Like the old song goes: summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the street. While the theater has its benefits as a restrictive space, and we do not encourage interrupting those to your immediate left and right with heavy movement, one appreciates, at times, the excuse to tap your feet. Or at least a reminder that theaters aren’t just about a big screen, but a sound system better than the built-in speaker  situated behind your TV.

Hence: Electronica. It’s a new series running at BAM from today, July 10, to July 14, featuring an “amalgam of films from across the globe boasting electronic-heavy soundtracks.” Some titles you might know chapter and verse; others, I think, have not played in New York for at least the decade I’ve lived here. I was glad to speak with BAM’s Yasmina Tawil about Electronica, but what follows is really a discussion of programming in its finer points: when to screen and why; when you can’t screen but really want to; what attracts an audience, and how you attract the audience with something they don’t necessarily want; and how this is seemingly the one realm of cinema where people reject monetary offers. I hope you enjoy, and see something in Electronica as it’s running.

Subscribe here and listen below:

Music courtesy of Lex Walton: “Love Theme from an Unreleased Film” from the album Giving It Up.

While Michael Mann will be getting behind the camera this November for Heat 2––which brings together the epic ensemble of Christian Bale as Vincent Hanna and Leonardo DiCaprio as Chris Shiherlis, with Adam Driver in talks for Wardell and Stephen Graham for Neil McCauley––one will have the chance to experience one of his earlier crime dramas in theaters. In celebration of its 40th anniversary, Manhunter: The Final Cut will be opening on July 24 in a new 4K restoration.

“40 years ago – though armed with Thomas Harris’ excellent novel, “Red Dragon” – its subject matter, the profiling of serial killers, as well as being shocking and raw, was unknown. When adapting, I wanted to make its storytelling deliver audiences into a certain state of threat and emotional engagement. Integral to that was the visualization and use of music with lyrics sometimes working like a libretto. We have carefully remastered the film to try to evoke that mood and intensity, heightened with audio sourced from the original 5.1 35mm analog masters. This latest iteration is that version of the film with which I’m most satisfied,” said director Michael Mann.

Here’s the synopsis: “A retired criminal profiler (William Petersen) reluctantly returns to the FBI to help track down a serial killer of families and is forced to consult an expert—the imprisoned Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox in a subtly chilling performance). The third feature written and directed by Michael Mann is a gripping adaptation of the first of Thomas Harris’s four novels featuring the iconic murderer, and benefits from the filmmaker’s typically striking visuals as well as a top-notch supporting cast, including Tom Noonan as the hunted killer, and three-time Oscar nominee Joan Allen (The Contender, 2000) as his blind love interest.”

Under the guidance of Mann, this 4K scan of the original 35mm negative––with a few shots from an interpositive––was conformed and digitally restored at L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna. Both the theatrical version and the UHD HDR & SDR video color gradings were performed by Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3 in Los Angeles with the director. Sound restoration was done at Audio Mechanics from an original 35mm magnetic 6-track printmaster to release a new 5.1 mix by Luke Schwartzweller at Fox. Technical coordination and deliveries were managed by L’Immagine Ritrovata. This project was supervised by Becca Mann and STUDIOCANAL team, Jean-Pierre Boiget and Delphine Roussel.

Mann added, “If the picture was left the way it was, it would be interesting, but you’d feel some distance …you’d be observing it somewhat. I’m more interested in its original intent impacting you the same way it may have in 1986…that is, to bring you into it again in the original way.”

See the new trailer below.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film at Lincoln Center
Tsai Ming-liang’s The Hole begins playing on a new 35mm print—read our interview with the director.

BAM
Films by David Fincher, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tom Tykwer, and more screen in Electronica.

Japan Society
Rex: A Dinosaur’s Story and Gakuryu Ishii’s Shuffle and The Master of Shiatsu play in new restorations on Friday and Saturday, respectively.

Roxy Cinema
Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place and They Live By Night screen on 35mm this Saturday, with the latter repeating on Sunday; Cannibal Holocaust shows on Saturday and Exposed plays Sunday.

Museum of Modern Art
Films by James Gray, John Ford, Jean Renoir, and more screen in Immigrant Nation.

Film Forum
Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March continues, as does The Third Man on 35mm; a Laurel and Hardy series begins.

Anthology Film Archives
Films by Robert Breer play on 35 and 16mm this Saturday.

Museum of the Moving Image
A De Palma retrospective continues with Raising Cain, Scarface, and a print of Dressed to Kill; The Muppets, Twists in the Cord, and a print of Natural Born Killers play on Saturday; Khanevade: Portraits of Iranian Americans shows on Sunday.

IFC Center
Lino Brocka’s Macho Dancer plays daily in a new restoration; Unforgiven, Nowhere, Easy Rider, Gummo, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 show late.

Nitehawk Prospect Park
A print of The Fountain plays early on Saturday and Sunday.

