Who needs summer blockbusters when there are so many gripping new and recent books related to the world of cinema? This column includes books highlighting creative heavyweights with new projects on the way, like Paul Thomas Anderson and Roman Polanski, and titans who have left us, like Abbas Kiarostami and Elizabeth Taylor. Other releases swim in the bloody waters of giallo, examine African American westerns, and offer reflections on horror cinema from queer and trans writers. 

One thing is certain––unlike Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, Fast X, and The Flash––everything here is worth your time and money. 

The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha by Ethan Warren (Wallflower Press)

While there have been fine books exploring the work of Paul Thomas Anderson (such as Adam Nayman’s Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks) Ethan Warren’s American Apocrypha stands as an important accounting of PTA’s energy and influence. Timing is one element. The book’s publication in 2023 means it includes Licorice Pizza, along with every Anderson music video to date. Indeed, while the entirety of the text is smart and compelling, it is the analysis of Pizza that most resonates. “There may be tangible movie cameras in Anderson’s ninth film, wielded by young filmmakers reminiscent of the director’s own onetime makeshift crews, but the more evocative ones may be the invisible cameras that Rex Blau summons as he prepares to direct a late-night motorcycle jump,” Warren writes. “All the world’s a soundstage for the born-and-bred auteur, and all the men and women merely extras.”

It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror edited by Joe Vallese (The Feminist Press)

The contemporary queer and trans writers who have contributed to It Came From the Closet are disarmingly perceptive. Films like Halloween and The Blair Witch Project are analyzed with wit and intelligence, but just as involving as the analysis is the personality each writer brings to the table. Consider Addie Tsai’s “Twin/Skin,” a thoughtful consideration of Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers. “To live in the world as a twin––a doubled body, a mirrored self––is to also live with others’ misperception that you’re somehow interchangeable,” Tsai writes, documenting a deeply personal connection with the film. This essay is, in fact, almost a short story, and one with an ending that packs a mighty punch. It is one highlight from a collection of standouts. 

Bloodstained Narratives: The Giallo Film in Italy and Abroad edited by Matthew Edwards and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (University Press of Mississippi)

It is appropriate that Bloodstained Narratives, an appreciation of the giallo––which means “yellow” in Italian––film cycle, spends significant time on the films of Dario Argento and Mario Bava. However, the essays included here also study the work of directors such as Jess Franco and Romano Scavolini, and stars like Barbara Bouchet. The sharp, passionate writing in Bloodstained Narratives highlights the genre’s connections to current cinema and shows the debt many writer-directors owe to the blood-drenched masterpieces of Italy. “The giallo film, indeed, has been with us since its (supposedly) demise through the 1980s,” explain Edwards and Pagnoni Berns. “It has changed clothes, but remained a faithful companion to weird cinema. It has been transformed into other genres, into other film cycles. But the heart remains ‘yellow.’”

Return of the Jedi: Unauthorized Timeline 1976-2023 by Justin Berger and Jamie Benning (Anchorhead Publishing)

One of my earliest filmgoing memories is seeing Return of the Jedi during its opening weekend in 1983. (This gives you some idea of my advancing age.) Therefore, the third film of the original Star Wars trilogy has always had a special place in my heart. I am, then, the perfect audience for Return of the Jedi: Unauthorized Timeline 1976-2023, a wildly entertaining journey through every element of the film’s pre-production, production, release, and legacy. Authors Justin Berger (who authored an Empire Strikes Back timeline book in 2021) and Jamie Benning (of the “Filmumentaries” podcast) understand that for fans, the minutiae is a joy to behold. And there is *plenty* of minutiae in Timeline. Examples: “February 11th, 1982: Salacious Crumb chewing on C-3PO’s eye is filmed” and “November 22nd, 1982: ‘Black Friday.’ George Lucas throws out nearly 100 FX shots and four months of VFX work. [VFX Supervisor] Ken Ralston goes out and gets drunk with most of the FX crew.”

Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western by Mia Mask (University of Illinois Press)

Netflix’s The Harder They Fall is the most recent African American Western, but as Black Rodeo explains, the first of these dates back to the “early rodeo actualities” of the 1920s. Author Mia Mask’s book, she writes, “seeks to pose questions regarding Black masculinity on the frontier.” It is a unique take on a key genre of cinema. One of the most profound sections examines John Singleton’s underrated Rosewood, a film Mask believes “seeks to make cinematic reparations by relaying the story of the Rosewood massacre and by offering up a Western-style hero for public consumption.” 

Abbas Kiarostami: Interviews edited by Monika Raesch (University Press of Mississippi)

The world of cinema is not the same without Abbas Kiarostami, a filmmaker whose later work (Certified Copy, Like Someone in Love) was every bit as provocative as classics like Close-Up and Taste of Cherry. As evident in Abbas Kiarostami: Interviews, which includes conversations from 1991 to 2016, he was also eminently quotable. Consider this comment, from a 2011 chat regarding Certified Copy, in which he explains that the main male character was originally earmarked for Robert De Niro: “I sent the script to Martin Scorsese, asking him to please forward it to De Niro. First, Scorsese read it himself; then he sent a brief note to me. He wrote, ‘At first, I laughed a whole lot, and by the end, I was very sad, as I saw the women of my own life in front of my inner eye as I was reading [your script].’ One needs to know that Scorsese did not have a shortage of women.”

National Treasure Hunt: One Step Short of Crazy by Aubrey R. Paris and Emily M. Black (Tucker DS Press)

While the Disney+ series continuation of the National Treasure films aired to little fanfare and was recently canceled, the affection many moviegoers have for the Nicolas Cage-starrers has not diminished one bit. This audience will have a blast reading One Step Short of Crazy, a pleasurable, obsessively detailed (in the best sense) look at the franchise. Paris and Black, both holders of PhDs, actually began their exploration with a podcast. This book followed, and along with it much to ponder, including background on the scripts and production of the films, the series’ connections to real (and imagined) history, and even a guide to locations and landmarks. The authors demonstrate why, in the eyes of fans, “the franchise remains so relevant and rewatchable to this day.” 

Tangents: From the Making of Shepard & Dark edited and with photographs by Treva Wurmfeld (Oscilloscope)

Oscilloscope’s lovely tribute to the late, deeply missed Sam Shepard is a photo-packed look at his friendship with writer and best friend Johnny Dark. The book also comes with a Blu-ray copy of the documentary Shepard & Dark, which was originally released in 2023. The film’s director, Treva Wurmfeld, shares what she calls “interview dialogues” in this wonderful companion to the documentary. 

Roman Polanski: Behind the Scenes of His Classic Early Films by Jordan R. Young (Applause)

The life and career of Roman Polanski have been documented in exhausting detail over the last several decades, but Jordan Young finds new ground to cover by turning his attention to a crucial era in Polanski’s development. Specifically, Young outlines the production and release of three films: Repulsion, Cul-de-Sac, and Dance of the Vampires (a.k.a., The Fearless Vampire Killers). The author devotes the most space to the deliciously fucked up Cul-de-Sac, which he believes is “the quintessential cult film.”

Elizabeth Taylor: Icon of American Empire by Gloria Shin (Lexington Books)

Yes, there is more to say about Elizabeth Taylor, and Gloria Shin proves it with her unique look at the late icon as the model of postcolonial whiteness. Of particular interest is Shin’s focus on Taylor’s AIDS activism, and how Taylor served “as an effective agent of positive social change.” Writes Shin: “As a woman who realizes her sexuality in the very socially and political conservative early 1950s and who becomes a singular icon of liberalized feminine sexuality in the early 1960s, notably as cinema’s most famous and seductive Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor’s public and rampant vilification for her erotic exploits arguably makes her an appropriate figure to stand up for gay men whose sexual practices are represented as virulent and deadly in the 1980s.”

Killin’ Generals: The Making of The Dirty Dozen, the Most Iconic WWII Movie of All Time by Dwayne Epstein (Citadel Press)

June is, of course, the month for Father’s Day, so shouldn’t we spend some time with a certified Dad Favorite? There is a good chance your dad is watching The Dirty Dozen right now, and if so, Killin’ Generals will be a must-read. Author Epstein explains why the star-filed World War II actioner was “one of the most hotly debated films” of the 1960s. Especially interesting for cinephiles are the descriptions of conflicted co-star John Cassavetes from producer Ken Hyman: “Cassavetes didn’t want to do the movie. He wanted to direct a movie. I almost had a fistfight with him to get him to do it. I’d said, ‘Johnny, for god’s sake, this is a wonderful role. Do the movie! Put your money in your pocket, then make your movie.” Cassavetes acquiesced, and gave a fine performance in one of his most widely seen roles. 

Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams (Penguin Press)

The best way to describe Unscripted, a non-fiction show-biz soap opera about the shockingly horny Sumner Redstone, his family, the Viacom board, and the women vying for his fortune? Try real-life Succession, with more sex. Admittedly, there is not much consideration here of Redstone’s contributions to the entertainment world. Rather, Unscripted is all about Redstone’s personal foibles, and the effect of these on the companies he built and the people in his orbit. It is a tale of glamorous villainesses, vexed staff members, worried family, and––my personal favorite––a dashing former soap opera star hawking his memoirs. It is a wild tale, and catnip for anyone who enjoys digging into tales of tabloid headline-making Hollywood drama. Just prepare to feel a bit icky afterward. 

New music books

Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska by Warren Zanes (Crown)

In a career of several masterpieces, it is safe to say Bruce Springsteen has only one record like Nebraska. It is also safe to say that it is his greatest achievement, and an album that unmistakably laid the groundwork for later heavyweights like Silver Jews, The National, and Bon Iver. Nebraska crackles (literally, because it was recorded on a home cassette recorder) and intensity, and bristles with unease. Zanes, a member of the late garage rock band the Del Fuegos, dissects the making of the album in detail, and uncovers key influences. One biggie? Terrence Malick’s Badlands. “Something about that story of a teenage serial murderer reminded Springsteen of his own life,” Zanes writes. Springsteen recalls that Badlands “didn’t make a big splash. And that connected up with the kind of place I was in. I was drawing from culturally quiet places and sources.” Nebraska deserved a book this hauntingly beautiful. 

