The best movie screenings in NYC this week
Each week, our seasoned film critics bring you the very best of New York City's alternative movie screenings and events
Every week, we round up the best movie events happening outside New York’s multiplexes, from major international film festivals (such as Sundance, the Toronto International Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival) and revivals at Film Forum and BAM to one-off movie screenings and in-person Q&As with stars, filmmakers and experts. New York also has a thriving film scene in galleries and pop-up venues, and in the summer months, you’ll find a wealth of outdoor screenings in NYC parks and gardens across the city.
Movie screenings and events in NYC
The Babadook
It’s not too soon to start reviving Aussie Jennifer Kent’s supremely confident first feature, which already feels major. Inventive, recognizably real and scary as fuck, the film staked out a shadowy domestic terrain last dominated by Roman Polanski and Repulsion. Kent may have actually outdone him.
IFC Center, Greenwich Village (ifccenter.com). Fri 21, Sat 22 midnight; $16.
Popeye
The critical tide is turning on this previously shunned Robert Altman bomb. That’s mainly because Paul Thomas Anderson revived one of Shelley Duvall’s strangled musical numbers (singing as Olive Oyl) for a lovely scene in Punch-Drunk Love. Give it a shot.
Alamo Drafthouse, Downtown Brooklyn (drafthouse.com). Mon 24 at 7pm; $12.
Battle Royale
The mighty Kinji Fukasaku’s last completed film stars action icon Takeshi “Beat” Kitano in a grim, violent tale about sadistic class experiments designed to illustrate “survival of the fittest” to kids on a remote island. If that sounds a hell of a lot like The Hunger Games, know that it is but was conceived years earlier.
Metrograph, Lower East Side (metrograph.com). Fri 21–Sun 23 at 10:30pm; $15.
Jaws
Or, as we like to call it, Three Men and a Shark. Yes, it’s the film that created the template for the modern Hollywood blockbuster. Pity that most of its successors suck so hard.
IFC Center, Greenwich Village (ifccenter.com). Fri 21, Sat 22 midnight; $16.
Paris Is Burning
When it was released, Jennie Livingston’s investigation of the gay subculture that embraced voguing was a cultural bulletin and a landmark documentary. Today, it’s a bit of a museum piece but a fascinating and vibrant one, still essential (and now gorgeously restored). Give it up for the late, great Willi Ninja.
Film Forum, Greenwich Village (filmforum.org). Now playing–Thu 27 at various times; $15.
La Notte
So estranged they can barely communicate, a married couple (Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau) spend 24 painful hours together in Milan. There’s no more fashionably alienated movie in all of Italian cinema—which is saying something.
Quad Cinema, Greenwich Village (quadcinema.com). Sun 23 at 9:45pm; $16.
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