Films at Amherst Cinema

Mud is an adventure about two boys, Ellis and his friend Neckbone, who find a man named Mud hiding out on an island in the Mississippi. Mud describes fantastic scenarios - he killed a man in Texas and vengeful bounty hunters are coming to get him. He says he is planning to meet and escape with the love of his life, Juniper, who is waiting for him in town. Skeptical but intrigued, Ellis and Neckbone agree to help him. It isn’t long until Mud’s visions come true and their small town is besieged by a beautiful girl with a line of bounty hunters in tow.

The Côte d'Azur: 1915. As the pain of arthritis makes painting increasingly difficult, celebrated artist Auguste Renoir becomes consumed with grief over the loss of his wife, and troubled by the news that his son Jean has been injured on the battlefield. Upon meeting Andrée (Christa Theret), however, the tired old artist gets a gainful second wind. Meanwhile, Jean returns home to recover, and finds himself under Andrée's spell as well. As tensions between father and son start to swell, Jean begins to blossom into an artist in his own right.

Director Jacob Hatley's intimate documentary finds Mr. Helm at home in Woodstock, NY, in the midst of creating his first studio album in 25 years.

‘The Audience is going to be one of the theatrical highlights of 2013.’ Daily Mail Helen Mirren reprises her Academy Award winning role as Queen Elizabeth II in the highly-anticipated West End production of The Audience, broadcast as part of National Theatre Live.

After a pair of expensive historical epics (Gangs of New York, The Aviator) Martin Scorsese returns to the well for this blistering crime thriller about cops and robbers in South Boston. A remake of the Hong Kong hit Infernal Affairs (2002), it stars Jack Nicholson as a ruthless mobster, Martin Sheen as captain of an undercover police unit, and Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio as the young men they send to spy on each other. Neither spy knows the other's identity, and their cover is so deep each runs the risk of being stranded in his new life.

THE EAST, a suspenseful and provocative espionage thriller from acclaimed writer-director Zal Batmanglij and writer-actress Brit Marling, stars Marling as former FBI agent Sarah Moss.  Moss is starting a new career at Hiller Brood, an elite private intelligence firm that ruthlessly protects the interests of its A-list corporate clientele.

Eighteen-year-old Shira (Hada Yaron) is the youngest daughter of the family and is about to be married off to a very promising young man of the same age. On Purim, her twenty-eight-year-old sister, Esther (Renana Raz), dies during childbirth, leaving her husband to care for the child and postponing Shira's promised match.

Martin Scorsese collaborated with Nicholas Pileggi on this 1990 adaptation of Wiseguy, Pileggi's nonfiction book about gangsters in Brooklyn, and in terms of narrative fluidity it may well be the most accomplished thing Scorsese's ever done. Set between the mid-50s and the mid-80s, the semifictionalized story centers on a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Mafia recruit (Ray Liotta)—who narrates along with the Jewish woman (Lorraine Bracco) he eventually marries—and the other gangsters in his immediate circle (Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, and Paul Sorvino).

Mads Mikkelsen (NBC's Hannibal, A ROYAL AFFAIR, CASINO ROYALE) won the Best Actor Award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival for his penetrating portrayal of Lucas, a former school teacher who has been forced to start over having overcome a tough divorce and the loss of his job. Just as things are starting to go his way, his life is shattered when an untruthful remark throws his small community into a collective state of hysteria. As the lie spreads, Lucas is forced to fight a lonely fight for his life and dignity.

A sixteen-year-old boy insinuates himself into the house of a fellow student from his literature class and writes about it in essays for his French teacher. Faced with this gifted and unusual pupil, the teacher rediscovers his enthusiasm for his work, but the boy's intrusion will unleash a series of uncontrollable events. Director François Ozon.  105 mins, Rated R.  In French with subtitles.  

A 1988 adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's controversial novel. Possibly Martin Scorsese's most ambitious film, it more or less inverts the principles of his religiously informed New York films by being a religious film informed by some of the cadences, intonations, and attitudes of New York. The efforts to plant this story in a contemporary vernacular are not always successful but the performances are uniformly fine in their adherence to the material, and consistently avoid any vulgarity or showboating.

Philip, an Englishman living in Denmark, is a lonely, middle-aged widower and estranged single father. Ida is a Danish hairdresser, recuperating from a long bout of illness, who's just been left by her husband for a younger woman, Tilde. The fates of these two bruised souls are about to intertwine, as they embark for a trip to Italy to attend the wedding of Patrick and Astrid, Philip's son and Ida's daughter. Director Susanne Bier.  110 mins, Rated R.  In Dutch, Italian and English with subtitles.  

The future is set for Tony and Michael - owning a neighborhood bar and making deals in the mean streets of New York city's Little Italy.  For Charlie, the future is less clearly defined.  A small-time hood, he works for his uncle, making collections and reclaiming bad debts. He's probably too nice to succeed. In love with a woman his uncle disapproves of (because of her epilepsy) and a friend of her cousin, Johnny Boy, a near psychotic whose trouble-making threatens them all - he can't reconcile opposing values.

The National Theatre presents a major new production of William Shakespeare’s celebrated play about the destructive power of jealousy.

Martin Scorsese's brutal character study incisively portrays the true rise and fall and redemption of middleweight boxer Jake La Motta, a violent man in and out of the ring who thrives on his ability (and desire) to take a beating.  Despite pressure from the local mobsters, Jake trusts his brother Joey (Joe Pesci) to help him make it to a title bout against Sugar Ray Robinson the honest way; the Mob, however, will not cave in.  Jake gets the title bout, and blonde teenage second wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty), but success does nothing to exorcise his

STORIES WE TELL unpeels the complex life of Diane, an aspiring actress and mother, and the shockwaves that a series of impulsive actions unleash on her children, husband and community.  With this groundbreaking new feature that seamlessly blends past and present, the real and imagined, Polley's characteristically unflinching yet compassionate gaze delivers a level of depth and emotion only hinted at by her acclaimed earlier directorial works, AWAY FROM HER and TAKE THIS WALTZ.  Making STORIES WE TELL that much more memorable is the revelation that the mother depicted—and family in question—is Polley's own.

James Graham’s biting, energetic and critically-acclaimed new play strips politics down to the practical realities of those behind the scenes who roll up their sleeves, and on occasion bend the rules, to manoeuvre a diverse and conflicting chorus of MPs within the Mother of all Parliaments.

Watch the week's news get the treatment it deserves when the NPR news quiz show Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me! brings its star power to the big screen for a special performance!  Host Peter Sagal and official judge and scorekeeper Carl Kasell will lead the cinecast, captured live from the New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.

Acclaimed documentarian Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) takes the reins for this no-holds-barred look at one of the most unusual phenomena of early 21st century media. In 2006, an Iceland-based outfit called The Sunshine Press launched the website WikiLeaks.org.