Metrograph
Ashes of Time Redux, For a Few Dollars More, Angel Heart, and Good Time play on 35mm; Eric Rohmer, Jocelyne Saab, and Gary Oldman retrospectives start while When Carolco Was King, The World Wide West, Christopher Doyle, and The Night Has Opened My Eyes continue.

Poh Si Teng’s American Doctor is a harrowing, heartbreaking portrait of Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian doctors who are risking their lives to tend to the overwhelming victims of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and speak the truth in any way they can. Following the film’s Sundance premiere, Watermelon Pictures have picked up the film for a release beginning on August 14 and have now debuted the first trailer.

Here’s the synopsis: “American Doctor follows three American physicians – Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian – united by a single oath to save lives. After volunteering in besieged hospitals in Gaza, they return home determined to fight for the patients and colleagues they left behind, taking their battle from the front lines of war to the halls of Congress.”

Dan Mecca said in his Sundance review, “When will this end? When will this bloodshed stop? And when will the United States of America stop supporting it? Filmmaker Poh Si Teng offers a clear-eyed, unrelenting look at the genocide in Gaza with her documentary American Doctor. It follows three doctors––Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, Dr. Thaer Ahmad, and Dr. Mark Perlmutter––that are consistently trying to save lives in the Gaza Strip. On some trips they are approved to enter. On others they are denied for specious reasons. Dr. Perlmutter is Jewish, Dr. Sidhwa is Zoroastrian, and Dr. Ahmad is Palestinian. Their mission is the mission of all medical professionals: to heal everyone they can.”

See the trailer below.

Looking for what to see in theaters? Our feature, updated weekly, highlights our top recommendations for films currently in theaters, from new releases to restorations receiving a proper theatrical run.

While we already provide extensive monthly new-release recommendations and weekly streaming recommendations, as distributors’ roll-outs can vary, this is a one-stop list to share the essential films that may be on a screen near you.

Barrio Triste (Stillz)

At barely two years old, Harmony Korine’s “post-cinema” company EDGLRD is already branching out. After directing AGGRO DR1FT and Baby Invasion, Korine takes on a producer role for Barrio Triste, the feature debut of Colombian-American artist Stillz. It’s a good match of talents, given Stillz’s background as a music video director for artists like Bad Bunny and Rosalia, and while Barrio Triste takes a vibes-based approach à la Korine’s last two features it’s an entirely different beast. Exhilarating, tense, personal, and enigmatic, Barrio Triste is a compelling look at a lost generation in search of salvation, and among this year’s best first features. – C.J. P. (full review)

Bouchra (Meriem Bennani, Orian Barki)

Based on a real-life conversation shared by co-director Meriem Bennani and her own mother, Bouchra (co-directed with Orian Barki and co-written by them and Ayla Mrabet) opens with a phone call. Aicha (Yto Barrada) is checking in on her daughter from Morocco when Bouchra (Bennani) broaches a subject they’ve been avoiding for almost a decade. Stuck creatively, the latter has decided to find emotional catharsis through a script about the complex dynamic shared with her parents and seeks context from the opposite side. – Jared M. (full review)

Disclosure Day (Steven Spielberg)

Certain beliefs unite all of humanity. Take, for example, the idea that the extraordinary is possible. Or, even more, that the impossible is possible. Steven Spielberg isn’t shy about believing in extraterrestrial life, and he doesn’t think you should be either. He’s so sincere about this aloof-yet-sky-high-stakes concept that he’s returning to it again with a very simple profundity in tow: “Empathy is the core of animate existence–our evolutionary advantage.” And he intends to remind us of our capacity for such. – Luke H. (full review)

Do You Love Me (Lana Daher)

In what could’ve also been called Lebanon Plays Itself, Lana Daher’s ambitious, all-archival Do You Love Me captures some 70 years of Lebanese history, curated from a search that began with more than 20,000 potential sources. Consolidated to just 76 minutes, the resulting feat of montage is an experiment as playful as it is informative, showing a country in turmoil and citizens who still find happiness in everyday life. – Jordan R.

Drunken Noodles (Lucio Castro)

The laws of time and space are met with frisky ambivalence in Drunken Noodles, Lucio Castro’s anticipated third feature and surely the hottest title in this year’s ACID lineup. Most people familiar with the New York-based, Argentinian-born director first encountered him through End of the Century, a film of similar temporal disregard: set in Barcelona, it followed two men who seemed to fall in love only to realize it wasn’t their first encounter. Upon release in 2019, critics were divided over some of the film’s more adventurous flourishes––the sense of overreach. There are a handful of moments in Noodles that do something similar, but it’s an otherwise sultry and strangely calming film, 82 minutes of late-night hookups and late-season ennui that passes like a summer breeze. – Rory O. (full review)

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (David Wain)

As the world continues fermenting its vile culture, the gang behind The State and Wet Hot American Summer is back to save you from the merciless onslaught of bad news. At least for 90 minutes. The dynamic duo of director David Wain and screenwriter Ken Marino are now in their third decade of bringing a unique brand of irreverent comedy to cinema. In the wake of their MTV sketch comedy show The State, Wain and co. premiered their cult hit Wet Hot American Summer at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. This year, they return once more with Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, a hilarious Hollywood farce in their signature absurdist voice. – Kent M. W. (full review)

