The Legacy of Beatrix Potter

Where did Villeneuve get his love of bigness? A new series at Film at Lincoln Center—fittingly called “Denis Villeneuve”—attempts, through both a catalogue of the director’s own work and a repertory selection of movies that have inspired him, to answer this very question. The series, running Feb. 16-28, screens eight of Villenueve’s features, including two earlier Canadian productions: “Polytechnique” (2009), a harrowing black-and-white film about a college-campus shooting, and “Incendies” (2010), the story of two Québécois siblings who travel to the Middle East in search of distant family members and uncover troubling secrets about their mother’s past. In the twenty-tens, Villenueve made the leap to Hollywood, directing Jake Gyllenhaal twice in 2013, first in the crime thriller “Prisoners” and then in the absurdist drama “Enemy,” before moving on to make the drug-cartel saga “Sicario,” in 2015. But it was Villeneuve’s 2016 film, “Arrival,” an adaptation of a Ted Chiang novella about a pair of language experts (played by Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner) recruited to communicate with extraterrestrials who have landed on earth, that really pushed him into mainstream success. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. (It won one, for Best Sound Editing.) “Arrival” (playing on Feb. 23 at 6 P.M.) is a film that glorifies the big-screen treatment; the sound design alone is worth experiencing in the theatre.