The Fascist Groove Thing: A History of Thatcher’s Britain in 21 Mixtapes by Hugh Hodges (PM Press)

Here’s a brilliant concept: a collection of 21 mixtapes centered on the horrors of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, along with analysis of the songs, the performers, and the meaning of it all. Hugh Hodges, then, has created the ultimate Spotify playlist for some of the grimmest eras of 1970s and 80s British life. “You may not remember all the bands on this mixtape,” Hodges writes after presenting “MIXTAPE 1,” which features, among others, the Sex Pistols, David Bowie, Madness, the Specials, the Smiths, Billy Bragg, and the Style Council. “You may have never heard of some of them. That’s okay. The point is that there were so many songs written about Thatcher in the 1980s that you can practically trace the outline of her career as prime minister just from their titles.”

Leon Russell: The Master of Space and Time’s Journey Through Rock & Roll History by Bill Janovitz (Hachette)

The legendary Leon Russell sadly passed away in 2016, but in the years before his death he found a new level of appreciation. As Bill Janovitz shares in his stellar biography of Russell, Elton John played a major part in this; Russell was one of John’s inspirations and the latter made it a mission to bring Russell back to cultural prominence. The Elton connection is a unique twist in a book full of them. Another involves the late documentarian Les Blank, who famously directed a film about Russell, A Poem Is a Naked Person, in the early 1970s. It was not shown until after Blank’s death, when Russell finally agreed to its release. “It not only introduced the general public to—and reminded his fans of—Leon in his prime,” writes, Janovitz, “but it reconnected old Leon to his younger self, from ‘hippo’ back to ‘hippie.’ He was far enough away from that young skinny live wire that he must have seemed a stranger to himself.” Janovitz, a founding member of Buffalo Tom, has crafted an extraordinary bio, one that captures the genius and sadness of an icon. 

The latest in D&D, DC, Star Wars, LEGO, and the Wizarding World, Star Wars

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was an enjoyable spring film, and two prequel novels — The Road to Neverwinter by Jaleigh Johnson and Honor Among Thieves: The Druid’s Call by E.K. Johnston (both Random House Worlds) add some complexity to the characters played by Chris Pine and Sophia Lillis, respectively. In addition, the design and history of Pine’s Edgin Darvis and Lillis’ Doric are presented in detailed fashion in The Art and Making of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Ten Speed Press). And the D&D faithful should also be aware of Dungeons and Dragons The Legend of Drizzt Visual Dictionary. Michael Witwer’s text colorfully outlines the character who was first introduced in R.A. Salvatore’s book series, along with the world he inhabits.

Meanwhile, The DC Book of Pride by Jadzia Axelrod (DK) is a timely guide to the LGBTQIA+ characters of the DC Universe. Many of these were new to me––I knew not of Bluebird and Dreamer––but all are given a backstory, along with the date and identity of their first appearance.

While the aforementioned Return of the Jedi: Unauthorized Timeline 1976-2023 looks at the dates and details for the history of one film, Star Wars Timelines by Kristin Baver, Jason Fry, Cole Horton, Amy Richau, and Clayton Sandell (DK) is a run through all of the series’ events. The book has already made some headlines for a few tidbits of info related to the chronology of The Phantom Menace and Boba Fett’s life. Timelines starts with the founding of the Jedi Order and ends on “Rey … Rey Skywalker,” while including events from last year’s Kenobi. This is a truly exhaustive text, one that should be the final word (for now, anyway) on the “whens” of the world of Star Wars.

Plus, two new novels to watch for are Star Wars: Jedi: Battle Scars by Sam Maggs (Random House Worlds), which expands the story of Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor’s Cal Kestis, and Star Wars: The High Republic: Cataclysm by Lydia Kang (Random House Worlds) continues the events of The High Republic: Convergence with a wartime thriller. Speaking of Star Wars novels, back in 2021 we highlighted the “Star Wars Essential Legends Collection” from Del Rey, which featured rereleased novels from the pre-sequel trilogy days. The most notable of these was Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, the 1991 release taking place after Return of the Jedi. My son and I just finished reading the second and third books in what was dubbed “The Thrawn Trilogy,” 1992’s Dark Force Rising and 1993’s The Last Command. The trilogy remains a high point of the Star Wars “Expanded Universe,” and Rising and Command are just as strong as Heir to the Empire.

Chronicle Books’ LEGO Heroes by Graham E. Hancock is a genuinely inspiring window into the creativity and passion of LEGO builders, young and old. The book highlights unique projects like bricks with braille studs and a brilliantly conceived LEGO wheelchair ramp. 

And lastly, the creation of the blockbuster Hogwarts Legacy video game is presented in The Art and Making of Hogwarts Legacy: Exploring the Unwritten Wizarding World (Insight Editions). It was clearly quite an undertaking to develop, for example, more than twenty shops in Hogsmeade and the 1800s-era grounds of Hogwarts. The scale of the work was astounding, but the game sales probably mean it was all worth it.

The post Recommended New Books on Filmmaking: Paul Thomas Anderson’s America, The Dirty Dozen, Giallo, Surveying the African American Western & More first appeared on The Film Stage.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Armageddon Time (James Gray)

Armageddon Time is the sort of film usually invoked as a “portrait of the nation” or “state of the union address,” something taking the temperature of a country—most likely the United States—at a particular time in history. But it’s also a work that makes self-consciousness a virtue: its wonderful writer-director, James Gray, is informed up to his eyes about the virtues and pitfalls of films like these, and here makes something so idiosyncratically his own but that audiences and critics might still mislabel with one of those aforementioned ideas. – David K. (full review)

Where to Stream: Prime Video

Godland (Hlynur Pálmason)

Featuring onscreen text explaining how the film was inspired by left-behind photos taken by a Danish priest while visiting Iceland in the late 1800s (as opposed to how it was actually suburban American child Andy’s favorite movie in 1995), Godland takes on the heavy weight of a historical object. But though this is really a film fighting a battle between formalism and compelling dramaturgy, the questions it asks will actually be much simpler. Our stand-in for the unnamed priest of historical record is the young Lutheran Lucas (Elliot Crosset Hove), assigned to help build a church in rural Iceland by his rather bored-looking superior in the ministry (he spends the meeting eating food, not making eye contact). Yet this is no easy task: Iceland is wild country and Lucas’ trek will take him into the so-to-speak heart of darkness. – Ethan V. (full review)

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Infinity Pool (Brandon Cronenberg)

By now the Cronenberg surname has become synonymous with bodily obsession. Like his father David’s wealthy oeuvre of anatomical grotesquerie, Brandon Cronenberg has taken the torch and developed his own small, corporeal-minded canon, blending a gory imagination with sharp socio-economic fables. More than his chilling, futuristic narrative concepts, it’s his sensory details that overwhelm and entrance, grounding science fiction in the earthly vulgarities and excretions that deliver genuine shocks instead of cheap thrills. That he can keep twisting the knife and warrant an appreciation for his detail and dexterity is a rare gift. – Jake K-S. (full review)

Where to Stream: Hulu

Morning of the Earth (Albert Falzon)

A rarely seen, recently remastered surf epic filmed in beaches across Australia, Hawaii, and Indonesia. Spearheaded by photographer-filmmaker-surfer Albert “Alby” Falzon, Morning of the Earth quickly achieved cult status upon initial release for its stunning cinematography, psychedelic soundtrack, and candid depiction of surfers raising chickens and growing their own vegetables that resonated with the nature-lovin’ youth counterculture of the era. Inspired by Jonas Mekas’ writing, Falzon made a film “that was a reflection of the spirit of surfing at the time.”

Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club

Pacifiction (Albert Serra)

Pacifiction is what Albert Serra might describe as an unfuckable movie. “Unfuckable is, you take the whole thing or you don’t take it but you cannot apply a critical judgment in an easy way,” he explained to us in 2019, “because it is what it is and it doesn’t look like any other film.” Pacifiction does not look like any other film. It doesn’t taste or smell like other films, either, even Serra’s own distinctive body of work. It premiered in a Cannes competition that has been high on wattage but low on power, crying out for a sensation. Pacifiction is that sensation: a film unlike any other this year, appearing near the end of proceedings, with the festival’s final furlongs already in sight; it is the closest the selection has come to delivering a masterpiece. – Rory O. (full review)

Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)

Other People’s Children (Rebecca Zlotowski)

Directed by Rebecca Zlotowski, the French drama Other People’s Children has a simple plot linked with complex ideas. Following Rachel (Virginie Efira), a 40-year-old childless, single teacher, the film watches her fall in love with Ali (Roschdy Zem), a man with a young daughter named Leila. Rachel, always wanting kids of her own, becomes connected to Leila, forcing her to confront her own views on motherhood. Zlotowski’s film grows into a study of overheard conversations and biting words from kids, those who don’t know any better. – Michael F. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Sanctuary (Zachary Wigon)

How well do you know your regular sex worker? How well do they know you? What Hal (Christopher Abbott) and Rebecca (Margaret Qualley) share may have begun as a source of fun, but it’s obviously evolved into something much deeper. It’s now akin to therapy and they both know it to be true. The problem, however, lies in how they interpret what these sessions actually provide. Does Hal need Rebecca to come and validate his fetishized insecurities so he can achieve orgasmic release? Or does she do it to empower him with the necessary confidence to lead a company that’s suddenly fallen to him upon the death of his domineering father? Can either of them really know for sure? Not with money involved. Honesty demands higher stakes. – Jared M. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

The Stroll (Kristen Lovell and Zachary Drucker)

A frank celebration of a pre-Giuliani New York, Kristen Lovell and Zachary Drucker’s The Stroll explores a unique period from the inside. Lovell––an actress, activist, and the producer of the seminal trans film The Garden Left Behind––knows the streets well, and after being the subject of a 2007 documentary about prostitution her eyes were opened to the possibility of one day making a film. In fifteen years, she’s gone from being homeless and sleeping at a Times Square megaplex to debuting her HBO-backed feature in Park City at the nation’s premier indie film festival. – John F. (full review)

Where to Stream: Max

Three Floors (Nanni Moretti)

A car is knocked off-course on a quiet suburban street and crashes fatally into the front room of a well-furnished apartment. In the flurry of bricks and wall plaster, it lands inches from the feet of a young girl who stares the wreckage down with a cool, deadpan expression. If this is your classic “inciting incident” for a full-bodied, conventionally structured drama, its oddly comic denouement––coupled with the main characters all appearing to survey the outcome in little, rhythmic intervals––mark Three Floors as a work by Nanni Moretti, who never met an instance of bourgeois life he couldn’t mischievously ironize. – David K. (full review)

Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)

You Hurt My Feelings (Nicole Holofcener)

In a landscape that has mostly lost its taste for comedy, every Nicole Holofcener film feels like a revelation. While she has more on her mind than just making audiences laugh, her gift for humor is undervalued, and her latest, You Hurt My Feelings, is as perceptive, insightful, and funny as her best work. The stakes may be considered low, but that is only in comparison to the ill-perceived notion that audiences need to be satiated with overcomplicated, heightened narratives that stretch beyond quotidian human issues. For these characters the stakes couldn’t be higher, and it’s refreshing to see a director examine the major emotional consequences of small but significant actions. – Jordan R. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Also New to Streaming

Max

Evil Dead Rise

Metrograph

The Living End
Totally F***ed Up

MUBI (free for 30 days)

Caravaggio 
Wittgenstein
Never Fear
Kotoko
Aribada

The post New to Streaming: You Hurt My Feelings, Sanctuary, Pacifiction, Godland, Other People’s Children & More first appeared on The Film Stage.

