The Spanish director Víctor Erice is one of our most revered, yet least prolific, European filmmakers. Over the past 50 years or so, he’s directed just four features, starting with his masterful debut, The Spirit of the Beehive.

That movie was a haunting family drama set in 1940, during the early days of the Franco dictatorship. It was also a passionate ode to cinema from a filmmaker who’s always loved the movies, even when the movies haven’t loved him back.

Erice had a rough time with his 1983 film El Sur, a beautiful yet truncated work that was released in its unfinished form. In the years since, Erice has directed a number of projects, including the 1992 documentary The Quince Tree Sun and several shorts.

But he has struggled to get another fiction feature off the ground — until now. The arrival of Erice’s new movie, Close Your Eyes, would be welcome news even if it weren’t one of the best things I’ve seen this year. Manolo Solo plays a long-retired director named Miguel, who quit the biz in 1990, after one of his films shut down production. The circumstances were mysterious: His star, a handsome actor named Julio Arenas, vanished without explanation and was presumed dead. Now, it’s 2012, and a Madrid-based TV journalist is investigating Julio’s disappearance.

After he’s interviewed, Miguel stays in Madrid and makes inquiries of his own. While Close Your Eyes unfolds at a leisurely pace over nearly three hours, it has the pull of a well-crafted detective story. Miguel reaches out to old friends and colleagues, like his longtime editor, Max, a hardcore cinephile who still has the never-screened footage from that halted production.

Miguel also gets back in touch with Julio’s daughter, who knew little about her father even before he went missing. She’s played, exquisitely, by Ana Torrent, who was just a young girl when she starred in The Spirit of the Beehive decades ago. It’s a glorious full-circle moment.

Miguel’s investigation doesn’t yield any immediate answers, and he returns, wistfully, to his home on the Spanish coast. It’s here that the action briefly pauses and settles into a simply magical interlude. One night, while hanging out under the stars, Miguel picks up a guitar and performs a duet with his friend Toni. You’ll recognize the song if you’ve seen Howard Hawks’ 1959 western, Rio Bravo, which is one of my own favorite movies.

Maybe it’s one of Erice’s, too. Like Rio Bravo, Close Your Eyes turns out to be a story about community, about friendships forged under unlikely circumstances. Miguel’s mission to solve the mystery of Julio’s disappearance becomes a group effort, as old and new friends come together to help him.

You don’t have to know Erice’s work to get swept up in Close Your Eyes. But those who do know his work will find the new film an almost unbearably moving experience. Erice is, in many ways, telling his own story: Miguel could be his stand-in, just as Miguel’s unfinished film feels like a meta-commentary on some of Erice’s own abandoned projects. Miguel and his old editor, Max, reminisce about earlier, better times for the film industry and grouse about the changes wrought by digital technology.

But despite his characters’ pessimism, Erice continues to show a hard-won faith in the movies. He knows that they can move us in ways that no other art form can. At one point, Erice ushers all his characters into a dilapidated old movie theatre, which is where Close Your Eyes becomes not just an engaging film, but a quietly transcendent one. I don’t want to say too much about what happens, but it’s worth discovering for yourself, in a movie theatre of your own.

When Jessica Alba reminisces about her Sundays as a child, the first things that come to mind are sleeping in and having Sunday dinner with her tight knit family.

“We would do enchiladas, al pastor or a more elaborate dinner that took more time,” says the Pomona-born actress, adding that one of her fondest memories is making homemade tortillas in the kitchen with her grandmother.

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

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Over the past two decades, Alba has starred in a myriad of projects, including the films “Fantastic Four,” and Y2K classic, “Honey,” as well as the TV series “Dark Angel.” Her latest is Netflix’s “Trigger Warning,” which was released this summer. The second season of “Honest Renovations,” her Roku Original home improvement series, drops on Friday.

A mother to three kids who range from 6 to 16, Alba continues to make family the focus of her Sundays. “We do believe in lazy Sundays,” she says. “I used to be really intense like ‘We have to be out of the house doing stuff,’ but my kids and my husband have all agreed that it’s nice sometimes just to be in pajamas all day. So I’m like ‘OK, let’s embrace this.’”

