(1976) Directed by Alan J. Pakula. Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards. (138 min.) PG

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, an investigative reporting dream team, comb through the tangled web of Watergate. A breathless thriller about . . . research. We know it’s a coverup that reaches to the Oval Office, but the pace of William Goldman’s Oscar-winning script never flags as we dog two dogged reporters.

Audio description provided by Arts Access Inc. of Raleigh, NC - making the arts accessible to people with disabilities.

Watergate Revisited
Frost/Nixon
Saturday, June 13 | 9 p.m.

(2008) Directed by Ron Howard. Frank Langella  Michael Sheen. (122 min.) R

A shallow talk-show host spars with a clever disgraced president on national television hoping for the revelations that will produce ratings and remorse. UNC’s James Reston, Jr., provides the research for Frost, itching for the criminal confessions that will bring a traumatized nation to closure.  

Man on Wire
Friday, June 19 | 9 p.m.

(2008) Directed by James Marsh. Philippe Petit. (90 min.) PG-13

This year’s Best Documentary Oscar recaptures the almost unbelievable feat of French high-wire artist Philippe Petit, who for a full 45 minutes danced  along a wire that he and his clever cohorts had strung between the World Trade Center Towers. It's been called "the artistic crime of the century."

Indian Movie Weekend
Dhoom: 2
Friday, June 26 | 9 p.m.

(2006) Directed by Sanjay Gadhvi. (122 min.) PG-13

This breathlessly entertaining Bollywood movie follows a master thief through a giddy international caper in India’s premiere action-movie franchise. The cast radiates a supernatural gorgeousness, on Jet-Skis, snowboards, motorbikes, plunging off a cliff, or dancing to the thumping score. Rev your engines, check your brain, and dhoom, dhoom.

(2008) Directed by Danny Boyle. Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan. (120 min.) R

An Oscar-sweeping favorite, Slumdog explores the stinging poverty from which Jamal emerges to fulfill his destiny on the hot seat of the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? This British film doesn’t flinch from darkness, but also dispatches time-tested Bollywood sentiments of good and bad brothers, pure love, and enraptured dance.

(2008) Directed by Mark Osborne and John Stevenson. Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie. (92 min.) PG

Po, a roly-poly panda bear, doesn’t want to be a noodle master, he wants to be a kung fu master!  Will the wise master Shifu train him in martial arts, and will he vanquish all foes? The superb animation of this zero-to-hero story charms all ages.

Kung Fu Panda Family Fun Night | 7 p.m.

Join us before the film for paper lantern crafts, a martial arts demonstration by Red Sun Academy, raffle prizes, $1 face painting, and a chance to meet the larger-than-life pudgy panda. Don't forget your cameras! Museum Members enjoy free popcorn and face painting.

(2008) Directed by Gus Van Sant. Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin. (128 min.) R

Sean Penn thoroughly deserves his Best Actor Oscar playing charismatic Harvey Milk, the first openly elected gay official in the United States, who recruited constituents by demanding equal rights for all. San Francisco in the 1970s is lovingly re-created, a landscape of possibility that eludes threatened conservatives like Dan White (Brolin).

(2007) Directed by Stephen Walker. (109 min.) PG

The average age of the singers in the Young at Heart chorus is 80. Their enthusiasm is as contagious as their willingness to tackle pop music by the likes of Coldplay and Sonic Youth. The world’s oldest cover band’s inspiring vitality repurposes youthful lyrics, like the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated.”

(2008) Directed by Jon Favreau. Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges. (126 min.) PG-13

The best comic-book movie of last summer (sorry Dark Knight fans!) was grounded by Robert Downey Jr.’s magnificent, snarky disdain as Tony Stark, arms dealer turned avenger, outsmarting terrorists at their own game. An explosion-filled action movie where you never lose the sense of the vulnerable man inhabiting the hero’s suit.

Audio description provided by Arts Access Inc. of Raleigh, NC - making the arts accessible to people with disabilities.

(2008) Directed by Patricia Rozema. Abigail Breslin, Julia Ormond, Stanley Tucci. (101 min.) G

Abigail Breslin stars as plucky Kit, an aspiring reporter and amateur sleuth in a squeaky-clean adventure that bathes Depression-era hardship in gentle sunlight. This first American Girl Doll movie continues the mission to woo tweens away from sexy Barbie toward an enriching, multicultural historical pageant of girl power.

