Screening Room : ‘The Bodhi-Dharma’ Celebrates Nature

Bae Yong-Kwun’s awesomely beautiful “Why Has the Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?” is at the Nuart for one week. Its title is a riddle, referring to the unanswerable question as to why the Indian monk who founded Zen Buddhism left home. It tells of an elderly monk guiding his disciple and an orphan boy on the path toward enlightenment.

The film is a celebration of living close to nature as part of one’s spiritual quest, and most of its settings are gorgeous, filled with natural grandeur and several superb ancient temple compounds.

Information: (310) 478-6379.

Existentialist Riddle: Director Robert Bilheimer’s adroit transposition to the screen of the San Quentin Drama Workshop’s celebrated production of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame,” will screen Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m. through Memorial Day at the Monica 4-Plex.

An existentialist riddle in which a blind man (Rick Cluchey), confined to a thronelike wheelchair in a bare dungeon of a room, rails against his fate. He is attended by a servant (Bud Thorpe) who cannot sit down, while from time to time the man’s childlike parents, both wearing old-fashioned night caps, pop out of oil drums to add their two-cents’ worth.

The ensemble performances are remarkable, demonstrating that individuals even in the most confined, dead-end predicaments cannot resist striving to make some sense of their lives.

Information: (310) 394-9741.

Supernatural Thriller: A first feature effort from writer-director-producer Audrey Lewis, “The Gifted” (at the Sunset 5 Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m.) is admirable and original in its effort to tap African spiritual traditions in creating a thriller of the supernatural. Unfortunately, the film is awkward rather than thrilling.

Dick Anthony Williams, in a well-sustained portrayal, stars as a member of an African American family who has for millennia possessed supernatural powers; in antiquity, Williams’ ancestors battled an alien force from the star Sirius; now he and his relatives have to do battle all over again. Information: (213) 848-3500.