Metrograph Theater (Manhattan, NY, Movie Theater)

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    The Metrograph Theater Starts a Film Magazine

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    A throwback publication courts cinephiles with stories featuring Ari Aster, Maggie Cheung, Daniel Clowes, Clint Eastwood and Ann Hui.At a time when print media is on the way out and streaming technology has slashed into box office returns, a band of downtown cinephiles in New York has started a film magazine.The Metrograph, a biannual publication from the art-house theater of the same name, will make its debut in December. The first issue, priced at $25, includes an in-depth interview with Clint Eastwood, a critical appraisal of the Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui, an essay on Filipino action movies and an analysis of a single shot of Maggie Cheung from the 1996 film “Irma Vep.”“This magazine is meant to be an extension of what happens at Metrograph, and everything about Metrograph is intended to enhance moviegoing and the seductiveness of cinema,” Annabel Brady-Brown, the magazine’s editor, said. “We want this magazine to evoke that feeling you get when you go to Metrograph on a Saturday afternoon with a friend or on a date.”The photo on the cover — showing the cinematographer Ed Lachman standing next to the director Jean-Luc Godard in the early 1980s — conveys the idea that this is a publication for devout film fans.The issue features a wide-ranging conversation between Ari Aster, the director of “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” and the graphic novelist Daniel Clowes. Steve Martin also interviews the two men behind Deceptive Practices, a consultancy founded by magicians that has advised a number of film productions, including “Ocean’s Thirteen” and “The Prestige.”The editorial team takes a look at the coming issue soon after it went to print.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Want to Turn Your House into the Art House? Try Metrograph at Home.

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      The Metrograph theater in New York has expanded to include a streaming platform that spotlights foreign, art house, independent, classic and documentary selections.When the Metrograph theater opened on New York’s Lower East Side in spring of 2016, it wasn’t just a cinema; it was an experience, offering up two screens of new independent films, archival screenings and special events, as well as an on-site bar, restaurant and bookshop. In the years that followed, Metrograph’s reach continued to grow, as did the opportunities for film lovers to patronize the theater beyond its walls, thanks to the establishment of Metrograph Pictures (a distribution company restoring and championing archival releases) and the Metrograph Journal (featuring thoughtful film writing from a variety of contributors).But like so many other theaters, particularly independent ones, Metrograph faced a crisis in the spring of 2020, as Covid forced the doors to close at 7 Ludlow St. But that July, the company launched what was initially known as Metrograph Digital, with an ambitious calendar of live screening events developed and curated by the theater’s programming team, featuring new releases and repertory titles supplemented by guest introductions and interviews. Those events were initially limited to Metrograph members, but that October, the program expanded to include screenings that were available to nonmembers à la carte.In the years that followed, the service — rechristened Metrograph at Home — expanded from the theater’s website into the streaming platform space, transforming a pandemic stopgap into a specialty streamer spotlighting foreign, art house, independent, classic and documentary selections and monthly verticals. Like similar services we’ve spotlighted here, the library may not be gigantic (it currently boasts 158 feature films, 10 short films, and 55 original videos), but the curation is excellent, the interface is easy to use and the audio and video quality are top-notch. Best of all, it’s affordable; access is bundled with a Metrograph Membership, which is only $5 per month or $50 annually (and which also includes discounted tickets, special events and other perks for in-person members).Here are a few recommendations from their current library:‘The French’: One of Metrograph Pictures’s proudest discoveries is this 1982 documentary from the expatriate American photographer and filmmaker William Klein, who was the first director ever granted permission to shoot at the French Open. He captures the 1981 tournament, in which Bjorn Borg defeated Ivan Lendl, in cinéma vérité style; we see plenty of action on the courts, including Borg’s dramatic victory, but Klein seems less interested in the spotlight than the margins, and the most fascinating footage finds sports gods hanging out and talking shop in the locker room, or trading strategy and gossip in the stands. (There are also plenty of opportunities to observe John McEnroe being a brat.) It’s a panoramic view, keenly observed, and serves as a valuable time capsule of the sport in an earthier and less corporatized era.Isabelle Adjani and Michael Hogben in “Possession.”Gaumont‘Possession’: When Andrzej Zulawski’s psychological horror drama was first released in the United States in 1983, it was in a badly butchered cut, excising much of the film’s weightier material to appeal to a straightforward horror audience that dismissed it. It was all but impossible to see in its original form for years, but Metrograph Pictures oversaw a new 4K restoration, which was the first film screened at the theater when it reopened in the fall of 2021. It’s a deeply unsettling picture, which begins with the marriage of its focal couple (played to the hilt by Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill) in total disrepair, and things go steeply downhill from there; suffice it to say that Adjani’s subway miscarriage is one of the most stunning pieces of acting ever committed to film, a scene that remains indescribable in spite of its notoriety and meme-ability.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Robert Gottlieb’s Books Go Up for Sale

