“New Directors/New Films Festival 2022 at Film at Lincoln Center & MOMA”
The 51st edition of the New Directors/New Films festival begins April 20 and runs until May 1. The festival has a long track record for identifying first-time directors who later went on to have exalted careers: Pedro Almodóvar, Kelly Reichardt, Atom Egoyan, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Sally Potter, John Sayles, ...
“The Girl And The Spider” opens at Metrograph & Film at Lincoln Center
(above: Liliane Amuat and Henriette Confurius in Ramon & Silvan Zürcher's THE GIRL AND THE SPIDER) In 2013 Swiss film director Ramon Zürcher had a festival hit with “The Strange Little Cat” that invented a unique formal language for telling a rich story of interpersonal relations in a cramped living space. His ...
Personal Shopper: Spring 2022 Gift Guide
Here's our selection of some of the best film-related books, Blu-Rays, DVDs and CDs released recently. A rapturous bio of a famous and troubled movie star marriage. A new reissue of a concert classic with tons of extras. P. T. Anderson's beloved masterpiece from last year out on Blu-Ray. A memoir by the star of "Mr. ...
Monthly Anime Classics at Japan Society in NYC
New York, NY (Mar. 31, 2022) Japan Society is pleased to announce the launch of Monthly Anime on April 15, 2022, which will kick-off with a screening of Mamoru Oshii’s seminal cyberpunk classic, Ghost in the Shell. Offering an eclectic range of classic, underseen, and contemporary visions from Japanese animation, ...
Four by Valentyn Vasyanovych at MOMI
“If we don’t resist the Russian invasion,” Valentyn Vasyanovych told Leonardo Goi, “Ukraine will disappear as an independent state, and the countries of the former Socialist Bloc will be next.” The 50-year-old Ukrainian film director is in Kyiv right now, doing just that, while the Museum of the Moving Image is ...
“The Apartment” new 4K and Blu-Ray release
Billy Wilder got the idea for “The Apartment” from a scene in David Lean’s classic 1945 film “Brief Encounter” in which a cheating couple uses a friend’s apartment for a tryst. The situation violated the Hollywood production code and he didn’t get around to using it in a film until 1960. (It was released the same ...
MOMI First Look Highlights
The Museum of the Moving Image’s eleventh First Look Festival, devoted to “innovative new international cinema” takes place Wednesday, March 16 to Sunday, March 20. Here are five features I highly recommend. Go here for more information about the festival, a complete list of films and ticket information. The ...
Yujiro Harumoto “A Balance”
Yujiro Harumoto’s “A Balance” is both a sensitive Japanese family drama and a powerful indictment of the myth of balanced investigatory journalism and its unfortunate contribution to public shaming. It is playing at Manhattan’s IFC Center beginning Friday, March 11 for one week as part of the ACA Cinema Project ...
“House of Gucci” Blu-Ray & DVD
Gucci is still one of the world’s most famous luxury goods brands, despite the fact that the Gucci family is no longer associated with it. In 1921 Glaudio Gucci, informed by his work as a bell hop in London that exposed him to the tastes of the wealthy in luggage and fashion, opened a luggage store in Florence, ...
“Algren,” “La Dénonciation” streaming on OVID
In Nelson Algren’s 1956 novel “A Walk on the Wild Side”, an old-timer tells the protagonist three rules for living: “Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse then your own.” Short lists like these (think of Satchel Paige’s “Don't look ...
“Monsieur Beaucaire” (1946) & “Where There’s Life” (1947)
I’ve always been a huge fan of Bob Hope. His comic persona seems to leap off the screen to me no matter how old the film is, a combination of his manic verbal humor, expert comic timing, the topicality of many of his jokes and his winking fourth-wall-breaking humor. (Many of his films include teasing inside jokes ...
“The Olive Trees of Justice” (James Blue) 1963
American filmmaker James Blue, though he died in 1980 at age 49, had a long and interesting career that is ripe for rediscovery. You can be part of that process beginning tomorrow (January 21) at New York City’s Metrograph theater where a newly restored print of “The Olive Trees of Justice,” his 1962 film, will ...