The Invite (Olivia Wilde)

Small in scale, yet so much greater than the sum of its parts, Wilde conducts her quartet of players to an orchestral performance. She builds the dramatic tension of a relationship-turned-powder-keg from years of complacency and poor communication over staccato strings until it reaches its summit, only for it to drop and rise again. Employing just four principal actors, including herself, and a single apartment, it’s an impressive feat to pull off and a testament to her progression as actor-turned-director. – Kent M. W. (full review)

Jackass: Best and Last (Jeff Tremaine)

The thing with Jackass is: there’s really nothing like it. Evolving from the skate videos of the 1990s, Jackass has persisted long enough to see its public perception come full circle: from lewd, obnoxious jerks to lewd, obnoxious sweethearts. The franchise never tried to be anything it wasn’t. In making the faithful leap from television to theaters, it only upped its budget to match the larger screen. Charismatic leader Johnny Knoxville and his partner-in-pain, director Jeff Tremaine, always followed a core thesis, a timeless truth: if you film someone getting hit in the nuts, people will laugh at it. Because of their fidelity, the Jackass brand has outlasted the relevance of its once-culture-defining home, MTV, and now its middle-aged principal cast. Despite numerous threats that they had hung up their thongs and Tasers for good, the gang is back for a bittersweet coda. – Kent M. W. (full review)

Leviticus (Adrian Chiarella)

Being queer—especially in this rapidly regressive age—means becoming acquainted with a base level of fear for most of your life. It is something you learn early on: not only when you must discover who can be trusted with your survival, but whether they might betray that trust later. Violence takes so many forms that it can lead to a sort of paranoia that folds in on itself. Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus understands this intimately. By blending the mechanics of It Follows with the trauma of conversion therapy, he crafts a tense, thematically potent feature debut that is more than just a clear metaphor—this is a creepy horror picture in its own right. – Devan S. (full review)

Maddie’s Secret (John Early)

You can’t accuse John Early of not committing. Through the majority of his acting career, the comedian has become a reliable avatar for a palpable, toxic, hilarious narcissism, playing characters oblivious to the world outside the bubbles they’ve so thoroughly cultivated. That was particularly evident over four seasons of Search Party, as well as last year’s Stress Positions, a Sundance favorite that exposed the absurdity of living in quarantine over a masked summer. As an agoraphobic tenant in a Brooklyn brownstone, Early took the situation’s disaster and approached it through his very specific kind of self-assured, righteous mania to such an extent that his freak-outs are still rattling around in my brain. – Jake K-S. (full review)

Night Nurse (Georgia Bernstein)

The best narrative film I saw at Sundance earlier this year, Night Nurse is a movie that very much walks to the beat of its strange drum. With shades of early Atom Egoyan, Georgia Bernstein’s directorial debut is a psychosexual drama following a nurse’s peculiar journey becoming connected to a strange patient’s perverse idea of fun. John Fink said in his review, “The perverse Night Nurse doesn’t quite qualify as a psychosexual thriller, despite underlying erotic tension; there is something more seductive and sinister under the surface.” – Jordan R.

Remake (Ross McElwee)

“I used to call myself a filmmaker. I used to call myself your father.” These two sentences are repeated like a mantra through Ross McElwee’s latest searingly personal documentary, Remake, focused primarily on the devastating loss of his 27-year-old son Adrian to a fentanyl overdose in 2016. It’s the director’s first film in fifteen years—the last, Photographic Memory, also utilized his relationship with Adrian to tackle self-reflective themes around parenthood, perspective, and the passage of time. McElwee has, for decades, been a pioneer of the type of tangential documentary storytelling popularized of late by artists like Nathan Fielder and John Wilson; work that on the surface appears as though the person behind the lens is making it up on the fly and finding a destination in real time, yet is far more methodically researched and developed over painstaking hours in the editing room. (Unlike the majority of his earlier work, which he edited solely, McElwee pulled in the aid of master editor Joe Bini, whose oeuvre includes Grizzly Man and American Honey). – Mitchell B. (full review)

Romería (Carla Simón)

Continuing in the low-key register of her Golden Bear winner Alcarràs, Carla Simón returns with Romería, another tale of intergenerational dissonance. A film about the stories families choose to tell and the ones they bury deep inside, it unfurls on Spain’s Atlantic coast, where 18-year-old orphan Marina (Llúcia Garcia) hopes to reunite with her paternal family. It’s also a story about displacement and yearning for lost roots, themes that cut close to the bone for a director whose parents died of AIDS when she was still a child, and who reunited with her father’s family in the town of Vigo, Galicia, where the film is set, at the same age. Simón has always been an autobiographical filmmaker; Romería might be her most personal work yet. – Rory O. (full review)

Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin)

The films of Mark Jenkin ooze a hypnotic, seasick sensibility; to watch them is to be lulled by their restless jumps through time and space, their ability to convert his home turf of Cornwall into a suspended world where facts and visions collide in stupefying dioramas. The director is a spinner of wandering tales, never fueled by linear plots so much as ambient forces: a ticking clock, gusts of wind, the distant roaring of waves. His dramas tend to pull your gaze from people and toward the inanimate objects that litter their surroundings. It’s here––in the interstice between the fictional foreground and non-fictional background––that the actual story often lies. – Leonardo G. (full review)

More Films Now Playing in Theaters

• Backrooms
• Camp
• Obsession
• Tuner

Read all reviews here. For our NYC-specific repertory round-ups, including many films that will tour the country, bookmark NYC Weekend Watch.

