The Front Row: “Autumn Leaves” Robert Aldrich's 1956 film with Joan Crawford provides crucial backstory to “Feud,” Ryan Murphy’s miniseries about the frenemosity between Crawford and Bette Davis.

Speaking of Joan Crawford, Autumn Leaves is playing at 4 at @moma.bsky.social To Save and Project; a great melodrama with Robert Aldrich's bitter film-noir pessimism, here aimed at hearts-and-flowers romance and the stigmatizing of mental illness—plus the family life that's often at its root:

The Brazilian Director Who’s Up for Multiple Oscars Kleber Mendonça Filho wants his films to reclaim lost history.

Extraordinary interview with Kleber Mendonça Filho, by my colleague Stephania Taladrid, that goes far into the sources, ideas, and methods of The Secret Agent; his approach to the archival is a fundamental and far-reaching ethic of cinema:
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

The lovely Sundance elegy by @justincchang.bsky.social unfortunately reminded me of Sundance history: ignoring (much of) the future as it was happening: no Frownland, Yeast, Josephine Decker's first films, the Safdies, Tiny Furniture, early Bujalski and Swanberg, Sun Don't Shine, Hamilton...

One Last Sundance in Park City The most important film festival in America bade farewell to its Utah roots.

On the end of Sundance as we know it. (Yes, I wrote about Grub Steak.) www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Max Ophüls’s Unheralded Masterwork “The Tender Enemy” The film shows the power of simple tricks to realize a fantastic, supernatural, yet sharply logical and piercingly dramatic story.

Max Ophuls's first absolute masterwork, La Tendre Ennemie (The Tender Enemy), from 1936—with form and invention as advanced as its bittersweet comedy is refined—is playing at @metrographnyc.bsky.social at noon, in 35mm.; word about it, and about Ophuls-ism overall: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Delighted to be introducing a longtime favorite of the nerve-jangled sixties, Pretty Poison, at the @paristheaternyc.bsky.social tomorrow at 4, as part of the @nyfcc.bsky.social series, regardless of the big chill.

The Origin of the World, by Brady Courbet

Challenging Official Histories in “Natchez” and “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” Two stunning new documentaries—one filmed in Mississippi, and one in Russia—examine the ways that education comes up against indoctrination.

Suzannah Herbert's documentary Natchez, opening today at Film Forum (needs to be shown nationally), turns observation into engagement—with history, its witnesses, its falsifiers, and government's crucial (and endangered) role in its preservation and transmission:
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Out of the Blue

Distractedly forgot to mention that Dennis Hopper's thrillingly and terrifyingly wild Out of the Blue, starring the great, lamented Linda Manz, is playing tonight at Quad Cinema at 8:15pm with a virtual introduction by Brian Cox: 
www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...

This is a man's job! - Journal - Metrograph On Ella Raines and the enigmatic Phantom Lady.

1/28/44: Robert Siodmak ATG #FilmNoir Phantom Lady
[P: Joan Harrison] w/Franchot Tone, Ella Raines, Elisha Cook Jr.
More:
@tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/video/watch/...
@geoff-andrew.bsky.social: www.bfi.org.uk/features/how...
@phuonghhle.com: metrograph.com/this-is-a-ma...

On what's left of Mozart's birthday, some specifics (beyond the antiauthoritarian furies of The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni) regarding his indignant rage at injustices of his day: here, his letter of Aug. 8, 1781 regarding one of them (or many of them in one story):

The release: mailchi.mp/movingimage/...

Terrific series coming to @movingimagenyc.bsky.social "2001: The Year, Not the Movie," Feb. 14-April 11; first thought, seeing the title: will they show In Praise of Love? Yes—in 35mm.! plus other favorites, including The Day I Became a Woman, That Old Dream That Moves, and I'm Going Home:

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

The first, from print; the second, from blog times:
www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

A couple of words from a while back on The Killing of a Chinese Bookie: from 2008, about its crucial transitional place in John Cassavetes's work, and from 2012, in which Ben Gazzara provides the receipts; it screens today at @ifccenter.bsky.social (twice the long version, twice the short):

Thrilled that Once Upon a Time in Harlem has been completed, is playing at Sundance, and is being received as the historic masterwork that it is.

