For the third installment in his Jazz Soundtracks series, local jazzman Ray Vega offers up this classic from 1986. Propelled by jazz immortal Dexter Gordon’s singular, phenomenal lead performance and Herbie Hancock’s dazzling soundtrack, Bertrand Tavernier’s ‘Round Midnight is one of the very best movies about jazz, the music and the people who make it.

In 1968, Peace Corps veteran David Schickele enlisted his friend Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam to star in a light-hearted comedy about the adventures of a young Nigerian intellectual in San Francisco. Using a docu-fictional style reminiscent of Cassavetes' Shadows, the film observes the foibles of late 1960s African-American culture with an outsider's incisive eye. The result is less frothy comedy, and more of a vibrant snapshot of the nation's racial politics, from interracial romance to cross-cultural misunderstandings and countercultural joy.

This criminally overlooked comic masterpiece finally gets a 4k restoration and the deluxe treatment it deserves! Wendell B. Harris wrote, directed and starred in this edgy, hilarious deep-dive into the mind of a brilliant African-American, William Douglas Street, a man who seeks to adopt any identity – baseball player, journalist, Harvard grad student, even surgeon – other than his own. Harris fully embodies Street, a riveting cinematic character, as he ascends (and descends) through the social order, where he is briefly accepted, then harshly rejected, at each turn.

Master documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s latest film, Menus-Plaisirs– Les Troisgros, is a film about the Troisgros family and their three restaurants: Troisgros, Le Central and Colline, located in three neighboring locations in bucolic central France. Troisgros is a legendary restaurant, founded 93 years ago with a sustaining 3-star Michelin rating for the past 55 years. In 2020, Troisgros was awarded a Michelin green star for exemplary sustainable practices. Much of the film takes place at Troisgros.

Strictly as a legal undertaking, The People’s Joker is fascinating just for the fact of its existence – IndieWire accurately calls it “one of the most impressive and subversive stretches of fair use law ever put to film.” Writer/director/star Vera Drew adapts and deeply subverts the famous DC Comics villain, taking shots at all variety of trademarked superheroes…and gets away with it.