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      Robert Gottlieb didn’t just edit books. He voraciously read and collected them.On Saturday, a portion of his personal library — his books on show business — were sold at a fair in the lobby of the Metrograph theater on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.When Mr. Gottlieb, who died last June at 92, wasn’t heartlessly lancing thousands of words out of Robert Caro’s biographical volumes or marking up the manuscripts of Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie, he loved watching movies. Along the course of his career, he built a vast collection of books on Hollywood’s golden age.His family was unsure what to do with the collection until earlier this year, when they started talking with Metrograph, a two-screen cinema that is a pillar of the downtown art house scene.Visitors lined up to buy “My Life with Chaplin,” “Fasten Your Seat Belts: The Passionate Life of Bette Davis,” “Little Girl Lost: The Life & Hard Times of Judy Garland” and hundreds of other books. When they opened them, they found a stamped seal reading “From the Library of Robert Gottlieb.” The books were priced around $15 to $40.Reinaldo Buitron, 28, a documentary filmmaker, flipped through a book about the Italian director Roberto Rossellini.“Being able to touch the same books Gottlieb had in his own home is surreal,” he said. “I see we admired the same films, and that makes me think we might have gotten along. That we could have sat for dinner and talked cinema and about his opinions on semicolons.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Fear and Desire’: Kubrick’s First War

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      Stanley Kubrick’s called his first feature, which is getting a new run at Metrograph, “boring and pretentious.” Instead, it is a revelation.Seen in retrospect, a first feature by a major filmmaker can be a revelation particularly if, as with Stanley Kubrick’s low-budget war movie “Fear and Desire,” it concerns a career-long preoccupation — and even more so if the filmmaker has attempted to suppress it.An independent production which, although fictional, premiered in the documentary section of the 1952 Venice Film Festival, “Fear and Desire” is getting a weeklong run at Metrograph, 70 years after its release in the United States.Kubrick, 23, had left his job as a staff photographer for Look magazine when he undertook the project, crediting himself as director, photographer and editor, as well as producer. The means were modest; the story, written by a high-school buddy, Howard Sackler, was epic. A portentous voice-over locates the action “outside history.” Four universal — albeit obviously American — soldiers, trapped six miles behind enemy lines, battle their respective demons in an attempted return to base.In addition to its allegorical framework, the film partakes in then fashionable existentialism. The same actor (Kenneth Harp) is cast as both the squad’s loquaciously philosophical lieutenant and an equally introspective enemy general. The soundtrack is heavy with the men’s internal musings. The new digital restoration includes nine minutes, mostly post-dubbed dialogue, cut after Venice when the film’s title was changed from “The Shape of Fear” by the distributor Joseph Burstyn, the pre-eminent U.S. importer of Italian neorealist films who also released the independent classic “Little Fugitive” in 1953.However arty, “Fear and Desire” is squarely in the American B-movie tradition. The situation — a cutoff platoon — and the pragmatic use of close-ups suggest Samuel Fuller’s Korean War quickie “The Steel Helmet,” which opened in 1951. Instantly notorious for depicting an American war crime, it is a movie Kubrick might well have seen.In Fuller’s film, an enraged soldier shoots an unarmed North Korean prisoner of war. In Kubrick’s, an unbalanced recruit (the future director Paul Mazursky) abuses and ultimately kills a local woman (Virginia Leith) who, having stumbled upon the four soldiers, is bound to a tree, and left in his charge. The sequence which juxtaposes Mazursky’s babbling with the woman’s petrified silence is the movie’s heart of darkness. Although Leith has virtually no dialogue, her image was featured in the movie’s ads.“Fear and Desire” is clumsily dubbed but strikingly photographed. A.H. Weiler’s New York Times review was both sympathetic and supportive, crediting Kubrick and Sackler with “a moody, often visually powerful study” of men under stress. The movie was not, however, a success. Nor was it a fond memory for its maker.When “Fear and Desire” was revived at Film Forum in 1994, Kubrick had a Warner Bros. publicist bombard local critics with letters expressing Kubrick’s feeling that the movie was nothing more than a “bumbling amateur film exercise,” written by a failed poet (an unkind reference to Sackler, who some 25 years after “Fear and Desire” was awarded a Pulitzer for his play “The Great White Hope”).Kubrick characterized “Fear and Desire” as “a completely inept oddity, boring and pretentious.” While undeniably pretentious, the movie is neither inept nor boring. Its oddity lies in its being both a prelude and footnote to Kubrick’s remarkable career.Fear and DesireSept. 22-29, Metrograph in Manhattan, metrograph.com. More

