Films this week 9/18/2026 to 9/23/2026
by Gary Palmucci | 18th September 2026 | Gary's Corner
Veteran Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has over three decades amassed an impressive body of work across numerous genres. In his NY Times Critic’s Pick review of one of his recent releases, Ben Kenigsberg – one of our best young film journalists – writes:
“To a career that includes some of the best examples of contemporary horror (Cure) and domestic drama (Tokyo Sonata), he can now add a superb 16th-century period piece, The Samurai and the Prisoner. Although for more than 30 years his name has required the disclaimer that he’s not related to Akira Kurosawa, in this case the comparison seems pertinent: The Samurai and the Prisoner is set at roughly the same time as that other Kurosawa’s late triumph Kagemusha (1980), and it recalls that film’s focus on leadership, strategy and deception.”
The result is a sort of serpentine game of chess between a conflicted samurai and a mysterious envoy whose motives and allegiances often appear to be a ‘moving target.’
Unexpectedly, this film that Kenigsberg calls “simultaneously classical and modern, austere and capricious, familiar and surprising,” is the director’s biggest US box office success to date. We’ll be screening it twice, on Friday evening and late afternoon Saturday.
Our Sunday afternoon classics series resumes this weekend with Norman Jewison’s 1987 heartfelt romantic gem Moonstruck, with Oscar-winning work from Cher, Olympia Dukakis and screenwriter John Patrick Shanley, and priceless support from Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, Danny Aiello and John Mahoney. My colleague Dan Cahill and I will introduce, and lead what we suspect will be a lively after-discussion.
This weekend’s durable holdovers include the raucous, rueful The Invite, crowd pleaser en francais The Marching Band, and the all-ages captivating doc Wild Inside. At press time we are expecting director Penny Lane and other colleagues to appear alternately at both shows, but not yet sure of the sequence – check our website for updates.
Penny assures us that she’ll be bringing ‘lots of Flaco merch’ to her appearance, having quickly sold out of it last weekend…
Some patrons have asked us about future shows of the tough but essential documentary American Doctor; the next one will be on Sunday Sept 27 at 2:45, with director
Poh Si Teng present for a Q&A. Tickets on sale early next week.