July Screening Picks (NY)

The best heatwave matinee, a perfect Meg Ryan haircut, Claire Denis in 35mm...

Welcome to Never Cursed’s Screening Picks! Every month I send subscribers the 10 best films screening in New York & Los Angeles. If you want to help make Substack a sustainable part of my writing life, consider upgrading to paid! In addition to free Screening Picks, Prix Fixes, and Essays, paid subscribers get access to my monthly reading & viewing diaries.

Coming to you live from Brooklin, ME! I’ve hit a total wall with watching TV and have resorted to actually using my Criterion Channel subscription (currently making my way through their Jacques Rozier series), but it’s so nice out that anytime I start watching a movie I pause it 10 mins in and go for a walk.

There’s a chance I may not see a single movie in theaters this month while I’m up North, so you all have to go and see these and report back (please).

divine!! (Lola Montès)

JULY SCREENINGS (NY)

New releases (& limited re-releases) to catch in theaters this month: This is Spinal Tap (rerelease), My Neighbor Totoro (rerelease), Familiar Touch, Sex, Videoheaven, Eddington, Oh, Hi!

• 7/6-7/10 - The Pope of Greenwich Village @ IFC Center - I grew up in the West Village, so any excuse to spend time in the neighborhood’s pre-Sweetgreen era is a blessing. I’ve never heard of this Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke, The Amityville Horror)-directed movie from 1984, but it promises Daryl Hannah, Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Sinatra on the soundtrack, and Little Italy & West Village locations…a perfect summer matinee. Pauline Kael’s review begins: “THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE is like a doughy plum cake with wonderful plums sticking out of it…”

• 7/7, 7PM - 35 Shots of Rum (35mm) @ BAM - This was one of the first Claire Denis films I saw and I don’t remember it very well, so I’m dying to see it again in a theater. I loved my friend Dema’s recent (FIVE STAR!) Letterboxd review: “Just the most beautiful movie. With all her best films, the more you inquire the more they reveal. It’s about glances and music and rice cookers and the vast everything else. The joy and pain hits delayed release like ten minutes after the final shot.” Young Mati Diop (now an acclaimed director of films like Atlantics & Dahomey) stars.

• 7/8, 7:30PM - Lola Montès (35mm) @ Metrograph - Incredible tagline: “She Lived Too Intensely And Far Too Well!” I was obsessed with director Max Ophüls in college and this is one of favorite films of his. In stressful times I like to disassociate by burying myself in a single filmmaker’s world (see: my fall/winter of 2016 obsession with Almodóvar), and I may be ready to sink into an Ophüls rewatch. A man who understands that even when women are treated like ornaments, they have a rich interior life. Beautiful film craft combined with deeply emotional storytelling. This is what it’s all about!!

• 7/10, 4:25PM - Lust, Caution (DCP) @ Metrograph - Will, Henry and I caught a matinee screening of Metrograph’s Lust, Caution print a couple weeks ago and were entranced. Ang Lee creates an impressively immersive WWII-era Hong Kong & Shanghai as the backdrop of his steamy espionage story. Tang Wei is unbelievable, as is Tony Leung, playing against type. Maybe the only film I’ve seen that empathetically communicates the distance between cinema’s glamorous, controlled depictions of femme fatales and the destructive, chaotic reality of duplicitous seduction.

• 7/11, 2:30PM; 7/13, 2:10PM; 7/15, 6:30PM - The Leopard @ Metrograph - My criteria for moviegoing shifts significantly in the summer. By July, it’s basically “is this movie over 2.5 hours and how good is the theater’s AC?” Yes, The Leopard is a masterpiece and beautiful and an absolute treat to see on the big screen but it is also 2 hours 45 mins and Metrograph AC rocks.

• 7/18, 4PM; 7/20, 4PM - The Young Girls of Rochefort @ Metrograph - Gene Kelly is so sublime in this, a STAR. The Michel Legrand score is one of my favorite albums to pop on during a long walk.

• 7/20-7/31 - High and Low (4K) @ Film Forum - I’m really excited for Spike Lee & Denzel Washington’s Highest 2 Lowest, and want to revisit the OG before that’s released in August. If anyone can step into Toshiro Mifune’s shoes, it’s DW.

• 7/21, 9:30PM; 7/24, 7PM - In The Cut (35mm) @ BAM - My favorite movie about being sweaty in New York. I’m a freak for Jane Campion and this is up there as one of my faves. Young Ruff(alo), Meg Ryan’s perfect haircut, Jennifer Jason Leigh is so good at playing a sister.

• 7/27, 3:15PM - Eureka @ Film at Lincoln Center - Nicolas Roeg & Gene Hackman’s epic gold mining drama?? Yes. Playing as part of Film at Lincoln Center’s Gene Hackman retrospective that’s running all month.

• 7/27, 9PM; 7/31, 7PM - Birth (35mm) @ BAM - Hoping & praying I’m in town to finally see this Nicole Kidman x Jonathan Glazer mind-melting domestic thriller in a theater. Would be a great follow up to In The Cut … disorienting, queasy explorations of desire in NY.

  

  sisters!! (In The Cut)

xoH