May 2-8, 2025

Hello, friends! 

It was absolutely wonderful to see so many of you coming out for Sinners last weekend – and indeed, the film made national box office history with just how many people showed up for the second weekend of its release. Generally speaking, attendance drops 40%-50% or so for most films in their second weekend, but that was not the case with Sinners, which dropped by only 6%, an essentially insignificant drop. It’s a testament to the fact that people are not only coming to see the movie a 2nd or even 3rd time, but that it’s also a word-of-mouth film, the kind of movie where people tell their friends, “You’ve GOTTA see this movie!” And what a joyous thing – people telling other people about something they love and then the love spreads even more. Sinners continues with us, then, into this third weekend, and what a pleasure to be hosting it, one of the most unique and significant movies of the year! 

We’ve also got two terrific brand new films added to our line-up for you: A Nice Indian Boy and The Shrouds. 

Directed by Roshan Sethi, A Nice Indian Boy is a really lovely, funny, and sweet, arthouse-adjacent, rom-com about Naveen (Karan Soni), a gay, rather shy and love-lorn doctor, who -- in an adorable meet-cute -- encounters the open-hearted Jay Kurundkar (Jonathan Groff), a white man who was adopted by an Indian family and who feels most at home among Indian families and traditions but who does not look Indian. Naveen's good-hearted parents are doing their best to embrace Naveen's sexuality, even if they do it rather awkwardly (they regularly watch the gay porn channel on TV to try to understand their son, much to Naveen’s chagrin), but Naveen has never brought a boyfriend home; his identity has always been theoretical, rather than practical for his family. And Naveen, further, knows his relationship with a white man might be a bridge too far for his parents, so he keeps it a secret as long as he can. Until he can't. And then chaos ensues. But it’s chaos in that satisfying, happy, rom-com way, where you just know everyone's going to be ok. 

I do love a good genre film, and the best kinds take the genre and put a unique and wonderful twist on it -- this one does just that, with several twists, not least a delightful, musical Bollywood one. It's a feel-good movie that also scratches the arthouse itch and affirms love and family and community in warmly gentle and insightful ways. Perfect, I think, for the times we're living in, where movies can remind us life can be wonderful and hopeful, too. 

David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, our second new movie this week, is also about love, but in a radically different way. 

In this deeply personal film, which Cronenberg made following the death of his wife, the always-fascinating director dips into some of his now-signature elements of body horror (e.g. in The Fly, Crash, Videodrome), but The Shrouds can't really be called a "horror" film in any classic way, unless the tragedy of grappling with a loved one's death can be called "horror." 

Here, in a near-future sci-fi-adjacent setting, a man (played by the great Vincet Cassel) has developed a technology where people can observe their loved ones decaying after they are buried. It sounds a bit gruesome (and do be prepared for some body-horror), but the film is ultimately profoundly moving, a meditation on the idea that when you lose a loved one, it's not just their soul and mind you're pining for, but their literal, physical body. 

The film is not just a grief-filled drama though: in that Cronenbergian way, he also manages to make the film something of a thriller, a witty one, peppered with wry humor, and it's also a wonderfully unsettling reflection on technologies of our own world, e.g. AI, technologies that can be both destructive and incredibly appealing. 

It's a film I wasn't sure I knew what to think about when I first saw it – much like any Cronenberg film – but it's the kind of film, too, that catches hold of you and won't let go, and that’s what it did for me: it was a film I couldn’t shake, and I’d place it among the best kinds of films, the ones that settle into your bones and linger there with all their cinematic power. 

I'll also note that I've been seeing the film resonate deeply with those who've lost a loved one; Ebert editor Matt Zoller Seitz, for example, who lost his wife to cancer in 2020, wrote a really beautiful review of it here.  

He writes, in part, "Despite the movie’s darkly fantastical imagery—or because of it?—The Shrouds seems to me a more ruthlessly honest treatment of what terminal cancer does to the body and soul of its victims and their survivors than most “realistic” films dare attempt. For that reason alone, it should be seen by anyone who lost a significant other to this scourge of a disease. Sigmund Freud knew that sex and death were entwined at every level of human experience. That principle has been illustrated throughout Cronenberg’s filmography. But it’s been placed before us here with singular nerve and bluntness.

We also have several single-showtime events for you this week, including an encore of a favorite film from Doctober 2024, Rainier: A Beer Odyssey. As we noted in our Doctober 2024 program about this incredibly fun film, “If you are of a certain age and from this area, you no doubt have strong memories of Rainier Beer commercials. Undeniably creative and more than a little unhinged, the iconic commercials not only sold a lot of Rainier, but they also helped put Seattle on the map in a very strange way. Go inside those legendary ad campaigns with the people who created them and examine their impact on Seattle and the nation at large. Finally, a particularly zany chapters in Seattle history gets the documentary it so richly deserves.”

Tickets are currently sold out for the Saturday, 4:00 pm showing, but keep checking our website as tickets are occasionally refunded to patrons who find they can’t attend, or stop by our lobby and ask to add your name to our waiting list: we’ll fit in as many folks as we have seats available at showtime!

Indie Lens Pop-Up also returns this month, which is Mental Health Awareness Month, with another excellent documentary, A Matter of Mind: My Alzheimer’s, the final film in this Indie Lens season. My Alzheimer’s is the third film in the Matter of Mind series, which explores neurodegenerative diseases: “My Alzheimer’s is an intimate portrayal of three families confronting the unique challenges of Alzheimer’s and how this progressive neurodegenerative disease transforms roles and relationships. Whether it’s a partner becoming a caregiver or an adult child shifting into being their parent’s caregiver, these stories show how families evolve when a loved one is diagnosed.”  

As the filmmakers note in their letter to audiences about the film, they wanted to shift some focus away from a cure and towards uplifting those currently living with Alzheimer’s and those who are caregivers: “Bringing a human lens to a scientific question, we share stories of the brain told from the heart. We tell the stories of individuals and their families as they ask what it is to live a good life with these illnesses now while keeping a hopeful eye toward the future of treatment.” 

It’s a sensitively told film, and we are grateful to PBS/Indie Lens for continuing to provide films such as this FREE to us and to audiences. Join us on Sunday at 10 am for the screening, and there will be an informal discussion following the film, providing space for us to process the film together.

Finally, Only Yesterday, the second film in our Takahata series, which is part of our larger Cinema East series, screens on Thursday, May 8 at 11 am and 7:45 pm.  

A lyrical and beautiful film, Only Yesterday follows the story of Taeko, who decides to travel from Tokyo to visit her relatives in the countryside and who begins to reconnect with her childhood and her childhood self, reliving memories and remembering her former dreams. Like so many of Takahata’s films, it’s pungent and poignant in narrative and visually stunning in its craft, and it is such a delight to have the opportunity to see it on the big screen.  Annie Bowmer will be offering an in-person introduction to the film’s evening showing, and keep an eye out for Cinema East curator Jeff Purdue’s newsletter with a written introduction, dropping into your inboxes on Sunday.  

See you at the movies, friends!

Melissa