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

Film at Lincoln Center
The Mother and the Whore begins a run in its 4K restoration; Scratch plays for free Friday night in Damrosch Park.

Museum of the Moving Image
E.T., The Green Ray, Risky Business, and Blow Out play on 35mm in a summer movie series; The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Great Muppet Caper, and Querelle also screen.

BAM
Juliet Berto’s superb directorial debut Neige begins playing in a long-overdue restoration.

Film Forum
A celebration of Ozu’s 120th birthday continues with a massive series; It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World plays this Sunday.

Roxy Cinema
35mm prints of Portrait of Jason and The Rocky Horror Picture Show screen, while Happy Together plays; “City Dudes” plays on Saturday.

Anthology Film Archives
Buster Keaton and Ken Jacobs screen in Essential Cinema.

IFC Center
The David Lynch and Studio Ghibli retrospectives continue while The Babadook has late showings.

The post NYC Weekend Watch: The Mother and the Whore, The Green Ray, Neige & More first appeared on The Film Stage.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Beau Is Afraid (Joaquin Phoenix)

Ari Aster’s brazenly original three-hour odyssey Beau Is Afraid is, refreshingly, the kind of film where it seems no notes were given––or at least the director had the creative control to reject them. Jumping from some of the most brilliant dark comedy in cinema as of late to a boldly conceived existential journey to an emotionally rife reckoning with mother issues, this Charlie Kaufman-esque journey of the mind packs in quite a lot. Even at its most unwieldy, Aster’s film is continued proof that Joaquin Phoenix––brilliant here, at the center of every scene––is the rare breed of actor seeking new challenges with each performance. – Jordan R.

Where to Stream: VOD

Chevalier (Stephen Williams)

TIFF wasn’t kidding when they said they were welcoming director Stephen Williams back after pivoting into prestige television. It’s been 27 years since his theatrical debut Soul Survivor, with a laundry list of all your favorite shows in the meantime. Which just goes to prove that sometimes it’s all about the right project bringing you back into the fold. And it seems a script by rising star Stefani Robinson (coming from FX shows Atlanta and What We Do in the Shadows herself) about the first-known classical composer of African ancestry, Joseph Bologne (also known as Chevalier de Saint-Georges), was exactly that. A stirring tribute to a man of many talents, Chevalier gorgeously gives a once-forgotten virtuoso violinist the cinematic treatment. – Jared M. (full review)

Where to Stream: Hulu

Cinema Sabaya (Orit Fouks Rotem)

If 2022 was the year of self-reflexive explorations of harnessing cinematic tools to varying means––the likes of Steven Spielberg, James Gray, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Jafar Panahi all providing differing viewpoints on how artistic ambitions have forged the paths of their lives––Orit Fouks Rotem’s debut feature Cinema Sabaya also deserves to be part of the conversation. With the smallest scope amongst the aforementioned–yet, like Panahi, exuding a documentary-like realism to excavate deeper truths––Israel’s Oscar entry examines how the unified pursuit of artistic fulfillment can break down cultural and religious barriers to invite conversations that otherwise may never take place. – Jordan R. (full review)

Where to Stream: Kino Now

Falcon Lake (Charlotte Le Bon)

Every cinematic cabin in the woods suggests a place out of time. If you believe the movies, they’re either a) a dread-inducing home to all manner of spirits and masked killers which directly tie the cabin back to its haunted past; or b) an idyllic getaway for a teenager during a formative coming-of-age experience. The directorial debut of Canadian actress Charlotte Le Bon is an unusual, immediately arresting combination, grounding its deeply sincere account of first love within the realm of gothic horror––here the urban myth of a girl who drowned in the nearby lake many summers prior. – Alistair R. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot (Adam Yauch)

Celebrating their 15th anniversary this month, Oscilloscope Laboratories have had quite a roster of notable releases, with films from Kelly Reichardt, Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay, Alice Rohrwacher, Anna Rose Holmer, Joel Potrykus, Josephine Decker, and beyond. The anniversary affords the perfect time to catch up with their first release, directed by the company’s founder, the late Adam Yauch of Beastie Boys fame. Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot, which captures the top 24 high school basketball players competing in an epic tournament in NYC’s iconic Rucker Park, is just as much an ode to the sport as it is an opportunity for Yauch to exude his musical tastes and energetic eye to capturing movement. Featuring tracks by Jay-Z, Nas, Public Enemy, Kool and the Gang and, yes, Beastie Boys, the documentary offers a kinetic look at promising talent trying to make it big. – Jordan R.

Where to Stream: VOD, Fandor

Matter Out of Place (Nikolaus Geyrhalter)

The term “matter out of place” refers to objects in a place they do not originally belong to. In his new film, acclaimed Austrian director Nikolaus Geyrhalter traces immense amounts of waste across our planet. The film made its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival 2022 and won the festival’s inaugural Green Leopard Environmental Prize.

Where to Stream: OVID

Retrograde (Adrian Murray)

One of the strongest independent features of the year also has one of the simplest premises: Molly Richmond (Molly Reisman) is charged with reckless driving but every fiber of her being aims to fight it. Through a series of pitch-perfect, dryly hilarious, and ultimately soul-sucking interactions, the 74-minute gem charts Molly’s journey to fight the system to dispiriting ends. Premiering alongside Jordan Tetewsky & Joshua Pikovsky’s Hannah Ha Ha and Clay Tatum’s The Civil Dead at Slamdance 2022, the three films would make an excellent triple feature about modern malaise and the mundane frustrations with the various economic and bureaucratic roadblocks of daily life.

Where to Stream: Fandor

Sideral (Carlos Segundo)

As Brazil prepares to launch its first manned rocket ship into space, one community begins imagining new futures for themselves. Carlos Segundo’s fifteen-minute black-and-white short spins a simple sci-fi premise into a smart study of changing family dynamics. In its calculated shift from slice-of-life storytelling to space-tinged surrealism, Sideral is a testament to Segundos’ mission to make films at “the edge of the impossible and the possible.”

Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club

Sweet Thing (Alexandre Rockwell)

Alexandre Rockwell’s Sweet Thing could be pulled from any era. Shot in striking 16mm black-and-white, the coming-of-age film—Rockwell’s first feature since 2013—is an intimate story about childhood, connection, freedom, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive. Starring Rockwell’s own children Lana and Nico as, respectively, Billie and Nico, Sweet Thing keeps its lens on two children maturing before they should and forced into situations of adulthood. – Michael F. (full review)

Where to Stream: Film Movement+

Tommy Guns (Carlos Conceição)

It’s tough when you want to like a film a little more. The idea and spirit is present in Tommy Guns, but an overwhelming air of academicism––something that’s sadly begun infecting art cinema in the past decade, its films made more and more by directors self-conscious of the festival circuit tics and requirements––leaves it hard to commend overall. – Ethan V. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

More to Stream

Hulu

Dune

MUBI (free for 30 days)

Spider
Seven Swords
Searching for Ingmar Bergman
Bullet Ballet
A Day in a Life
Crimes of the Future
I’m Not There

Netflix

Dunkirk
Extraction 2

Prime Video

Spoiler Alert
Zero Fucks Given

VOD

The Draughtsman’s Contract
Kandahar
Maggie Moore(s)

The post New to Streaming: Beau Is Afraid, Falcon Lake, Retrograde, Chevalier & More first appeared on The Film Stage.

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

Metrograph
Lars von Trier’s The Idiots begins playing in a new 4K restoration.

Film Forum
A celebration of Ozu’s 120th birthday brings a massive series; a retrospective on New York movies continues with Carpenter, Friedkin, Pakula, and more; I Was Born, But… plays on 35mm this Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center
A retrospective of the great, underseen Marco Ferreri continues with a series of imported 35mm prints; Love & Basketball plays for free Friday night at Governors Island.

Roxy Cinema
35mm prints of In the Cut and The Rocky Horror Picture Show screen; Party Girl and Paris Is Burning also play.

Museum of the Moving Image
Raiders of the Lost Ark and Beat Street play on 35mm in a summer movie series; a print of Mulholland Dr. plays in a queer cinema series.

IFC Center
The David Lynch retrospective continues as “Studio Ghibli Summer” gets underway; A Clockwork Orange, Aliens, and The Babadook have late showings.

The post NYC Weekend Watch: The Idiots, In the Cut, Raiders of the Lost Ark & More first appeared on The Film Stage.

As we approach 2023’s halfway point it’s time to take a temperature of the finest cinema thus far: we’ve rounded up our favorites from the first six months of this year, many of which have flown under the radar. Kindly note that this is based solely on U.S. theatrical and digital releases from 2023.

We should also note a number of stellar films that premiered on the festival circuit last year also had an awards-qualifying run, thus making them 2022 films by our standards––including One Fine Morning, Saint Omer, and Return to Seoul. Check out our picks below, as organized alphabetically, followed by honorable mentions.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (Kelly Fremon Craig)

Like Judy Blume’s treasured young adult classic, Kelly Fremon Craig’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret begins in 1970 with 11-year-old Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) getting the worst news any New York City-raised child can get: her family is moving to New Jersey. It’s not only that Margaret will have to leave behind her wise-cracking grandmother Sylvia (Kathy Bates) or her friends or school, but that being 11 years old often means everything is the end of the world. The crushing despair that makes adolescence feel like a rueful eternity is Fremon Craig’s specialty. – Fran H. (full review)

Asteroid City (Wes Anderson)

A sultry, creamy western that feels more like a vacation, Asteroid City is an absolute delight, Anderson’s best since The Grand Budapest Hotel. It practically begs you to sit back, relax, and enjoy yourself. Hell, it might even want you to take a nap, but not for lack of entertainment. As the characters of Asteroid City know all too well, “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.” Remember that. – Luke H. (full review)

De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor)

A recent episode of Amazon’s The Boys showed a superhero shrink to the size of an uncooked grain of rice and walk into the shaft of his lover’s penis. The episode’s creators visualized this orifice as a dark cavern, all wet and leaky, but now we have the real thing––if still wet and leaky, now throbbing with awkward and unmistakable life. This astonishing image, one of many in De Humani Corporis Fabrica, is brought to us courtesy Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, a filmmaking duet who, almost a decade on from their breakout masterpiece Leviathan, continue giving viewers new and vital ways of seeing the world. – Rory O. (full review)

Godland (Hlynur Pálmason)

Featuring onscreen text explaining how the film was inspired by left-behind photos taken by a Danish priest while visiting Iceland in the late 1800s (as opposed to how it was actually suburban American child Andy’s favorite movie in 1995), Godland takes on the heavy weight of a historical object. But though this is really a film fighting a battle between formalism and compelling dramaturgy, the questions it asks will actually be much simpler. Our stand-in for the unnamed priest of historical record is the young Lutheran Lucas (Elliot Crosset Hove), assigned to help build a church in rural Iceland by his rather bored-looking superior in the ministry (he spends the meeting eating food, not making eye contact). Yet this is no easy task: Iceland is wild country and Lucas’ trek will take him into the so-to-speak heart of darkness. – Ethan V. (full review)

How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Daniel Goldhaber)

Logan (Lukas Gage) meets Shawn (Marcus Scribner) holding a red-covered book within a section of a bookstore both men are trolling for like-minded individuals. Our assumption is that the color means he’s leafing through Andreas Malm’s nonfiction How to Blow Up a Pipeline, in which the author argues for sabotage as a legitimate form of climate activism while also criticizing the pacifism and fatalism that has otherwise dominated the conversation instead. It makes sense, then, why Logan smirks before relaying how it “doesn’t actually explain how to build a bomb.” It doesn’t have to when there are numerous resources that already do––the stuff that will probably land you on an FBI watchlist. That’s not the point. The point is that those bombs should be built. – Jared M. (full review)

Human Flowers of Flesh (Helena Wittmann)

Early into Helena Wittmann’s 2017 feature debut, Drift, a character recounts a Papua New Guinean tale of the world’s creation. Back when the planet was all water, a giant crocodile kept paddling around preventing the sand to settle; only after a warrior slaughtered the beast did the land jut into being. A few minutes into Human Flowers of the Flesh a sailor shares another legend, this one from Ancient Greece. As he chopped Medusa’s head, Perseus dropped it on the shore; the seaweed absorbed the Gorgon’s petrifying powers, and that’s how coral was born. Wittmann has a knack for myths, and her cinema radiates a certain mythical grandeur, a pleasure as primeval and untimely as the stories her projects orbit around. Flowers, in that, feels both ancient and novel. It’s a film whose visual experiments invite one to see the world anew, even as the demons that fuel it harken back to a passion for storytelling that’s as old as time itself. – Leonardo G. (full review)

Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan)

With its Twilight Zone-esque thrills, taking a high-concept, small-scale scenario and exploring it with pressure cooker intensity, Knock at the Cabin sets M. Night Shyamalan the restraints to craft one of his most impressive feats of directing. Further proving to be one of the most empathetic directors working on a studio level today, he also packs in moments of fright as we glimpse apocalyptic disasters through the omnipresent form of a television broadcast, grounding the unthinkable in a startling familiarity. – Jordan R.

Pacifiction (Albert Serra)

Pacifiction is what Albert Serra might describe as an unfuckable movie. “Unfuckable is, you take the whole thing or you don’t take it but you cannot apply a critical judgment in an easy way,” he explained to us in 2019, “because it is what it is and it doesn’t look like any other film.” Pacifiction does not look like any other film. It doesn’t taste or smell like other films, either, even Serra’s own distinctive body of work. It premiered in a Cannes competition that has been high on wattage but low on power, crying out for a sensation. Pacifiction is that sensation: a film unlike any other this year, appearing near the end of proceedings, with the festival’s final furlongs already in sight; it is the closest the selection has come to delivering a masterpiece. – Rory O. (full review)

Other People’s Children (Rebecca Zlotowski)

Directed by Rebecca Zlotowski, the French drama Other People’s Children has a simple plot linked with complex ideas. Following Rachel (Virginie Efira), a 40-year-old childless, single teacher, the film watches her fall in love with Ali (Roschdy Zem), a man with a young daughter named Leila. Rachel, always wanting kids of her own, becomes connected to Leila, forcing her to confront her own views on motherhood. Zlotowski’s film grows into a study of overheard conversations and biting words from kids, those who don’t know any better. – Michael F. (full review)

Past Lives (Celine Song)

Whether miniscule or major, the millions of decisions we make form the winding path of our lives. Specific reasons for taking certain forks in the road can often be lost to the sea of time, swelling back up only as our memory allows. A triptych not-quite-romance crossing nearly a quarter-century, playwright Celine Song’s directorial debut Past Lives examines such universal experience with keen cultural specificity, telling the story of childhood friends who twice reconnect later in life. It’s a warm, patient film culminating in a quietly powerful, reflective finale, though its sum is greater than its parts when the first two sections register a touch underdeveloped. – Jordan R. (full review)

The Plains (David Easteal)

The year’s most astonishing exercise in world-building did not take place in some faraway planet but in the confines of a Hyundai Elantra. For over three hours, David Easteal invites us to eavesdrop as two co-workers share a journey home. Well, several. A montage of car rides (eleven total) recorded over the course of a year, the camera placed in the backseat so that all we see of the two is a slanted reflection in the rearview mirror, The Plains is a soul-replenishing road trip that turns us from spectators into passengers. A richly textured portrait of a life, epic in size and probing in scope. – Leonardo G. (full review)

Rewind & Play (Alain Gomis)

Félicité director Alain Gomis returned to the festival circuit last year with Rewind & Play, which recontextualizes Thelonious Monk’s appearance on a 1969 French television program into an experience that can only be described as a parade of horrors. His genius musical talent is on display, but in expanding far beyond the standard music documentary, Gomis focuses in on the white host’s inane, condescending line of questioning in a series of outtakes. As the bright lights burn down on a sweating Monk, the interview devolves into an uncomfortable, revealing look at the prejudiced belittling of a legend. – Jordan R.

R.M.N. (Cristian Mungiu)

Anyone looking to take the temperature of Cristian Mungiu’s first film in six long years should heed the words of Matthias, his most recent downtrodden protagonist: “People who feel pity die first,” he explains to his 8-year-old son. “I want you to die last.” Too much? Try the more eloquent musings of the local priest: “Everyone has their place in the world, as God ordained.” Translation: go back to where you came from. The Romanian filmmaker returns with R.M.N., a portrait of Europe, perhaps the world, in the days of late capitalism. As bitter and biting as its winter landscape, it stars Marin Grigore as a Hungarian immigrant in a small village nestled amongst the snowy forests and sweeping mountains of Transylvania. Working in crisp blues and greys from Tudor Vladimir Panduru (Graduation, Malmkrog), Mungiu sketches the town as a modern Babel: Romanian, Hungarian, French, German, Sri Lankan, and English are all spoken, and an uneasy coexistence prevails. You soon wonder for how long. – Rory O. (full review)

Scarlet (Pietro Marcello)

In his previous film Martin Eden, and now with Scarlet, Pietro Marcello has found a novel way to depict artistic striving, closely tying it with the concept of labor. It’s also something that runs through Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, about the poetry-penning bus driver of the same name: both filmmakers have helped demystify our idea of the artist as a potential “great man of history” and the deification often accorded them. The would-be literary maven of Martin Eden and two artist-craftsmen of Scarlet are engaged instead in a noble struggle, a bit like the eternal workers’ struggle of Marcello’s other chief interest: that of leftist political thought. – David K. (full review)

Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)

Two years after First Cow, which we collectively named our favorite film of 2020, Kelly Reichardt returns with a work like a line drawing: neat, lean, evocative. Showing Up is about art, how art is made, and the people who use their time to make it. It stars Michelle Williams, an actress who has always been at home to the quiet rhythms of Reichardt’s filmmaking, appearing over the years as a down-on-her-luck drifter in Wendy and Lucy (2008), a settler on the wagon trail in Meek’s Cutoff (2011), and as a woman burdened by a belittling man in the director’s anthology Certain Women (2016). – Rory O. (full review)

Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)

There are many films that start with a bang and many that climax at the end. There are fewer that wow with a deliberately calibrated, orgiastic halfway mark. This (among many other qualities) makes Argentinian director Laura Citarella’s beguiling, shape-shifting epic Trenque Lauquen something of a rarity. The first half of the 250-minute film (also screening in two parts at festivals, which is perfectly doable and would probably lead to a different viewing experience) concludes with a wordless scene of contemplation that abruptly cuts to a title sequence for the ages. This brutal transition comes as a surprise—not only because nothing in the two hours you’ve just spent has prepared you for the mean glare of strobe light and nasty electro beat accompanying the credits list. It also feels like a promise, a dare: “Think that’s enough weirdness for one movie? We’re just getting started.” However fatigued or perplexed one may be at this point, the sweet kick of adrenaline from this madly confident interlude will send pulses racing like the best of cinema does. But let’s start again from the top. – Zhuo-Ning Su (full review)

Unrest (Cyril Schäublin)

