Michael Cimino, RIP

When did you last get excited by a movie? When was the last time a movie came out that made you want to see it - again and again and again?

I remember in the 1990s when Pulp Fiction hit theaters - it was so exciting, such daring filmmaking, such thrilling storytelling, that I went to see it four times in the theaters. Back then, movies seem to matter to people, personally, and they seemed to be important cultural touchstones as well. Movies were, dare I say it, important. They mattered. They lived.

Today? Movies suck - or mostly suck. These days, TV shows have the cultural edge that movies once enjoyed. For the most part, movies now are either one of two things: huge, cynical, money-hungry enterprises (think of the proliferation of "franchises" and the unending number of sequels) or calculated "Oscar-bait", movies designed to win awards and make some money but are otherwise forgettable. Movies don't excite anymore. They don't live inside us or the culture. The artistry of film making isn't moving forward, taking strides. It's stuck. And that's sad.

So how did we get here? It took a long time. While movies were burning up the culture in the 1970s through the 1990s, the seeds of their downfall were being planting at the same time, namely the era of blockbusters and sequels, along with the upwards spiral of production costs. But most of all came the huge costs of failure. When movies fail, they not only lose money but can destroy careers.

In 1978, a director named Michael Cimino made a movie called The Deer Hunter, about working class men and women who's lives are shattered by the Vietnam war. The movie was a huge success - it made lots of money and won several Oscars, including Best Picture. Two years later, Cimino produced his follow-up, Heaven's Gate, about 19th century land wars in the American West. This movie failed catastrophically, so much so that the studio that financed it went under. 

It was the first time that a movie's failure actually did something so devastating. Needless to say, the studios reacted accordingly. In the decades that followed, movies became increasingly "safer" so as not to offend audiences and critics. That's not to say, in the ensuing decades, that there still haven't been other huge failures as well as other exciting movies (like Pulp Fiction). But over time, safeness won over daring. The deary cinematic landscape we live in today is largely due to the failure of Heaven's Gate -- a movie that tried every bit to be as good as The Deer Hunter but wasn't.

Michael Cimino died last week, and his professional trajectory tells us a lot about the culture we live in today. After his once promising career was derailed, Cimino only directed a small number of movies, most of which critics and audiences ignored. This was, and is, a shame. A daring director was largely sidelined because of this (certainly huge) failure and the art of film, I think, suffered as a result.

Movies matter less now because directors are increasingly not the voices of their own films. When was the last time you saw a movie and really felt like you saw art being created? Yes, such film "auteurs" like Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, and the Coen Brothers are still making movies - but for how much longer? And when they're gone, who will replace them? I have no idea. There seem to be no young auteurs on the horizon.

When you watch both The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate, putting aside both movies' virtues and flaws, what strikes you about them is that these are stories being told by a great directorial voice; that you are watching someone's singular vision spring to life; that these are movies that do what only movies can do best: tell a story through moving images, the director as storyteller. Like a painter using paints and brushes, like a writer using words and a pen, like a sculptor using stones and chisel, this is a director using camera and film to tell a story and imprint an artistic style on your consciousness. Cimino didn't need special effects, he didn't need clever dialogue, he didn't need fancy editing, he didn't need any visual or storytelling tricks - he was amazingly confident in the way that he simply pointed and moved the camera, coreographing his scenes with such skill, that his vision came across so strongly that you were left with an impression that lasted long after these movies were over. 

Having seen both films, I remember them - the storytelling is unconventional, the performances are bold, the camera work is thrilling and confident, a master clearly at work. Ask yourself this: when was the last time you saw movie where you felt like this? Probably a long time.

And as good as television is these days, it will never have the cinematic visual power of the movies. Television is still mostly a writer's medium with the director serving as the writer's handmaiden. That's fine! But movies are first and last a director's medium, and they are at their most powerful when the director's voice rings loudly.

In many ways, Cimino both exemplified everything that used to be great about movie making and was also indirectly responsible for its decline. His ego, apparently, got in the way of his work. But now that he has passed on, it's important to remember that filmmakers like him used to reign supreme in our culture and that hopefully, one day, movies will live again.

PS. You must read Final Cut by Steven Bach, generally considered the best book ever written about the movie business, which chronicles the turbulent history of Heaven's Gate. It paints Cimino in a very unflattering light but, after reading it, you'll understand how movies are what they are today. You can find the documentary based on the book at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyeOmPMHRYg.

PPS. Cimino was a New Yorker, originally from Long Island, but he got his start working in advertising in NYC in the Mad Men era of the 1960s.

TV on the Movies

This is a must read: Vanity Fair culture critic James Wolcott makes a very convincing case that today, in the second decade of the 21st century, TV shows are better than movies. In terms of quality, originality, writing, acting, excitement -- Wolcott says TV is whipping the movies' tuchus.

And I agree. 

