FEBRUARY 15

NOTORIOUS

1946. USA. Dir: Alfred Hitchcock. With Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman. 101 min
Grant’s suave secret agent recruits Bergman’s scandal-sheet party gal to hop a plane for Rio and seduce the leader of a nefarious Nazi research ring. But as their own romance ignites, can Cary and Ingrid keep their hands off of each other long enough to thwart the villains? Innuendo and intrigue abound as sexual tension and psychological terror mount in one of Hitchcock’s most elegantly suspenseful thrillers.
FEBRUARY 16

THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER

2010. Israel. Dir: Eran Riklis. With Mark Ivanir. 103 min
An industrial bakery’s hapless HR man is dispatched to Romania after a worker dies in a suicide bombing. Adrift in the strange plains of Eastern Europe, our hero learns about his late employee – and himself –  in this offbeat, humanist road movie. Speaker: Rabbi Seth Haaz from Middletown’s Congregation Adath Israel.  
FEBRUARY 17

BLUE VELVET

1986. USA. Dir: David Lynch. With Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini. 120 min
A college student’s discovery of a severed ear leads to a despairing nightclub singer, a nitrous-huffing psychopath, and one suave pimp with a fondness for Roy Orbison. Lynch’s subversively surreal spin on suburban life takes you on a funny and frightening plunge down the American rabbit hole. Be a good neighbor at your own peril.
FEBRUARY 18

IMITATION OF LIFE

1959. USA. Dir: Douglas Sirk. With Lana Turner, Juanita Moore. 125 min
An aspiring model and actress leaves a doting daughter in the shadow of her rising star. A light-skinned teen shuns her loyal mother in order to pass for white. The problematic familial and racial relationships of this gorgeous, frothy melodrama carry a stinging criticism of postwar America and the shiny surfaces that mask hollowness and tumult. Speaker: Visiting Prof. Sarah Mahurin, English/AFAM.