Independent films
fromThe New Yorker
1 day agoNew Directors, New Films
The New Directors/New Films series showcases diverse films with innovative narratives, including 'Variations on a Theme' and 'Next Life'.
The invention of the Cinématographe was ready right away. The process of the invention was longer, and there were a lot of inventors before Lumière.
Set on the blossom tree-lined fringes of Hyde Park in London, Herbert Wilcox's black-and-white rom-com blows in like a fresh spring breeze. The film charts the will-they-won't-they romance between Richard (Michael Wilding), a wealthy lord masquerading as a butler, and Judy (Anna Neagle), the niece of the family who employs him.
The inquiry was like thousands of others. Somebody had potentially cool films they thought might interest the Library of Congress. But it was brand new for Jason Evans Groth... In September, he stepped outside the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, to meet Bill and Mary McFarland, who had driven from Michigan with about 40 strips of celluloid that had once belonged to Bill's great-grandfather.
What begins as a fairy-tale romance set in the beautiful Mediterranean town of Agde gets more complicated when Stann's family ties prove more durable, and dangerous, than he expects. Stann, the hub of a sprawling, criminally inclined clan, finds himself torn between Gloria, a vibrant Black American woman who offers him a glimpse at a life beyond the one he knows, and his inescapable family obligations.
South by Southwest is not the only annual genre fest out there by any means, but its equal focus on film, music, and tech makes it nearly unmissable for many a genre fan. The Austin-set fest has almost too much to offer, however you slice it: Building one's schedule feels like a perpetual exercise in killing your darlings.
During a junket interview with OutNow, Gyllenhaal explained that the punctuation mark was included to represent the "whole lot of energy" that comes out when the historically muted Bride of Frankenstein is finally allowed to speak. That's all well and good, but to viewers the titular exclamation point is less of a metaphor and more of a golden arrow saying, "This movie is going to be crazy."
A quarter-century later, it's safe to say that those days have come to an end. Not only does the streaming-only Netflix of the twenty-twenties no longer transmit movies on DVD through the mail (a service its younger users have trouble even imagining), it ranks approximately nowhere as a preferred cinephile destination. That has to do with a selection much diminished since the DVD days
Even in an era of CGI and AI, nothing is more vivid than the intimacy and imagination of radio or more direct than the connection radio has with listeners. I remember when the legendary Stan Freberg drained Lake Michigan and filled it with hot chocolate, a 700-foot mountain of whipped cream, and a 10-ton maraschino cherry. We didn't have to see it. We heard it on the radio. It was Freberg's demonstration of what radio can do better than television.
an Act of Killing-style re-enactment of the 1919 conquest of the Adriatic city of what is now Rijeka by a rag-tag army assembled by the proto-fascist dandy-poet Gabriele D'Annunzio. It was precisely the kind of quirky cinematic gem that the European film awards should be there to champion: a film ignored by the main festivals, about an overlooked but relevant episode in history.
We've all watched a film or series and wanted to step straight into it. So, it's hardly surprising that set jetting'is shaping up to be a top travel trend again for 2026. We've already seen it in recent years with the White Lotus effect-the Four Seasons Maui reported a 425% year-on-year rise in website visits after the first season aired. Set jetting seems to be a particularly big hit with Gen Z and millennial travelers-81% now plan their getaways based on what they've seen
In the case of the Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, who has died after a long illness, at the age of seventy, I confess that I'd expected-without necessarily hoping for-a faint premonition, perhaps a grim tingle in our collective cinephile sixth sense. Tarr, unique among his European art-film contemporaries, cut an almost oracular figure. The greatest of the nine features he directed,
In recent years, there's one word you hear again and again from movie distributors and pundits: event. Making a great movie is nice. But creating a culture-shaking event is what's required in the current boom-bust film landscape. It's something everyone has known for a long time, but in 2026 it seems like studios are really beginning to grasp what it actually means. From Tom Cruise in an auteur-driven comedy to the sequels to Devil Wears Prada and The Social Network
Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Emily Brontë's beloved novel has been driving people mad since the project was first announced. Now, you can see it for yourself. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi play Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, two young adults ( their ages are questionable here) with a deeply destructive obsession with each other that only spirals further when the Lintons (Shazad Latif and a scene-stealing Alison Oliver) move in at Thrushcross Grange across from the Earnshaws at Wuthering Heights.
The quirky crime thriller Tuner follows Niki, a young piano tuner with acute absolute pitch, as he makes his rounds among an upscale New York clientele. At the film's outset, we meet his aging, hard-of-hearing mentor and wife (Dustin Hoffman, Tovah Feldshuh), ersatz parents who will soon recede into the background of this genre trope mashup. There are East European gangsters, Asian drug traffickers, safecracking, robbery, extortion, a killing, an encrypted wire transfer, a romcom meet-cute, even an onstage music competition.