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      ‘Millennium Mambo’: A Lush, Mysterious Tale From Taipei

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      A 4K restoration of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s thrumming, visually bold movie about a self-destructive club girl retains its capital-L look.Sordid yet transcendent, bathed in neon haze and set to a relentless techno-beat, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “Millennium Mambo” — the tale of a teenage Taipei club girl — is not only the most pop movie the great Taiwanese filmmaker has ever made but, intermittently, among the most astonishingly beautiful.The movie has a capital-L look, and the 4K restoration, opening at Metrograph in Manhattan on Dec. 23, does it justice.“Millennium Mambo” premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where it was given a mixed reception and an award for sound design. Hou’s first feature since his exquisite period piece “Flowers of Shanghai,” the movie marked his entry into contemporary territory occupied by two of his younger admirers, the filmmakers Olivier Assayas and Wong Kar-wai.Hou’s frequent cinematographer, Mark Lee Ping-bin, had just shot Wong’s “In the Mood For Love,” and he reprised its voluptuous imagery: Cigarettes are orange points of light in the blue-on-blue disco where Vicky (Shu Qi) spends her nights; the cramped, cruddy apartment she shares with her emotionally abusive boyfriend, a DJ wannabe (Tuan Chun-hao), is a perfumed miasma. The pad’s lush mise-en-scène sets up a shock cut to a gyrating butt in the hostess bar where Vicky has taken a job and where she meets her sometime protector, a benign gangster with a Buddhist streak (Hou regular Jack Kao).Some took “Millennium Mambo” as Hou’s misguided attempt to connect with a younger generation, perhaps forgetting that he had begun his career as a commercial filmmaker and made more than a few “youth films” — notably the not dissimilar and initially underappreciated “Daughter of the Nile.”According to Maggie Cheung, Hou had originally wanted her to play Vicky, opposite Tony Leung, her co-star from “In the Mood for Love.” Shu Qi is a less subtle actor than Cheung, but the movie is stronger for it. Stunningly photogenic, remote and self-destructive, alternately passive and hysterical, Shu Qi’s character lives in a trance, reminiscent of the Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick. As the New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell wrote in his mildly favorable review, “the insistence of high-throb electronica calls out to Vicky, so that she pounds the thoughts out of her head.”Vicky’s neurotic behavior makes “Millennium Mambo” almost a case history or, given her repetitive voice-over narration, a kind of ballad. At the same time, like other Hou films, it is a temporal pretzel. Vicky narrates her story, apparently set in the year 2000, from a point 10 years in the future. Not infrequently we hear about events before we see them.Most mysterious are the brief sequences set in the sleepy, snowy Japanese island of Hokkaido — an alpine environment far different from steamy Taipei. Are these unmotivated scenes a flash-forward to Vicky’s untroubled future? A deliberately unconvincing happy ending à la Douglas Sirk? A fantasy triggered by her chance encounter, while clubbing, with two Japanese brothers?That the director is something of a Japanophile — and that, in a spasm of narrative ambiguity, Vicky finds herself in the snowbound town that hosts the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival — could support any of these theories.Millennium MamboOpens Dec. 23 at Metrograph, Manhattan; metrograph.com. More

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      New York’s Movie Theaters, From Art-House to Dine-In

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      New York is the nation’s moviegoing capital, especially for cinephiles who treasure archival prints, experimental cinema and concession stands that go far beyond the standard offerings. Below is a guide to the city’s art houses.Alamo DrafthouseFinancial District, 28 Liberty Street, Suite SC301, Manhattan. Downtown Brooklyn, 445 Albee Square West, Brooklyn. drafthouse.com.This dine-in chain, based in Austin, Texas, has a hip aesthetic and is noted for its brews, queso and screenings of cult classics, in addition to regular showings of new releases. A revived version of Kim’s Video has set up shop within the Manhattan location. A Staten Island theater is scheduled to open this summer.Angelika Film CenterAngelika Film Center, 18 West Houston Street, Manhattan. Cinema 123 by Angelika, 1001 Third Avenue, Manhattan. Village East by Angelika, 181-189 Second Avenue, Manhattan. angelikafilmcenter.com.The original Angelika