Metrograph is doing what it does best, yet again: Offering a perfect venue at which to see a vintage film you've maybe never gotten around to seeing, but feel you maybe should.
This time, it's New York, New York's turn, a new 35mm print of which (all 155 minutes) might be at the top of your heap of things to do in NYC in the near future.
The 1977 film, directed by Martin Scorsese, is one of his most peculiar.
(Image via Breaking Glass)
Last week, I made time to see not one but two NYC-oriented films, each offering unique portraits of the city, and unique storytelling that left me struggling to think of comparables. For that reason alone — I always give points to the nonformulaic —you should try to see Cubby, the debut feature by Mark Blane, and Downtown 81, a fairy-tale-like feature shot in 1980-1981 and recently restored for release by Metrograph Pictures.
Matt Tyrnauer at Film Forum in NYC on Friday, September 20, 2019 (Image by Matthew Rettenmund)
Roy Cohn (1927-1986) was one of the most heinous villains of the 20th century, a vile, self-loathing, aggressive, self-aggrandizing, corrupt liar who helped fan the flames of McCarthyism, who defended murderous mobsters, who mentored consequential toads like Roger Stone and Donald Trump, who received special treatment from AIDS-denialist Ronald Reagan when battling AIDS himself, and on and on.
The man himself (Image via Obscured Pictures)
Halston, Frédéric Tcheng's absorbing, exhaustive documentary about the charmed — then ill-fated — life and business of the superstar gay American fashion designer of the same name, should be the final word on what the visionary accomplished.
The sweet smell of success is never forever. (GIF via GIPHY)
Sadly, it is also an ultimately sympathetic portrait of how power and an unlimited bank account can corrupt artistry, and how blinding and fleeting success can be.
Don't you know who he is? (Images via TLA)
The Skin of the Teeth, the debut project by director-writer Matthew Wollin, is a low-budget, high-style conjuring of David Lynch that pulsates with a genuine air of the unexpected.
Poetry in motion (Image via video still)
In Madeleine Olnek's subversively whimsical Wild Nights with Emily, the poet Emily Dickinson (played with mirthful, lusty intensity by Molly Shannon) is given the life she probably actually had — passionate lesbian who tried her hardest to have her game-changing poetry published — rather than the solitary, sexless, hermetic life we've always been told she had. Forget about gimmicks like imagining her as a zombie when history has never dared to truly imagine her as she was — a woman-loving woman whose legacy was shaped by a person with every motive to warp and distort it.
ABOVE: Dark and lovely.
BELOW: Keep reading for stacks of studs, Streisand's about-face, Stamos's wardrobe malfunction and more...
Jackson with Robson, who idolized him. Robson says he was molested from ages 7-14. (Image via HBO)
Leaving Neverland — the documentary about allegations that Michael Jackson sexually abused two of his most famous-to-fans young playmates — is controversial only because of Jackson's undeniable talent and inescapable fame.
Directed by Dan Reed and set to be presented March 3 and 4 on HBO, it methodically attempts to create an exhaustive record of the claims of James Safechuck, 37, and Wade Robson, 41, exploring along the way how Jackson allegedly groomed them, how he managed their families, how he was able to basically date male children right out in the open, what these arrangements did to the kids' relationships going forward, and why both young men testified, under oath, on Jackson's behalf when he was closest to facing justice for his actions.