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2026 Sundance coverage. The film opens on July 10.

We know so little about the life of Eleni (Cemre Paksoy), a nurse working in an upscale retirement community, until something awakens in her. Directed by Georgia Bernstein, the perverse Night Nurse doesn’t quite qualify as a psychosexual thriller, despite underlying erotic tension; there is something more seductive and sinister under the surface.

Eleni lands a job in a retirement community that allows its upscale elderly residents a degree of simulated independence in bungalows centered around a “big house,” which offers more extensive care. Eleni soon proves susceptible to both being seduced and seducing, working as part of a nursing team with Mona (Eleonore Hendricks) for a client named Douglas (Bruce McKenzie). He is a man of striking confidence who seems to have skimmed off the system his entire life; Douglas is somehow permitted to stay in the community by Doctor Mann (Mimi Rogers) even after his checks bounce.

Douglas introduces Eleni to a common phone scam where she pretends to be a granddaughter in trouble with the law, baiting her prey until Douglas gets on the phone and closes the deal, telling their targets to send cash in an envelope to bail out their “granddaughter.” The scams briefly catch the attention of the local police and an all-hands meeting is held for the care staff, while Eleni, Bruce, and Mona drive around in his convertible, figuring out who their next target should be. Eleni and Mona fall for both each other and Douglas—forming a throuple that feels disconnected from the rest of the community—becoming both a cult and a family unit.

Night Nurse walks a fine line between camp and thriller. Its story is largely focused on the psychological journey of Eleni, a dedicated nurse who’s initially seduced rather than repulsed by Douglas, a control freak happy to sit and smoke by the pool all day and bark orders. It hosts multiple dimensions of their attraction, which Bernstein, captivatingly, never quite spells out; the only exposition we’re given is Eleni’s early confession to Mona that she feels like a changed woman.

Being a nurse requires an intimate connection with a client, especially when caring for the aging. We find out this position was open because Douglas is considered an odd case for Doctor Mann; he once fell in love with and confused a previous nurse for his wife. Douglas, for his part, is a natural-born con artist, and we come to doubt his “downfall” even as he is somehow able to pull a room full of young, attractive nurses in for a “party” that involves the recreational use of prescription meds.

The second collaboration between Bernstein and Paksoy (after their series following a professional cuddler), Night Nurse is a fascinating character study that can suggest an early Atom Egoyan film with notes of Michael Haneke. The film’s production design and aesthetic embrace a 1980s style, itself harkening back to Douglas at the height of his success. It’s never quite clear what kind of man he was before his health started to fail, but it’s easy to imagine Douglas as the kind of psychopathic lawyer or business shark who only shows teeth when about to bite. Night Nurse is a study in susceptibility and codependence as Eleni, early in the picture, becomes fixated on gestures of care. It’s not quite clear what her objective is until the final act, where perhaps all our suspicions are confirmed.

Night Nurse premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2025 TIFF coverage. The film opens on July 10.

At barely two years old, Harmony Korine’s “post-cinema” company EDGLRD is already branching out. After directing AGGRO DR1FT and Baby Invasion, Korine takes on a producer role for Barrio Triste, the feature debut of Colombian-American artist Stillz. It’s a good match of talents, given Stillz’s background as a music video director for artists like Bad Bunny and Rosalia, and while Barrio Triste takes a vibes-based approach à la Korine’s last two features it’s an entirely different beast. Exhilarating, tense, personal, and enigmatic, Barrio Triste is a compelling look at a lost generation in search of salvation, and among this year’s best first features.

Named after its setting, an impoverished Medellín neighborhood associated with addiction and drug-related violence, Barrio Triste frames itself as a found-footage film from the late 1980s. Its opening shows a news anchor reporting on claims of strange lights and sounds in the area when a group of four teenage boys rush them and steal the camera. From that point on the film belongs to them, and they use this camera to document their day-to-day activities––including violent crimes, like a jewelery store robbery that goes awry when one of the guys gets trigger-happy.

That robbery scene, one of several standout sequences, quickly establishes the harsh, violent environment where these characters have to survive. Shot in a lengthy single take, it starts with the gang filming themselves in a car as they head to the store. They sit in silence, unfazed as the radio plays a call-in show where the hosts interview a man who claims to be a serial killer responsible for murdering local prostitutes. The hosts try to psychologize the killer by asking him questions about his childhood to no avail (the caller eventually admits he’s high) while Arca’s ominous score ramps up the tension until it explodes in deafening walls of noise once the boys head into the store. 

