Landmark Sunshine Cinema

Like its gaggle of former anti-nuke environmentalists who've now switched sides, Pandora's Promise takes the form of a traditional liberal pop-doc while proffering a decidedly nonconformist message. The case for nuclear power as the solution to... More »

Like its gaggle of former anti-nuke environmentalists who've now switched sides, Pandora's Promise takes the form of a traditional liberal pop-doc while proffering a decidedly nonconformist message. The case for nuclear power as the solution to both the planet's rapidly escalating energy needs and the climate change produced by fossil fuels and natural gas is aggressively, and somewhat convincingly, made by writer-director Robert Stone. His doc bolsters his stance via a group of experts who have abandoned their prior activist assumptions about nuclear energy (and radiation) in the face of supposedly overwhelming evidence that it's actually safe and clean. Investigating Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and the recent fallout from Fukushima while also delivering mounds of data about the boundless possibilities afforded by the technology—- as well as confronting the fears surrounding it, most of which are rooted in its WWII bomb origins-- the film deploys the usual mixture of talking heads, graphics, and archival footage to compelling effect. Alas, its argument against fear-driven orthodoxy is undercut by the fact that, as with so many of this sub-genre's entrants, there are no substantial competing voices included in the mix, so that the proceedings, no matter how logical their contentions, come off as merely one side of the debate. « Less

12:15 PM, 2:15 PM, 4:15 PM, 7:00 PM, 9:30 PM

12:05 PM, 2:35 PM, 5:05 PM, 7:35 PM, 10:05 PM

Rama Burshtein's Fill the Void opens on green leaves, smiling faces, lush billows of fabric that when pieced together, the sensuous images accumulating into a fuller picture, become a wedding dress, tulle and silk diffusing the glow. Engagements,... More »

Rama Burshtein's Fill the Void opens on green leaves, smiling faces, lush billows of fabric that when pieced together, the sensuous images accumulating into a fuller picture, become a wedding dress, tulle and silk diffusing the glow. Engagements, weddings, births, and deaths: This film is a more traditional kind of marriage plot than you might expect in 2013, and Burshtein has cited Jane Austen as a major influence. Even within the sometimes intimate, sometimes suffocatingly close Hasidic Jewish community of Tel Aviv, where these life cycle events take place, love is not easy. And from the dense, textured carpet of her characters' emotions, Burshtein draws gorgeous threads and holds them to the light. The film centers around 18-year-old Shira (Hadas Yaron), who is about to be engaged when her older sister Esther (Renana Raz) dies in childbirth. Esther leaves behind a tiny son and a grieving husband (Yochay, played by Yiftach Klein); Shira's mother (Irit Sheleg) is unwilling to lose a grandchild to Yochay's inevitable remarriage, so she devises a plan to wed Shira to Yochay. A fumbling courtship follows. Shira's painful, tightly wound interactions with Yochay make clear that she’s still a child, unable to articulate what she wants or make herself vulnerable to him, while a weary Yochay desires only to be wanted and cared for in return. The Hasidic community is never shown interacting with society at large, only moving through it out of necessity. And that insularity-- the void-- results in deep psychic pain for the people trapped within its rigid structure, even as that structure supports them. « Less

12:10 PM, 2:00 PM, 4:00 PM, 6:00 PM, 8:00 PM

12:00 PM, 2:30 PM, 5:00 PM, 7:30 PM, 9:15 PM, 10:00 PM

Sitcoms, especially since Seinfeld, have a way of getting audiences to root for jerks. The Kings of Summer attempts to pull off the same narrative trick by getting us to mistake 15-year-old protagonist, Joe (Nick Robinson), for a scamp instead of... More »

Sitcoms, especially since Seinfeld, have a way of getting audiences to root for jerks. The Kings of Summer attempts to pull off the same narrative trick by getting us to mistake 15-year-old protagonist, Joe (Nick Robinson), for a scamp instead of a sullen little shit, even when he calls his widower dad's girlfriend a "spider woman you found in the gutter." Joe thinks his gruff, sarcastic father (Nick Offerman, playing a less noble variation of Parks and Recreation's Ron Swanson) is totally ruining his life, so he moves into a fantasy cabin-- complete with a loft and air hockey table-- with his athletic best friend, Patrick (Gabriel Basso), and a nonsense-spouting ethnic cartoon named Biaggio (Moises Arias)-- one of the two dark-skinned, asexual characters the film prods us to laugh at. To clinch all the Urkel-era clichés, Joe and Patrick run away by telling their parents they're sleeping over at each other's house. For a while, the teenagers live in a Boys' Life paradise, jumping into lakes, dueling with swords, and sneaking off to Boston Market to retrieve dinner. But their idyll evaporates with the arrival of a popular blond girl (Erin Moriarty)-- do teenage boys in movies ever fall for anyone else?-- who unwittingly pits Joe and Patrick against each other. Joe’s conflicts with his friend and father lead to a tense, funny, mettle-testing climax, but the ending is more cornball than Tony Danza. The film's grown-up world-- populated by the tart, shticky likes of Offerman, Megan Mullally, Alison Brie, and Mary Lynn Rajskub-- a lot more interesting than its pimple-faced counterpart. « Less

12:15 PM, 2:15 PM, 4:45 PM, 7:05 PM, 9:55 PM