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NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research

In anticipation of The Jag, a new play produced by yours truly, Paul Felten and Joe DeNardo present Jean-François Stévenin’s Mountain Pass on Friday.

Film at Lincoln Center

Films by Antonioni, Buñuel, and more play in a retrospective of Monica Vitti.

Anthology Film Archives

Films by Stan Brakhage play in Essential Cinema.

Roxy Cinema

Tongues Untied screens on Friday; Dressed In Blue, Three Bewildered People In the Night, and The Wild Boys show Saturday; Ratcatcher plays on Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Raid, District 13, Stagecoach, and Jackass 3D screen in “See It Big: Stunts!“; Alien shows Saturday and Sunday.

IFC Center

Ran continues in a 40th-anniversary restoration; Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Happiness play daily; Romeo + Juliet, To Live and Die in L.A., Audition, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang show late.

It is difficult to make a story about a failing marriage humorous. Yet, director Mikio Naruse made this possible, balancing bleakness and humor in his comedy-drama “Sudden Rain.” The film adapts a play by Kunio Kishida, with a screenplay by Yoko Mizuki, who previously collaborated with Naruse on features such as “Sound of the Mountain” and “Floating Clouds.”

The Whole Family is screening at Metrograph as part of the Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us program

Within a house located in a Tokyo suburb lives an unhappy childless married couple. Fumiko, a burdened housewife, frequently spends her days at home, while her indifferent husband, Ryotaro, works as a salaryman and returns home primarily concerned about dinner while managing his stomach issues. Their marriage is marked by frequent arguments, often sparked by trivial annoyances. However, the couple’s quarrels eventually escalate into clear animosity. Several outsiders, including the wife’s niece...

Starting today, and for most of April, Film Forum in New York will be honoring five of Japan’s greatest actresses in a portmanteau retrospective entitled 5 Japanese Divas. The divas in question are Setsuko Hara, Kinuyo Tanaka, Isuzu Yamada, Machiko Kyo and Hideko Takamine who, collectively, starred in some of the greatest Japanese films of the 1950s golden age (there are more masterpieces per square foot in this retrospective than in any other theater in town). Takamine died last December at the age of 86 (and was featured on Movie Poster of the Week earlier this year), but, remarkably, three of these goddesses—Kyo, Hara and Yamada—are still with us, aged 87, 90 and 94 respectively.

I love the Japanese posters of the 1950s with their crowded montages of faces (I can never be sure if they are photographs or hyper-realist illustrations) in which the actors are paramount, more because I love the...