MOVIE SCREENINGS AND FILM EVENTS IN NEW YORK THIS WEEK

Each week, our seasoned film critics bring you the very best of New York City's alternative movie screenings and events

Every week, we round up the best movie events happening outside New York’s multiplexes, from major international film festivals (such as Sundance, the Toronto International Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival) and revivals at Film Forum and BAM to one-off movie screenings and in-person Q&As with stars, filmmakers and experts. New York also has a thriving film scene in galleries and pop-up venues, and in the summer months, you’ll find a wealth of outdoor screenings in NYC parks and gardens across the city.

Movie screenings and events in NYC

1. Phantom Thread

Deceptively hidden under layers of gorgeous surfaces, Paul Thomas Anderson’s borderline-sick romance waltzes toward a riveting tale of obsession. If this is Daniel Day-Lewis’s way of dropping the mic (purportedly, he’s retiring), then he’s picked a fine exit, bringing to life a fastidious fashion designer who, in 1950s London, falls for a lissome waitress (Vicky Krieps). Despite the latter’s humility, she’s the one who turns the tables, steering the film into deliciously dark irony.

Museum of the Moving Image. Thu 23, Fri 24 at 7pm; Sun 26 at 3, 6pm. $15.

2. Frozen

 

You think you know how this animated blockbuster is going to end: a curse that can only be broken by true love, etc. And there's a handsome prince too, right? Wrong. This plot's most important connection is between sisters, because princes are unreliable. It's a welcome corrective to, well, pretty much every Disney film that came before it. For this free outdoor screening, expect the sing-along version with lyrics onscreen. Let’s practice: “Let it go-oooo…Let it go-OH-oooooooh…”

Hudson River Park, Hell’s Kitchen. Thu 23 at 8:30pm; free.

3. Who Framed Roger Rabbit

 

The live-action-animation hybrid plays like an irreverent Chinatown, with a hard-bitten private eye, a voluptuous femme fatale (Jessica Rabbit isn’t bad, “just drawn that way”) and a urban-planning conspiracy that turns out to be true. It still works as a manic piece of fluff, with some truly astounding moments involving real props handled by ’toons.

IFC Center, Greenwich Village. Fri 24, Sat 25 midnight; $15.

4. Ghostbusters + Stay Puft marshmallow roast

 

Is it sacrilege to call this a dumb comedy? Nope. Ghostbusters is deliriously, proudly dumb, from its wackadoo supernatural concept (supplied by Dan Aykroyd) to its caricatured yet still somehow huggable New York City. And at this screening, you can toast marshmallows at your seat.

Videology Bar & Cinema, Williamsburg. Sat 25 at 9:15pm; $18.

5. Before Sunrise

 

Boy (Ethan Hawke) meets Girl (Julie Delpy) on a train in Europe. They get off in Vienna, spend the night together and go their separate ways. And the audience gets to witness one of the most romantic movies ever made.

Nitehawk Cinema, Williamsburg. Sat 25, Sun 26 at 11:45am; $12.

6. Kids

 

Audiences were shocked by photographer-provocateur Larry Clark’s portrait of New York skate rats behaving badly (teenagers drinking and having sex? Who’d have thunk?), though anyone familiar with his early exhibits knew Clark had a knack for nailing youth culture’s nihilistic side. The filmmaker would descend into barely legal ogling in subsequent works, but his debut still packs a punch. Clark will do a Q&A after this screening.

Metrograph, Lower East Side. Sat 25 at 6pm; $15.

7. Go Ape! A Planet of the Apes Marathon

 

Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village

Aug 26 2018 - Aug 27 2018

All five of the original movies (freshly restored) will be screened for true Apes fanatics. Come ready with your favorite line of dialogue: “Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”

Quad Cinema, Greenwich Village. Sun 26 at 1pm; $30.

8. The Last Temptation Of Christ

 

Willem Dafoe portrays a kind of alternative-world savior torn between divinity and humanity in this controversial work, which is not so much blasphemous as thought-provoking. Jesus Christ!

Alamo Drafthouse, Downtown Brooklyn. Sun 26 at 3pm; $12.

9. Killer of Sheep

 

Charles Burnett’s no-budget epic of working-class grit and survival on a slaughterhouse job’s wages should be considered required viewing in film schools. You want indie cinema? Here it is, glorious and uncompromising.

BAM Rose Cinemas, Fort Greene. Mon 27 at 7pm; $15.

10. Badlands + Carrie

You call yourself a Sissy Spacek fan? Prove it at this double feature: One admission gets you in to see Spacek go on the road with outlaw Martin Sheen and get covered with pig blood.

Film Forum, Greenwich Village. Tue 28 at various times; $15.

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