The Dead

John Huston, 1987
PG; 87 minutes
 
A festive holiday dinner in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century leads to epiphanies for a married couple. At the home of his spinster aunts, the socially maladroit Gabriel Conroy (Donal McCann) and his reserved wife, Gretta (Anjelica Huston), reflect on their marriage, Gretta's memories of her first love, and what it means both to live and to love. Director John Huston's final film is a faithful adaptation of the James Joyce short story.

Auntie Mame

Morton DaCosta, 1958
143 minutes
 
Mame Dennis (Rosalind Russell), a progressive and independent woman of the 1920s, is left to care for her nephew Patrick (Jan Handzlik/Roger Smith) after his wealthy father dies. Dwight Babcock (Fred Clark), Patrick's assigned executor, objects to Mame's unconventional way of living and tries to force her to send Patrick to prep school.

How to Marry a Millionaire

Jean Negulesco, 1953
95 minutes
 
Schatze Page, Loco Dempsey, and Pola Debevoise (Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable, and Marilyn Monroe) are three women on a mission: they all want to marry a millionaire. To accomplish this task, they move into a fancy New York City apartment and begin courting the city's elite. They have no problem meeting rich men, but unfortunately most of them turn out to be creeps or cons. Eventually they must decide: is a life of luxury more important to them than finding true love?

Wings of Desire

Wim Wenders, 1987
PG-13; 128 minutes; German with English subtitles
 
Two angels glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population and providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed, but never interacting with them. When one of the angels falls in love with a lonely trapeze artist, he longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds—with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk (playing himself)—that it might be possible for him to take human form.

Charles Gaines

“I do believe that there is such a thing as intuition and there is such a thing as imagination. I just think these are concepts, that they’re culturally realized. What we come to understand is, knowledge and meaning are not pure products of our genius but are built into the structure where we reside.” —Charles Gaines, “Systems & Structures,” Art21 Extended Play, December 14, 2022

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, with Laura Phipps

“My work comes right from a visceral place―deep, deep―as though my roots extend beyond the soles of my feet into sacred soils. Can I take these feelings and attach them to the passerby? To my dying breath, and my last tube of burnt sienna, I will try.” —Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, quoted in Laura Phipps’s catalogue essay, “‘My Roots Extend’: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and the Landscape of Memory,” Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map (2023).

Priscilla

When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) meets Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend. Through Priscilla’s eyes, director Sofia Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla's long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland, in this deeply felt and ravishingly detailed portrait of love, fantasy, and fame.

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