Very rarely these days do I get excited about a movie. I don't care for the big Twilight/Harry Potter/Hunger Game "event" movies. They're all noise and action without really interesting plots or characters. Plus, they're all skewed to teenage girls which, at last check, I'm not. I'm more interested in movies by really great directors with good stories and characters but, honestly, most of our great directors aren't making such great movies these days. 

To whit: with the exception of Midnight in Paris last year, Woody Allen hasn't made an exciting movie in a long time. Scorsese used to make exciting movies but they have become less so over time (Goodfellas? Exciting! Hugo? Uh....). Robert Altman is sadly dead. Spike Jonze and David Russell make very few films. I still get excited whenever Quentin Tarantino makes a movie but he seems only to make one every five or six years. And don't get me started on Cameron Crowe and James L. Brooks: Say Anything ..., Almost Famous, Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News are some of my favorites ever. But their most recent movies have been unwatchable. It's like watching great athletes who used to win every competition come in last. 

TV, however, has been an autre histoire. 

In the last ten years there have been some TV shows that have gotten me crazy excited: The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Rescue Me, The Wire, True Blood, Lost, 30 Rock, The Office, Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Downton Abbey, Portlandia, Modern Family and lots of others -- really great shows with complex characters, interesting stories, brilliant film making, and amazing production values. And right now I salivate (well, almost) over Game of Thrones and Mad Men. The fact that they're on back to back on the same nights has sent me into geeky heaven. (Heck, even Saturday Night Live is funny again for the first time in 20 years.) 

I'm stunned at the quality of these shows and amazed at how much I'd rather stay at home and watch them (on TV or Netflix) instead of schlepping to the movies and plunk down ten bucks -- only to sit next to or behind douches who talk during the movie or have their cell phones go off. Increasingly, not only are the movies bad but the movie going experience has gotten expensive and annoying.

Plus, snobs who used to ignore TV seem to be ignoring the movies these days. 

Wolcott writes: "Even in cine-mad Manhattan, where the admonitory ghost of Susan Sontag haunts theaters by night, the new movie that everybody’s talking about is being talked about by a shrinking number of everybodies. It’s seldom the presiding topic of cocktail chat and intellectual quarrel, as it was when critic Pauline Kael led the wagon train. (Her successors at The New Yorker, David Denby and Anthony Lane, might as well be tinkling the piano in the hotel lobby for all the commotion they create.)" He also makes the point that it's pretty sad when a cliched, plodding movie like Bridesmaids is acclaimed as one of the best comedies of the year. 

I couldn't even get through it. It just wasn't that funny. 

Wolcott also says Reese Witherspoon is an example of what has happened not only to movies but movie stars: she used to give great performances in fun or excellent movies like Legally Blonde and Walk the Line. Now she's stuck in drivel like This Means War. When was the last time Tom Cruise had a good movie? He used to have one every year. Now everyone talks about Mad Men's Jon Hamm and Tom Cruise is better known for his weird Scientology worship these days. 

Wolcott even asks a great rhetorical question: "Does anyone think The Artist is better than Mad Men?"

Hear hear. 

We really do seem to be living in a golden age of TV and a dark ages of movies. Maybe this will change. But probably not for a while. Movies must respond to the demands of moviegoers -- who are increasingly kids and dopes who care more about spectacle than story. Meanwhile, as TV has gotten more niche driven and cable has found a business model to thrive, there are more outlets for original, daring stuff. Ultimately, like everything, it comes down to money: if the studios can only make money with big noisy junk and TV can make money producing quality -- guess what? That's what you're gonna see!

I'm a culture geek and I want movies and TV to be equally good and compelling. Hopefully, some day, a business model will emerge where great movies can be produced again. But as of now, the David of the small screen has conquered the Goliath of the big screen.  

Debbie Does Dallas@40

Or: Debbie didn't do Dallas -- Bambi bonked Brooklyn. 

The movie Boogie Nights, made in 1997, is a nostalgic look at the late 1970s "Golden Age" of adult film. The basic premise of the movie is that porn was on the cusp of becoming respectable -- that these could be movies and not just prurient recordings of sex.  At one point in Boogie Nights an established porn director, played brilliantly by Burt Reynolds, talks about how he wants to make movies that people will remember, that people will want to see as much for the story and characters as for the "boinking", that porn will take its place in the firmament of cinematic art. "I'm a filmmaker!" he exclaims defiantly at one point. 

Then, as the movie shows, the 1980s and videotape (plus Ronald Reagan and AIDS) came along and ruined it all. 

Of course, this was never really the case. Porn movies were never really going to become mainstream cinema, people weren't really going to watch them for the story/characters, there were never any such movies (even classics like Deepthroat or Behind the Green Door) that could even remotely be called "good movies" (as opposed to "good porn movies"). All videotape did was put them in their proper place -- to be watched comfortably at home instead of embarrassingly in theaters. 

