NEW YORK IN THE 70S Programmed by Bruce Goldstein
Movies Can Take New Yorkers Back to the ’70s. But Why Go There? Editorial Observer By CLYDE HABERMAN JULY 4, 2017 In “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” a film classic about a New York subway hijacking and hostage-taking — the 1974 version, not the pallid 2009 remake — an exasperated transit official only wants to get his train back. He couldn’t care less about the fate of the captive riders. “What the hell did they expect for their lousy 35 cents — to live forever?” he grumbles. Given the decay that has lately seeped into the bones of the city’s mass-transit network, some New Yorkers understandably wonder if that sort of bureaucratic indifference is more than a screenwriter’s throwaway line. One week ago, a southbound A train derailed and filled with smoke, causing passengers to fear that they could indeed die on the tracks. The agony of the subways also has more than a few New Yorkers worrying that they’ve begun an inexorable descent, maybe even back to the 1970s, when the city endured what could reasonably be described as a near-death experience. It might be useful, then, for everyone to take a deep breath and think about how far New York has come from those bad old days. Evidence of that progress can be found in a three-week series that begins on Wednesday at the Film Forum on Houston Street and offers several dozen movies about New York that were made in the ’70s and consistently showed a city with a fading pulse. The series’ title borrows a 1975 headline in The Daily News that lodged forever in the civic consciousness. Often imitated, it summed up the president’s rejection of federal help for New York during its ruinous fiscal crisis: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” (The Times’s headline on that story was “Ford, Castigating City, Asserts He’d Veto Fund Guarantee; Offers Bankruptcy Bill.” Amazingly, it is never quoted.) Continue reading the main story As the film selections suggest, New York did seem beyond redemption then. In addition to “Pelham One Two Three,” they include “The French Connection,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Taxi Driver,” “Mean Streets,” “Serpico,” “The Hospital,” “The Panic in Needle Park,” “The Warriors” and “Death Wish.” One way or another, they depict a city spinning toward a hell. That’s because, in many respects, it was. The ’70s was the decade of the serial killer Son of Sam and of a nightmarish 1977 power blackout that led to widespread looting and vandalism. They were the “Bronx is burning” years. The municipal treasury was broke. City workers — garbage collectors, hospital doctors, police officers — went on strike, heedless that it made them lawbreakers. Systemic police corruption abounded: Think “Serpico.” Crime soared, with 62 percent more murders (1,814 in 1980) than there had been at the decade’s start (1,117 in 1970). Some Fortune 500 companies relocated to other parts of the country. Broadway theaters moved up the evening curtain by an hour so that playgoers could get out of Times Square before the muggers took over. Bruce Goldstein, the Film Forum’s director of repertory programming, recalled being in London around the time of “Death Wish” (1974), which is about a New York where street punks reigned. He said a woman asked him, “Is it true that whenever you walk on the streets, you get stabbed?” “No,” Mr. Goldstein said he replied sardonically, “only every other week.” Plainly, New York today is light-years from that era — with a Bronx that is revived, a population that has since grown by more than 20 percent, a municipal balance sheet that is reasonably sound and a murder toll that keeps falling (335 in 2016 and on a path to even fewer this year). The often criticized police are better behaved, despite dark episodes like the 2014 death of Eric Garner after being put in a chokehold on Staten Island. William Friedkin, the Oscar-winning director of “The French Connection” (1971), observed that the police in that film, based on a true story, took for granted that they could do what they wished with criminal suspects. “If they were to operate like that today,” Mr. Friedkin said by phone from Los Angeles, “they’d be busted or kicked off the force.” In short, despite the daily subway ordeal these days, there is no point succumbing to despair. Evidence that the city is greatly improved comes from a recent movie, “A Most Violent Year,” released in 2014. It is set in 1981 New York. To capture a stricken landscape, the filmmakers could not find all that they wanted in the city. They went instead to Detroit. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------“Offers several dozen movies about New York that were made in the ’70s and consistently showed a city with a fading pulse. One way or another, they depict a city spinning toward a hell.” – Clyde Haberman, The New York Times. Read the full article here. “A MAMMOTH THROWBACK TO A GRITTIER ERA OF CITY LIFE!” – Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times “Celebrates New York at its 1970s scuzziest.” – J. Hoberman, The New York Review of Books “Classic, history-making movies made during some of the city’s darkest years.” – Bilge Ebiri, The Village Voice “Takes you back to an NYC on the verge of implosion.” – David Edelstein, New York Magazine “One of the most fertile periods of filmmaking in cinematic history comes back to life!” – Robert Levin, AM New York. “[In the 70s,] urban blight crossed paths with Hollywood’s new interest in true grit, creating a perfect storm of films that showed the city at its worst, its people at their most desperate.” – Matt Prigge, Metro “FABULOUS! The films shot on location in NYC in the 1970s have become relics of a very different New York: accidental documentaries of what the city once was.” - Jason Bailey, Flavorwire
List activity
1.7K views
• 10 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
44 titles
- DirectorJohn SchlesingerStarsDustin HoffmanJon VoightSylvia MilesA naive hustler travels from Texas to New York City to seek personal fortune, finding a new friend in the process.Directed by John Schlesinger
Starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight
(1969) “Everybody’s talkin” at cowboy-geared, straight-from-the-sticks stud wannabe Jon Voight, while seedy tenement squatter Dustin Hoffman is “walkin’ here” as he storms at a pushy cabdriver; but they form their own alliance within the grubby underside of Times Square. Oscars for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay (Waldo Salt), among seven nominations. 35mm. Approx. 114 min.
REVIEWS
“AN UNFORGETTABLE LOWLIFE RHAPSODY.”
– Benedict Cosgrove, Gothamist
“Nuanced, realistic and provocative without being crude and obscure. Popular without being frivolous… took New York’s good, bad, and ugly and presented it all without pretext. Of all the films made in and about New York City to this point, Midnight Cowboy best captures the chaotic and manifold audio-visual essence of the setting’s disorder.”
– Jeremy Carr, mubi
“ACHINGLY ACCURATE. One of the first wide releases to capture the rot of the city in general and its once-glam Times Square district in particular.”
– Jason Bailey, Flavorwire
“Neither Voight nor Hoffman has ever been better on screen than they are here.”
– Chicago Tribune
“Midnight Cowboy’s peep-show vision of Manhattan lowlife may no longer be shocking, but what is shocking is to see a major studio film linger this lovingly on characters who have nothing to offer the audience but their own lost souls.”
– Owen Gleiberman
“It is a tribute to [Voight and Hoffman] that Ratso and Joe Buck emerge so unforgettably drawn… Joe and Ratso rise above the material, taking on a reality of their own.”
– Roger Ebert
“Today, Midnight Cowboy provides a spellbinding glimpse—etched in acid—of how we lived then that bears comparison to the work of great documentary still photographers, such as Weegee, or to the lurid excesses of tabloid filmmakers, such as Sam Fuller, or to the hallucinatory sensibilities of a Fellini.”