Film Center is the downtown six-screen theater where you can catch art-house releases, like “Petite Maman” or “Anaïs in Love,” while the subway rattles underneath. The brand name has also been appended to the Village East, whose main auditorium is a gorgeous old Yiddish stage theater. In addition to showing new releases, it hosts “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and periodic revival screenings, and like its uptown sibling, the Cinema 123, it is equipped to show 70-millimeter film.Anthology Film Archives32 Second Avenue, Manhattan; anthologyfilmarchives.org.New York’s polestar of avant-garde film (and the preservation of it) for more than 50 years, Anthology was started by some of experimental cinema’s most important promoters (Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney) and practitioners (Stan Brakhage, Peter Kubelka). In addition to retrospectives, the theater hosts a rotating series, Essential Cinema, that is free with membership; programming includes seminal narrative works by Alexander Dovzhenko and F.W. Murnau and medium-expanding nonnarrative films from Ken Jacobs and Michael Snow.Brooklyn Academy of Music30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn; bam.org.At any given time in the main BAM building in Fort Greene, three out of four screens show new releases, while one holds retrospectives, such as ones on films shot in New York City in the 1990s or others that place David Lynch’s work alongside movies he influenced. Occasional screenings take place at the BAM Harvey Theater a few blocks away.Film at Lincoln CenterElinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th Street, and Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Manhattan; filmlinc.org.Lincoln Center’s film arm, the hosting organization of the New York Film Festival, runs a year-round theater with one of the largest screens in town: the Walter Reade. There you can catch adventurous revivals, such as programs on the Hungarian director Marta Meszaros or the Japanese actress-director Kinuyo Tanaka, and contemporary series, like the annual Rendez-Vous With French Cinema. Across the street is the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, which houses two screens and a food-and-wine bar, Indie.Film Forum: Come for the popcorn; stay for the cinematic edification.Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty ImagesFilm Forum209 West Houston Street, Manhattan; filmforum.org.A New York institution for more than 50 years — it has been at its present location since 1990 and added a fourth screen in 2018 — Film Forum hosts some of the most extensive retrospectives in town, often showing dozens of films from a director or from stars like Toshiro Mifune and Sidney Poitier. Regular attendance constitutes a cinematic education in itself, and the popcorn, to which moviegoers apply sea salt themselves, is a delicacy.French Institute/Alliance FrançaiseFlorence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, Manhattan; fiaf.org.This classy venue with excellent sightlines hosts screenings on Tuesdays. The programming consists of new and vintage films from France, with English subtitles, bien sûr. Series typically have a theme — it might be Wes Anderson selecting favorites by Ophüls and Truffaut or a program of recent French comedies.IFC Center323 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan; ifccenter.com.This Greenwich Village five-screen theater boasts four first-rate auditoriums (and one cubbyhole) and typically shows many more than five movies in a given week, usually with a short beforehand. Shows can start as early as 10 or 11 a.m. and, on the weekends, as late as midnight. The concession stand sells T-shirts that substitute directors’ names for those of heavy metal bands.Japan Society333 East 47th Street, Manhattan; japansociety.org.This theater’s annual Japan Cuts series is probably the largest single showcase of recent Japanese cinema on the New York cinephile’s calendar. For the rest of the year, new movies share screen space with classics, often shown on 35 millimeter.Light Industry361 Stagg Street, Brooklyn; lightindustry.org.This microcinema, which specializes in experimental film and typically holds screenings on Tuesday nights, hosted its final program at its longtime Greenpoint location in April. It will reopen by June on Stagg Street. Past screenings have varied widely; they’ve included early work by William Castle, a four-hour Mexican serial from 1919, Hollis Frampton and Owen Land films on 16-millimeter and a marathon of “Police Squad!” episodes.Maysles Cinema343 Lenox Avenue, Manhattan; maysles.org.This small (about 60 seats) Harlem venue specializes in documentaries — it was founded by the director Albert Maysles, of “Grey Gardens” fame. The programming often places an emphasis on social issues and local artistry.Metrograph7 Ludlow Street, Manhattan; metrograph.com.An ever-changing (and expensive!) selection of international candies, a nook of a bookstore and a high-class restaurant, the Commissary, are among the features of this Lower East Side two-screen venue, which opened in 2016. (Many don’t notice, but it sits across the street from the neglected Loew’s Canal Theater.) The retrospectives, such as a recurring series of the programmers’ favorites, organized alphabetically, have a correspondingly artisanal feel.Museum of Modern Art11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan; moma.org.MoMA has