When the scene ends, its chaos stopping as abruptly as it started, Stillz changes gears entirely, going from abrasive to immersive. After making it back home, the camera quietly wanders the streets and buildings, catching glimpses at various goings-on: a group of kids watching static on a TV, a punk band jamming out, a mother expressing concerns about her son getting into trouble. Stillz adds the occasional surreal imagery, e.g. the cameraman opening a front door to reveal a horse. This observational approach lets Barrio Triste take on a more deliberate pace than the kinetic moments of its opening, but the film maintains an unpredictability from one moment to the next. Stillz’s construction of the barrio’s passages and alleyways comes from a place of affection, and in these moments suggests there are entire worlds of perspectives and experiences if anyone were to look for them.

Stillz extends that sensitivity to his characters, which, given their lives on the fringes of society, is a privilege they can’t afford. The film periodically cuts to one-on-one interviews with members of the group, who stare the camera down while speaking about their dreams, the future, or how they feel about death; at one point someone breaks down as they wish to feel the kind of love his parents never provided. These scenes deliberately break the film’s internal logic––we have no context for these moments––but outside of these moments, there are no opportunities for them to show vulnerability. “Maybe our memories will survive,” one of them tells the camera, a line that shows their resignation to never having a life they wanted.

As the camera gradually drifts back into focus on the gang, who kick off their nighttime partying by trashing and burning a car, Stillz scales up the extremes his film operates within. Between the violence and vulnerability, the chaos and stillness––all of it amplified by Arca’s excellent soundtrack––Barrio Triste turns to the spiritual in its final act, where the film evokes heaven and hell through cryptic imagery and horror elements. And if the only outcome is salvation or damnation, then Barrio Triste represents the purgatory these young people inhabit, a place overlooking a city they will always exist outside of. 

Barrio Triste screened at TIFF 2025.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Amores perros (Alejandro G. Iñárritu)

Ahead of his Tom Cruise-led Digger arriving this fall, a 25th anniversary 4K restoration of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s debut feature Amores perros is now streaming on MUBI. Led by Gael García Bernal and shot by Rodrigo Prieto, the triptych film, which follows three lives from disparate parts of Mexico City that converge in a fatal car crash, is still the director’s most accomplished.

Where to Stream: MUBI

Amrum (Fatih Akin)

There’s a reason behind the odd credit at the start of Amrum: “A Hark Bohm film by Fatih Akin.” While the two collaborated before on the latter’s In the Fade, this project had a different beginning. Bohm wrote the script to direct himself before realizing he wouldn’t have the strength to do so. Raised on the island of Amrum (and a teen during the film’s 1945 setting), it was surely a very personal project that Akin initially refused to take over. – Jared M. (full review)

Where to Stream: Kino Film Collection

Camp (Avalon Fast)

The opening credits reveal tragedy as a teenage Emily (Zola Grimmer) drives down a darkened country road only to hit and kill a young girl who ran into traffic chasing a soccer ball. It’s a reality she’s had to come to grips with over the years since, and, in a show of honesty, is the story she tells a bunch of strangers at a college party during a game of Truth or Dare: “What’s your biggest regret?” The clarity and confidence in relaying this fact proves she’s come out the other end. – Jared M. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

City Wide Fever (Josh Heaps)

Whatever the last great horror movie was, I doubt it was so strange or compelling as City Wide Fever. Shot on video, seemingly whenever the talent had free time from whatever else they were doing, this is a film rejects the eye-deadening digital that defines so many genre movies that go for prestige only to end up at TUBI. It’s also funny, with a sense of humor that is pranksterish, even juvenile without dipping into an edgelord attitude to which it could’ve so easily resorted. – Nick N. (listen to his full interview with Josh Heaps)

Where to Stream: Fandor

Faces of Death (Daniel Goldhaber)

Director Daniel Goldhaber and co-writer Isa Mazzei are intimately familiar with the darker side of the Internet. Their 2018 debut, Cam, remains among the quintessential horror films of the Internet age, and with their reboot / remake / reimagining of Faces of Death, they bring the past into startling view of the present. It’s a film that recognizes there’s a little bit of a sicko in all of us, and there may be nothing we can do about it. – Devan S. (full review)

Where to Stream: Shudder

The Furious (Kenji Tanigaki)

The Furious is the kind of totemic action picture that comes around only once or twice a generation. Its skeleton is a standard father-of-a-daughter revenge narrative. Its head, heart, and muscles are something else entirely, the action rendered with an acute sense of speed and ferocity. Director Kenji Tanigaki subverts rote beats and constantly invents new ways to celebrate bodies in bruising, bloody motion. The film’s climactic melee is such masterfully controlled chaos that the only alternative to hooting and hollering is stunned, wide-eyed amazement. – Conor O.

