Man and Woman in front of large window.

New Directors New Films March 29-April 9

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Late Friday afternoon March 13, 2020, Bill Wolf, the preeminent 94-year-old senior critic of the New Directors/New Films press corp, and this writer scurried out of the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd St. We’d just finished watching Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, a gorgeous 150-minute Chinese epic, the last film of the first… Read more »

CHILDREN READING TABLOID

New York Jewish Film Festival, January 12–23

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The cautionary alerts are everywhere throughout Manhattan. At the Center for Jewish History on West 16th just off Fifth Avenue, president Gavriel Rosenfeld writes that to understand “growing antisemitic threats facing American Jews, examining the past is indispensable for understanding the present.” At Bloomberg Philanthropies, former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg introduced showings of Arthur Miller’s… Read more »

A person walking through the destruction from a volcano.

DOC NYC Nov. 9-27

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No, your reviewer didn’t actually haul a sleeping bag into the IFC Center, Cinepolis Chelsea or the SVA Theatre (16 screens in total). And even if the most fanatic cinephiles had elected all-day, all-night viewing—cinema-crawling from lower 6th Avenue up to West 23rd Street and back, then home-viewing til dawn—they’d have missed some of the… Read more »

A scene from the courtroom at Nurenberg

The New York Jewish Film Festival Jan. 12-25

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Senior Film Critic Kurt Brokaw picks his virtual favorites from the 2022 New York Jewish Film Festival. Selections include documentaries on the history of a film about the Nuremburg Trials, artist Lily Renée Phillips, ehtnomusicologist Moisei Beregovsky, a musical about Bernie Madoff  and a short about a bar mitzvah in the middle of an arial bombing.

Woman on car.

New York Film Festival Sept. 20-Oct. 8, 2021

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Senior Critic Kurt Brokaw picks his top movies and shorts from the 59th New York Film Festival, including Julia Ducournau’s Titane, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car and Rebecca Hall’s Passing as well as two shorts.

Painted face with the text, "Venus as a Boy"

Venus Personified

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Courtney Gardner reviews Ty Hodges’ new film, Venus as a Boy. The film challenges our assumed stereotypes as it follows a small groups of friends as they navigate adulthood in Los Angeles.

A man and woman on a fire escapte staring out at morning in New York City.

20th Annual Tribeca Festival June 9-20

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Senior Film Critic Kurt Brokaw reviews the 2021Tribeca Festival, which celebrates its 20th anniversary. He spotlights the Warner Bros. musical In the Heights and Michèle Stephenson’s Stateless, two movies tied to the Dominican Republic in two very different ways. He also reviews Coded, Ryan White’s short documentary about J. C. Leyendecker, and The Queen of Basketball, Ben Proudfoot’s documentary on basketball pioneer, Lusia Harris-Stewart.