That said, some adult movies are certainly better and more memorable than others. Some craft a legacy. And probably the last Golden Age movie was 1978's Debbie Does Dallas, a movie that's now forty years old. For some reason, this one's remembered. Perhaps it's the alliterative title. Perhaps it's the plot (a bunch of cheerleaders try to raise money to send Debbie to try out for the "Texas Cowgirls" cheerleading squad). Perhaps it's because the star, Bambi Woods, made very few movies and then vanished. Whatever the reason, it's one of the few, very few adult movies that people have heard of even if they've never seen it.

And here's where it gets interesting: Debbie Does Dallas wasn't made in Dallas at all but in NYC -- specifically, in Brooklyn. 

It was filmed (mostly and covertly) around the campus of Brooklyn College. It's a New York production from start to finish, and its secret filming caused great controversy when revealed. It also stars NYC natives like Robin Byrd, giving it a distinct New York flavor. It has nothing to do with Dallas at all.

For whatever reason, this movie has become perhaps one of the most "respectable" porn movies ever made. When I was in college (actually, just before I arrived on campus) it was shown by the student film society. It was a big hit in 1978 and generated sequels. People have even gone back to find the original places in Brooklyn where it was filmed. It has, for whatever reason, endured beyond its merits as a film.

I'm not going to link to this movie for obvious reasons but you can find it on the interwebs. It fell out of copyright (it was lost for some reason) so it's free to all. 

What I find most interesting about Debbie Does Dallas and the Golden Age movies like them, and what makes them historic (if not "great") movies, is that we will probably never see their likes again. They tried, and in some cases succeeded, in being cinematic if not necessary "good" movies. Thanks to the short-attention span immediacy of the Internet, porn today is no longer cinematic in any regard -- even 1980s and 1990s videotaped movies look like Bergmanesque masterpieces compared to what's being produced today -- so Debbie Does Dallas, its Golden Age brethren, and the filmmaking community that produced it is yet another NYC scene that has vanished forever. 

So, when you watch Debbie Does Dallas, you're watching yet fascinating kind of cultural and NYC history -- and that's worth remembering. 

Andy Milligan & The Legacy of NYC Grindhouse Cinema

Recently I caught a movie on TCM Underground called, alternatively, Fleshpot of 42nd Street or The Girls of 42nd Street. Made in 1973, it was, to put it bluntly, one of the most amateurish and poorly made films I've ever seen. And yet it was fascinating. Directed by a guy I'd never heard of before named Andy Milligan, it was a leading example and artifact of early 1970s NYC "grindhouse cinema." 

Simply put, grindhouse movies were exploitation movies -- lots of horror, gore, violence, sex, nudity, and sheer nastiness. They were cheap to make and cheap to see, playing mostly in rundown theaters in rundown neighborhoods (like the old Times Square), and they would screen all day and night for the bored, lonely, horny and otherwise dissapossed people inclined to see them. In 2007, a loving homage to these movies was produced called, no surprise, Grindhouse, featuring two movies directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino that were short, shlocky, and violent. Later on a series of movies based on a character called Machete were produced, introducing grindhouse movies to a 21st century audience.

But back to 1973.

At the time one of the biggest gindhouse directors was a guy named Andy Milligan and Fleshpot of 42nd Street is probably his most famous movie. The plot concerns a woman named Dusty, a "working girl", who sleeps with, then steal from, various men. Her partner in crime is a drag queen named Candy who helps set her up with the clients she scams. But along the way Dusty meets a charming fellow named Bob in a Manhattan bar who then takes her to his home on Staten Island where he treats her nicely. Dusty starts to fall in love with him and begins to think about another, better life that might be possible with him -- leaving the streets, crime, and hustle behind once and for all. But then ... well, you'll have to watch it to find out.

Dusty is played by a woman named Laura Cannon who was an adult star at the time but here tries to actually act -- badly, but she holds your attention through the film. Bob is played by the notorious Harry Reems and he's actually a good actor. Most of the other actors are people who probably never acted before and since, and it shows -- the acting in this movies, much like the camera work, is uniformly bad. And yet ... the movie works. It's a heart-wrenching story. This movie affects you.

And Ms. Cannon is naked quite a lot in the flick.   

But the real star of Fleshpot of 42nd Street is Andy Milligan. He was probably more interesting that any of the characters in his movies. He was basically an early 1970s NYC Ed Wood, a bad director who people remember. Originally from Minnesota, he migrated to NYC after serving in the army, working on off-Broadway shows and hanging out in the Village. He began making movies in the 1960s, eventually moving to a house in St. George, Staten Island that became his cinematic headquarters and the location 

for many of his films (like this one). Eventually he migrated to LA and, a gay man, died of AIDS in 1991. He apparently suffered from bi-polar disorder, had drug and alchohol problems, could be insufferable and difficult, and yet was beloved by many. Like Mozart, he would up in a pauper's grave. And yet, here we are, 30 years after his death, and his movies are being shown on TV, folks like yours truly are writing about him, and his influence, and the influence of grindhouse cinema, has only blossomed since then. 

