Film Series in NYC This Week

Photo

Our guide to film series and special screenings. All our movie reviews are at nytimes.com/reviews/movies.

EROTIC CITY at the Quad Cinema (Aug. 25-31). Think of independent film in New York, and pioneering directors like John Cassavetes and Shirley Clarke are likely to come to mind. But in the 1970s and ’80s, the ranks of those working outside the Hollywood system also included quite a few directors of so-called adult movies, some of which edged closer to the mainstream than their pornographic counterparts today. The Quad’s celebration of New York’s equivalent of the “Boogie Nights” scene takes these movies seriously as artifacts and artworks. (The theater organized the series with Joe Rubin, a founder of Vinegar Syndrome, a company dedicated to the preservation of such films.) Radley Metzger’s “The Opening of Misty Beethoven” (Monday and Thursday) is among the better-known titles.
212-255-2243, quadcinema.com

‘FOX AND HIS FRIENDS’ at BAM Rose Cinemas (Aug. 25-31). Rainer Werner Fassbinder died at 37 having completed more movies than he had years on Earth. So while there is plenty of room for argument about whether he ever made a greater film, anyone seeking the perfect distillation of his sensibility should look no further than this 1975 drama about a naïve gay carnival worker (played by Mr. Fassbinder himself) who wins the lottery and is subsequently fleeced by his new upper-crust boyfriend (Peter Chatel) and high society.
718-636-4100, bam.org

THE RONALD REAGAN PICTURE SHOW at the Museum of the Moving Image (Aug. 25-30). Chalk it up to politics, image fatigue or simply the likelihood that few are clamoring to watch “Bedtime for Bonzo” (Sunday) from start to finish, but Ronald Reagan’s movies aren’t frequently revived. The 40th president did not star in an abundance of classics, but the best case for his acting ability is probably “Kings Row” (Saturday), in which he plays a lovable small-town cad who loses his fortune and his legs. In a classic scene, he wakes up, post-amputation, and cries, “Where’s the rest of me?” (It’s an unofficial Cold War weekend at the museum: In addition to 70-millimeter screenings of the space race saga “The Right Stuff” on Friday and Sept. 1 — a tribute to Sam Shepard — a trio of films by the Soviet director Yuliya Solntseva, the first female filmmaker to win the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival, will show on Saturday and Sunday.)
718-784-0077, movingimage.us

Continue reading the main story