(David Cronenberg, 2005, USA/Canada/Germany, 96 minutes)

Screening in 35mm!

Here’s a good answer for the discerning cinephile seeking to answer “What’s your favorite comic book movie?” (Well, this or Ghost World.) David Cronenberg’s Cannes- and Oscar-laureled A History of Violence adapts John Wagner and Vince Locke’s 1997 graphic novel about a family man named Joey (Viggo Mortensen, fresh off of Lord of the Rings) who, in the process of stopping a robbery of the diner he owns, proves maybe a little too adept with guns and violence, which leads to questions about his past. Smartly stealing tropes from the American Western and recasting them in modern small-town Indiana, Cronenberg and Mortensen both do some of the best work of their respective careers here, and this marks the first of four collaborations between the two of them (so far).