Andy Milligan was the true King of Grindhouse Cinema in early 1970s NYC, who work, like the man, was reviled and revered, master of a time and place and genre of film long gone but whose legacy endures to this day. 

Review: "Highest 2 Lowest" (2025)

Few filmmakers capture the life and spirit of NYC like Spike Lee. He's been making movies for forty years and he makes movies like no other -- movies that make you think, movies that sometimes make you angry, sometimes make you laugh loudly, but that you never forget.

Spike and his movies have been part of my life since I was kid -- Do the Right Thing blew we away as a teenager. And then he started his fruitful collaboratoin with Denzel Washington and they have made some modern classics -- Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm X, Inside Man and, now, after working together for more than 30 years, Highest 2 Lowest. 

Denzel plays a music executive who is the midst of trying to save his business when his kid gets kidnapped -- only for a huge twist when its not his kid but his assistants. This awful situation leads him into a huge moral dillemma and leads to wild, unpredictable outcome.

Spike's approach to storytelling is unconventional -- he does not make predictably, standardly told narratives. And he really goes all out with that approach here. But, always, his visual flair is on full display, and Denzel just eats up the screen with a wild, fun performance -- a great actor, a master thespian, at the time of his craft. Also, Jeffrey Wright plays his assistant and, as always, he's great.

Late in the movies the rapper ASAP Rocky appears and, damn, he's got some real acting chops. There's a scene between him and Denzel that is so good, so intense, so amazing and mesmerizing that you have to watch the movies just for that. It's just two guys talking -- and its riveting.

Finally, this is a great NYC movie and it really goes from "highest to lowest", from the penthouses of highrises of gentrified Brooklyn, to the streets of Manhattan, to the subways and back alleys of the Bronx.

They don't make a lot of movies like Highest 2 Lowest these days so you gotta appreciate it when you can.

You can also listen to Spike talk about the movies with Marc Maron here. 

Review: "Serpico" (1973) & "The Turning Point" (1977) - Two Classic Gritty '70s NYC Movies

On the face of it, the 1970s movies Serpico and The Turning Point couldn't be more different: the former is a real-life story about dirty cops, the latter is a fictional story about ballet.

But watching them makes you realize they share a lot in common: besides both movies being made in the 1970s in NYC, they are gritty, brutal, totally realistic deep-dives into high-pressure, competitive, all-consuming worlds that their denizens both love and revile, that reach into the very cores of their being, enthralling and warping them, and completing devouring their lives.

Back in the 1970s Hollywood used to make movies like these, movies where not everyone and everything was beautiful, where the world was reflected back to us in all of its deformed glory, where we saw and heard people who were in pain, and where things didn't always end happily. These movies were overshadowed by many othe great classics from that time (The French Connection, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws, Rocky, Star Wars, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, you name 'em), but these two slice-of-life movies of believable realism cut just as deep emotionally as any of those other great '70s flicks.

Serpico stars Al Pacino as real-life cop Frank Serpico who "blew the whistle" on massive, entranched corruption within the NYPD, leading to the Knapp Commission and major reforms. Serpico (who's still alive!) was an odd fit with the NYPD, more of a hippy than a tough guy, someone who didn't believe violence and brute force necessarily meant good policing, and someone who didn't think corruption should ever be "business as usual". He took his life into his hands to expose the corruption and, afterwards, quit the NYPD and left the country. Directed by Sidney Lumet at the height of his career, the movie was made just a year after the main events in the film so it was an almost real-time retelling of how and why Serpico changed the NYPD -- and the whole city -- forever. Pacino was just then becoming a star -- the first Godfather movie had just come out and he was just about to start work on the second one -- but this film showed his incredible range, his ability to transform into complicated people,  the depth of a soul that is both revealing and mysterious. The film is also a very realistic look at what NYC was like back in the early 1970s and, watching it now, you see how much the city has changed while also realizing that problems with policing are, well, perennial.

The Turning Point is much different but no less intense: as someone who had experience in the world of professional ballet, I can tell you that it's a tough, insular, and unforgiving world. People in ballet LOVE balletto an irrational level, it completely dominates their minds and bodies, they speak and think and do nothing else. They sacrifice their lives and physical, mental, and emotional well-being in pursuit of career in it. There is no divide between their personal and professional lives. This film asks but doesn't attempt to answer this question: at what price glory? Shirley McClaine stars as DeeDee, a woman who relinquished a ballet career to move with her former dancer husband Wayne (Tom Skerritt) to Oklahoma City and raise a family and live a quiet life. Events ensue bringing DeeDee and her daughter Emilia to NYC where Emilia shines with the company, and where DeeDee enounters her frenemy Emma (the always glorious Anne Bancroft) who started with the company at the same time as DeeDee, stayed, and become a big ballet star. There are affairs, fights, and great performances throughout the film that show, in raw and gorgeous ways, the constant fight between ambition and personal happiness, between career and family, about understanding your real values, and the sacrfifices and sadness that go with both. The film offers no easy answers and does what all great movies do -- it shows and doesn't tell (including showing lots of great ballet dancing). It's a film that moves you and makes you think about own life and values.