Where to Stream: VOD

Hamnet (Chloé Zhao)

Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel operates in an emotional register that’s easy to ridicule. The premise itself is ripe for mocking: what if the death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet was the direct inspiration for his play Hamlet? Yet there is so much quiet tenderness here, so much patient filmmaking. For me, the honesty behind any artifice worked like the most beautiful of magic tricks. Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes, while Paul Mescal plays her husband, William Shakespeare. These two young stars cannot be denied, and Zhao allows them to blossom within her frames. Some movies are about the right thing at the right time in a viewer’s life. Hamnet is that for me. Watching earnestly helped me. And for that I am grateful. — Dan M.

Where to Stream: Netflix

The Mountain (Rachel House)

It’s no surprise Rachel House gives the first credit at the end of her feature debut to Te Kāhui Tupua, the mountain at the center of The Mountain. Co-written by Tom Furniss (from his original story), the film follows a young girl (Elizabeth Atkinson’s Sam) who decides to climb their peak in order to request that they use their power to save her life. She’s recently discovered her cancer returned and hopes tapping into the ancestry of the father she never met might help, and thus Sam escapes the hospital in pursuit of Taranaki Maunga, emboldened to find her identity and conquer her illness in one fell swoop with the assistance of two new friends met along the way. – Jared M. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Reeling (Yana Alliata)

Executive produced by Werner Herzog, Yana Alliata’s SXSW selection Reeling picks up the pieces of a life in shambles following a harrowing accident. By keeping the mystery of the trauma at the center for much of the runtime, this feature becomes a psychological character study exploring the ways Ryan (Ryan Wuestewald) is affected by triggers big and small while attending a family gathering in Hawaii. While the film operates most effectively through the visual language that Alliata develops, especially when it comes to the natural environment of the locale, it’s a commendable powder keg of a debut.

Where to Stream: VOD

Also New to Streaming

Hulu

Redux Redux

MUBI

Terminal Island
Group Marriage
The Working Girls
The Non-Actor

Prime Video

Normal

VOD

Girls Like Girls
Maintenance Artist

The latter-day work of Tsai Ming-liang—beginning, let’s say, around 2009’s Face or 2013’s Stray Dogs, and extending at least to 2024’s Abiding Nowhere—are not merely devoted to the master-shot style or scant narratives; for the admiring viewer, they briefly make other forms of cinema almost impossible to comprehend. It’s surprising, then, to look back and realize Tsai was not always so rigid.

Revisiting The Hole, his 1998 feature beginning a North American rollout on a new 35mm print this Friday at Film at Lincoln Center, presents a style that, while anticipatory of later films, nevertheless permits something broader, certainly more musical. By the time of its perfect final image, we’re in the realm of the outright sentimental.

One could also know nothing of Tsai, experience The Hole in this ideal form, and suspect they’ve encountered one of the 20th century’s very last great films. Big World Pictures’ release is enough of an occasion that the Taiwanese director lent some of his time to discuss this long-past project, in so doing proving rather lucid on the place it’s since taken in his career. Little surprise, however, that Tsai is looking forward: our conversation concludes with unbearably tantalizing hints at his next phase.

The Film Stage: When is the last time you watched The Hole?

Tsai Ming-liang: That was last year, because in Austin they did a retrospective of my career. Because of that particular retrospective, I had the good fortune of watching this particular print of The Hole, and I was very happy to be able to do that. There are actually two versions of The Hole: one was edited, the TV version, for Arte, and that particular version is 20 minutes less than this whole, entire version; the print is the complete version of the film.

I’ve seen all of your features, but given how they’re distributed in the United States, almost all of them at home. Watching The Hole in a theater and on a print was a different process, like the experience I recently had seeing What Time Is It There? on 35mm. What are your feelings about the divide between watching movies at home or theatrically—for the size of the screen, the sound, attention span?

I do think that watching films at home is something that is very convenient, but I do think that, as a result, a lot has been lost in the process of viewing these films at home rather than on the big screen. For me, to watch something on the big screen really showcases the unique quality of films, and that is the only way you can see the true details of the film and what the filmmaker is trying to present. In addition, the sound needs that kind of environment—on the big screen, in the big theater—in order for you to really immerse yourself.

And then the fact that it’s in complete darkness is something that is not totally controllable. Those are all the different elements that make the viewing experience even more unique, and also the only way you can express the true power of films in the movie theater. So I do think that I have been trying to make some efforts in Taiwan specifically, and also in Asia in general—trying to sort of create this movement of bringing the audience back to the theater. I think that this is not an easy task, but at the same time, I think that is the only way for you to really enjoy and appreciate the true power of films: in the theater rather than at home, no matter how convenient that might be.

I found myself rewatching some of your earlier films, like Rebels of the Neon God and Vive L’Amour, and was surprised at their faster pace. I think there are more shots in the first five minutes of Rebels than in your last five movies combined. There’s also quite a lot of camera movement in Vive L’Amour—almost a dance-like quality. It seems that The River and The Hole do more to begin a slower, more static cinema. Did something in particular account for this shift?