The best word to describe Unrest is “clever.” It isn’t on the level of the artisans and thinkers it lovingly portrays––all the graphers (geo, carto, photo) and the ists (social, anarch, horolog, and so on)––but not so far off; and more than enough to be worthy of their story. Consider the title’s neat duality. “Unrest,” as the film explains, is another name for a wristwatch’s balance wheel: an instrument that, working in tandem with the spiral and escapement, creates the mechanism that makes it tick. Then there is the other kind. – Rory O. (full review)

You Hurt My Feelings (Nicole Holofcener)

In a landscape that has mostly lost its taste for comedy, every Nicole Holofcener film feels like a revelation. While she has more on her mind than just making audiences laugh, her gift for humor is undervalued, and her latest, You Hurt My Feelings, is as perceptive, insightful, and funny as her best work. The stakes may be considered low, but that is only in comparison to the ill-perceived notion that audiences need to be satiated with overcomplicated, heightened narratives that stretch beyond quotidian human issues. For these characters the stakes couldn’t be higher, and it’s refreshing to see a director examine the major emotional consequences of small but significant actions. – Jordan R. (full review)

Honorable Mentions

• AIR
• Alcarràs
• BlackBerry
• Blue Jean
• Chile 76
• The Civil Dead
• Dry Ground Burning
• The Eight Mountains
• Enys Men
• Falcon Lake
• The Five Devils
• Geographies of Solitude
• Hannah Ha Ha
• The Innocent
• John Wick: Chapter 4
• Linoleum
• Queens of the Qing Dynasty
• Master Gardener
• Nam June Paik: Moon Is The Oldest TV
• Passengers of the Night
• Reality
• Revoir Paris
• Rye Lane
• Sanctuary
• Sick of Myself
• Stonewalling
• A Thousand and One
• Walk Up
• Will-o’-the-Wisp
• Viking

While the above list features our favorite films through June, the rest of the summer has more to look forward to, including Earth Mama (July 7), Afire (July 14), Kokomo City (July 28), Passages (August 4), Our Body (August 4), Problemista (August 4), The Eternal Memory (August 11), The Adults (August 18), Bottoms (August 25), and Before, Now & Then (August 25) along with some blockbuster offerings from Greta Gerwig, Christopher McQuarrie, and Christopher Nolan that we hope deliver.

The post The Best Films of 2023 (So Far) first appeared on The Film Stage.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (Kelly Fremon Craig)

Like Judy Blume’s treasured young adult classic, Kelly Fremon Craig’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret begins in 1970 with 11-year-old Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) getting the worst news any New York City-raised child can get: her family is moving to New Jersey. It’s not only that Margaret will have to leave behind her wise-cracking grandmother Sylvia (Kathy Bates) or her friends or school, but that being 11 years old often means everything is the end of the world. The crushing despair that makes adolescence feel like a rueful eternity is Fremon Craig’s specialty. – Fran H. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Avatar: The Way of Water (James Cameron)

James Cameron’s long-awaited sequel finally arrived. If not to just wax poetic on the photo-realistic Na’vi and the water they inhabit, one has to admire the megalomaniac yet compassionate director’s knack for a satisfying narrative. Culminating in a perfectly constructed final act which shifts from about four different kinds of action sequence, constantly escalating the stakes and managing to conclude with a lovely, Miyazaki-like grace note… well, you can’t help but admire a blockbuster that has the whole package. – Ethan V.

Where to Stream: Disney+, Max

Brooklyn 45 (Ted Geoghegan)

It’s supposed to be a nostalgic, supportive night. On December 27, 1945, five military veterans and friends from childhood gather inside a Brooklyn brownstone to reminisce about old times, celebrate the end of World War II, and comfort a grieving host whose wife has recently passed. But what starts with sentimental banter and a strong whiskey buzz quickly spirals into an unexpected séance that conjures the paranormal, sparks some paranoia, and builds to a possession that seems hell-bent on staining the wood-paneled parlor with as much blood as possible. That’s the fun, gory, alarming premise behind Brooklyn 45, Ted Geoghegan’s third feature film that asks a lot of heavy questions in-between its abrupt moments of splatter. – Jake K. (full review)

Where to Stream: Shudder

Creed III (Michael B. Jordan)

Just to get it out of the way: the first Creed is the best Rocky film. They share the same formula, a foundation no doubt solidified by the ‘70s sports classic, but Ryan Coogler perfected it to shape a framework that would become emblematic of so many lega-sequels thereafter. The backslide of a follow-up, Creed II, seemed to trade fully in nostalgia, and leaning so hard into the Rocky IV of it all felt cheaper in comparison. A safety net. In such terms Creed III’s success may hinge on a viewer’s love for the Rocky franchise overall. For devotees, Sylvester Stallone’s absence as the Philly icon may leave something of an emotional vacuum. For those unattached, especially following a Drago-heavy part II, it’s almost immediately apparent how liberating Rocky Balboa’s vacancy is. A third installment (or ninth, depending on who’s counting) can be hard to narratively justify in any franchise, let alone one where the legacy character decides to uncharitably bow out. But star and first-time director Michael B. Jordan uses newfound free space to his advantage. Haymakers and uppercuts aren’t the only bold swings taken here. If Creed is the best of the Rocky films, Creed III works because it’s barely a Rocky film. – Conor O. (full review)

Where to Stream: Prime Video

Flamin’ Hot (Eva Longoria)

Well-documented controversies over the accuracy of its story notwithstanding, Eva Longoria’s high-energy feature-directing debut Flamin’ Hot is a classic underdog story, a winning crowd-pleaser, and a brand deposit for Pepsico’s Frito-Lay division. The story of Richard Montañez, a General in the snack wars of the 1990s who rose through the ranks at PepsiCo from janitor to storied executive in charge of multicultural marketing, Flamin’ Hot “prints the myth” guided by a narrator who admits in passages he’s not always reliable. – John F. (full review)

Where to Stream: Hulu

Living (Oliver Hermanus)

Bill Nighy’s Williams finds a reason to live as the inevitable end approaches in this deeply moving retelling of Kurosawa’s Ikiru, transported to an emotionally repressed postwar London. Like its main character, this is an unfussy, unsentimental film, yet makes an extraordinary emotional mark, powered by a brilliant, nuanced screenplay from Kazuo Ishiguro and Nighy reaching the pinnacle of his career. At a time when we’re all recovering from the trauma of the pandemic, few films in recent years show how precious our time on this planet can be. – Ed F.

Where to Stream: Netflix

Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Steven Soderbergh)

Repeating the blissfully perfect, pure ode to pleasure that is Magic Mike XXL would be a fool’s errand, so nearly a decade later––with Steven Soderbergh back in the director’s chair–cinema’s finest stripper-verse is closing out on a more gentle, familiar, innocuous note. Hewing, unexpectedly, closer to a family film at its heart, Magic Mike’s Last Dance offers a more generalized message of the power of dance to engender community. This reliance on plot––and specifically this plot––rings a touch disappointing when considering the franchise’s bolder peaks. But thanks to a couple of memorable set-pieces, this final outing is still sexier than anything the likes of 50 Shades of Grey or Sam Levinson could ever dream up. – Jordan R. (full review)

Where to Stream: Max

Master Gardener (Paul Schrader)

There is a paradox at the heart of Master Gardener. In their respective worlds—one of abstinence and iconography; the other of money and risk—priests and gamblers are kind of sexy. In their own ways, so are gigolos, drug dealers, porn stars, sex addicts, even taxi drivers. Gardeners? For all their charms, maybe less so. The latest from Paul Schrader rounds out an idiosyncratic trilogy: without breaking the mould, and for three films in a row, the director has placed his man-in-a-room archetype into the fraught, divided milieu of contemporary America. With First Reformed and Card Counter, Schrader could bank on audiences already being attuned to the quasi-culty vibes of his characters’ extreme callings. Master Gardener, the story of a diligent horticulturist, has a bit more heavy lifting to do; but there’s fun to be had in the labor. – Rory O. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Shadow Kingdom (Alma Har’el)

Your local Bob Dylan obsessive has surely mentioned Shadow Kingdom, the 2021 concert film that saw him rework an assortment of earlier songs––some established (“Forever Young,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”), some deeper in the back catalogue (“The Wicked Messenger,” “What Was It You Wanted”). One case (“To Be Alone with You”) marked an almost-total rewrite, and courtesy the end credits (which we now know is called “Sierra’s Theme”) an entirely new track. A smorgasbord for Dylanologists, enough to write home for, but greater still that the film component (directed by Alma Har’el and shot by Lol Crawley) is a smoky, dark––yes, shadowy––achievement all its own. It also sat on some weird service for the short duration paying customers could even access it, seemingly left to be a fun memory from a strange summer. Event of events, then, that Shadow Kingdom is now available to rent or buy. – Nick N.

Where to Stream: VOD

Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)

Two years after First Cow, which we collectively named our favorite film of 2020, Kelly Reichardt returns with a work like a line drawing: neat, lean, evocative. Showing Up is about art, how art is made, and the people who use their time to make it. It stars Michelle Williams, an actress who has always been at home to the quiet rhythms of Reichardt’s filmmaking, appearing over the years as a down-on-her-luck drifter in Wendy and Lucy (2008), a settler on the wagon trail in Meek’s Cutoff (2011), and as a woman burdened by a belittling man in the director’s anthology Certain Women (2016). – Rory O. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

TÁR (Todd Field)

Although she’d never mention it, we know Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) endured plenty of toxic male BS on her way to becoming a living legend among composers/conductors. To prove that she could also command the wind. So instead of her struggle to the top, a plot that fiction has shown us before, Todd Field makes us witness her tragic descent. Shot with the clinical precision of a nature documentary and powered by Blanchett’s symphony of a performance, TÁR neither condemns nor celebrates ways in which the powerful achieve and remain in power. Instead it simply observes, capturing a refreshing portrait of female genius, a study of the ravenous affair between art and capitalism, and making us question our belief that the art we love can ever truly be separated from an artist we hate. – Jose S.