So if you want to see two old NYC movies that feel just as relevant today as they were more than 40 years ago, I can't suggest Serpico and The Turning Point enough. 

Interview: Alexander Zalben, Managing Editor of Decider.com

These days there's more pop culture than ever before -- more movies, more TV shows, more music, more celebrity gossip and cultural trends, that's it's impossible to keep track of it. Thankfully, Alexander Zalben is here to help us make sense of it all!

A professional pop culture junkie and commentator, Alex runs Decider.com, a website that helps all of us fans out there figure out what and what kind of pop culture we want to consume and what shows we want to stream. He's worked at MTV, TV Guide, AMC, and he appears often on TV and radio, as well as at numerous conventions, to give fans the latest news as well as provide commentary about their favorite shows.

Alex was kind enough to tell Mr NYC about how he came upon this very cool, very unlikely career as well as what pop culture means in 2018 (the Trump effect, #MeToo, etc.) as well as his love for the show Riverdale. 

Tell us briefly about your background and how you managed to forge a career as a professional pop culture junkie/critic/commentator? 

I kind of fell into it by accident! I was working as the Artistic Director of a comedy theater, and started doing a weekly, live talk show about comic books called Comic Book Club, which I still host/produce every week. That led to some comics critic and writing gigs, which led to a full time gig writing for MTV, which is now my whole life! Career paths are weird, man! 

What's Decider.com, the website that you're the Managing Editor for?

Decider is an entertainment journalism outlet focused on TV, and streaming TV in particular. So Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video... But also you can stream anything nowadays, so it's all fair game.

Quickly, what are some of your favorite movies, TV shows, and bands?

Oh boy. I've been into Game of Thrones and Walking Dead for a long time, but recently have fallen in love with Riverdale and The Good Place. My favorite movies are pretty basic, too: Star Wars, Marvel movies, and I had a birthday party screening of Labyrinth last year, so that probably counts. What are these bands of which you speak?

In the "Golden Age of Television" and streaming shows, has TV become more cultural relevant or dominant than movies? Has TV become equal or more prestigious than movies in the pop culture hierarchy?

I'd say they're different. TV definitely had the volume at the moment, but there's still a cachet to doing a movie in a movie theater. The line is eroding - peak TV shows are often encroaching movie length every week anyway. But you can't match the experience of being in a theater with hundreds of people experiencing the same thing. That said, as movies get more expensive, there's more of a "coin" to watching TV... Not everyone has seen every movie, but the availability of Netflix and others means that everyone can easily watch Maniac "opening weekend," for example, where if that sort of thing was in theaters, it would be seen by a fraction of the audience. Short answer, for the time being they're different... But I definitely watch exponentially more TV, than movies. 

In your opinion, how has the Trump presidency affected pop culture? Does pop culture have a role in keeping people sane during an insane time? 

Well these are two opposing questions, in a way. Trump has absolutely affected pop culture, for better or worse. It's frustrating to watch nearly every TV show make the same "fake news" joke, even if it ostensibly takes place in a world different from ours. But that said, I do think people retreat into pop culture regardless of references and thematic ties, because it offers a brief respite. I was talking to a colleague earlier today about Riverdale, arguably the craziest show on television. But what I like about it is that it's a crazy that's enjoyable, that's manageable, and ultimately one that impacts the characters but is thrilling for the viewers. The reality show we're currently stuck in is the opposite of that: it's crazy, but it'll ultimately impact you in the real world, whether you like it or not. I'd prefer to live in Riverdale, all things considered.

Has the politicization of everything made pop culture better, worse -- or just weird? Is it possible to simply enjoy something because it's funny or well-done or does it feel like there's this dark cloud over everything in the culture today?

I don't think there's a dark cloud over everything. There's a need to feel relevant, but that varies by show, and some do it better than others. Don't just do an episode about #MeToo because you think you should... Do it because it fits the context of the show, the tone, the feel. For example, not TV, but a recent X-Men comic tackled border separation, in a shockingly timely and powerful manner. It worked because the X-Men have always been a metaphor for the "other," whatever that other may be. Or on TV, something like The Good Fight that's inherently a political show can dive right into that. But seeing say, Sofia The First's take on international trade would be a weird fit. It's the responsibility of art to mirror the world we live it, and to shine a light on injustice. But it's not the responsibility of everyone to do it, or in the same way. 

Where does pop culture go after Trump? Can it ever be just fun again? 

