HEARTBEATS Begins April 1...

The French-Canadian drama, HEARTBEATS, begins April 1. Xavier Dolan’s sexy and stylish HEARTBEATS is a comic exploration of a romantically obsessed menage-a-trois. HEARTBEATS was a hit at the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Youth Prize, and an official selection of the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. Part farce, part exploration of the complexity of love and desire, Heartbeats centers on two close friends, Francis (Xavier Dolan) and Marie (Monia Chokri), who find themselves fighting for the affections of the same striking young man (Neils Schneider). The more intimate the trio becomes, the more unattainable the object of their infatuation seems, sending the friends’ obsession into overdrive.

I SAW THE DEVIL...

The Korean thriller, I SAW THE DEVIL, begins at Living Room on March 25. I SAW THE DEVIL is a shockingly violent and stunningly accomplished tale of murder and revenge from Korean genre master KIM Jee-woon (The Good, The Bad, The Weird and A Tale of Two Sisters). Oldboy‘s CHOI Min-sik plays Kyung-chul, a dangerous psychopath who kills for pleasure. The embodiment of pure evil, he has committed horrifying and senselessly cruel serial murders on defenseless victims, successfully eluding capture by the police.

On a freezing, snowy night, his latest victim is the beautiful Ju-yeon, daughter of a retired police chief and pregnant fiancée of elite special agent Dae-hoon (The Good, The Bad, The Weird‘s LEE Byung-hyun). Obsessed with revenge, Dae-hoon decides to track down the murderer, even if doing so means becoming a monster himself. And when he finds Kyung-chul, turning him in to the authorities is the last thing on his mind.

BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK...

The excellent documentary about New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham, BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK, opens at Living Room on April 15. You can read an interview with the film’s director, Richard Press, HERE.

“We all get dressed for Bill,” says Vogue editrix Anna Wintour.

The “Bill” in question is 80+ New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. For decades, this Schwinn-riding cultural anthropologist has been obsessively and inventively chronicling fashion trends and high society charity soirées for the Times Style section in his columns “On the Street” and “Evening Hours.” Documenting uptown fixtures (Wintour, Tom Wolfe, Brooke Astor, David Rockefeller—who all appear in the film out of their love for Bill), downtown eccentrics and everyone in between, Cunningham’s enormous body of work is more reliable than any catwalk as an expression of time, place and individual flair. In turn, Bill Cunningham New York is a delicate, funny and often poignant portrait of a dedicated artist whose only wealth is his own humanity and unassuming grace.

MONOGAMY Begins March 25...

MONOGAMY begins at Living Room March 25. Increasingly anxious about his impending marriage to Nat (Rashida Jones) and thoroughly bored with his day job as a wedding photographer, Theo (Chris Messina) establishes a hobby: he’s hired by clients to clandestinely snap voyeuristic photos of them as they go about their days. Things go smoothly until a sexy exhibitionist (Meital Dohan) leads him into an all-consuming obsession. As Theo stalks her day and night, the woman’s mysterious public trysts send him reeling, forcing him to confront uncomfortable truths about his sex life at home.

CERTIFIED COPY – Kiarostami...

CERTIFIED COPY, the latest from the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, opens at Living Room on April 8. This his first feature in 10 years and the first he has filmed outside of Iran. The film stars French beauty, Juliette Binoche. The New Yorker has an excellent article on the film and the director HERE.

KABOOM Begins March 18...

KABOOM begins at Living Room on March 18. The latest film from iconoclastic independent filmmaker Gregg Araki, KABOOM is a hyper-stylized ”Twin Peaks” for the Coachella Generation, featuring a gorgeous young cast. A wild, witty and sex-drenched horror-comedy thriller, KABOOM tells the story of Smith (Thomas Dekker), an ambisexual 18-year-old college freshman who stumbles upon a monstrous conspiracy in a seemingly idyllic Southern California seaside town. KABOOM shares key touchstones of Araki’s early films, including scatological and absurd Valley-inflected dialogue, elements of campy gore and Araki’s troupe of arrestingly sexy guys and girls. With his sophisticated synthesis of various experiments in tone and cinematography, Araki has reached a new level of artistic maturity.

HOOD TO COAST Q&A Series...

The locally made documentary about the annual Hood to Coast Relay, HOOD TO COAST, is currently enjoying a great run at Living Room Theaters. The filmmakers and some of the teams featured in the documentary will be hosting Q&A’s at Living Room Theaters over the next several weeks.

Hood To Coast: The Movie and Living Room Theaters are excited to announce a special Q&A series starting Wednesday, March 16. Every Wednesday and Thursday after the 7:00 PM screening, we highlight one of the teams featured in the movie with team members present to answer all your questions. Plus, there will be a three night Q&A event with Director Christoph Baaden.

Q&A Schedule

Wednesday, March 16 and Thursday, March 17
Heart N Sole with Kathy Ryan and other Heart N Sole Team Members

Wednesday, March 23 and Thursday, March 24
Thunder N Laikaning with Rachel Larsen and other TNL Team Members

Friday, March 25 to Sunday, March 27
Director Christoph Baaden, crew members and Rachel Larsen from TNL

Wednesday, March 30 and Thursday, March 31
Dead Jocks in A Box with Bob and Jim and other Dead Jocks Team Members

Wednesday, April 6 and Thursday, April 7
Team R Bowe with Ryan’s mother Vicki and representatives from the American Heart Association

Wednesday,  April 13 and Thursday, April 14
Bowerman AC – the Elite Team. Meet some of the fastest runners on the course.

THE OTHER WOMAN starring Natalie Portman...

This year’s Oscar winner for Best Actress, Natalie Portman, stars in THE OTHER WOMAN which opens March 11. The radiant Natalie Portman (CLOSER, BLACK SWAN) lights up the screen in this frank, funny, and heart-wrenching adaptation of bestselling author Ayelet Waldman’s novel about life, loss, and family directed by Don Roos (THE OPPOSITE OF SEX, HAPPY ENDINGS).

Emilia (Portman) is a Harvard law school graduate and a newlywed, having just married Jack (Scott Cohen, THE UNDERSTUDY), a high-powered New York lawyer, who was her boss – and married – when she began working at his law firm. Unfortunately, her life takes an unexpected turn when Jack and Emilia lose their newborn daughter. Emilia struggles through her grief to connect with her new stepson William (Charlie Tahan, I AM LEGEND), but is finding it hard to connect with this precocious child. Perhaps the most difficult obstacle of all for Emilia is trying to cope with the constant interferences of her husband’s angry, jealous ex-wife, Carolyn (Lisa Kudrow).

THE HOUSEMAID Begins Friday...

A favorite at this year’s Cannes, Toronto and Fantastic Fest film festivals, THE HOUSEMAID is a stylish, sexy thriller about an innocent young woman caught in the twisted web of a rich family’s games.

Eun-yi (Cannes Best Actress winner Jeon Do-youn of SECRET SUNSHINE) is hired as a nanny in an lavish mansion by businessman Hoon (Lee Jung-jae) and his very pregnant wife, Hae-ra (Seo Woo). When Eun-yi is seduced by the father of the house, she becomes the unwitting victim in a series of traps laid by the women of the house—Hae-ra, her villainous mother (Park Ji-young), and their seemingly loyal but increasingly bitter housekeeper (Yun Yeo-jong). Intensely erotic and fiendishly entertaining, THE HOUSEMAID builds to an unforgettable climax as Eun-yi must outwit them and escape their schemes to protect her sanity—and her life—from the vicious family.

COLD WEATHER Begins Friday...

Shot in Portland, COLD WEATHER is the third film from local filmmaker Aaron Katz. After abandoning a promising academic career in forensic science, a self-styled Sherlock Holmes, Doug (Cris Lankenau), returns to Portland to live with his more responsible big sister Gail (Trieste Kelly Dunn). He lands a dead-end job working in an ice factory, but soon finds an opportunity to use his passion and skill in detective work when his ex-girlfriend, Rachel (Robyn Rikoon) goes missing. Enlisting a team of ramshackle slacker-sleuths, Doug leads his team down a complex trail of clues and increasingly close to the discovering the mysterious truth about Rachel. COLD WEATHER is a charming mystery — simultaneously a rich detective story and an affecting tale of siblings uniting after years apart. With it’s own idiosyncratic spin on familiar genre conventions, the film features the lyrical style, lush camera work and naturalistic performances that have established director Aaron Katz (DANCE PARTY USA, QUIET CITY) as a major talent to watch.