been showing movies since the 1930s, when Iris Barry, the museum’s first film curator, helped advance the idea that films should be collected as art. Today the institution’s two main theaters screen films from its own collection and archives around the world (the annual series To Save and Project highlights recent preservation work). Admission to most screenings is free with membership.Museum of the Moving Image36-01 35th Avenue, Queens; movingimage.us.The high ceilings and blue wall padding give a faintly futuristic feel to the 267-seat Redstone Theater, the main auditorium in this museum in Astoria. That works well when a favorite like “2001: A Space Odyssey” is playing on 70 millimeter. More specialized fare sometimes is shown in the Bartos Screening Room down the hall.Nitehawk CinemaProspect Park, 188 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn. Williamsburg, 136 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn. nitehawkcinema.com.These stylish dine-in theaters have several screens that show new releases and perennial favorites (“Carrie,” “Face/Off”) from brunch time to midnight-snack time. Both venues have bars.The Paris Theater, once a destination for French film, is now leased by Netflix.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesParis Theater4 West 58th Street, Manhattan; paristheaternyc.com.Once a go-to destination for French cinema and films with a literary pedigree, the Paris briefly closed in 2019, but then was leased by Netflix, which uses it for theatrical runs of its streaming titles (like Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog”) and older movies intended to complement them. It’s one of the few remaining New York theaters with a balcony.Quad Cinema34 West 13th Street, Manhattan; quadcinema.com.When this Greenwich Village theater opened in 1972, having four screens was unusual. (“A new way to go to the movies,” boasted a New York Times ad on the first day.) It reopened in 2017 after a renovation that gave it bigger, comfier seats for viewing new art-house releases, like “A Hero” or “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.” Plus, there’s an adjoining bar.Roxy Cinema New York2 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan; roxycinematribeca.com.Located in the basement of the Roxy Hotel, this plush red screening room offers a mix of revivals (often on 35-millimeter film) and second-run programming — recent releases that have been in theaters awhile.Spectacle124 South Third Street, Brooklyn; spectacletheater.com.A grungy Williamsburg microcinema started in 2010, Spectacle has a calendar as eclectic as it is inscrutable. There’s horror and martial-arts fare that tends toward the obscure, along with a lot of international titles that never turn up in other New York venues.United Palace4140 Broadway, Manhattan; unitedpalace.org.One of the original Loew’s Wonder Theaters — movie palaces built in the late 1920s, with one in each borough except Staten Island (Jersey City got it instead) — this architectural marvel in Washington Heights is an attraction in itself. It’s now run by an organization that promotes interfaith artistic events, but the theater also hosts concerts and, generally once a month, movie screenings. Lin-Manuel Miranda, a neighborhood resident, chipped in for a new screen and projector. More

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      France’s Colonial Conflict, Filmed From Both Sides

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      “The Olive Trees of Justice,” a neorealist take on the Algerian War made with nonprofessional actors, is newly restored and still resonates today.Shot in Algeria on the eve of independence, “The Olive Trees of Justice” is the only fiction film by the American documentarian James Blue and, based on a novel by the French Algerian writer Jean Pélégri, one that acknowledges colonial oppression as well as post-colonial displacement.Blue’s movie, which had its United States premiere in 1963 as part of the first New York Film Festival, has been revived at Metrograph, newly restored and still resonant.Unsurprisingly, “Olive Trees” has a strong neorealist component. A pre-credit statement announces it as a movie without professional actors. The protagonist Jean (Pierre Prothon) is a young pied-noir — a settler of European descent — who has returned to Algiers from France to be with his dying father (played by Pélégri, who also wrote the screenplay). Some of the strongest scenes follow him through the city’s barricaded streets, hillside slums and bustling markets. In a moment that feels more stolen than staged, French soldiers shut down traffic to check an abandoned shopping bag for explosives. Evidently, the production was itself targeted by right-wing settlers.The movie also has an existentialist aspect. Like the antihero of Camus’s “The Stranger,” also set in Algiers, Jean experiences the death of a parent and views himself as a foreigner in his native land. Prothon has the anguished blankness of a Robert Bresson principal. (Not coincidentally Pélégri had just played the police detective in Bresson’s “Pickpocket.”) Maurice Jarre’s solemn, modernist score adds the underlying angst, as do the helicopters hovering over the city, which, midway through the film, shuts down for Ashura, an Islamic day of mourning.Jean’s return is a trip into his past, shown in extended flashbacks. His dying father, a self-made man, is not so much nostalgic