– Vanity Fair - DirectorMilos FormanStarsLynn CarlinBuck HenryGeorgia EngelWhile searching for their runaway teenage daughter, the parents rediscover the pleasures of life as they get acquainted with a self-help group for parents of vanished children.Directed by Miloš Forman
(1971) In desperate search for their runaway daughter through East Village hippie enclaves, Buck Henry and Lynn Carlin resort to the ultimate – trying some reefer themselves. Forman’s first American film gives not only the middle class squared, but also those would-be radicals, a comic workout. 35mm. Approx. 93 min.
REVIEWS
“[The East Village] scene snapshotted with documentary-like verve.”
– Jason Bailey, Flavorwire
“IMPECCABLE. A deft satire of the American counter-culture. The hippie culture, the repression of the suburbs, the toking, the charade of ‘scape’ — it’s all a deeply American farce, taking an outsider to fully appreciate how funny and aimless it all is. Its genius is in the subtlety of its sleights, its ability to slip under the cracks. The farther the ’60s recede into the rear-view mirror, the funnier it gets.”
– Tyler Maxin, Screen Slate
“Bitterly funny!”
– The A.V. Club
“Whether Taking Off is caricature or dead-on is, presumably, all a matter of perspective and distance, and I can’t resolve it. But it’s definitely hilarious: A deadpan Henry effortlessly dominates as a milquetoast, and the supporting weirdos are all aces. It remains his [Miloš Forman’s] best film in and about America.”
– The Village Voice
“Wackier and more expansive than Forman’s previous films.”
– J. Hoberman - DirectorChantal AkermanStarsChantal AkermanImpersonal and beautiful images of Akerman's life in New York are combined with letters from her loving but manipulative mother, read by Akerman herself.Directed by Chantal Akerman
(1976) Akerman returns to the personal avant-garde essay to evoke a ghost town Manhattan, the news from home coming through “love letters” to the filmmaker in New York from her mother in Belgium. “When you see the images, you realize that New York has nothing to do with European ideas about it. The myth doesn’t connect at all with the reality of the city” (Akerman). DCP. Approx. 85 min.
REVIEWS
“A time capsule for a city that today resembles an alien planet.”
– Matt Prigge, Metro
“A GREAT CITY SYMPHONY.”
– J. Hoberman, The New York Review of Books
“No portrait of New York captures both the majesty and the sorrow of the city quite like Chantal Akerman’s News From Home.”
– The Village Voice
“A considerable contribution to the hinterland area between narrative cinema and the avant-garde.”
– Time Out
“This is one of the best depictions of the alienation of exile that I know.”
– Jonathan Rosenbaum
“A trance-like documentary... It gives a window into Akerman’s lifelong inherited anxiety, and the ways in which her work was a tribute to the woman who so cared for her, who sent her money to help support her young daughter, making art she probably didn’t understand. Her love for her mother is in everything she did.”
– Scout Tafoya, RogerEbert.com - DirectorJohn CassavetesStarsGena RowlandsBuck HenryJulie CarmenWhen a young boy's family is killed by the mob, their tough neighbor Gloria becomes his reluctant guardian. In possession of a book that the gangsters want, the pair go on the run in New York.Directed by John Cassavetes
Starring Gena Rowlands
(1980) Kid averse ex-moll Gena Rowlands gets stuck with an 8-year-old when her neighbor, mob accountant/ FBI informant Buck Henry, gets noisily rubbed out. Then it’s a road movie for the smart-mouthed twerp and smartly suited, heat-packing Rowlands (Best Actress Oscar nomination).
DCP restoration. Approx. 123 min.
REVIEWS
“Cassavetes films Rowlands, his wife, with self-deprecating adoration; the demanding man likens himself to the defenseless boy, and both are saved by this gloriously burdened woman who would kill for them.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“It’s an infectious performance—if infectious is the word to describe a chain-smoking dame who charges around town in her high heels, dragging a kid behind her.”
– Roger Ebert
“Cassavetes set out to transform New York City into Never-Never Land. From the film’s magically evocative opening sequence, a series of aerial shots of a nighttime New York approaching dawn, the city of Gloria is beautiful, recognizable and completely alien.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times
“John Cassavetes clearly set out to make a commercial film, but, intransigent personality that he was, he turned in a slice of pure avant-garde.”
– Dave Kehr - DirectorJerry SchatzbergStarsAl PacinoKitty WinnAlan VintFollows the lives of heroin addicts who frequent "Needle Park" in New York City.Directed by Jerry Schatzberg
Starring Al Pacino and Kitty Winn
*7:00pm screening followed by Q&A with director Jerry Schatzberg
(1971) Scintillating debut for Al Pacino, as a small-time crook leading decent Kitty Winn (Best Actress, Cannes) on the downhill heroin path. Schatzberg’s second film established him as a major stylist. Screenplay by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. DCP restoration. Approx. 110 min.
REVIEWS
“Presents a fascinating picture of the tony Upper West Side, which was no less immune [than the rest of New York] to the troubles of the city.”
– Jason Bailey, Flavorwire
“Schatzberg creates a tremulous visual palette of briskly panning telephoto shots and macrophotographic intimacy that unfolds a city within a city and reveals a second world of experience that shows through New York’s abraded surfaces.”
– Richard Brody
“Pacino is a force of nature.”
– The Village Voice
“One of the most gifted and original filmmakers to emerge during the 70s.”
– Dave Kehr, The New York Times
“A special and extraordinary movie! A carefully observed portrait.”
– Roger Ebert
“Schatzberg moves with considerable force over the urban territory of Midnight Cowboy, using hand-held cameras and a sustained editing rhythm to convey the couple’s gradual descent into hell as mercilessly as he shows the needles entering his characters’ veins.”
– Time Out (London)
“A relatively unsung chronicle of ‘70s alienation… Remembered mainly as the neophyte Pacino’s launching pad into Godfather stardom, the modestly scaled, harrowing Needle Park has over the decades proven to be nearly as influential as Coppola’s blockbuster, setting a cinematic template later used by Drugstore Cowboy, Requiem for a Dream, and a good deal of Sundance Channel fodder.”
– Fernando F. Croce, Slant Magazine - DirectorSidney LumetStarsAl PacinoJohn RandolphJack KehoeAn honest New York cop named Frank Serpico blows the whistle on rampant corruption in the force only to have his comrades turn against him.Directed by Sidney Lumet
Starring Al Pacino
(1973) Al Pacino’s Frank Serpico flashes back from his beginnings as a naive, idealistic police recruit to a bearded, hippie-like undercover detective in a relentless mission against corrupt cops, aided only by pot smoking button-down cop Tony Roberts. Pacino’s blowtorch performance as the actual hero cop vaulted him to the front ranks of American actors. 35mm. Approx. 129 min.
REVIEWS
“Galvanizing because of Al Pacino's splendid performance in the title role and because of the tremendous intensity that Mr. Lumet brings to this sort of subject.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times
“A tour de force genre piece that transcends the supercop conventions to create a moving, engrossing portrait of Frank Serpico.”
– Chicago Reader
“The ultimate development of the all-cops-are-bent theme that understandably proliferated in the counterculture-dominated, post-Watergate 1970s.”
– Empire
“One of the grittiest, least romantic movies ever shot in New York.”
– Philip French
“Never has a cast wrung so many meanings out of one four-letter word, and I don’t mean love.”
– Pauline Kael - DirectorJoseph SargentStarsWalter MatthauRobert ShawMartin BalsamFour armed men hijack a New York City subway car and demand a ransom for the passengers. The city's police are faced with a conundrum: Even if it's paid, how could they get away?Directed by Joseph Sargent
*Introduced by Bruce Goldstein
(1974) “This city hasn’t got a million dollars!” kvetches a flu-plagued Koch-lookalike mayor to hovering spin doctor Tony Roberts when he gets that ransom ultimatum: cough up the dough in an hour or 17 passengers on the downtown 6 train get wasted. Wisecracks and bullets fly as quick-witted Transit Authority cop Walter Matthau negotiates with Robert Shaw’s all-business “Mr. Blue.” 35mm. Approx. 104 min.
REVIEWS
“One of this writer’s all-time favorite New York movies. The glimses of the city (and the subway system) that it gives us are choice — particularly in the film’s breathless climax.”
– Jason Bailey, Flavorwire
“Walter Matthau is gruff, shaggy and sardonic as a Transit Authority lieutenant; Robert Shaw is clipped and cruel, and the supporting performances are allowed to grow and take on personality. These aren’t machine-made genre characters, but individuals (and, more specifically, New Yorkers with gallows humor, paranoia, warmth and resiliency).”
– Roger Ebert
“Superior exercise in urban paranoia.”
– Dave Kehr - DirectorWilliam FriedkinStarsGene HackmanRoy ScheiderFernando ReyA pair of NYPD detectives in the Narcotics Bureau stumble onto a heroin smuggling ring based in Marseilles, but stopping them and capturing their leaders proves an elusive goal.Directed by William Friedkin
(1971) Traffic problems in Brooklyn, as Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle car-chases a killer-bearing B train, after being snookered by Fernando Rey in a cross-midtown shadowing topped by a classic subway door jamming. Multi-Oscared re-creation of a legendary drug bust. DCP. Approx. 104 min.
REVIEWS
“1971 was a hell of a year for gritty Big Apple movies… One of the best all-around tours of New York in [the 70s].”
– Jason Bailey, Flavorwire
“Hard-nosed, pork-pie-hatted, vulgar, a tough cop in the latest measure of a fine tradition, [Hackman] exists neither to rise nor to fall, to excite neither pity nor terror—but to function. To function in New York City is its own heroism, and the film recognizes that.”
– The New York Times
“A knockout police thriller with so much jarring excitement that it almost calls for comic-book expletives. POW!, ZOWIE!”
– Jay Cocks
“Solid, slick filmmaking, full of dirty cops, shrewd operators, and slam-bang action.”
– Dave Kehr
“Like an aggravated case of New York.”
– Pauline Kael
“Friedkin’s symphony of long, sharp shocks is memorable for any number of sequences: the cat-and-mouse subway game, the ballbusting bar shakedown, a breakneck chase scene that still seems leagues ahead of greatest-ever competitors.”
– David Fear, Time Out New York
“Fraught with urban decay and racial tension, Friedkin’s bang-bang procedural created a paradigm for the tell-it-like-it-is cop drama… While Dirty Harry provided audiences an anti-establishment legal vigilante, French Connection introduced the notion of the heroic working-class narc. Blue-collar to the bone, Popeye lives in public housing and feeds his face with a rancid-looking slice in the course of a freezing afternoon spent staking out on the Upper East Side boîte where the French smuggler who is about to unload 100 pounds of uncut heroin leisurely consumes a multi-course feast.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice
“In a sense, the whole movie is a chase… the smugglers and the law officers are endlessly circling and sniffing each other… Doyle himself is a bad cop, by ordinary standards; he harasses and brutalizes people, he is a racist, he endangers innocent people during the chase scene (which is a high-speed ego trip)… The French Connection is as amoral as its hero, as violent, as obsessed and as frightening.”
– Roger Ebert - DirectorJohn BadhamStarsJohn TravoltaKaren Lynn GorneyBarry MillerAnxious about his future after high school, a 19-year-old Italian-American from Brooklyn tries to escape the harsh reality of his bleak family life by dominating the dance floor at the local disco.Directed by John Badham
Starring John Travolta
(1977) John Travolta’s Tony Manero struts down the streets of Bay Ridge, eating two pizza slices on top of each other, all to the music of the Bee Gees. And then there’s Saturday night at the 2001 Odyssey disco. 35mm. Approx. 119 min.
REVIEWS
“15 percent disco, 85 percent a grueling and heartbreaking look at a go-nowhere schnook (who can dance).”
– Matt Prigge, Metro
“DAZZLING. [Badham’s] camera occupies the dance floor so well that we really do understand the lure of the disco world, for all of the emptiness and cruelty the characters find there.”
– Roger Ebert
“John Travolta is so earnestly in tune with the character that Tony becomes touching and a source of fierce, desperate excitement. The movie has a violent energy very like his own.”
– Janet Maslin
“Tony’s pent-up physicality draws us into the pop rapture of this film.”
– Pauline Kael - DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsJane FondaDonald SutherlandCharles CioffiA small-town detective searching for a missing man has only one lead: a connection with a New York prostitute.Directed by Alan J. Pakula
Starring Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland
(1971) Small town detective Donald Sutherland, journeying to NYC to seek a friend’s murderer, finds both were clients of high-priced call girl Jane Fonda – and then things get ominous. Ruthlessly stylized photography by Gordon Willis (Manhattan), and a partly-improvised (and Oscar-winning) performance by Jane highlight glossily Noir thriller. 35mm. Approx. 114 min.
“Criminally underappreciated!”
– Benedict Cosgrove, Gothamist
“What is it about Jane Fonda that makes her such a fascinating actress to watch? She has a sort of nervous intensity that keeps her so firmly locked into a film character that the character actually seems distracted by things that come up in the movie. You almost have the feeling, a couple of times in Klute, that the Fonda character had other plans and was just leaving the room when this (whatever it is) came up.”
– Roger Ebert
“Hinges on the contradictions of autonomy and emotional commitment facing would-be independent women… For once, a genuinely psychological thriller.”
– Time Out
“[Fonda] makes all the right choices, from the mechanics of her walk and her voice inflection to the penetration of the girl’s raging psyche. It is a rare performance.”
– Jay Cocks
“A movie resolutely of its moment that still surges with third-rail electricity. The dread and unease that suffuse the film seem rooted partly in anxiety over second-wave feminism, the cresting of which nearly coincided with the release of this movie, one that centers on its heroine’s profound ambivalence about growing emotionally attached to a man.”
– The Village Voice
“One of the strongest woman characters to reach the screen.”
– Pauline Kael
“Challenges the historically male preserve of the private eye story.”
– Forster Hirsch - DirectorSidney LumetStarsAl PacinoJohn CazalePenelope AllenThree amateur bank robbers plan to hold up a bank. A nice simple robbery: Walk in, take the money, and run. Unfortunately, the supposedly uncomplicated heist suddenly becomes a bizarre nightmare as everything that could go wrong does.Directed by Sidney Lumet
Starring Al Pacino
(1975) As a scorcher unravels from day to night in Brooklyn, the motive for Al Pacino’s botched bank robbery/hostage taking is revealed to be the funding of his transgender wife’s sex-change operation. Lumet’s ultimate exercise in realism, with 60% of the dialogue improvised – including Pacino’s phone call to his wife, shot in a single, 15-minute take. DCP. Approx. 124 min.
REVIEWS
“One of the best ‘New York’ movies ever made.”
– Pauline Kael
“Filmmaking at its best.”
– Variety
“Sidney Lumet is a master filmmaker. Here he has created a film made brilliant by its deeply seen characters, in a plot that could have obviously been cheapened and exploited but is always human and true.”
– Roger Ebert
“An astonishing fusion of suspense and character, powered by superior ensemble acting.”
– Jonathan Rosenbaum
“The most accurate, most flamboyant of Lumet’s New York movies.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times - DirectorCarl ReinerStarsGeorge SegalRuth GordonRon LeibmanWhen an attorney meets the girl of his dreams, he fears that his batty mother will scare her off, so he schemes to eliminate the senile old woman.Directed by Carl Reiner
Starring George Segal and Ruth Gordon
(1970) “Is that a tush!” Exasperated son George Segal can’t stop insane Jewish mother Ruth Gordon from kissing his behind, while gorilla-suited brother Ron Leibman finds his true love in Central Park, in the blackest of all black comedies. With the original, uncensored answer to the title. 35mm. Approx. 82 min.
12:30, 4:00, 7:30
“GENUINELY OUTRAGEOUS…A series of extended slapstick riffs in which each dreamlike scene heads straight into psychosexual hyperbole...Hollywood’s equivalent of the Kafkaesque.”
– J. Hoberman
“Works from the firm conviction that everyone in New York City is insane.”
– Variety - DirectorIvan PasserStarsGeorge SegalPaula PrentissKaren BlackA smart-mouthed junkie and loser known as J.J. (George Segal) spends his days looking for just "one more fix".Directed by Ivan Passer
Starring George Segal and Robert De Niro
(1971) George Segal in his “most prodigious and imaginative performance” (Pauline Kael), as a heroin addict who haunts Times Square until a friend gets the obligatory “hot shot” in a hotel elevator. With Karen Black and a pre-Mean Streets Bobby De Niro. 35mm. Approx. 88 min.
2:10, 5:40, 9:15
“A lighter portrait of addiction, thanks mostly to the offhand wit of star George Segal….[with] Times Square looking just as weathered and dirty as it did in Midnight Cowboy two years earlier, if not more so.”
– Jason Bailey, Flavorwire
“An unjustly neglected film.”
– Pauline Kael
“Makes you wonder what Passer’s been doing all your life.”
– J. Hoberman - DirectorDavid GreeneStarsVictor GarberLynne ThigpenKatie HanleyAn adaption of the musical, in a modern-day song-and-dance recreation of the Gospel of St. Matthew.Directed by David Greene
(1973) Flower power NYC, with the parables and overall story of the Gospel of St Matthew reenacted by hippie-ly clad players all over mainly empty Gotham locations. Adapted from the endlessly revived Stephen Schwartz Broadway musical. 35mm. Approx. 103 min.
3:05, 7:40
“I can’t remember another film that seems to have caught the way New York appears on a lot of hot summer days, when its jagged outlines are softened by a golden smog.”
– Vincent Canby - DirectorSidney LumetStarsDiana RossMichael JacksonNipsey RussellAn adaptation of "The Wizard of Oz" that tries to capture the essence of the African-American experience.Directed by Sidney Lumet
Starring Diana Ross, Lena Horne, Michael Jackson and Richard Pryor
(1978) Schoolteacher Diana Ross eases on down the road to the land of Oz, which looks exactly like... 70s NYC! From the all-Black Broadway version of The Wizard of Oz, with Lena Horne (Lumet’s mother-in-law) as the Good Witch, Michael Jackson as Scarecrow, and Richard Pryor in the title role, et al. 35mm. Approx. 133 min.
12:30, 5:10, 9:45
“Sidney Lumet’s spectacular, joyous production of The Wiz generates a mood of wonder and sentimental rapture.”
– Washington Post - DirectorElaine MayStarsWalter MatthauElaine MayJack WestonHenry Graham lives the life of a playboy. When his lawyer tells him one day that his lifestyle has consumed all his funds, he needs an idea to avoid climbing down the social ladder. So he intends to marry a rich woman and - murder her.Directed by Elaine May
Starring Walter Matthau and Elaine May
(1971) Inheritance-denied playboy Walter Matthau contemplates two solutions: suicide or rich marriage. Enter nerdy heiress/botany prof Elaine May. New choice: settle down... or murder. May’s debut as writer/director. 35mm. Approx. 102 min.
12:30, 4:30, 8:30
“A film of such wit and comic invention that it belongs among the great American comedies”
– The Village Voice
“Reveals the essence of marital love more brutally than many confrontational melodramas.”
– Richard Brody
“One of the funniest movies of our unfunny age.”
– Roger Ebert - DirectorOtto PremingerStarsDyan CannonJames CocoJennifer O'NeillWhile awaiting the outcome of her husband's surgery, Julie Messinger discovers he has been having affairs.Directed by Otto Preminger
Starring Dyan Cannon
(1971) Black comedy ensues as ex-oppressed wife Dyan Cannon finds dying husband’s extramarital scorecard, then starts one of her own. Pseudonymous script by Elaine May, with Burgess Meredith’s (“My last chance for a nude scene”) book/jock-strapped dance a bizarre highlight. DCP. Approx. 101 min.
2:30, 6:30
“A hard, unsentimental, deeply cynical comedy.”
– Roger Ebert - DirectorWilliam FriedkinStarsAl PacinoPaul SorvinoKaren AllenA police officer goes undercover in the underground S&M gay subculture of New York City to catch a serial killer who is preying on gay men.Directed by William Friedkin
Starring Al Pacino
(1980) Increasingly ambivalent undercover cop Al Pacino dons leather drag to hunt a gay-bashing serial killer through an assortment of West Village S&M bars, in the most controversial movie of the 80s. DCP. Approx. 102 min.
REVIEWS
“One of the most controversial New York movies of the era. Preserves a fascinating glimpse of [the cruising] subculture, with scenes shot in real downtown leather bars.”
– Jason Bailey, Flavorwire
“It has something to offend almost everyone.”
– Frank Rich, TIME - DirectorGordon ParksStarsRichard RoundtreeMoses GunnCharles CioffiA crime lord hires black private eye, John Shaft, to find and retrieve his kidnapped daughter.Directed by Gordon Parks
(1971) “Who’s the Black private dick that’s a Sex Machine to all the chicks?” Richard Roundtree is John Shaft, one cool dude in turtleneck and leather jacket, bopping down The Deuce to the beat of Isaac Hayes’ Oscar-winning theme song, and handling cop pal Charles Cioffi the bodies of half the drug dealers on the East Coast. 35mm. Approx. 100 min.
“Forty years of gumshoe noir collided with black power in this 1971 action classic.”
– J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader
“A hip, cool, entertaining thriller.”
– Time Out
“The first picture to show a black man who leads a life free of racial torment.”
– Ebony - DirectorGordon Parks Jr.StarsRon O'NealCarl LeeSheila FrazierThe daily routine of cocaine dealer Priest who wants to score one more super deal and retire.Directed by Gordon Parks Jr.
(1972) Coke-blowing Harlem pusher Priest has fine vines, a mean haul and a pair of foxes, but he wants to split from the life. Ron O’Neal stars as one of the era’s most unforgettable icons and the ultimate in early 70s fashion statements. Music by Curtis Mayfield. 35mm. Approx. 96 min.
“Gordon Parks Jr. was one of the greatest casualties of the collapse of blaxploitation cinema, a director with a distinctive, tightly packed visual style and a remarkably bitter vision for this supposedly escapist genre.”
– Dave Kehr
“Its gut pleasures are real, and there are a lot of them.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times - DirectorMartin ScorseseStarsRobert De NiroJodie FosterCybill ShepherdA mentally unstable veteran works as a nighttime taxi driver in New York City, where the perceived decadence and sleaze fuels his urge for violent action.Directed by Martin Scorsese
Starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster and Harvey Keitel
(1976) Robert De Niro’s insomniac cabbie Travis Bickle transforms himself into a mohawked, armed-to-the-teeth avenging angel, meeting his own judgment day in the form of child hooker Jodie Foster and her pimp Harvey Keitel. Shot during a sweltering NYC summer-cum-garbage strike. 35mm. Approx. 113 min.
REVIEWS
“Few film captured the squalor of that era more viscerally… The portrait of Times Square as a hotbed of porno theaters, junkies, and prostitutes is a jarring contrast to the scrubbed-down, Disney-fied version of today.”
– Jason Bailey, Flavorwire
“A BRILLIANT NIGHTMARE.”
– Rober Ebert
“FEROCIOUSLY POWERFUL… The whole movie has a sense of vertigo.”
– Pauline Kael
“Taxi Driver synthesized noir, neorealist, and New Wave stylistics; it assimilated Hollywood’s recent vigilante cycle, drafting then-déclassé blaxploitation in the service of a presumed tell-it-like-it-is naturalism that, predicated on a frank, unrelenting representation of racism, violence, and misogyny, was even more racist, violent, and misogynist than it allowed.”
– The Village Voice
“Martin Scorsese’s unflinching plunge into the darkest recesses of the human soul feels painfully relevant.”
– Time Out
“Like Werner Herzog’s Aguirre or Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver is auteurist psychodrama… Certainly no one connected with Taxi Driver ever again reached such heights (or plumbed such depths).”
– J. Hoberman - DirectorMartin ScorseseStarsRobert De NiroHarvey KeitelDavid ProvalIn New York City's Little Italy, a devoutly Catholic mobster must reconcile his desire for power, his feelings for his epileptic lover, and his devotion to his troublesome friend.Directed by Martin Scorsese
Starring Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel
(1973, Martin Scorsese) Guilt-ridden hood Harvey Keitel keeps a low profile, but out-of-his-friggin’-mind cousin Robert De Niro doesn’t give a flyin’ pasta fazool about those gambling debts. 35mm.
Approx. 110 min.
Plus Les Rues de Mean Streets (2010, Bruce Goldstein), a tour of Marty’s old nabe. Approx. 7 min.
REVIEWS
“Scorsese directs with a breathless, head-on energy which infuses the performances, the sharp fast talk, the noise, neon and violence with a charge of adrenalin. One of the best American films of the decade.”
– Time Out
“No matter how bleak the milieu, no matter how heartbreaking the narrative, some films are so thoroughly, beautifully realized they have a kind of tonic effect that has no relation to the subject matter.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times
“A true original, and a triumph of personal filmmaking. This picture about the experience of growing up in New York’s Little Italy has an unsettling, episodic rhythm and it’s dizzyingly sensual. Scorsese, shows us a thicker-textured rot than we have ever had in an American movie, and a riper sense of evil.”
– Pauline Kael - DirectorSidney LumetStarsFaye DunawayWilliam HoldenPeter FinchA television network cynically exploits a deranged former anchor's ravings and revelations about the news media for its own profit, but finds that his message may be difficult to control.Directed by Sidney Lumet
Starring Peter Finch, William Holden, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight
(1976) “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” bellows “mad prophet of the airwaves” Peter Finch – with America seemingly joining in – as network news head William Holden breaks the news of his guilty affair with scheming entertainment chief Faye Dunaway to wife Beatrice Straight. Paddy Chayefsky’s scabrous satire of television eerily prefigures today’s political climate. Winner of three acting Oscars: Finch (posthumously), Dunaway, and Straight – as well as for Chayefsky’s script, plus six other nominations. 35mm print courtesy Harvard Film Archive.
Approx. 121 min.
REVIEWS
“BRILLIANTLY, CRUELLY FUNNY.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times
“In other hands, the film might have whirled to pieces. In [Lumet’s], it became a touchstone.”
– Roger Ebert
“Endures (wide 1970s lapels and all) as a brave, outspoken work.”
– The Guardian - DirectorJohn CassavetesStarsBen GazzaraPeter FalkJohn CassavetesAfter the death of a common friend, three married men leave their lives together, seeking pleasure and freedom and ultimately leaving for London.Directed by John Cassavetes
Starring John Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk
(1970) Cassavetes’ epic of male menopause, as he sends Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara and himself on a transcontinental bender. A search for lost youth moving from barroom to basketball court to gaming tables, to a series of sordid hotel room trysts – and back home again for the dreaded morning after. DCP restoration. Approx. 154 min.
REVIEWS
“Impossible to dismiss or shake off. The performances are potent.”
– Jonathan Rosenbaum
“Few films capture with such life-affirming wonder the despair, hatred, and incomprehension that drives the sexes together and apart.”
– Richard Brody - DirectorPeter YatesStarsRobert RedfordGeorge SegalRon LeibmanDortmunder and his pals plan to steal a huge diamond from a museum. But this turns out to be only the first time they have to steal it...Directed by Peter Yates
Starring George Segal
(1972) Ace crook Robert Redford’s Dortmunder, locksmith George Segal, and driver Ron Leibman heist a lost African gem from the Brooklyn Museum, but only slippery lawyer Zero Mostel knows where the loot is stashed now. From the novel by crime titan Donald Westlake. 35mm studio archive print. Approx. 101 min.
12:30, 4:30, 8:30
“It’s never been clear why The Hot Rock didn’t get more love at its 1972 release. (Maybe because the city was simply an unfunny tableau of urban decline, not yet the object of nostalgic affection it would become.) Even so, the film is an embarrassment of riches.”
– The New York Times - DirectorSidney LumetStarsSean ConneryDyan CannonMartin BalsamAfter ten years in prison to protect a mafia family, Duke Anderson is released and he cashes in a debt of honor with the mob to bankroll a caper.Directed by Sidney Lumet
Starring Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon and Christopher Walken
(1971) Everybody seems to be listening as safecracker Sean Connery decides to clean out ex-lover Dyan Cannon’s entire Upper East Side apartment building during the city’s deserted Labor Day weekend, with a team including electronics expert Christopher Walken (in his debut). 35mm. Approx. 99 min.
“I am full of admiration—for the superb pacing, the tactful understatement of the location shooting, the sharp feel of the city.”
– The New York Times - DirectorWoody AllenStarsDiane KeatonGeraldine PageKristin GriffithThree sisters find their lives spinning out of control in the wake of their parents' sudden, unexpected divorce.Directed by Woody Allen
Starring Diane Keaton and Geraldine Page
(1978) As daughters Mary Ben Hurt, Diane Keaton and Kristen Griffith try to handle things in their separate ways, super-aesthete/control freak mom Geraldine Page goes to pieces when dad E.G. Marshall demands a separation. And then Marshall finds someone very different. Allen’s fist “serious” picture and first without him as actor. 35mm. Approx. 93 min.
“Allen is astonishingly assured in his first drama… When it’s over, we may even find ourselves quietly cheered that Allen has seen so clearly how things can be.”
– Roger Ebert
“Interiors looks beautiful. It has been photographed by Gordon Willis in cool colors that suggest civilization’s precarious control of natural forces.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times
“One of the most spectacular changes of direction for an American artist.”
– Time Out (London) - DirectorFrank PerryStarsRichard BenjaminFrank LangellaCarrie SnodgressA housewife with an abusive husband has an affair with a writer.Directed by Frank Perry
(1970) Cornflower blue-eyed housewife Carrie Snodgrass steps from the frying pan into the fire, as she finds romantic relief from sadistic lawyer husband Richard Benjamin with bedroom-eyed Frank Langella. 35mm. Approx. 104 min.
2:25, 6:25
“We’re irritated by the things the character puts up with, but Miss Snodgress is beautifully good at putting up with them.”
– Roger Ebert
“Escapes its genre and becomes the kind of present and lucid mystery that signifies great movie making.”
– Roger Greenspun, The New York Times
“Very funny in its acerbic swipes at American success-orientated society.”
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London) - DirectorArthur HillerStarsGeorge C. ScottDiana RiggBarnard HughesA hospital's chief-of-staff struggles to find meaning in his life during a spate of staff deaths.Directed by Arthur Hiller
(1971) Top Doc George C. Scott’s split with his wife — but can’t get it up anyway — and while hitting the vodka is a flop at suicide, doctors and nurses are accidentally (?) winding up dead — and then ex-flower child Diana Rigg arrives. Paddy Chayefsky’s second of three Screenplay Oscars. 35mm. Approx. 103 min.
“Paddy Chayefsky has been responsible for some lovely lines in his life, but nothing quite to equal the monologue by which this marvelous actress [Rigg] seduces [Scott], by word and well-exposed leg.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times - DirectorAnthony HarveyStarsGeorge C. ScottJoanne WoodwardJack GilfordIn a Manhattan psychiatric hospital, a man convinced that he is Sherlock Holmes is treated by a female doctor who happens to be named Watson.Directed by Anthony Harvey
(1971) Around the bend since his wife’s death, judge George C. Scott thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes, complete with deerstalker, and hard on the trail of that dastardly Moriarty. But when his brother tries to get him committed, shrink Joanne Woodward’s Dr. Watson (!), starts to get in on the game herself. Adapted by James Goldman (Lion in Winter) from his play. 35mm. Approx. 86 min. - DirectorSydney PollackStarsRobert RedfordFaye DunawayCliff RobertsonA bookish CIA researcher in Manhattan finds all his co-workers dead, and must outwit those responsible until he figures out who he can really trust.Directed by Sydney Pollack
Starring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway and Max von Sydow
(1975) Bringing back lunch to a NY CIA office, analyst Robert Redford finds everybody dead — and from then on he’s on the run, with big trust issues, among them Faye Dunaway’s hideout holder, Max von Sydow’s assassin and Cliff Robertson’s Agency exec. DCP. Approx. 117 min.
2:35, 7:55
“The action rarely falters, and at its best the film offers an intriguing slice of neo-Hitchcock.”
– Time Out
“Three Days of the Condor creates without effort or editorializing that sense of isolation—that far remove from reality—within which super-government agencies can operate with such heedless immunity.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times
“All too believable.”
– Roger Ebert - DirectorIrvin KershnerStarsFaye DunawayTommy Lee JonesBrad DourifA famous fashion photographer develops a disturbing ability to see through the eyes of a killer.Directed by Irvin Kershner
Starring Faye Dunaway and Tommy Lee Jones
(1978) Fashion photog Faye Dunaway has hit it big with Helmut Newtonish stagings with stylized violence; only trouble is, she’s now getting killer’s eye visions of real life murders, and cop Tommy Lee Jones is showing her unsolved murder scenes that match her fashion shoots. And then she sees... 35mm. Approx. 104 min.
12:30, 5:50, 10:10
“It’s the cleverness of Eyes of Laura Mars that counts, cleverness that manifests itself in superlative casting, drily controlled direction from Irvin Kershner, and spectacular settings that turn New York into the kind of eerie, lavish dreamland that could exist only in the idle noodlings of the very, very hip.”
– Janet Maslin
“This New York-set thriller operates on mood and atmosphere and moves so fast, with such delicate changes of rhythm, that its excitement has a subterranean sexiness.”
– Pauline Kael - DirectorBob FosseStarsRoy ScheiderJessica LangeAnn ReinkingDirector/choreographer Bob Fosse tells his own life story as he details the sordid career of Joe Gideon, a womanizing, drug-using dancer.Directed by Bob Fosse
Starring Roy Scheider and Jessica Lange
Winner of four Academy Awards.
(1979) “It’s showtime!” as Roy Scheider’s five-packs-a-day, womanizing workaholic director-choreographer lands him in intensive care and a date with Jessica Lange’s Angel of Death. Fosse’s 8 ½ sees his life as a series of high concept production numbers. DCP. Approx. 123 min.
REVIEWS
“All That Jazz set a new standard for speed and complexity, its structure boasting as many temporal pirouettes as the headiest art house fare. Yet the film never feels labored. It’s not homework. It’s showtime.”
– Matt Zoller Seitz
“An uproarious display of brilliance, nerve, dance, maudlin confessions, inside jokes and, especially, ego.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times
“Fosse’s finest cinematic achievement.”
– Slant Magazine
“One of the most self-indulgent movies ever made—but blessedly so.”
– The Dissolve
“A must for Fosse fans.”
– Leslie Halliwell - DirectorJohn SchlesingerStarsDustin HoffmanLaurence OlivierRoy ScheiderAfter the shocking murder of his older brother, a New York history student finds himself inexplicably hounded by shadowy government agents on the trail of a Nazi war criminal who is trying to retrieve smuggled diamonds.Directed by John Schlesinger
Starring Laurence Olivier, Dustin Hoffman and Roy Scheider
(1976) “Is it safe?” whispers/hisses Nazi war criminal and dentist Laurence Olivier, doing a little Novocain-free probing on grad student/marathoner Dustin Hoffman — what has big brother Roy Scheider gotten him into? And who’s got those diamonds? Adapted from William Goldman’s bestseller, with Olivier’s walk through the 47th Street Diamond District a highlight. 35mm (12:30, 5:20) DCP (2:50, 7:30). Approx. 125 min.
REVIEWS
“A VISCERAL THRILLER.”
– Pauline Kael
“As well-crafted escapist entertainment, as a diabolical thriller, the movie works with relentless skill.”
– Roger Ebert
“Instead of logic, the film presents us with a literally breathtaking nightmare that turns out to be, within the film, absolutely true.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times - DirectorHal AshbyStarsBeau BridgesLee GrantDiana SandsAt the age of 29, Elgar Enders (Beau Bridges) "runs away" from home. This running away consists of buying a building in a black ghetto in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. Initially, his intention is to evict the black tenants and convert it into a posh flat. But Elgar is not one to be bound by yesterday's urges, and soon he has other thoughts on his mind. He's grown fond of the black tenants and particularly of Fanny (Diana Sands), the wife of a black radical; he's maybe fallen in love with Lanie (Marki Bey), a mixed race girl; he's lost interest in redecorating his home. Joyce (Lee Grant), his mother has not relinquished this interest and in one of the film's most hilarious sequences gives her MasterCharge card to Marge (Pearl Bailey), a black tenant and appoints her decorator.Directed by Hal Ashby
(1970) Callow, whiter than white rich yuppie Beau Bridges finds his dream house: a tenement building in way-before-gentrification Park Slope. Think he’ll get African-American tenants Pearl Bailey, Lou Gossett Jr., Diana Sands, et al. to move out? 35mm. Approx. 112 min.
REVIEWS
“No film of the period is more prescient.”
– Jason Bailey, Flavorwire
“One of the funniest social comedies of the period, as well as the most human.”
– J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
“Leaves an almost eerie tonic effect of truth and laughter.”
– The New York Times
“Full of sharp, absurdist humor.”
– Pauline Kael
“A more honest, if less optimistic, portrait of American race relations than we usually see in the movies.”
– Roger Ebert
“The Landlord deserves attention, and not just because it’s a terrific film. It is a chance for audiences to see a pivotal moment not only in the career of Mr. Ashby but also in the histories of American film and, coincidentally, of New York real estate.
– Mike Hale
“Like a Blaxploitation movie made by Buñuel.”
– Darren Hughes, Senses of Cinema
“A wondrously wise, sad and hilarious comedy. Leaves an almost eerie tonic effect of truth and laughter, with some of the sharpest, funniest dialogue in a long time.”
– The New York Times
“There’s something really great about it, and it’s a film that I’d kind of fallen in love with. There’s something unique about the softness of the colors, about the way you can light things well but they’re not overly sharp and vivid. There’s just something more human about them, a more poetic way of capturing reality.”
– Alexander Payne - DirectorWoody AllenStarsWoody AllenDiane KeatonMariel HemingwayThe life of a divorced television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.Directed by Woody Allen
Starring Woody Allen, Meryl Streep, Mariel Hemingway and Diane Keaton
(1979) Dumped by wife Meryl Streep for another woman, Woody Allen now dates high-schooler Mariel Hemingway – but pal Michael Murphy’s mistress Diane Keaton sure looks good. Backed by a Gershwin score and shot by Gordon Willis in ravishing b&w, this is one of the greatest odes to New York. 35mm. Approx. 96 min.
REVIEWS
“I like to think that one hundred years from now, if people see the picture, they will learn something about what life is like in the 1970s.”
– Woody Allen
“The city leaps out with caricatural precision even as Allen constructs it piecemeal from his own urbane aesthetic. Turning experience into art and vice versa, converting disappointed ideals into existential crises, Allen offers a nostalgic vision of New York that was utterly of its time and that remains as strong as its reality.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“Allen’s best film: the most grown-up, most technically accomplished, most securely pitched.”
– Foster Hirsch
“Woody Allen’s writing isn’t just persuasive; it cuts like a laser through the gorgeous black-and-white valentine he constructs to the city. His one-take scenes and ingenious tracking shots etch an indelible portrait of a community in slow decay and are no less breathtaking than Renoir’s Rules of the Game.”
– Neil LaBute
“WORLD-CLASS BLACK-AND WHITE CINEMATOGRAPHY! Manhattan fiddle[s] with a wide range of levels, roaming freely between the screwball experimentalism of Annie Hall’s sketch-autobiography and the considerably more subdued oceanfront tragedy that [Allen] made in the wake of his Oscar triumph… The shape-shifting city sets the tone for all that happens in it; it exerts an irresistible draw on our hero, never failing to provide the perfect background image, sidewalk cafe, or lunch counter to enable (but never to judge) his good and bad decisions.”
– Jaime M. Christley, Slant Magazine
“Framed as a loving tribute to neurotic New York, it’s funny and sad in exactly the right proportions.”
– Tom Milne, Time Out (London)
“A masterpiece that has become a film for the ages by not seeking to be a film of the moment.”
– Andrew Sarris - DirectorPaul MazurskyStarsJill ClayburghAlan BatesMichael MurphyA wealthy woman from Manhattan's Upper East Side struggles to deal with her new identity and her sexuality after her husband of 16 years leaves her for a younger woman.Directed by Paul Mazursky
(1978) Jill Clayburgh’s got it all: a 16-year marriage, nice kid, an enjoyable job at an art gallery — but then weaselly husband Michael Murphy leaves her for a tie seller at Bloomingdale’s. Both criticized and praised by feminists, with 100% acclaim for in-every-scene Clayburgh. 35mm studio archive print. Approx. 124 min.
12:30, 4:50, 9:15
“Mazursky finds the right tone again and again. And it’s not always very easy to find, because he wants to make his film both true and funny, not sacrificing the laughs for the truth.”
– Roger Ebert
“AN INSTANT-CLASSIC DRAMA, starring the luminous and lyrical Jill Clayburgh. Mazursky applies a light and graceful touch to matters of intimate agony. Mazursky’s achievement is distinctively choreographic: for all the trenchant conversation, he sets the characters into mad motion, alone and together—jogging, dancing, fighting, strolling, embracing—and even the static set pieces, in bars and at dinner tables, have the sculptural authority of frozen ballets.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker - DirectorJeff NicholsStarsRuth NeggaJoel EdgertonWill DaltonThe story of Richard and Mildred Loving, a couple whose arrest for interracial marriage in 1960s Virginia began a legal battle that would end with the Supreme Court's historic 1967 decision.Directed by Irvin Kershner
Starring George Segal and Eva Marie Saint
(1970) Angst in suburbia. Commercial artist George Segal makes good money but never enough, while stalwart wife Eva Marie Saint tries to hang on until that darned closed-circuit security camera shows her party guests one tryst too many. 35mm. Approx. 89 min.