I'm having a blast, man! Ha ha, just kidding, I'm depressed every day. But there are those pockets of hope that keep us going. I recently watched The Flash premiere, and it was full of fun and good people being good to each other. Or something like Game Night, that has nothing to do with politics and is just a delightful break from the outside world. There's a lot happening, and I think it's okay to take a break for an hour or two and decompress. Going forward, the world will be different, and entertainment will be changed; but ultimately there are fun things that are fun, there are things that are not fun, and there will always be variations between the two. 

Any other thoughts you'd like to share? Is there anything about pop culture in 2018 that most people don't understand?

I don't think people should feel bad about using pop culture as metaphors. Yes, it's a simplification, and not everything can be broken into Harry Potter vs Voldemort. But that's how people process overwhelming emotions and events, through things they do understand. I love fans. I love that people love things, more than anything else in the world. I am a fan of fans! And there's this mass misunderstanding that people can't like what they like. That's what leads to toxic fandoms, versus the understanding that there can be more than one thing, of a thing. Star Wars can be for girls, and boys, y'all! Sometimes even at the same time! That's okay! The world is a burning hellfire and we have maybe 10 years before the climate collapses. Let people enjoy what makes their heart soar, and as long as they're not hurting someone else it's a-okay. They'll let you like the thing you like, too. 

Thanks Alex!

Best NYC Movies Set in 24-Hours

When you read a novel or watch a movie or any standalone story, the timespan it takes place across can vary: the story can take place over a few hours, a few days, a few weeks -- or a few years, decades, or centuries. 

It therefore takes a special skill to tell a story within one day -- 24 hours -- that has an engaging beginning, middle, and end. Obviously the goldstandard of a 24-hour story is James Joyce's 1922 legendary novel Ulysses, a tale of two down-on-their-luck Dubliners, whose lives intersect on June 16, 1904. 

Most movies that take place over 24-hours are action movies -- they're basically lengthy chases, one slambang sequence after another -- that only work narratively over a short period of time. Also, the movie usually has a hook that such and such a thing must be done before a specific time or else a bomb goes off. Non-action movies are harder to tell within 24-hours but some have tried.

Either way, this list of the best movies set over 24-hours is intriguing. 

There are a bunch NYC movies on this list that take place over 24-hours (or less), some of which I've either written about or reviewed over the years: Dog Day Afternoon, My Dinner With Andre, After Hours, Do The Right Thing, Night On Earth, and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. 

A couple of other very good set-within-24 hours NYC movies that aren't on this but that I've also written about are New Year's Day and Vanya on 42nd Street. 

Of course NYC is the perfect place to set a story within 24-hours because there's so much to do, and it's so relatively easy to get around, that a lot can happen within a short period of time. I hope many such movies will be made in the future!

Remember, it's Chinatown

One of the greatest movies ever made is Chinatown, the 1974 crime thriller about the corrupt  political machinations that built Los Angeles. Funnily enough, the actual neighborhood of Chinatown appears only once at the very end of the movie. But, as it proves, Chinatown the place isn't as important as Chinatown the idea -- the idea of foreignness, mystery, scandal, and excitement. It's a ready made place for the movies, a cinematic treasure trove.

Chinatown, like any and all foreign language urban enclaves (think Greeks in Astoria, Russians in Brighton Beach, Orthodox Jews in Borough Park, Italians in Little Italy) is like a little world within a world, a satellite of the country its residents come from. The people there live insular lives, their families and communities are more important to them than the city as a whole, and they operate by their own rules, dictated more by their home country's customs and traditions then by their new country's laws. They speak their native language, the signs for their stores are in those languages' alphabets, and they read newspapers, watch TVs show, and listen to radio programs about their home counties.  

And woe unto those outsiders who dare intrude and seek to change them! These neighborhoods live in perpetual conflict with the outside (i.e. mostly white and English-speaking) world. Sometimes these two worlds come into conflict -- and drama obviously ensures. As mentioned, this makes great material for the movies.     

No movie as great as Chinatown has been made about NYC's own Chinatown but, over the years, several movies have been set in that little area of Lower Manhattan. Until Monday, at the Metrograph on Ludlow Street, several New York Chinatown movies will be playing in a festival called Imaginary Chinatown. Some of them, as this article indicates, perpetuate ugly racist stereotypes of Chinese people and that shouldn't be ignored. But what's interesting about these movies is how when outsiders (i.e. white people) go into Chinatown, they are entering a new world within their own city, a world they don't understand, and a world where they don't rule. For most, it's a rude awakening, and their arrogance, their sense of superiority, is quickly extinguished. 

My favorite NYC Chinatown movie is the 1985 Michael Cimino flick The Year of the Dragon. It's a fun, pulpy, violent movie starring Mickey Rourke as an NYPD detective trying to take down a Chinatown drug gang and the great John Lone as his arch-nemesis. It's dives deep into the culture of Chinatown and it explains, as few other Chinatown movies do, that this a world few white people and outsiders will ever understand. 