for his lost vineyard (taken by creditors) as for a world “where everyone knew their place.” Jean’s memories are now tainted by a relative’s desire to hold on to her farm by any means necessary and the news that his childhood best friend has joined the National Liberation Army in the mountains.The pervasive sense of impending conflict evoked an unusually personal response from the New York Times reviewer Howard Thompson. Self-identified as a “moviegoer from Dixie who has never set foot in North Africa,” Thompson wrote that the portrait of French settlers forced to enclose their vineyards with barbed wire “suggests trouble clouds scudding over a placid but firmly run plantation of yore.” This nostalgic characterization of slavery notwithstanding, Thompson praised the film’s balance. And indeed Blue is a sympathetic witness to a zero-sum conflict.Having won an award at Cannes in May 1962, “Olive Trees” opened in Paris that June, eight months after hundreds of Algerians were massacred in the city, with French revanchists still planting bombs. The war had come home. Some found the film’s measured gravity a palliative. The Times correspondent Cynthia Grenier reported its praise by critics across the political spectrum who “seemed to have but one regret: that no Frenchman had the courage to make such a film” — perhaps with good reason. The movie utterly failed to attract a French audience.“Olive Trees” is steeped in ambivalence — a dilemma manifest in the abrupt, impulsive decision Jean makes in the movie’s final moments.The Olive Trees of JusticeFriday-Sunday, in person and streaming at Metrograph, Manhattan; metrograph.com. More

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      Which Movie Theaters Are Reopening in New York City? Here’s a Guide.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhich Movie Theaters Are Reopening in New York City? Here’s a Guide.The state says they can resume operations Friday. Some cinemas are saying not so fast; others are eager to welcome audiences. Here’s the latest.The IFC Center in Greenwich Village will welcome back moviegoers starting Friday.Credit…Calla Kessler for The New York TimesMarch 5, 2021Updated 5:49 p.m. ETAlthough movie theaters in most of New York State were allowed to reopen in October, those in its filmgoing capital, New York City, remained closed because of the pandemic. But early last week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo gave cinemas in the five boroughs the go-ahead, setting an opening date of March 5.Not all theaters are choosing to reopen just yet. Those that do must follow certain guidelines: They are limited to 25 percent of capacity, and an audience cannot exceed 50 people. Moviegoers must wear masks when not eating and must have assigned seats.Certain chains have opened around the country under comparable strictures. AMC plans to open all its theaters this weekend in the city, the country’s second-largest movie market; Regal is holding off until the top market, Los Angeles, reopens. But the guidelines pose special difficulties for New York’s independent theaters and art houses. Below is a roundup of which plan to return on Friday or in the near future and which will stay shut for now.Opening FridayANGELIKA FILM CENTER In the last two decades, Angelika Film Centers have sprung up around the country, but the original Houston Street location, managed by the chain Reading International, will reopen Friday. So will Reading’s two other theaters in the city, the Cinema 1, 2, 3 and the Village East, which have been folded into the Angelika brand and now sell tickets on the same website.“We strongly feel that reopening our cinemas, albeit at a reduced capacity, starts bringing back folks into our cinemas,” Scott Rosemann, the eastern division manager at Reading, said, even if operating now may not generate profits for a while.When you make a purchase online or at a kiosk, the seats surrounding yours will be automatically blocked off to maintain social distance. The theater and its cafe will remain cashless for now to reduce touch points. All screenings will have “preshow greetings” to remind moviegoers of protocols.This weekend, the Angelika will show the likely Oscar contenders “Minari” and “Nomadland,” while Village East will show “Tenet” on 70-millimeter film.IFC CENTER The Greenwich Village theater opens Friday with a robust lineup that includes first-run titles (“My Salinger Year,” “La Llorona,” “The Vigil”); opportunities to catch Netflix features like “Da 5 Bloods” and “Mank” theatrically; and two monthlong series, one called What’d We Miss, featuring acclaimed titles from last year (“Collective,” “Kajillionaire”), and another commemorating the 20th year of IFC Films.