender to occupying American forces, Emperor Hirohito rummages around his palace, trying to make sense of the impending defeat and his own responsibility for it. In an unforgettably poignant performance by Issey Ogata, Hirohito is fully brought to life as an educated, ineffectual gentleman, aware of his fallibility but trapped by rituals of adoration behind the mask of divinity. Aleksandr Sokurov, brings his customary imagistic brilliance to this tour-de-force of historical reconstruction. As controversial for its interpretative conjectures as it is visually arresting, The Sun is a complex, important work by a major filmmaker. - New York Film Festival

A co-presentation of Melnitz Movies and the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies

“A mind-boggling essay on the end of divinity and the pleasures of life as an ordinary mortal” -Olaf Moller, FILM COMMENT
“One of the best films of the year.” -James Quandt, ARTFORUM

DIRECTOR: Aleksandr Sokurov
WRITERS: Yuri Arabov, Jeremy Noble
CAST: Issei Ogata, Robert Dawson, Kaori Momoi
Opens at Laemmle Theatres, November 27.  A Lorber Films Release
In English and Japanese with English subtitles
115 min

View the Japanese trailer

POLICE, ADJECTIVE
Thursday, December 3 @ 7:30pm

Cristi is a policeman who refuses to arrest a young man who offers hash to two of his school mates. "Offering" is punished by the law. Cristi believes that the law will change, he does not want the life of a young man he considers irresponsible to be a burden on his conscience. For his superior the word conscience has an entirely different meaning...

FIPRESCI Critics Prize, Un Certain Regard, 2009 Cannes Film Festival

"a perfectly timed, slow-to-boil absurdist comedy...further proof of the strength of the Romanian New Wave" -Manohla Dargis, NEW YORK TIMES
“A small masterpiece...has something of the deadpan theatricality that characterized early Jim Jarmusch." -J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE
"Certainly the smartest film I’ve seen this year...The richness of Porumboui’s seemingly simple creation allows it to be read as a reverse policier, a social drama, an attenuated art film bordering on parody, a moral tale. The film’s intelligence does not drive itself home until in its last remarkable scenes." -Mark Peranson, CINEMASCOPE

DIRECTOR and WRITER: Corneliu Poromboiu
CAST: Dragos Bucur, Vlad Ivanov, Ivan Stoica, Irina Saulescu
An IFC Films release
In Romanian with English subtitles
115 min