Family Fun Night | 7 p.m.

Show off your favorite American Girl outfit and bring your doll along to compete for best look-alike prizes! Don't have a doll? No worries, we will have them at the event! Make a bracelet for you or your doll at our craft workshop and then strike a pose in the PicPod photo booth for only $1. All children under 12 enjoy free ice cream courtesy of Ben & Jerry's. Museum Members receive 1 free photo booth picture per membership.

(2008) Directed by Laurent Cantet. François Bégaudeau. (128 min.) PG-13

One frustrating, hopeful, challenging year in a lower-income, melting-pot Parisian-neighborhood junior high, this hybrid doc is an Oscar nominee and winner of the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The Class is an autobiography (starring the author as himself) with real teens facing societal expectations with fierceness and humor.

(2007) Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy. Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Jekesai Gurira, Hiam Abbass. (104 min.) PG-13

A college professor, emotionally numb after his wife’s death, blossoms after discovering and befriending the illegal immigrants squatting in his Manhattan apartment. McCarthy’s last film was The Station Agent, and this heartfelt indie garnered an Oscar nomination for character actor Jenkins’s role of a lifetime.

Two callow girls on a Spanish holiday aspire to artistic madness and get more than they bargained for when they become embroiled in the passionate love-hate affair between a painter and his tempestuous ex-wife. Woody continues his autumnal directorial brilliance with this meditation on the seductive intersection between life and art.

(2008) Directed by Saul Dibb. Kiera Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Charlotte Rampling. (110 min.) Rated PG-13

The scandalous 18th-century Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana, was married off at a tender age to the wealthy Duke to produce heirs, much like her descendant Princess Diana. Knightly (in her Oscar-winning frippery) is headstrong, amorous, and an outspoken feminist in this compelling (and truthy) historical drama.

(1973) Directed by George Roy Hill. Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw. (129 min.) PG

Con men are irresistible, especially when played by Newman and Redford, one of the great bromantic teams of all time. Scott Joplin’s infectious ragtime score glides Oscar’s Best Picture of ’73 through rowdy 1930s Chicago, while two charmers fleece their marks with a wink and a smile. Perfect family entertainment.

Audio description provided by Arts Access Inc. of Raleigh, NC - making the arts accessible to people with disabilities.

(1939) Directed by Victor Fleming. Produced by David O. Selznick. Vivian Leigh, Clark Gable, Hattie McDaniel, Olivia de Havilland. (226 min.) G

The NCMA is pleased to present a special 70th-anniversary screening of one of the most iconic Hollywood movies of all time. Margaret Mitchell's sensational Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was brought to the screen by the legendary producer David O. Selznick in 1939, capturing an unprecedented 10 Academy Awards. Few films have inspired as much passionate devotion and debate as Gone with the Wind.

This screening is part of the special event: "The Southern Plantation Revisited"

David O. Selznick's son Daniel served as executive producer (along with his brother Jeffrey) of this fascinating and insightful documentary film about the making of GWTW, which was shown on television to mark the movie's 50th anniversary. Both Selznick and Cheshire will be on hand to discuss the film.

This screening is part of the special event: "The Southern Plantation Revisited"

(2008) Directed by Jonathan Demme. Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Debra Winger. (113 min.) R

Hathaway sets her princessy self aside in this raw, Altmanesque drama about a druggie sprung from rehab to attend her sister’s wedding in the fraught family home. Jenny Lumet, ace director Sidney’s daughter, scripted this ensemble film about festive-occasion pathology, focused on vulnerable, spoiled Kym, Oscar-nominated Hathaway.

(2008) Directed by Baz Luhrmann. Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Bryan Brown. (165 min.) PG-13

Uptight Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) reaches Australia and prevails upon the Drover (rugged Hugh Jackman) for help running her ranch. No less than a Gone with the Wind for the new millennium, westerns, war, romance, hissable villains, and meditations on race and history blend into a magnificent epic.

Audio description provided by Arts Access Inc. of Raleigh, NC - making the arts accessible to people with disabilities.