“I think everybody was caught a little by surprise by the timing of the announcement” by the governor, said John Vanco, the senior vice president and general manager of the center. The expectation, he said, had been that theaters would open in late spring or summer, and much of the lineup came together over the last week.Some of the rules are similar to other theaters’. But IFC will keep its concession stand closed. In addition, some showtimes will have cheaper tickets to encourage moviegoers to attend at nonpeak times.In perhaps its most distinctive pandemic adjustment, the theater has opted to start features precisely at the listed showtime; if you want to watch the trailers and a short film, arrive early. “We just want people to have kind of control,” Vanco said. “You can see on our website how long a movie is. We run a short film before every feature, and we run trailers like other theaters do, and we would love you to see that stuff. But if you just want to get in and get out,” that’s now possible.NITEHAWK CINEMA These Brooklyn dine-in theaters — in Prospect Park and Williamsburg — are reopening as cinemas on Friday, but they had already reopened as restaurants. “That’s kind of why, even with the short notice, we’ve been able to ramp up to open for the theaters, because it really doesn’t take that many more people to start serving in the theaters,” said Matthew Viragh, Nitehawk’s founder and executive director. Another advantage: The vaccine is available to restaurant workers.Every other row has been blocked off, Viragh said, “and then within the active rows, if you select a seat and purchase those tickets, two seats on either side of you will be blocked off.” At the larger Nitehawk Cinema Prospect Park, only five of seven screens will be operational, to make sanitizing the space easier, and both locations will be closed on Mondays for additional deep cleaning. Patrons will be subject to temperature checks, something Viragh said the theaters had been doing for indoor dining. Anyone who has a temperature or is feeling unwell can get a credit.QUAD CINEMA This Greenwich Village theater is reopening Friday with “My Zoe,” “Night of the Kings,” “Supernova” and “The World to Come.” Revival programming, which the Quad had typically put on one of its four screens, will come later, said Charles S. Cohen, the real estate developer who owns the cinema.The precautions will follow government recommendations and will be “pretty much along the lines of what every other theater is doing,” he added. Concessions will be available.Cohen also owns the national chain Landmark, which began opening theaters in August. (The Landmark at 57 West in Manhattan closed for good during the pandemic, a shuttering Cohen attributed to a combination of causes.) The capacity issues in the short term do not faze him. “There are films that need to reach an audience, and we are doing what we can to present those films to the filmgoing community that we think very much enjoys film in a theater,” he said.Still, another of his ventures, the distributor Cohen Media Group, has a backlog of 10 films. The holdup? Waiting for theaters in Los Angeles to return.Opening LaterALAMO DRAFTHOUSE The Downtown Brooklyn location of the dine-in chain has no date for reopening yet, but it will happen in the “very near future,” said Tim League, a founder and executive chairman of the company, based in Austin, Tex. (Separately, the company announced this week that it had filed for Chapter 11 and was undergoing a major financial restructuring, but an Alamo spokesman said that would affect neither the reopening date nor the continued development of new theaters in Lower Manhattan and Staten Island.)“We have started the opening process,” League said of the Brooklyn location. “It’s just a little more complicated for us because we have a big kitchen facility. We have a lot of hiring to do, and we’ve implemented some safety protocols.”Alamo has opened several of its locations across the country at some point since theater closures last March, and it has posted guidelines for moviegoers online. There hasn’t been much change in the number of patrons ordering food, League said, but there have been some changes in the service. The theaters have a reduced menu intended to maintain social distancing for the kitchen staff. Food can be ordered online in advance; pint glasses now have paper lids and silverware is sealed. Of staff training, League said, “We’re treating it like a new venue opening every time we do this.”ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES The city’s premier experimental-film venue, located in the East Village, has no firm date for reopening yet. “We’re going to sort of take it slow and take a wait-and-see approach,” Jed Rapfogel, the theater’s programmer, said, noting that the organization is keeping an eye on factors like the spread of new Covid-19 variants and the availability of vaccines. “I think the first thing that will most likely happen will be one screening a week or a couple screenings a week.”When theaters shut down last March, Anthology had just sent its program notes for the following three months to the printer. Rapfogel still hopes to play some of what was on that “ghost calendar,” including a near complete retrospective of the filmmaker Michael Snow — a “long overdue and major event,” Rapfogel said. But some series, he said, “you don’t want to present until you can have 100 percent capacity.” The theater’s online screening program, which has had many free offerings, remains active.BAM “A reopening date is yet to be determined,” Lindsay Brayton, a spokeswoman for this Brooklyn institution’s film division, said by email. “We’re looking forward to opening with the highest level of safety in place.”FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER “We expect a spring opening will be possible — I can’t tell you if that means April, May or June,” said Dennis Lim, the director of programming for Film at Lincoln Center and the New York Film Festival. The lack of a firm date is a function of several factors. The organization has three screens in two buildings; it is also part of the larger Lincoln Center campus, which