Where to Stream: Prime Video

Yeast (Mary Bronstein)

​​In her directorial debut, Mary Bronstein taps into the frustrations of three friends suffering from arrested development. Shot on MiniDV by cinematographer Sean Price Williams (Good Time, Frownland) and starring a young Greta Gerwig opposite Bronstein––among other fresh-faced but now esteemed American filmmakers––Yeast is a time-capsule of New York’s film scene during the aughts, full of perspicacious and pointed notes on life. Le Cinéma Club presents Yeast in collaboration with Mezzanine, an LA-based independent and revival film series.

Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club

Also New to Streaming

Fandor

Retrograde

Hulu

Baby Ruby

Metrograph at Home

Gay Girls Riding Club
Stan VanDerBeek shorts

MUBI (free for 30 days)

Caché
Amour
Topology of Sirens
Tetsuo, the Iron Man
Playback
Corpo Celeste
Velvet Goldmine

Prime Video

Sully

VOD

Aloners
Daliland

The post New to Streaming: Showing Up, Master Gardener, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. & More first appeared on The Film Stage.

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

Film Forum
A celebration of Ozu’s 120th birthday brings a massive series, with many playing on 35mm; a retrospective on New York movies continues with Carpenter, Mel Brooks, Cassavetes, Polanski, Woody Allen, and more; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory plays on 35mm this Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center
A retrospective of the great, underseen Marco Ferreri begins with a series of imported 35mm prints.

Roxy Cinema
35mm prints of Blade Runner, Cruising, and Control screen this weekend, while Happy Together also plays.

Museum of the Moving Image
An Asteroid City-themed series programmed by Wes Anderson and Jake Perlin includes Close Encounters and three films by the Maysles; Fassbinder’s Querelle plays in a queer cinema series.

Museum of Modern Art
A tribute to casting directors Ellen Lewis and Laura Rosenthal brings prints of Broadway Danny Rose and I’m Not There, as well as Dead Man.

IFC Center
The David Lynch retrospective continues; A Clockwork Orange and Aliens have late showings.

The post NYC Weekend Watch: Ozu, Marco Ferreri, Blade Runner & More first appeared on The Film Stage.

Following a number of disappointing blockbusters in May, there are a few promising ones this month (as glimpsed in our honorable mentions below), but it feels like we’ll have to wait until July for a trio of heavy hitters. In the meantime, June brings an eclectic mix of sturdy debuts, auteur-driven offerings, and accomplished documentaries.

15. Shadow Kingdom (Alma Har’el; June 6)

Technically released in limited capacity a couple years ago, the Bob Dylan concert film Shadow Kingdom is now getting proper distribution. As Nick Newman said in our summer movie preview, “Your local Bob Dylan obsessive has surely mentioned Shadow Kingdom, the 2021 concert film that saw him rework an assortment of earlier songs––some established (‘Forever Young,’ ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’), some deeper in the back catalogue (‘The Wicked Messenger,’ ‘What Was It You Wanted’). One case (‘To Be Alone with You’) marked an almost-total rewrite, and courtesy the end credits (which we now know is called ‘Sierra’s Theme’) an entirely new track. A smorgasbord for Dylanologists, enough to write home for, but greater still that the film component (directed by Alma Har’el and shot by Lol Crawley) is a smoky, dark––yes, shadowy––achievement all its own. It also sat on some weird service for the short duration paying customers could even access it, seemingly left to be a fun memory from a strange summer. Event of events, then, that Shadow Kingdom will be available to rent or buy on June 6.”

14. Padre Pio (Abel Ferrara; June 2)

Fittingly premiering at Venice, Italy’s most famous film festival, last fall, Abel Ferrara’s Padre Pio is now coming stateside. With Shia LaBeouf playing the title figure, the story follows him as the young priest who begins his ministry at a remote monastery in Italy right after WWI has ended. David Katz said in his review, “The film is grounded in the reality of Italian life shortly after World War I, as socialist ideas gained currency amid calls for a transformation of society and the populace imagined a better way of life following their army’s traumatic return from the battlefield. The town of San Giovanni Rotondo, located in the country’s southeast, is conceived by Ferrara and first-billed co-screenwriter Maurizio Braucci (who appositely worked on Martin Eden) as a microcosm of this societal shift, where the ruling class harass their charges and dispute the results of a key national election in an apt parallel to Trumpian America.”

13. A Woman Escapes (Sofia Bohdanowicz, Blake Williams & Burak Çevik; June 9)

After directing some of the most interesting films on the international circuit in the last few years, Sofia Bohdanowicz, Burak Çevik, and Blake Williams have teamed on a new feature (in 3D!) which explores a woman’s emotional healing process through filmmaking exchanges. A Woman Escapes, which premiered last year at festivals, now marks the first release from Prismatic Ground. Alongside the run, Anthology Film Archives will also show Blake Williams’ other 3D works, Burak Çevik’s The Pillar of Salt and Belonging, and Sofia Bohdanowicz’s earlier collaborations with filmmaker and actress Deragh Campbell.

12. Happer’s Comet (Tyler Taormina; June 16)

After the stellar, surreal drama Ham on Rye, Tyler Taormina returned to the festival circuit last year with Happer’s Comet, which is finally getting a release this month. Rory O’Connor said in his review, “It’s structured as a series of beautifully shot vignettes starring Taormina’s family members and neighbors, shot around their homes and places of work. What’s remarkable about Happer’s Comet is what sense of unison Taormina achieves, the resulting cumulative mood that is created. Each setting, and almost each person, appear disparate and isolated (in only a couple sequences are we shown more than one figure onscreen) but they feel intrinsically connected, like a network of mycelium. (As the end credits confirm, with some affection, it was made “in lockdown with a crew of two and a cast of my hometown community.”)”

11. Blue Jean (Georgia Oakley; June 9)

A BAFTA nominee, winner of both the Venice Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award and a quartet of British Independent Film Awards, Georgia Oakley’s directorial debut Blue Jean is finally arriving stateside this June. Leonardo Goi said in his review, “Camouflaging—its costs and consequences—is at the cornerstone of Oakley’s frank, often quite gripping feature debut. If Blue Jean does not debunk or reinvent new tropes in its tale of self-acceptance (does it have to, anyway?) it still radiates a rebellious energy, courtesy McEwen’s riveting performance and Oakley’s ability to never make her outcasts feel like lessons.”

10. Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) (Anton Corbijn; June 7)

You are likely familiar with the photographs and narrative films of Anton Corbijn (Control, The American, A Most Wanted Man), but now the artist has directed his first-ever documentary on a subject he knows well. Squaring the Circle, a Sundance and Telluride selection, entertainingly examines the work of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell, the creative geniuses behind the iconic album art design studio, Hipgnosis. Featuring brand-new interviews with Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Peter Gabriel, Noel Gallagher, and more, the documentary charts how the pair were responsible for some of the most recognizable album covers of all-time, including Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Paul McCartney and Wings’ Band on the Run, and Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, all three of which celebrate their 50th anniversaries this year.

9. Lynch/Oz (Alexandre O. Philippe; June 2)

“The Wizard of Oz is a film with very great power… And it’s to be expected that it has stayed with us for the past several years and that we find its echoes in our films for such a long time after. The Wizard of Oz is like a dream and it has immense emotional power,” David Lynch once said. “There’s a certain amount of fear in that picture, as well as things to dream about. So it seems truthful in some way.” Indeed, from the overt references (Wild at Heart) to the more subtextual (see: every other David Lynch movie), Victor Fleming’s 1939 landmark has been a constant wellspring of influence for the legendary director. Yet even with such source of inspiration, Lynch’s films play as singular creations, every frame infused with a thrillingly unique voice. With his new essay documentary, Alexandre O. Philippe entertainingly explores the vast range of connections between Lynch and Oz through the perspectives of Karyn Kusama, John Waters, David Lowery, Rodney Ascher, Amy Nicholson, and Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead. Read my interview with the director.

8. Brooklyn 45 (Ted Geoghegan; June 9)

One of the highlights from this year’s SXSW, Ted Geoghegan’s Brooklyn 45 follows five military veterans who gather in the ornate parlor of a Brooklyn brownstone. Jake Kring-Schriefels said in his review, “It’s supposed to be a nostalgic, supportive night. On December 27, 1945, five military veterans and friends from childhood gather inside a Brooklyn brownstone to reminisce about old times, celebrate the end of World War II, and comfort a grieving host whose wife has recently passed. But what starts with sentimental banter and a strong whiskey buzz quickly spirals into an unexpected séance that conjures the paranormal, sparks some paranoia, and builds to a possession that seems hell-bent on staining the wood-paneled parlor with as much blood as possible. That’s the fun, gory, alarming premise behind Brooklyn 45, Ted Geoghegan’s third feature film that asks a lot of heavy questions in-between its abrupt moments of splatter.”

7. Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy (Nancy Buirski; June 23)

Dive deeper into one of the great films of the ’60s with a new documentary by the accomplished Nancy Buirski. Logan Kenny said in our summer movie preview, “Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy professes to be something more than just a film about the making of Midnight Cowboy. Nancy Buirski’s latest work is an extremely ambitious documentary that attempts to navigate the impact and cultural presence of the legendary film while also exploring the history of queer cinema, the death of the western, and the counter-culture of the ’60s transforming into the nihilism of the 1970s. It packs a lot of information and perspectives into 101 minutes and while it doesn’t explore each subject with the perfect amount of depth, its sheer enthusiasm for the film and the cultural period is infectious. By the end there’s a sense of sadness that its shaggy pleasures are now in the past. A worthwhile endeavor for anyone interested in 1960s cinema and one of its greatest offerings.”

6. Falcon Lake (Charlotte Le Bon; June 2)

Whether it’s Michel Gondry’s Mood Indigo, Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk, The Hundred-Foot Journey, Anthropoid, The Promise, or last year’s Fresh, chances are you’ve seen Charlotte Le Bon’s work as an actor. She’s now helmed her feature with the haunting, beautiful genre-melder Falcon Lake. Alistair Ryder said in his review, “The directorial debut of Canadian actress Charlotte Le Bon is an unusual, immediately arresting combination, grounding its deeply sincere account of first love within the realm of gothic horror––here the urban myth of a girl who drowned in the nearby lake many summers prior.”

5. The Passengers of the Night (Mikhaël Hers; June 30)

As we near the halfway point of the year, one of the great performances of 2023 thus far comes courtesy Charlotte Gainsbourg in Mikhaël Hers’ new drama The Passengers of the Night. Following a woman adrift in 1980s Paris (and even referencing one of the best films of the respective decade, Éric Rohmer’s Full Moon in Paris), the drama is carefully attuned to the emotions of everyone that graces the screen. Reeling from a divorce while balancing job prospects and a relationship with her two teenage children as well as a new teenager that enters her life, Passengers exudes a mature poeticism in every scene.

4. Past Lives (Celine Song; June 2)

Whether miniscule or major, the millions of decisions we make form the winding path of our lives. Specific reasons for taking certain forks in the road can often be lost to the sea of time, swelling back up only as our memory allows. A triptych not-quite-romance crossing nearly a quarter-century, playwright Celine Song’s directorial debut Past Lives examines such universal experience with keen cultural specificity, telling the story of childhood friends who twice reconnect later in life. It’s a warm, patient film culminating in a quietly powerful, reflective finale, though its sum is greater than its parts when the first two sections register a touch underdeveloped. Continue reading my full review.

3. Scarlet (Pietro Marcello; June 9)

After Martin Eden had the unfortunate timing of being released digitally in the pandemic, the big-screen-demanding vision of Pietro Marcello can now be seen in its proper glory with his enchanting new fable Scarlet. David Katz said in his review, “In his previous film Martin Eden, and now with Scarlet, Pietro Marcello has found a novel way to depict artistic striving, closely tying it with the concept of labor. It’s also something that runs through Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, about the poetry-penning bus driver of the same name: both filmmakers have helped demystify our idea of the artist as a potential ‘great man of history’ and the deification often accorded them. The would-be literary maven of Martin Eden and two artist-craftsmen of Scarlet are engaged instead in a noble struggle, a bit like the eternal workers’ struggle of Marcello’s other chief interest: that of leftist political thought.”

2. Revoir Paris (Alice Winocour; June 23)

While she had been working for two decades, Virginie Efira received much-deserved wider acclaim leading Benedetta and Sibyl a few years back. She’s back this year with a pair of staggeringly great performances in Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children and Alice Winocour’s Paris Memories. The latter, for which Efira earned the César for Best Actress, follows her character trying to pick up the pieces of her life after experiencing a terrorist attack in Paris. Also starring Pacifiction‘s Benoît Magimel and Claire Denis regular Grégoire Colin, the drama is another example of Winocour’s mastery for immersing her audience in the headspace of her character with stellar sound design and precise cinematography.

1. Asteroid City (Wes Anderson; June 16)

Expanding his formal dexterity in fascinating ways with The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson’s follow-up Asteroid City is another pleasurable, increasingly rare example of witnessing a director with complete artistic command breaking conventions of structure and storytelling. As Luke Hicks said in his Cannes review, “The color is somehow both soothing and electrifying––the milkiest of pastels with a Mesa turquoise gauze over it all. The sky is a piercing aqua blue, the jagged plateaus bastions of red rock around the saloon-sized town in an otherwise vast, sparsely cacti-dotted desert with the occasional perfect mushroom plume of nuclear testing visible in the distance. I suppose it’s also worth mentioning that there’s a giant hole in the ground where a meteor once struck.”

More to See

• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (June 2)
• Topology of Sirens (June 5)
• After Sherman (June 2)
• Aloners (June 9)
• Users (June 9)
• Persian Lessons (June 9)
• Nobody’s Hero (June 16)
• The Stroll (June 21)
• No Hard Feelings (June 23)
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (June 30)

The post 15 Films to See in June first appeared on The Film Stage.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

BlackBerry (Matt Johnson)

In BlackBerry, the rise of a blue-chip tech company sets the stage for the dissolution of a longstanding friendship. Sound familiar? Just wait ‘til you hear the score. Directed by Matt Johnson, it tells the true story of Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin, software engineers who founded the company RIM in the mid-80s and later invented a cellphone that could handle email. The film begins on the day when they meet Jim Basillie (Glenn Howerton), a Rottweiler who, alongside Lazaridis’ genius, turned RIM’s invention (only later christened BlackBerry) into the world’s most ubiquitous mobile device––at least for a time. – Rory O. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

The Hole in the Fence (Joaquín del Paso)

69 years on from Lords of the Flies and its source of influence seems ever-flowing. The latest film to take inspiration from the set-up comes from Joaquín del Paso, whose visually exacting sophomore feature The Hole in the Fence follows a group of boys at a religious summer camp as they receive intense training. As mysteries start to pile up, the film reveals itself to be a biting commentary on class in Mexican society. While the script can feel a bit flat and obvious in spots, the film’s power lies in its unflinching, sobering depiction of how violence can breed under the guise of purportedly holy leadership.

Where to Stream: VOD

Hypnotic (Robert Rodriguez)

This is probably an odd thing to say, but whenever watching a modern potboiler I find myself asking, “What would Bertrand Tavernier think?” The kind of French cineaste that found themselves most at home in the company of the disposable American crime film, the esteemed director could wax poetic on the most disreputable of pictures. If you squint during Hypnotic––a collaboration between Robert Rodriguez and Ben Affleck that’s likely been cooking since they first met at a 1997 Miramax holiday party––you can see faint traces of a classic noir like Otto Preminger’s Whirlpool, or something of such ilk. – Ethan V. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Method Acting

Another new series on The Criterion Channel delves into the art of method acting. Kicking off with a great new conversation between Isaac Butler, Ethan Hawke, and Vincent D’Onofrio, the series also features such iconic classics as A Place in the Sun (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), 12 Angry Men (1957), The Misfits (1961), Something Wild (1961), Splendor in the Grass (1961), The Haunting (1963), The Pawnbroker (1964), Cool Hand Luke (1967), The Graduate (1967), In the Heat of the Night (1967), Rachel, Rachel (1968), Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968), Five Easy Pieces (1970), Wanda (1970), Carnal Knowledge (1971), The French Connection (1971), and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974).

Where to Stream: Criterion Channel

Padre Pio (Abel Ferrara)

The film is grounded in the reality of Italian life shortly after World War I, as socialist ideas gained currency amid calls for a transformation of society and the populace imagined a better way of life following their army’s traumatic return from the battlefield. The town of San Giovanni Rotondo, located in the country’s southeast, is conceived by Ferrara and first-billed co-screenwriter Maurizio Braucci (who appositely worked on Martin Eden) as a microcosm of this societal shift, where the ruling class harass their charges and dispute the results of a key national election in an apt parallel to Trumpian America. – David K. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke)

On December 2, 1966, director Shirley Clarke and a miniscule film crew gathered in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea. Bestowed for twelve hours with the one-and-only Jason Holliday, Clarke confronted the iconic performer about his good times and bad behavior as a gay hustler, on-and-off houseboy and aspiring cabaret performer. As the cameras rolled and Holliday spun tales, sang songs and donned costumes through the night, a mesmerizing portrait formed of a remarkable man. Ingmar Bergman called it “the most extraordinary film I’ve seen in my life,” but audiences may know it better as Portrait of Jason, a funny, stinging and painful meditation on pride and prejudice through the eyes of a legendary figure.

Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club

Pride Month

As Pride Month kicks off, look no further than Criterion Channel for your viewing needs. Across three separate series, they’ve collected essential works and new discoveries. LGBTQ+ Favorites brings together Je tu il elle (1975), Jubilee (1978), Querelle (1982), Desert Hearts (1985), Tongues Untied (1989), Paris Is Burning (1990), Weekend (2011), and more. Masc, curated by Jenni Olson and Caden Mark Gardne, examines masculine identity as it exists outside the realm of cisgender men, featuring Vera (1986), Shinjuku Boys (1995), By Hook or By Crook (2001), Lifetime Guarantee: Phranc’s Adventure in Plastic (2001), Southern Comfort (2001), The Aggressives (2005), Tomboy (2011), Stud Life (2012), Chavela (2017), and No Ordinary Man (2021). Last but not least curator Michael Koresky’s latest Queersighted series examines the gay best friend with Easy Living (1937), Adam’s Rib (1949), The Strange One (1957), A Taste of Honey (1961), Rachel, Rachel (1968), Knightriders (1981), The Fisher King (1991), Single White Female (1992), Six Degrees of Separation (1993), and Irma Vep (1996).

Where to Stream: Criterion Channel

Reality (Tina Satter)

A good conceit can go a long way. In 2017, a former U.S. Air Force member-turned-NSA translator named Reality Winner leaked a document to The Intercept exposing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. On June 3rd of that year, two FBI agents appeared on her lawn and began questioning her. She didn’t ask for a lawyer and, after roughly 90 minutes, was arrested. In Reality, directed by Tina Satter from her own acclaimed play Is This a Room, that transcript is performed to the letter. Then a curious kind of alchemy occurs: as the actors laser-in on the transcript’s every detail, Satter’s fascinating film moves away from the rhythms of political thriller and into the eerie realm of the uncanny. – Rory O. (full review)

Where to Stream: Max

Safe (Todd Haynes)

Although the “Horror” segment of Poison is more easily identifiable as a conventional, well, horror film–especially for playing up the kitsch of low-budget B-movies from the 1950s–Safe might be his horror masterpiece. His tale of a 1980s housewife who becomes allergic to her suburban world is chilling in its articulation of anxiety and alienation, one that is at once universal and capitalizes on specificity. Though there are no out queer characters in the film, Haynes’s use of the housewife archetype, Carol (Julianne Moore), lets him mine gay culture to present a form of estrangement that feels especially potent for queer people. While its coldness and austerity lends an Antonioni-esque and Kubrickian feel, the brand of dread and isolation (identity as social construct) belongs only to Mr. Haynes. – Kyle T. (full feature)

Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)

Sátántangó (Béla Tarr)

The most stunning experience I had in a cinema in recent years was witnessing the new restoration of Béla Tarr’s 7-5 hour masterpiece Sátántangó. Now available on MUBI, the story of those in a small village as Communism crumbles makes for the ideal marathon viewing. A potent combination of humanity and brutality, the journey is one of truly setting the viewer in its intimate world, captured with stunning cinematography by Gábor Medvigy in every meticulous frame.

Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)

To Leslie (Michael Morris)

British-born Andrea Riseborough deserves credit for her ability to seemingly morph into any character like a chameleon. With veteran TV director Michael Morris’ feature debut To Leslie the actress brings a tremendous level of sympathy to her West Texan title character. The story is quite straightforward, hinging upon Riseborough’s ability to carry a script with both hope and cruelty. – John F. (full review)

Where to Stream: Netflix

Also New to Streaming

The Criterion Channel

The Doom Generation
Screwball Comedy Classics
Starring Marilyn Monroe

Disney+

Indiana Jones series

MUBI (free for 30 days)

This Must Be the Place
John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection
Inspector Ike
Mélo
Is This Fate?

Prime Video

The Exiles
Violent Night

VOD

Monica

The post New to Streaming: BlackBerry, Padre Pio, Pride Month, Sátántangó, Reality, and More first appeared on The Film Stage.

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

Museum of the Moving Image
An Asteroid City-themed series programmed by Wes Anderson and Jake Perlin includes 35mm prints of Some Came Running and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; Blow Out shows on 35mm this Sunday, while Rope plays in a queer cinema series.

BAM
A retrospective of the great Juliet Berto brings Celine and Julie, Godard’s Weekend, and more.

Museum of Modern Art
A tribute to casting directors Ellen Lewis and Laura Rosenthal brings prints of Goodfellas and I’m Not There, as well as Dead Man.

Roxy Cinema
35mm prints of The Fifth Element and Eastwood’s The Gauntlet screen this weekend, while J. Hoberman and Ken Jacobs present a tribute to Jack Smith; 4K restorations of The Trial, The Doom Generation, and Dogville play.

Film at Lincoln Center
Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies continues showing in a long-overdue restoration.

Anthology Film Archives
An Udo Kier retrospective continues with My Own Private Idaho on 35mm and Fassbinder’s The Third Generation; an Iván Zulueta series is underway.

IFC Center
The David Lynch retrospective continues; A Clockwork Orange and Aliens have late showings.

Film Forum
A retrospective on New York movies continues with Carpenter, Sergio Leone, Cassavetes, Polanski, Woody Allen, and more; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory plays on 35mm this Sunday.

The post NYC Weekend Watch: Asteroid City Influences, Juliet Berto, Goodfellas & More first appeared on The Film Stage.

It’s sequels galore this summer, from alien robots to comic book heroes new and old. Five June Fridays are thus necessary––nothing else would be able to elbow their way in without them. So for those lucky enough to live in a market where qualifying runs and arthouses can still survive without bending to crazy studio quotas, I hope you’ll get to enjoy a few of the below posters in-person. The rest of us will have to get our fill now and wait for them to pop back up on the VOD / streaming cycle. If you find yourself thinking “I know that one!” a couple weeks from now, the artists have done their job.

Out of focus

Despite including it here, BLT Communications, LLC’s Asteroid City (limited, June 16; wide, June 23) is not out-of-focus. I don’t think Wes Anderson would allow it. Instead, much like the posters for Moonrise Kingdom and The French Dispatch, we get a massive scene with every character involved all at once. It’s not as blatantly Photoshopped as the former or collaged as the latter, but there’s definitely an air of artifice to those figures standing in the back row. What’s weirdest to me is just how much empty space is present above the cliff face behind them. These posters usually fill up every inch with their infinite cast lists. Having them let things breathe is a nice change of pace.

We’re able to focus on the people more without such distraction. We can read the cast names if we want without feeling obligated, and spend time with the characters before moving onto the title without being assault by a barrage of floating text. It’s still a bit cartoonish and affected like all of Anderson’s work, but it seems less oppressive in a way that lets the whimsy shine through.

This is especially true for the teaser and its desert expanse, with billboard that looks ripped out of a Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner short. There’s a meticulousness that tells you exactly who the director is as well as a sense of possibility, courtesy the open outdoors. It’s a travel brochure to catch your eye at a rest stop.

Rather than be so clear that it becomes unreal, the designers of Pollen (limited, June 6) provide a shallow focus that ensures our attention is drawn exactly where they want it. While most instances like this would blur the background so we can devote our brain power to the subject in the foreground, however, this one does the opposite: the woman is still our focal point as a result of the depth of field, but there exists an additional layer of mystery to the whole.

Why is she blurred? Why can’t our eyes adjust? Add the title and you must wonder if the image is alluding to our being drugged. The pollen in the air has impaired us to the point where we cannot trust what it is we see. Was she ever really there?

Anonymous Sister (limited, June 2) uses blur in a similar way, seeking to depict the notion that someone who is physically present might not truly be altogether there. It’s a powerful image representing what filmmaker Jamie Boyle felt as her mother and sister fell under a cloud of addiction courtesy the opioid epidemic. Not only is the older girl fading out of existence, but she’s also falling out of frame. She’s being lost by time with the younger girl straining to see her before she’s completely gone.

The rest of the layout is perfectly balanced to counter the whole being so heavily weighted to the bottom-right corner. The first word of the title (and festival laurel) stays bold and black to offset those girls; the rest of the text remains small and / or faded to keep everything on a diagonal line, like an arrow pulling us through the page.

With a look

It may not seem like much, but that’s part of the effectiveness of Intermission Film’s Blue Jean (limited, June 9). When you have an image as captivating as Rosy McEwen staring back at us, you don’t really need much more. Suddenly the job becomes about maintaining that eye contact. Augmenting it. The typography and layout around her face becomes paramount.

So the firm stretches out the credit box to lessen its height and anchor the bottom while laurels get pushed to the sides to create a gap from which her neck can rise. The critic blurbs are reduced to brief platitudes; stars take centerstage so they can be pushed to the top and away from her face. Which therefore leaves the title. They could have stacked its words in the gap at the bottom or awkwardly squeezed it onto her hair, but chose to use it instead. By expanding the kerning to go edge-to-edge, it becomes a third horizontal line to balance the whole and steal focus as the boldest and brightest. Separating the words turns them into highlights for her cheekbones, avoiding the nose to push our eyes towards hers. To read the title is to get lost in her gaze.

BLT Communications, LLC’s Past Lives (limited, June 2; wide, June 23) is less intense by design. There’s no fear of being outed or plea for empathy here. This is a straightforward romance between two people falling in love. The look is thus shared by them rather than us. We’re merely observers noticing their attraction and longing for each other. It’s present in their subtle smiles. Their hands almost touching. The intense stare. Everything else fades away.

And that’s intentional when it comes to the credit block and critic quote. Those are there because they need to be––read them at your leisure. They shouldn’t garner our attention. Especially not when so much is being said by the actors’ eyes. The only words we truly need are those of the title, stacked and centered as a sort of unspoken conversation in the gap separating them. Even as it pops, however, its placement on that subway pole’s y-axis (like all the other text) ensures it remains a secondary prop.

Intermission Film’s Millie Lies Low (limited, June 30) arrives as a sort-of hybrid of these two. We get Ana Scotney’s telling stare, but also an obvious y-axis to direct our sight. Whereas the subway pole above was utilized as a divider to give its characters equal footing and stronger focus, however, this one moves off-center to create a boundary that drives our view sideways. Whether you look at her first or the title, both eventually bring you to that edge––pushing you into the foreground in the former’s case and wrapping you around to the background in the latter’s. An illusion of depth is created, turning this very minimalist and flat image into a scene we can enter.

It does so without sacrificing the stark composition and expert typography. Since it’s all being done with a manipulation of the solid yellow, no drop shadows or knockouts are needed for legibility. Accordingly the black text isn’t “floating.” Reading it actually removes that illusory depth completely to revert back to a printed a page. Only when you engage with those elements interacting with that invisible vertical line does the whole separate back into its layers.

No stars needed

The poster for documentary After Sherman (NYC, June 2) is quite powerful. Though they could have put filmmaker Jon Sesrie Goff front and center––the story is about his inheritance and generational trauma as a part of America’s dark history––it was chosen to go with a gorgeous watercolor that evokes the emotions of that truth instead. The heavy, clouded colors. The idea of that land holding the memory, blood, and tears of the slaves who worked it. The inability to separate what was done from what might happen next. Past and future are inextricably linked.

I love that the image is also allowed to exist on its own. By pushing all text to the bottom, the painting becomes isolated, like a print of it would on a page all by itself––artist signature and edition number subsequently added to the bottom corners respectively. The positioning also guarantees we look at the reality of its subject. That we move from the land’s surface down through its ghosts and finally to the title. The impact of that journey cannot be diminished.

Ricky D’ Ambrose’s Happer’s Comet (limited, June 16) is much less obvious in its depiction. To look at it without context is to see tiled windows peering into the night sky with the vapor trails of a highway––if not celestial body, as the title suggests. To know more about the film itself is to perhaps see those lines as rollerblade tracks swooping through a town, each rectangle being a different section containing its own unique yet related story.

There’s something to the imperfections too that make the whole stick in your mind. The poorly masked edges becoming a feature of the imagery’s abstraction. Because the rest is so meticulous––from the sans serif font to the symmetrical construction of shapes to the purposeful crop off the top edge. It becomes a piece unto itself. An artwork that earns your attention with its emotionality and, later, its understanding via the experience of watching the film to process those initial feelings into something tangible. Something personal.

And then there’s the mesmerizing Falcon Lake (limited, June 2) by Caspar Newbolt and Version Industries. It’s a behind-the-scenes shot of a scene wherein Sara Montpetit’s character is taking a photograph of Joseph Engel across the water. What feels like harmless fun in that moment now seems ominous with its supernatural filter of light—an effect that the artist says was created by capturing a light source with a grease-smeared camera lens. Even more so, too, when you watch the ending of the movie and recontextualize what came before as far as fate and trust and truth are concerned.

Beyond any meaning projected in hindsight, however, is also just a stunning bit of fantastical mystery. You read the tagline “A love and ghost story” and manufacture meaning to that glow as being from a different plane of existence. Follow the blurred lines and you wonder if it could be some alien sent from above that landed at the lake to peer into our soul. Curious. Judgmental. Or perhaps simply a mirror. The old-fashioned typeface and heavy grain add the perfect amount of character and mythology to ensure what we’re seeing isn’t a scene from today, but the echo of one from yesterday… or perhaps tomorrow.

The post Posterized June 2023: Asteroid City, Past Lives, Falcon Lake & More first appeared on The Film Stage.