I do think that has something to do with the fact that before I made Rebels of the Neon God and Vive L’Amour, I was making a lot of TV productions, or films made for TV. So that was the predecessor, and I was primed at the time with that type of style going into the first two films. Also, because of the fact that the kind of style required this completely different narrative in terms of the storytelling needing to be very, very clear, the camera shots needing to be very smooth. At the time, those were the things that I took into consideration as I was making the first two films.

But later on, I do think that I want to make sure that every single film I make, there will be new things in the film, and you can tell that there are differences from one to the next. Including the elements of thinking about how I can include no music. I also think about having a clear narrative structure, storytelling, clear camera shots; I want to somehow use one single camera shot. Also thinking about how I can incorporate, later on, the musical elements into the film. So I do think these are all a different way I not only, on the one hand, want to get closer to the audience with every single film that I make, but also want to make sure that I create something new for each and every single film that I make.

I know you had an initial scenario for The Hole that you essentially abandoned when you found the locations. Which is surprising—the film actually has one of your stronger stories. Do you remember the process of finding it through shooting? Could you talk a bit about making the film come together that way?

The Hole started as a commissioned work by a French team that wanted to have multiple perspectives on 2000—to capture the kind of turn at the end of the century going into the next century. For me, thinking about this kind of transition from one to the next, I can’t help but start thinking about, “This has to have the kind of non-stop raining atmospheres and situations that I want to create.” And also, I think that the turn of a century should feel very cool, very wet, very dark. There’s almost a hopelessness, and there’s no way out. Those are all the different kinds of moods or feelings that I wanted to create for this particular commission work.

Later on it sort of evolved into something where I wanted to incorporate something new: the musical elements of the film. I am personally a big fan of the old songs from the ‘60s, and also the musicals back in the ‘60s—either from Hollywood or from Hong Kong—and therefore I felt that this would be a great resource I want to tap into, and I selected one particular singer, Grace Chang, because of the fact that she was, at the time, very westernized. The way that she sings is very expressive, very avant-garde, very striking.

So for me, that is such a great element to include for this particular commission work. And then the location. When I identified this particular location—which is sort of in the marginalized space within the city proper, and it’s a housing project that is for people who are not so well-off that they would live in this particular environment—it almost gave me a sense of a prison-like environment. So we never left that particular housing project for one month for the entire production of the film.

We spent the entire month either in the market space of the housing project, in the apartments, in the public space of the housing project. And because of this particular, very unique environment, it also makes it more feasible for us to create the kind of non-stop raining scenes that I want to create for the film—not only visually, but also audio to capture the kind of turn-of-the-century raining scenes for this particular commission work.

I’m terrified of water damage, and your films are often quite upsetting for their focus on them—the many images of these endless streams of water entering a space and destroying them. I’d like to know a bit about your interest in that as a dramatic device.

All these elements, especially the water damage one, have something to do with my own lived experience. And I am an overseas Chinese that sort of migrated from Malaysia to Taiwan as a quote-unquote “international student” and have been living here since. So that kind of diasporic experience informed my connection or my understanding of water, since I have been staying in rental-housing units and have been sort of changing my residences very frequently as a result of my sort of diasporic status. Because of that, I tend to stay in very old rental units that will have many water-related damages—including maybe the pipe bursts, the kind of leaks, or the kind of inundations and overflowing of water as a result of heavy rain.

So those are all the elements that I actually had lived through, and I felt that definitely informed the way I devised the film. The other elements of lived experience I mentioned also have something to do with the plotline that had been designed for The Hole. It is my experience that, at the time, I was living in this particular housing unit in this mountainous region of the city, and I remember that my downstairs neighbors that don’t usually live there—they just sort of show up once in a while over the years—but one day a plumber knocked on my door and told me that there’s a leak and they’re trying to figure out what is going on for the downstairs neighbor. So the plumber dug a hole in my floor, which is the ceiling of my downstairs neighbor, and then, for whatever reason, he just disappeared for a month. I lived a month of my life there with a hole in my floor, and that is something that I just used, integrated into the plotline of this particular film because of that lived experience.

So I do think that the turn of the century, for me, is something that was full of challenges. I was not very optimistic about the future; I tended to take a very, very pessimistic viewpoint of the progressions of our future at the time. So not only the elements of water damage as one of the challenges; I also thought that illnesses would be something that I want to incorporate into this particular film to represent the kind of challenges and the concerns I have for our future at the juncture of the turn of the century.

I still love the work you’re making, like Abiding Nowhere. What are you developing now?

I’ve been invited to do many projects, and two or three actually are in the pipeline right now as part of the Walker series. I’m going to go to Korea soon to film the 13th installment of my Walker series. And I do think that I see the past 10 years of the Walker series as one long film that I have been developing and making. Maybe because of the fact that I’m older now, I am, in addition to the Walker series, also thinking about making a very unique and one-of-a-kind narrative film in the future.

The way that I see this is sort of semi-narrative: you can say that it’s a narrative film, but you can also see this as completely different from the conventional narrative film. I also have the intention to somehow use this particular new film that I am envisioning to work with and to reunite all the actors I have worked with in the past, for all my previous films, into this particular film project. So those are all the things in the pipeline and things that I am thinking about going forward.