3:00, 7:15
“Loving’s world is so greatly an extension of the character Segal creates that I cannot happily imagine the film without him.”
– Roger Greenspun, The New York Times - DirectorBarry ShearStarsAnthony QuinnYaphet KottoAnthony FranciosaTwo New York City cops go after amateur crooks who are trying to rip off the Mafia and start a gang war.Directed by Barry Shear
Starring Tony Franciosa and Anthony Quinn
(1972) “Somebody *beep* with my balls, I’d talk, too!” philosophizes a hood on the run from ambitious Mafioso Tony Franciosa. Old-style cop Anthony Quinn and Buppie detective Yaphet Kotto are also on the trail, in Hollywood’s first all-hand-held shot feature, filmed entirely in Harlem.
35mm. Approx. 102 min.
12:30, 4:20, 8:10
“A GUTSY AFFAIR.”
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out
“Extremely seedy and violent, Across 110th Street makes extraordinary use of Harlem locations”
– Don Druker, Chicago Reader - DirectorAram AvakianStarsCliff GormanJoseph BolognaCharlene DallasTwo disillusioned New York City policemen plan a ten million dollar robbery to fuel their low pensions, only to run into one debacle after another in the process.Directed by Aram Avakian
(1973) Underpaid, burnt out, and fed up cops Cliff Gorman and Joseph Bologna decide to go for a big heist during the Apollo 11 ticker tape parade, but need backup and payoff from the Mafia — and to get out alive. Scripted by crime icon Donald E. Westlake. Thriller? Spoof? Not exactly.
35mm. Approx. 89 min.
2:30, 6:20, 10:10
“The first movie in a long time to understand, rather than merely to exploit, its New York City locales.”
– Roger Greenspun, The New York Times
“The film wrings both excitement and humor.”
– Rob Nixon, TCM - DirectorMichael WinnerStarsCharles BronsonHope LangeVincent GardeniaA New York City architect becomes a one-man vigilante squad after his wife is murdered by street punks. In self-defense, the vengeful man kills muggers on the mean streets after dark.Directed by Michael Winner
Starring Charles Bronson
(1974, Michael Winner) When his wife is brutally murdered, “respectable citizen” Charles Bronson slowly sheds his liberal ways and takes to dispensing “vengeance” on an Upper West Side gone mad with crime. Original IB Technicor 35mm print. Approx. 93 min.
12:30, 4:30, 9:15
“We get just about the definitive Bronson; rarely has a leading role contained fewer words or more violence.”
– Roger Ebert
“Transforms New York into a land mine waiting to explode.”
– Foster Hirsch - DirectorBrian De PalmaStarsMichael CaineAngie DickinsonNancy AllenA mysterious blonde woman kills one of a psychiatrist's patients, and then goes after the high-class call girl who witnessed the murder.Directed by Brian De Palma
Starring Angie Dickinson and Michael Caine
(1980) Dis- and un- satisfied housewife Angie Dickinson has rape fantasies in the shower, must deal with a super nerdy son, gets turned down even by shrink Michael Caine, but during a tour-de-force 9-minute dialogue-less scene in a museum, hooks up with a stranger... and then the head-snapping twists start coming. DCP. Approx. 105 min.
2:25, 7:00
“ONE OF THE MOST SHEERLY ENJOYABLE FILMS, this sophisticated horror comedy is permeated with the distilled essence of impure thoughts. De Palma presents extreme fantasies and pulls the audience into them with such an apparent east that the pleasure of the suspense becomes aphrodisiacal.”
– Pauline Kael
“An audacious blend of black humor, blood-red violence and pure cinematic skill.”
– Peter Sobczynski, Balder and Dash
“Dressed to Kill is the quintessential New York erotic horror-comedy of the grindhouse heyday; the film’s luxurious, almost eerily plastique elegance just barely disguises its unapologetic presentation of fetish iconography.”
– Slant Magazine - DirectorWalter HillStarsMichael BeckJames RemarDorsey WrightA street gang known as the Warriors must fight its way from the Bronx to its home turf on Coney Island when its members are falsely accused of assassinating a respected gang leader.Directed by Walter Hill
(1979) “Warriors, come out to play.” As color-coded gangs gather by the thousands in the Bronx, charismatic leader Cyrus is assassinated and the finger points, mistakenly, at the Warriors – now it’s one long trek back to Coney. Ultra-stylized, violence-packed update of Xenophon’s Anabasis. 35mm. Approx. 90 min.
12:30, 4:20, 8:10
“Looks as if Fritz Lang had directed The Wiz, with occasional contributions from Sergei Eisenstein and Bruce Lee. What is most frightening about the movie is the essential truth of its basic premise: that the streets already belong to the violently and criminally inclined. The city is dying, block by block, from fear, loathing, fire, and desertion. And suddenly a dark and dangerous knighthood emerges on the screen from the ruins.”
– Andrew Sarris, The Village Voice
“ENORMOUSLY ENTERTAINING!”
– Gothamist
“There’s a night-blooming, psychedelic shine to the whole baroque movie… It has – in visual terms – the kind of impact that ‘Rock Around the Clock’ had when it was played behind the titles of Blackboard Jungle. It’s like visual rock, and it’s bursting with energy.”
– Pauline Kael, The New Yorker - DirectorJohn CarpenterStarsKurt RussellLee Van CleefErnest BorgnineIn 1997, when the U.S. president crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent in to rescue him.Directed by John Carpenter
(1981) 1997, and President Donald Pleasence has escape-podded from an Air Force One terrorist takeover into Manhattan, now a river-girdled maximum security prison. Convicted bank robber Kurt Russell’s piece-of-cake assignment: ride a glider onto the World Trade Center and get him out, within the 22 hours before his own injected explosives go off. DCP. Approx. 99 min.
2:20, 6:10, 10:00
“ONE OF THE BEST ESCAPE (AND ESCAPIST) MOVIES. A brutal, very fine-looking suspense melodrama… by far Mr. Carpenter’s most ambitious, most riveting film to date. Works so effectively as a warped vision of ordinary urban blight that it seems to be some kind of hallucinatory editorial.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times
“To many fans who love the filmmaker’s tinkling synth scores, his impeccable widescreen compositions and libertarian wink, this Kurt Russell action flick occupies the sweet spot. For good reason too: The pleasures are right in your face, beginning with the million-dollar idea of turning NYC into a walled-off prison where criminals run free. Even born-and-raised New Yorkers (of which Carpenter was decidedly not) could smile at that histrionic setup; it’s an outsider’s joke made funny by our willingness to be entertained… It feels perfectly positioned between Hollywood’s ’70s-era political cynicism and the dawning age of the blockbuster. The movie proudly wears its affection for crusty Sergio Leone archetypes and countdown-clock suspense sequences; Carpenter was Tarantino long before Tarantino was.”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
“John Carpenter is offering this summer’s moviegoers a rare opportunity: to escape from the air-conditioned torpor of ordinary entertainment into the hothouse humidity of their own paranoia. It’s a trip worth taking.”
– Richard Corliss, TIME