And that's, ultimately, what it's all about: understanding. Understanding the "other", the mysteries in our midst. The classic line "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown" is all about how people who meddle in places they don't understand are headed to certain ruin. So before you go into Chinatown or any other place and try to change it, either understand it first -- or forget it.   

Review: Forgotten NYC Movies - "Welcome to New York" "Exiled" and "Parting Glances"

There are so many NYC movies that reviewing the famous ones is pointless because they've been written about ad nauseum (and much better) elsewhere. That's why I like, here at Mr NYC, to review some of the forgotten NYC films, as I've been doing recently. Here are three very, very different NYC movies that are probably forgotten but worth checking out:

Welcome to New York (2014): This movie is a collaboration between legendary NYC director Abel Ferrera and French superstar Gerard Depardieu. A chamberpiece of a film, it is based on the 2011 incident involving former World Bank head Dominique Strauss-Kahn and a black maid in a Manhattan hotel room. Depardieu plays a world famous economist who has just left his big job in DC and, before heading back to France to run for president in an election he seems certain to win, goes to NYC to visit his daughter. While staying at a fancy hotel, he rapes a black maid and is soon arrested and confined to imprisonment in a Greenwich Village townhouse with his wife. While there, he ponders his life, his ambitions, thinks about how no matter how powerful he has become he is actually quite miserable, and how life is meaningless and only lust seems real to him. Eventually the charges against him are dropped -- but his repuation and life are ruined.

Exiled: A Law & Order Movies (1998): This is an old TV movie from back in the day when the major networks still did TV movies. It stars Chris Noth (just before he became Mr Big) reprising his Law & Order character Mike Logan. Logan (and Noth) left the show in 1995 when, in the season finale, he hit a politician in the face on the steps of a courthouse. Logan isn't fired from the force but he exiled from detective work in Manhattan -- the patroling the streets of NYC's Sibera, Staten Island. The movie is about how Logan is trying to break a big case, while romancing a young lady, in the hopes that it will revive his career and bring him back into Manhattan. 

Parting Glances (1986): set over a 24-hour period, mostly at a farewell party, it was one of the first movies to directly address the AIDS crises. It stars Steven Buscemi in his first movie role as a gay man dying of AIDS. This movie was part of the rough and tumble independent NYC movie scene of the 1980s, before such movies became big business in the 1990s. The director, Bill Sherwood, never made another movie because, shortly after this movie was released, he also died of AIDS. But this movie was well ahead of its time and gave us one my generation's greatest actors -- recently profiled here for GQ.

NYC Movie Theaters Are Vanishing

In some big news, the Regal Cinema multiplex in Union Square is closing. (This is part of a bankruptcy proceeding by Regal Cinema that is seeing its multiplexes close nationwide.)

While it's always seemed like it's been part of the Union Square scene forever, this multiplex has only been there since 1998. Nonetheless, it fast became a vital part of the neighborhood and its location made it one of the most heavily patronized movie theaters in the city. I went there countless times, seeing movies like Signs and Up and so many others. It was very popular with NYU students and it's also the movie theater where I once accidently bumped into Ed Koch on Christmas Eve 2004. Even though it was a big, impersonal, and wildly overpopulated multiplex, it had a cozy feel.

Now it's gone, following on the heels of so many other movie theaters around the city that are vanishing, especially in residential neighborhoods, and especially in downtown Manhattan. As sad as this is, it's not surprising. Streaming has utterly transformed how we consume movies. Now people can watch first-run movies on their phone while traveling or on their huge flatscreens on home -- why venture out and pay a ton of dough and put up with other moviegoers when you sit in the comfort of home, get some take out, and watch it there? In the same way that the Internet transformed Times Square by putting porno movie theaters out of business, streaming is transforming NYC and other cities by stamping out movie theaters. Sad but plus ca change. 

Video stores were an even earlier casualty of streaming. There's even a documentary about the once mighty, now gone, Kim's Video stores that used to populate the city (I used to live near one). Even though it was a basic CD/DVD store, it had a nerdy vibe that made you feel part of a movie-loving, pop culture community. That's been lost now -- the community belongs on remote. 

My favorite long-gone movie theater was the Ziegfeld on 54th street. It was a massive single-run movie house, the closest thing we ever had to a movie palace in this town. I saw many great movies there like Inglorious Basterds (and some not so great ones, like the Star Wars prequels). It was the kind of place that made movies feel important in a way that streaming and watching them on phones  doesn't.

There are a lot of great movies set in NYC -- it's just too bad there are increasing few great places to see movies in NYC. 

The Best Outer Borough Movies

My previous post on Working Girl got me thinking about movies set in the boroughs outside of Manhattan. There are a number of films -- some old, some more recent, some great, some not -- set in places where the vast majority of New Yorkers actually live. Here are a few of the most memorable. Please let me know if I'm missing any really great ones. I'm sure there are some I missed that'll make me smack my head and shout "D'OH!"