That sounds amazing. As is, you’ve done so much to shape what I love about cinema and how I think about it, so I thank you for the time.

Recently I rewatched Ozu’s film, Tokyo Story, and other films, and I really think that I, myself, am very much informed and influenced by many of the films, the greats.

The Hole begins a 35mm rollout on Friday, July 10 at Film at Lincoln Center and will expand.

After bringing much-loved surreal entertainment with his viral Too Many Cooks, Casper Kelly is getting into feature territory with Buddy, starring Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Topher Grace, Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Shannon, and Patton Oswalt. A premiere at Sundance earlier this year, it follows a children’s show gone awry, and now Roadside Attractions will roll it out in theaters beginning August 28. Ahead of the release, the first teaser has arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “Remember BUDDY—the bright orange unicorn and star of that classic childrens’ television show who brought joy and life lessons into your living room? Inside the colorful world of ‘It’s Buddy!,’ a group of children spend their days singing, dancing, and helping Buddy spread happiness. But when one child refuses to play along, Buddy is not pleased and cracks begin to appear in this seemingly perfect world.”

Caleb Hammond said in his Sundance review, “A mix of Barney and Blue’s Clues, the TV program Buddy follows a large pink unicorn who, alongside a supporting cast of anthropomorphized house objects, teaches the program’s children a new lesson each episode. All of the show’s elements—the colorful sets, the ’90s outfits the children wear, the songs they sing—point to Kelly’s deep understanding of the aesthetics and rules of the world that he subverts.”

See the teaser below:

After Takashi Yamazaki’s smash, Oscar-winning hit Godzilla Minus One, he’s back with Godzilla Minus Zero, a sequel set for release on November 3 in Japan and three days later in the United States. Ahead of a roll-out of the film, which was shot entirely in Japan as the country’s first-ever production be filmed for IMAX, a new teaser and poster have landed, and additional cast has been announced.

Here’s the synopsis: “War reduced Japan to zero, and Godzilla plunged it into minus. Two years have passed since then, and the country has faced agonizing struggles to achieve recovery and finally reclaim its daily life. Just as humanity managed to cling to a hard-won peace, a new threat strikes, crushing hope in an instant. There is no third time. Everything ends here.”

The press release notes, “Godzilla Minus Zero picks up in 1949, two years after the tumultuous events of Godzilla Minus One, and continues the story of the Shikishima family as they face an all-new calamity. As previously announced, Ryunosuke Kamiki returns as Koichi Shikishima, the hero who stood against Godzilla’s terror in Godzilla Minus One, and is joined by Minami Hamabe as Noriko Shikishima, who miraculously survived Godzilla’s first attack on Tokyo.”

Revealed to be joining the film cast is legendary actor Min Tanaka (Kokuho), playing Kanji Murakami, a biologist carrying deep psychological scars from the war. In addition, “Hidetaka Yoshioka reprises his role as Kenji Noda, who fought alongside protagonist Koichi Shikishima in Godzilla Minus One and now battles the new threat as the director of the Disaster Response Bureau. Yuki Yamada returns as Shiro Mizushima, the young crew member of the Shinseimaru who fought on the front lines, alongside Kuranosuke Sasaki as Seiji Akitsu, the captain of the same vessel. Furthermore, Sakura Ando reprises her role as Sumiko Ota, Shikishima’s neighbor who now runs a local orphanage, and Mio Tanaka returns as Tatsuo Hotta, the former captain of the destroyer Yukikaze. Having survived the previous deadly struggle alongside Shikishima, these beloved characters stand ready to face Godzilla once again.”

See the new teaser and poster below:

Following a divisive Cannes premiere, the “final cut” of Na Hong-Jin’s sci-fi thriller Hope is now set to debut stateside this month at the New York Asian Film Festival. Ahead of that North American unveiling and subsequent September 9 release from NEON, the new trailer has arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “In the remote village of Hope Harbor, a mysterious creature has wreaked havoc on the village. Police and local hunters set out to track the beast and find themselves hunted instead. But not all is as it seems. As panic spreads and reality begins to unravel, the village finds itself facing something far beyond imagination.”

“Ultimately, what this film hopes to explore and convey is the familiar adage that all the world’s tragedies stem from misunderstandings,” says Na. While audiences may come for the pulse-pounding genre spectacle, the director describes HOPE simply as “a human drama.”

Luke Hicks said in his review, “It’s never night in Hope Harbor. At least so long as we’re there. The eschatological events of writer-director Na Hong-Jin’s high-octane, highly anticipated Hope unfold over the course of one long, grueling, nonstop chase of a day for its rag-tag team of small-town South Korean cops, yokels, and hicks, an ensemble that ranges from heroic to hilarious in this blathering creature-feature phantasm.”

See the trailer below for the film starring Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Jung Ho-yeon, Taylor Russell, Cameron Britton, Alicia Vikander, and Michael Fassbender: