Feel like taking a chance this week on a movie you may never have heard of? Advance word is really strong on Cutie and the Boxer, Zachary Heinzerling's documentary about the marriage of painter Noriko Shinohara and her 80-year-old artist husband Ishio Shinohara. Ishio achieved some notoriety in the 1970s New York art scene for his technique of using boxing gloves to pound paint on canvas, but Heinzerling concerns himself as much or more with Noriko — the "cutie" depicted in her own paintings — and her growing emergence from her husband's shadow.
Cutie and the Boxer shows Oct. 11-13 and again Oct. 16 as The Belcourt enters the third week of its Doctober survey of high-profile current docs. Patrons have found this series to be a low-risk/high-yield proposition: Oftentimes even the most artless docs still have arresting archival footage or a compelling true story. You've got one night left, Thursday, Oct. 10, to see two of the most intriguing titles, the self-explanatory The Trials of Muhammad Ali and Terms and Conditions May Apply, an exposé of the ways corporations gather private dossiers on unsuspecting citizens via user agreements. And you've got two nights only this week, Oct. 13 and 16, to catch Jamel Shabazz: Street Photographer, in which seminal Wild Style hip-hop chronicler Charlie Ahearn pays tribute to the Brooklyn-born photographer who helped shape the music and culture with his images.
Showing 10 a.m. Saturday as this week's kids matinee at The Belcourt: Jack Clayton's underrated Disney adaptation of the Ray Bradbury carnival chiller Something Wicked This Way Comes, with Jason Robards Jr., Pam Grier and Jonathan Pryce as a deliciously nasty Mr. Dark. Screening free 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 16, at Vanderbilt's Sarratt Cinema: the Cold War psychological thriller Barbara, the first feature in the International Lens program's festival of films by German director Christian Petzold. Peggy Setje-Ellers, Vanderbilt assistant professor of German, introduces the film.
See you at Machete Kills!
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