The Bronx

Marty (1955): A beautiful movie about a lonely butcher looking for love. Ernest Borgnine creates one of the greatest characters ever etched on film. It swept the 1955 Oscars, including Best Picture, Actor, Director and Original Screenplay.

A Bronx Tale (1993): Robert De Niro's directorial debut about a boy in the Bronx trying to live honestly in a world of crime.

Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981): Cops in a war zone, led by Paul Newman. Very controversial at the time.

Awakenings (1991): One of De Niro's best performances about catatonic patients brought back (briefly) to life. Based on the story of Dr. Oliver Sacks.

Finding Forrester (2000): Not a great movie by any means but it does have Sean Connery saying "You're the man now dog!"

The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990): Awful movie based on a great book. One of the great bombs of all times. It does, however, give you a very good idea of what the Bronx was like the late 1980s -- namely, scary.

Brooklyn

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944): A Cary Grant classic about old ladies in Brooklyn Heights who murder people. Ronald Reagan was actually considered for the Cary Grant part at one time.

The Squid and the Whale (2005): Very funny, very sad movie about a miserable family in Park Slope. The best performance Jeff Daniels has ever given.

Moonstruck (1987): Cher's Oscar (Olympia Dukakis got one to). A beautiful film about Italians, baking, opera, and the insanity of love. Classic lines: "Where are you taking me?" "To da' bed!"

Radio Days (1987): Perhaps Woody Allen's sweetest movie. A tribute to childhood in the 1940s, classic radio, and growing up Jewish.

Saturday Night Fever (1977): Gave us John Travolta, the Bee Gees, and polyester. Best line: "You know I work on my hair 'long time and he hits it ... he hits my hair!"

She's Gotta Have It (1986): Spike Lee's first movie.

Do The Right Thing (1989): Spike Lee's best movie.

Smoke/Blue in the Face (1995): Dual movies about the lives of people who frequent a smoke shop. Harvey Keitel was never so sweet.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975): "Attica! Attica! Attica!" Al Pacino's greatest performance ever. Based on a real bank robbery gone very wrong.

Queens

Goodfellas (1990): The life of Henry Hill, a great movie about a very bad man. The best mob movie ever, Scorsese's masterpiece, and the immortal lines, "Funny? Funny how? Like I'm a clown, I amuse you, I make you laugh?"

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006): Strange but touching little movie about life in lower-class Astoria in the 1980s. Robert Downey Jr. gives a lovely performance.

Queens Logic (1991): Never saw it, no one did apparently, but it's an ensemble piece about Queens and it should really help you with that "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game.

Coming to America (1988): Eddie Murphy's funniest movies about an African prince looking for a wife in, well ... Queens! His best comic performance ever.

The Wrong Man (1956): True story about an innocent man accused of murder. Alfred Hitchcock and Henry Fonda -- need I say more?

Staten Island

Working Girl (1988): A "goil" named Tess with big dreams who gets it all.

Sisters (1973): One of Brian De Palma's pre-Carrie movies. Before she was Lois Lane, Margot Kidder starred in this psychological thriller.

School of Rock (2003): Jack Black comedy about teaching kids how to rock. It was completely filmed in this borough.

Summary

It looks like Brooklyn's got most of the best movies made about it, followed by Queens, followed by The Bronx, followed by Staten Island. But who really cares about pecking order. These movies show that some of the most interesting New York characters in movie history were from the outer boroughs.

Next up -- the best outer borough novels and TV shows.

Michael Mann Takes NYC

A few years ago I blogged about the great 1995 movie Heat, a Los Angeles crime epic starring two of the greatest actors NYC ever produced -- Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Although taking place entirely in LA, the New York sensibility of its two stars makes it ever greater.

It's one of my favorite movies, a true classic, about men and their work, men and their loves, about how work and love become one and the same, and overwhelms and subsumes them. I can watch this movie again and again and again and find something new each time to appreciate about it. 

The movie was written and directed by Michael Mann (himself a son of Chicago) who has made many excellent films over the last forty years including Thief, Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider, Ali, and Collateral. His movies, and the men and women who lives and work he portrays, are steely, unsentimental, brutal, and totally honest. In each movie he brings his exacting eye, his almost surgical camera-work, his extremely honest storytelling, not so much to tell a story but to reveal one through the motivations and actions of his characters. His movies manage to be both trilling and suspenseful while also soulful and meditative. Mann's movies, as I wrote before, are action movies for smart people.

And now Michael Mann is having a moment in NYC. His movies are enjoying a retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image in early June and then, on June 17th, the Tribeca Film Festival is honoring Heat with a special screening where Mann, Pacino, and De Niro will be in attendance and speak afterwards. 

Truly a Mann and his moment.