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...

“Freedom on My Mind”: A Symphony of Voices for Civil Rights This 1994 documentary brings the passions and agonies of Mississippi’s voter-registration drive into the present tense.

Remarkable-documentary alert: Freedom on My Mind, by Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford, a teeming, probing, and far-reaching oral history of the 1961-64 Mississippi voting-rights campaign and related electoral politics of 1964 and beyond; @tcmtv.bsky.social 12:30pm:
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

“Stick around. You make it all so nice and sad”: Fatalism and Fantasy in Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross (1949) – Senses of Cinema

1/19/49: Robert Siodmak gem Criss Cross
w/Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea [Look for Alan Napier]
@eddiemuller.bsky.social: 2nd greatest #filmnoir
More:
@tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/video/watch/...
Kannas/ @sensesofcinema.bsky.social: www.sensesofcinema.com/2023/cteq/st...

One of the great last films, An Autumn Afternoon—a ferocious repudiation of conformism and decorum, in private and civic realms—should dispel any misguided notion of Ozu as a gentle observer of delicate feelings; at @moma.bsky.social at 7: 
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Typo of the day, from our friends at @screenslate.bsky.social: part of a trilogy that also includes Kill Bill and....

Thank you; very grateful for the generous thought; it was a pleasure to be immersed in Stroheim's world; it left me craving the decades'-worth of films he didn't make.

Cockfighter

Monte Hellman's magnificent, still shocking Cockfighter (1974), restored and in 35mm. at @moma.bsky.social To Save and Project series, 6:30pm; a capsule review from a while back plus excerpts from a terrific 2011 interview with him:
www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Nia DaCosta Injects New Blood Into “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” In this gory sequel to Danny Boyle’s “28 Years Later,” an undead threat that has ravaged Britain turns out to be no match for the reality of living human evil.

28 YEARS LATER: BONEHENGE, reviewed. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Going Hollywood

What great directors do, as Raoul Walsh did with Going Hollywood (on @tcmtv.bsky.social at noon), is to take seemingly ordinary subjects and bring out what's extraordinary in them—with images, with performances, with tone and mood: www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...

Erich von Stroheim’s Spectacular Art Is Back A new restoration of Stroheim’s unfinished 1929 drama “Queen Kelly” spotlights his reckless directorial career, which, though brief, is one of the greatest of all.

It's Stroheim time: a look at his entire and dreadfully short directorial career in the light of the new restoration of Queen Kelly from @milestonefilms.bsky.social that's playing at @filmforumnyc.bsky.social:
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...