1/25/51: Bogie in The Enforcer, w/Zero Mostel, Ted de Corsia, & Everett Sloane [DP Robert Burks]
@kinolorber.com blu w/ @thetallcinephile.bsky.social commentary
More:
@trailersfromhell.bsky.social: trailersfromhell.com/film-noir-th...
@tnyfrontrow.bsky.social:
www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...

1/24/61: Antonioni's La Notte
w/Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti
More:
@tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.criterion.com/current/post...
@mitchellbeaupre.bsky.social: www.pastemagazine.com/movies/miche...
@splicedpersonality.bsky.social: crookedmarquee.com/classic-corn...

Such as:
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...
www.newyorker.com/culture/goin...

Bloggy days: Shutter Island (@ifccenter.bsky.social 11:40pm) came out when I was posting daily and sometimes more, and I wrote about it many times (indeed, many more than here), including with quick discussions of remarkable interviews with (and about) Martin Scorsese that were appearing...:

I'd include Lumière, Eva, and Nathalie Granger.

Challenging Official Histories in “Natchez” and “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” Two stunning new documentaries—one filmed in Mississippi, and one in Russia—examine the ways that education comes up against indoctrination.

From next week's Current Cinema column, two extraordinary new documentaries, Natchez and Mr. Nobody Against Putin, that confront—with a thoughtful sense of cinematic form—official misrepresentations of history and the ongoing evils that they enable: 
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

2. They're as bad as any scene that's there just for information. Nothing is ever necessary—no scene, no plot; the reason for filmmaking is freedom, and what's in a film should be what a filmmaker has in mind. Stop playing studio cop.

To be done with the sex-scene nonsense:
1. The worst sex scenes are the ones that are there on the belief that they're necessary to the plot; I call them forensic sex scenes, whose sole purpose is to inform viewers that the characters had sex with each other (or one another)...

The New Yorker Reporting, Profiles, breaking news, cultural coverage, podcasts, videos, and cartoons from The New Yorker.

Oscar nominations plus: my friends and colleagues @justincchang.bsky.social and @michaelschulman.bsky.social and I discuss them here, in the @newyorker.com Daily newsletter, with our editor Erin Neil keeping the peace:
link.newyorker.com/view/5bea068...

The 2026 Oscar Nominations and What Should Have Been Picked It’s a pleasant surprise to find some of the year’s best movies enthusiastically acknowledged by the Academy, but plenty of greatness has been left by the wayside.

The Oscar nominations—what they got right, what they got wrong, and my own counter-Oscars: what I'd have nominated, what I'd pick to win:
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

January Festivals Bring the Weird, Wonderful Shows Also: “Tartuffe” mania, the guitar stylings of William Tyler and Yasmin Williams, Justin Chang’s movies for a new year, and more.

Today in To Save and Project: Murnau's silent Tartuffe (Herr Tartüff, the longer, German version), transformed into The Play's the Thing for modern times, at @moma.bsky.social at 2 (scroll down for short word:
www.newyorker.com/culture/goin...

“Talking About Trees,” Reviewed: The Warmth and Wisdom of Four Elders of Sudanese Cinema The documentary follows four filmmakers whose poetic insight illuminates, with an air of graceful equanimity and hearty derision, the personal experience of political horrors.

about Talking About Trees:
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Delighted to see Suhaib Gasmelbari’s cinema-centric documentary Talking About Trees coming to @criterionchannl.bsky.social in February; (happened to mention it here the other day), plus... the answer is, The fundamental film of modern melodrama. What is All That Heaven Allows?

Paris Theater - Pretty Poison 4K Restoration | Introduced by NYFCC member Richard Brody

Honored to be introducing Pretty Poison at @paristheaternyc.bsky.social Jan. 31; a longtime favorite which I went to see, way back, because it was shot in Great Barrington, Mass., where I went to summer camp, and was shocked to find it's wild and great.
www.paristheaternyc.com/film/nyfcc-p...