A great silence comes to Topeka, a vital doc arrives at the Tivoli, Tom Ford goes home with you — and then we watch the Oscars

Thursday, February 23

On the three short making-of featurettes from the new Blu-ray of Tom Ford’s divisive Nocturnal Animals, the writer-director speaks with the utmost sincerity about his artistic intentions for this sleazy noirish drama. Part of the reason I love this movie so much is because Ford unknowingly nails the absolute bull’s-eye between high art and low art; it’s a gorgeous, cinematic piece of trash. (Brian De Palma fans, take note.)

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Woe-is-me art gallery owner Amy Adams reads a book by ex-husband Jake Gyllenhaal, which he wrote to get back at her for being a shitty wife. Mission accomplished! Michael Shannon, Oscar-nominated for his role as a go-for-broke Texas lawman in the story within the story, steals the movie. The whole nihilistic affair, shot by top-flight cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, looks fantastic in 1080p.

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Friday, February 24

The 21st-annual Kansas Silent Film Festival starts tonight at 7:30 at Washburn University with a rare screening of a 1926 W.C. Fields–Louise Brooks comedy: It’s the Old Army Game. The wonderful event includes multiple short films that accompany each feature, short introductions by film historians, and live accompaniment from top musicians. Best of all, each showing — which takes place in White Concert Hall, on the Topeka campus — is free. Saturday’s daytime program spotlights early animation from Max Fleischer and Lotte Reiniger, Buster Keaton’s The Boat, Pola Negri’s Barbed Wire, a D.W. Griffith short, and Why Change Your Wife? The latter is a 1919 Cecil B. De Mille feature starring Gloria Swanson. It all leads up to tomorrow night’s final film, another 1926 W.C. Fields comedy, So’s Your Old Man. His granddaughter Dr. Harriet Fields will answer questions afterward. See kssilentfilmfestival.org for details.

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Saturday, February 25

The Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro, which opened last night at Tivoli Cinemas, is more of a visual essay than a traditional nonfiction film. Combining archival footage and interviews with an unfinished manuscript from author James Baldwin, director Raoul Peck has created an angry and poetic plea that couldn’t be more timely. Baldwin’s words — reflections of assassinated civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X and Medgar Evers — are spoken aloud by Samuel L. Jackson. The narration forms the connective tissue of this challenging, important film. Don’t miss it.

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Sunday, February 26

It doesn’t say so specifically in its title, but the seventh-annual Kansas City Japanese Film Festival (at the Alamo Drafthouse) is essentially a modern-anime celebration. A Letter to Momo (2011) is a genuinely strange coming-of-age story about a young girl who meets three mischievous spirits who are guiding her deceased father to heaven. The 2009 comedic sci-fi adventure Summer Wars may be the most pertinent today, dealing as it does with artificial intelligence and surveillance in a virtual-reality world called OZ that contains all kinds of sensitive data, such as personal records and nuclear codes. Probably the most well-known film on offer is the visually resplendent 2003 melodrama Tokyo Godfathers, about three misfits who find themselves taking care of a baby on Christmas Eve in Tokyo. That one is showing at 7 p.m., so skip it and come to the KC Oscar Party at Screenland Armour — co-hosted by yours truly — instead. We’ll have giveaways, trivia and drinking games! More info at kcjas.org and bit.ly/kcoscarparty2017.

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Monday, February 27

Between 1995 and 1999, Japanese provocateur Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer) put himself on the map with three films set in the world of organized crime, specifically the Triad and Yakuza. Shinjuku Triad Society is a brutally violent movie that follows a crooked cop through Japan and Taiwan as he moves to kill an underworld kingpin. Rainy Dog portrays the unlikely friendship between an exiled hitman and his recently discovered son. And Ley Lines is a slow-build thriller featuring three sympathetic Tokyo newcomers who get caught up in a life of crime. Arrow Video has just released this Black Society Trilogy on a new Blu-ray boxed set, featuring new transfers of the films, which were the first indications of Miike as a serious new talent. They haven’t looked this good in ages.

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Tuesday, February 28

Detroiters is a charming, scrappy new Lorne Michaels–, Jason Sudeikis–produced half-hour original comedy created by two guys who might look familiar. Tim Robinson was a former writer and featured player on SNL, while his co-star Sam Richardson plays a harried personal assistant on Veep. They play two almost-talented best friends who run a crumbling ad agency in the Motor City, but never give up hope that something big is just around the corner. The humor is sometimes improvisational and mostly works because of the the actors’ good-natured chemistry, but the show is also full of some pretty funny and ridiculous gags. Catch up with it on demand or at cc.com before the fourth installment airs at 9:30 tonight on Comedy Central.

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Wednesday, March 1

Acclaimed filmmaker Claude Chabrol made his name during the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s, but he continued making movies until his death in 2010. Three of his best late-period films make up a very nice Blu-ray box from Cohen Media Group that came out last week. Three Classic Films by Claude Chabrol includes the dark 1992 character drama Betty, starring Marie Trintignant, and L’Enfer (Torment), a twisted 1994 psychological thriller about an obsessively jealous husband (François Cluzet) and his new wife. Chabrol worked many times with Isabelle Huppert, and she stars in the set’s most accessible film, the 1997 comedy-drama The Swindle, as a con artist who gets caught up in a scam with far-reaching implications.

Eric Melin is the editor of Scene-Stealers.com and president of the KC Film Critics Circle.