remains mostly closed. In addition to making sure that staff can return to work safely, Lim said, “we’re getting feedback from our members about their comfort levels at this stage.”The lineup for the organization’s virtual cinema is mapped out for the next several months; some films could play on both the digital platform and theatrically after the reopening. Down the road, moviegoers may have a chance to top off last fall’s largely virtual New York Film Festival with selections that didn’t make sense to show online: “The Works and Days,” which runs eight hours, and a restoration of the Polish classic “The Hourglass Sanatorium.”FILM FORUM This is the only nonprofit theater in the city that gave a specific date for reopening: April 2. The programming at the Greenwich Village cinema will include “The Truffle Hunters” and the new Pedro Almodóvar short “The Human Voice,” showing with his 1988 film, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.” There will also be a revival of Federico Fellini’s “La Strada.”Karen Cooper, Film Forum’s director, said upgraded HVAC filters had been installed, and the ticketing system had been reprogrammed so that moviegoers can reserve seats online. The concession stand will be closed, and masks must be worn at all times. Expect industrial-strength rubber bands to prevent you from sitting where you shouldn’t.Cooper acknowledged the drawbacks of the state’s 25 percent capacity restriction. “It’s totally not economical,” she said with a laugh. “It’s a bigger money-loser to be open than to be closed. But the bottom line is, we’re a nonprofit. We exist for a purpose. We really believe that our job is to show these movies.”The expansive retrospectives for which Film Forum is famous will have to take a back seat for now, though. “You really can’t show a 40-film festival over a three-week period to houses that are 25 percent capacity,” Cooper said. Also, many archives around the world remain closed.But at least one series disrupted by the pandemic has a chance at a reprise, she said: 35-millimeter prints from The Women Behind Hitchcock, a series that had been set to end last March 19, are still sitting on the floor of the projection booth.MAYSLES CINEMA This Harlem venue has no reopening plans yet “due to continued concern for the health of our community” and the overhead cost of operating a single screen at limited capacity, said Annie Horner, a programmer and spokeswoman for the theater. Maysles Cinema normally seats about 60, which makes the 25 percent cap a difficult proposition.METROGRAPH This Lower East Side two-screen cinema did not comment beyond a statement: “While we can’t wait to see everyone, we must evaluate all the details — safety and logistical — for our team and audiences. We’ll be in touch soon with more updates.” The theater remains closed for now, and it plans to continue streaming titles on its virtual platform after reopening.MUSEUM OF MODERN ART The museum itself reopened in August, but its movie theaters are still closed for now. “The methods we had developed for a potential reopening last summer or fall, when I think all of us were hoping cinemas could reopen, they don’t really apply I think the same way anymore,” said Rajendra Roy, the chief film curator. He cited both advances with vaccines and questions surrounding new variants.While the museum has now had the experience of being open during the pandemic, Roy said, translating what happens in galleries to the theatrical experience isn’t straightforward. “It’s not a direct overlay in terms of procedures and time spent in one area,” he said. The staff has mapped the cinemas and even with the capacity restrictions can fit in a “decent” number of moviegoers. Still, he wants to avoid a situation in which there are “crickets in the room because there’s not a comfort level yet in coming back.” He’s envisioning reopening with something that will be a “delight” to watch on a big screen.In the meantime, MoMA started a virtual cinema in December, and Roy feels “it’s been curatorially representative of what we would hold ourselves to.” (Currently streaming: Two rediscoveries from 1930s France that MoMA had included last year in To Save and Project, a film preservation series.)If the theaters had reopened in 2020, Roy said, “I don’t know that we would have even built the virtual cinema.” Now, “it’s going to be a permanent feature of our offerings.”MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE “Our goal has been to open our entire facility — our theaters and our galleries — in tandem, and to do so this spring,” said Carl Goodman, the Queens museum’s executive director. But moviegoers who are looking for something to watch this weekend can attend the Queens Drive-In in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which reopens for a new season tonight, and which the museum runs with Rooftop Films and the New York Hall of Science. Programming is planned through June, at least.When the museum returns, so will its exhibit “Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey,” which has been extended through September. The disrupted programming that accompanied the exhibit — screenings of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and related films — will also continue.“I’m very, very confident in our airflow adjustments,” Goodman said, adding, “We need staff and visitors to be safe and feel safe.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More