We caught up with Alba to discuss how she’d spend her ideal Sunday in Los Angeles with her husband, Cash, and children, Honor, Haven and Hayes. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.

9 a.m.: Enjoy a latte and a few games in bed

On my perfect Sunday, I wake up at 9 a.m., and my husband makes me an almond milk latte and my son gives it to me [with] a kiss [laughs]. I do a meditation in bed, I drink my coffee and I’m doing my New York Times crossword puzzle, Wordle, Connections and all the things.

11 a.m.: Go on a hike and then have acai bowls

Then I’ll do some kind of outdoor activity so I’ll either get on my spin bike or I’ll take a walk or a hike. I like Franklin Canyon. I like that it’s chill and there’s a bathroom. Then we order acai bowls for lunch. That’s like a special thing that we’ll order in. Sometimes we’ll make our own smoothie bowls and those are fun because we can make the base, we chop up all of the fruit before and make the bowls really pretty so I’ll do that with the girls. If we order it, we like Ubatuba Açaí or Açaí, Por Favor. We usually build our own bowls. I always like to have almond butter in mine. My kids do not. They always want Nutella and I’m like “Well that’s just all sugar, guys. Have some kind of nut butter or something [laughs].”

1 p.m.: Look for bugs and plants with my son

Usually by then, my son has been up doing a lot of things so I can convince him to come into this little space in my closet and we can paint in there together. We’ll watercolor and he likes to listen to calm music and we’ll just chat. After that, we’ll go on an adventure. We’ll go around the yard and we’ll take pictures of plants or bugs. I have an insect identifier and a plant identifier, so we’ll be able to look them up and [learn] different things about little plants or little bugs.

2:30 p.m.: Meditate, journal and find some stillness

Then I would want to do my meditations and do my sound bowls. [Hayes will] kind of come in and out but he has to be quiet. He’ll play the chimes or he likes to play the drum a lot. Then he’ll get bored because I’ll be like, “You can’t touch that,” then he’ll be like “Ugh” and he leaves [laughs]. So I’ll do that for like 45 minutes. Just meditate, journal, maybe I’ll pull cards, pray and just kind of sit with myself and the sound bowls.

3:30 p.m.: Start prepping Sunday dinner

That’s when I’ll start to prep for dinner. I’ll go and see what we have in the fridge. Usually I’ll do roasted veggies because we always have veggies. I can get root vegetables, I can get broccoli, cauliflower, whatever we have. Chop them all up, [add] olive oil, seasoned salt and that’s an easy side. Then depending on the night, I’ll either do a pasta, rice, a potato for the starch and roasted chicken is usually my go-to. We’ll have like two small organic birds. I’ll spatchcock them, which means you split it and open it and it gets all the skin really crispy. I’ll do a spicy one and then one that’s more mild like a lemon pepper. It takes probably two hours from beginning to end. Then the girls will set the table and [my son] Hayes usually gets the napkins and drinks. We’ll sit down and do “rose and thorn” for our whole weekend.

7:45 p.m.: Read stories with my son before bed

One of us is going to have to put Hayes to bed. So we rock, paper, scissors it. [Laughs] No, just depending on how we all feel, one of us is putting him to bed. He’s getting his bath or reading three stories. With me, he always keeps me there longer. We tell stories on top of reading the three stories and then I’m like, “OK, enough of the stories. It’s time for bed. You’re just stretching this out. Your dad is in and out of here in 15 minutes, it’s been an hour and a half [laughs].”

8:30 p.m.: Wind down with a movie with my husband and the girls

I’ll go downstairs and usually Cash, me, Honor and Haven will watch a show or a movie together and that’s it. I really like “Bridgerton” and “Dark Matter.” I’ll have chamomile lavender tea and they’ll usually have their dessert — they usually pick something out of the freezer. Sometimes if I know a movie is going to go so late, I’ll try to do my skincare before I go downstairs so I can just roll into bed.