After a year of special programming and lectures, the Belcourt’s centennial celebration is coming to an end with one final series showcasing some of the arthouse’s most notable releases of the past quarter-century.
Milestones of the Last Quarter Century kicks off Friday and runs through June 2. The series will feature 40 total screenings of 16 films, each representing a watershed 21st-century moment for the Belcourt — from record-breaking attendance to local connections and more. “There’s a story for all of them,” Belcourt programmer Toby Leonard tells the Scene.
Beyond the Treetops
The series begins with Morgan Neville’s tearjerking Mr. Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (May 15 and 18), the theater’s highest-attended run of the past 26 years. On Saturday, catch one of the weirdest doubleheaders in Belcourt history with Wes Anderson’s sweet summer camp tale Moonrise Kingdom and Mikhail Kalatozov’s electric revolutionary text I Am Cuba (both May 16 and 19).
On May 17 or 20, carve out some time for a true slow-cinema outing with Terrence Malick’s tone poem TheTree of Life (check out late Scene editor-in-chief Jim Ridley’s lovely 2011 review) and Robert Bresson’s tragic donkey drama Au Hasard Balthazar.
The Belcourt’s long-running Music City Mondays series will be part of Milestones with the acclaimed rockumentary Anvil! the Story of Anvil (May 18) and Jonathan Demme’s iconic Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense (May 25), another Ridley favorite.
Stop Making Sense
An entire spectrum of the male experience will be on display May 23 as Richard Linklater’s painstaking coming-of-age story Boyhood (May 23 and 25) and Sam Peckinpah’s bleak revisionist Western The Wild Bunch (May 23 and 24) slot in. The latter, which will be shown on 35 mm, was part of the Belcourt’s excellent Essential Westerns series in 2018.
Raoul Peck’s uncompromising James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro (May 24 and 26) and Bong Joon Ho’s twisty Best Picture winner Parasite (May 26 and 29) should be must-sees for anyone who missed out on their original runs. Speaking of which, Parasite owns the record for longest continuous run at the Belcourt, lasting 20 weeks (almost five months!) from October 2019 until March 2020.
The Wild Bunch won’t be the only 35 mm offering on the docket. Though it isn’t showing at midnight this time, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s bonkers haunted-house trip House (May 28 and 30) is a perfect representative of the Belcourt’s ongoing Midnight Movies series, while sleek gambling thriller Croupier (June 2) will close out the Milestones slate.
Elia Kazan’s underseen Wild River (May 30 and June 1), a TVA-centered drama starring Montgomery Clift and Lee Remick, stands in for the Belcourt’s monumental 22-film 2011 series Visions of the South.
You’ll need to block out your entire afternoon on May 31 to witness Béla Tarr’s epic, 439-minute Hungarian drama Sátántangó. (There is — naturally — a brilliant 2006 Ridley essay on the film.) More than five hours shorter, but no less affecting, is Kelly Reichardt’s two-hander First Cow (June 1). First Cow will have a special intro from local musician William Tyler, who composed the score for the acclaimed gentle drama concerning stolen milk in the Pacific Northwest.
Sophy Romvari’s debut feature — opening this week in select theaters — is a refreshing take on the mental health family drama
Other, non-Milestone (but just as interesting) films on the Belcourt’s upcoming schedule include Midnight Movie screenings of cult favorites Zardoz (May 15), Beyond the Black Rainbow (May 16), Masters of the Universe (May 29, on 35 mm) and the non-cult-but-certainly-weird Barbie (May 30). The Secret World of Arrietty (opening May 22) and Trainspotting (June 4 and 7) are also in the rep screening future.
Upcoming new releases at the Belcourt include celebrated Canadian drama Blue Heron (opening May 15, already screening at AMC Thoroughbred 20), Boots Riley’s raucous anti-capitalist I Love Boosters (opening May 21) and heist picture Tuner (opening May 28).
At the megaplexes, you can find freaky horror offerings Obsession (opening May 15) and Backrooms (opening May 29), big-time blockbusters like the latest Star Wars entry The Mandalorian and Grogu (opening May 22) and Steven Spielberg’s return to the world of UFOs Disclosure Day (opens June 12), and hometown boy Nate Bargatze’s upcoming comedy The Breadwinner (opens May 29).
