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If you truly want to live the lifestyle of a movie-crazed New Yorker, there's nothing better than heading down to Greenwich Village's Film Forum (now in its 48th year), buying a chocolate egg cream—a classic that's been on their menu since the start—and easing into a foreign-language thinker along with the cognoscenti. We love Film Forum with the very fiber of our beings. Now, after a relatively speedy three-month renovation at an estimated $5 million, the nonprofit theater is back open for business, as of yesterday.
What can you expect? For starters, an entirely new fourth theater, one that will allow them to secure more first-run titles, as well as extend its renowned repertory programming into a new space. But the other screens haven't lacked for attention: Film Forum now boasts new seats venue-wide, improved "rakes" (that's the technical term for the tilt of the floor, allowing you to see over the head of that annoying sexter) and better sight lines.
Best of all is something that hasn't quite changed—but there's more of it: The selection of programming is glorious and massive. It includes a series devoted to the essential French master Jacques Becker (championed by such slouches as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut), along with a revival of the nuclear-scare doc The Atomic Cafe, which Film Forum debuted way back in 1982. You owe yourself a trip downtown to take in that new-theater smell. Welcome back, Film Forum.
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