Celebrating Community
Our tech-dominated society is generous with its glimpses of dystopia. But there’s something especially chilling about the captive audience meetings in the documentary Union, which screened at the New York Film Festival and is currently playing at IFC Center. Chronicling the fight of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), led by Chris Smalls, to organize the Amazon fulfillment warehouse in Staten […]
There have been a few large community meetings and some smaller ones following Mayor Adams’ May 14 announcement about a planned transformation of the local waterfront. This has been the plan of the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC) who is tasked with leading the transformation. I attended one of the smaller sessions on October 23. Four people showed up to […]
Red Hook is long overdue for its close-up. And this month, it gets one. Running November 1-10, the 2nd Annual Red Hook Community Cinema film festival showcases 25 films made in, about, or that feature the neighborhood. The series opens Friday, November 1 with Isaac Dell’s Boys at Twenty at 7 p.m., followed by a costume party at 9. Like […]
Red Hook is long overdue for its close-up. And this month, it gets one. Running November 1-10, the 2nd Annual Red Hook Community Cinema film festival showcases 25 films made in, about, or that feature the neighborhood. The series opens Friday, November 1 with Isaac Dell’s Boys at Twenty at 7 pm, followed by a costume party at 9. Like […]
The 62nd New York Film Festival kicked off September 27 with Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel. What followed on the main slate was one heavy hitter after another: U.S. premieres of The Room Next Door, Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, Brady Corbet’s Oscar frontrunner The Brutalist, Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada, and Hard Truths, […]
There’s an alternate universe where, after the 1973 release of The Spook Who Sat By the Door, director Ivan Dixon would have worked regularly in studio movies rather than be relegated to episodic TV journeyman. But that’s a universe where The Spook Who Sat By the Door — a singular movie about the CIA’s first Black operative, hired as token […]
There are some movies that are such dumb fun they’re impervious to criticism. In fact, scratching too hard at them — tugging on this loose end or poking at that plot hole — does yourself a disservice more than it does the film. Why break the spell? Batman: The Movie (1966) is one such flick, in all of its “Some […]
There is nothing the least bit remarkable about Rita, the protagonist of Chronicles of a Wandering Saint. She lives in a desperately rural Argentinian town. Her job, as a cleaning lady in the desperately old church, is, like, her marriage, desperately mundane. As if to prove that cameras do capture souls, her Facebook profile photos are either underlit smears or […]
There is nothing the least bit remarkable about Rita, the protagonist of Chronicles of a Wandering Saint. She lives in a desperately rural Argentinian town. Her job, as a cleaning lady in the desperately old church, is, like, her marriage, desperately mundane. As if to prove that cameras do capture souls, her Facebook profile photos are either underlit smears or […]
Nearly two years ago, it seemed like Vera Drew’s debut film was doomed. Not because it centered on and was made by a trans woman — a twice-over target in this era of escalating anti-trans bigotry — but because it poked a Hollywood giant. The People’s Joker, billed as a “queer coming-of-age superhero parody,” Jokerizes Drew’s coming out experience. Its main […]