Dear Friends,

The Tribeca Film Festival opened last night and celebrates its 25^th anniversary. I really enjoyed attending the movies and panels last year. The pick for this week is a movie that premiered at Tribeca last year, but I missed it at the time. It’s one of a select group of previous festival participants that have made their way into theaters over the course of the year, with varying degrees of success.

The film is Honeyjoon, the first feature by writer-director Lilian T. Mehrel, and it tells the story of a “grief anniversary” getaway shared by a mom and her adult daughter a year after the death of their husband/father. Since its premiere, Honeyjoon has had a very extensive festival run and collected numerous awards. Here’s the trailer1:

We’ll go next Wednesday (June 10) to the 7pm screening at IFC Center with Ms. Mehrel in attendance – ah the benefits of being in New York where the filmmakers travel to you all year round!

It’s actually a banner weekend for women-directed films compared to the past couple of months, with at least five other varied and distinctive features screening in NYC2. Notably, however, all of them are non-Hollywood limited releases. While the summer is shaping up to be good for the box office, Hollywood studios continue to support almost exclusively men. Women can direct franchise and horror movies too, people!

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

Dear Friends,

This week’s pick is Manas (“sisters”), a deeply researched story of a girl’s fight against sexual abuse and repression in the Brasilian Amazon. Director Marianna Brennand thought she was working on a documentary film, but at a certain point realized she would need to change course and create a fictional narrative.1 Winner of the director’s prize at the Venice Film Festival, it’s been extended into a second week at Film Forum. We’ll see it tomorrow (June 2) at 5:40pm.

Violence against women and girls is pervasive and widespread in the U.S. and around the world. One of the worst news stories I encountered recently occurred close to my home in Brooklyn: a woman waiting arraignment for over 24 hours on a minor misdemeanor charge was nine months pregnant and gave birth while handcuffed in the courtroom. The levels of injustice and inhumanity that surround this entire scenario are astonishing.

If we want to halt the current cycle of violence and destruction, we should reorient the core values of society around female empowerment and justice. I believe changing women’s place in the world is the most important and powerful, and possibly the only, structural way to change the world for the better.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Dear Friends,

I’m coming towards the end of a short writing pause, but I wanted to depart from my usual recommendations to highlight the nationwide re-release today (Sunday, May 31) and tomorrow of a remarkable Japanese anime film that premiered twenty years ago and combines almost entirely hand-drawn (incredible!) animated beauty with ever-relevant thematic storytelling. Based on a classic manga from renowned author Taiyō Matsumoto and originally serialized in 1993 and 1994, the film and manga are called Tekkonkinkreet.

Although produced in Japan, it was directed by Michael Arias, who spent the better part of a decade getting the film made, and written by his friend and colleague Anthony Weintraub, both of whom are from the U.S. and packed the movie with multi-cultural cinematic references. Set in a surreal cosmopolitan city with various competing real estate developers, crime syndicates, and outmatched or corrupt cops, the story focuses on two orphans who live in a car and roam the streets and alleys both of the city and their imaginations.

Over the past two decades the film has built a significant following, and having now seen it I understand why. I know little about anime beyond the occasional Studio Ghibli film, which I’ve always watched on TV. If you’re a manga or anime fan, seeing this gorgeous 4K restoration on the big screen is an absolute must. If you’re not familiar with the style, take this opportunity to enjoy a glorious work of art that is a mind-expanding departure from the movies you typically see.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

P.S. I watched it with our 14-year-old son who loved it. I’d say it’s most suitable for ages 11 and up.

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Dear Friends,

I don’t know about you, but I encounter a lot of articles and posts about collapse and prepping. If you want to explore some nitty gritty research and details, check out Jessica Wildfire’s free Substack. Part of coming to terms with global warming and our changing environment is getting back to basics and recognizing our requirements as humans are under threat. Such is one of the underlying themes of Zach Galifianakis’ new Netflix show This Is a Gardening Show. It’s very funny, informative, and also reverberates with the current climate, as he says in the first episode, “The future is agrarian.”

Further along in this theme, the top prize for documentary at this year’s Cannes Film Festival was announced today, for Groundswell, directed by wife and husband team Rebecca Harrell Tickell and Josh Tickell. The movie is a globe-hopping exploration of regenerative agriculture, the third film in a trilogy they have made on the subject. Their films advocate the goal of dedicating one billion acres globally to regenerative agriculture, which equals 10% of global ag lands.1 “That’s what we need to reach the tipping point to be able to have this be an unstoppable force for us to have life and balance on earth.” says Rebecca Harrell. I’ll keep an eye out for their movie when it arrives stateside.

As for this week, I was excited to learn about a film by Canadian documentary filmmaker Amalie Atkins, who followed her petite, nonagenarian aunt’s daily routines for six years and filmed her—on 16mm film—maintaining her rural Manitoba home with astounding DIY resourcefulness. We’re going to a 2:40pm afternoon screening tomorrow (May 19) at Film Forum. I’m ready for more inspiration, and to learn a thing or two along the way about how to live now to have a planetary future of life and balance.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Dear Friends,

Last week I took our car in for routine maintenance (we have an electric VW ID.4) at the only dealership in Brooklyn in a neighborhood way to the Southwest near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge where the marathon crosses from Staten Island. While the dealer had the car I had some time to walk around, and what I found especially remarkable about the neighborhood is the diversity of people on the sidewalk. All New Yorkers experience this to some degree, but watching a mix of old Italians, Mexican families, women in full hijab, old bearded men in Orthodox Jewish dress, just to name a few, all sharing the same space while going about their business is a reminder of the diversity of humans and the commonalities we share.

There aren’t many communities in this country or the world where this diversity is a commonplace, everyday experience. It’s one of my favorite things about New York City. Everyone is doing their thing and trying to get by one way or another, dealing with problems, eating and drinking and praying and socializing in their own unique way. Difference surrounds us, ubiquitous and undeniable, experienced firsthand, unmediated.

I was on a walk in the park with two of my sons (and our two dogs) and overheard them talking about the recognition that other people have lives just as unique, deep, and important to them as your own is to you. This phenomenon has a name, “sonder,” a term I’d never heard before my son used it. When I looked it up I discovered why: it was invented in 2019 by John Koenig as part of a project he started called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which “seeks to coin and define neologisms for emotions not yet described in the English language.” Sonder is one of the invented words that is slowly making its way into the culture, listed by Merriam-Webster as slang and picked up by one of my sons. Given the importance of language in manifesting thought, creating ideas, and determining how we comprehend the world around us, I’m fascinated by the project. As for sonder, it happens all the time in New York City, and if more people regularly felt it around the world, the world would be a better place.

Like walking an NYC sidewalk, a film can cross cultures and offer a means of making connections across differences, revealing our shared humanity. This week’s movie pick is a film that appears to do this, aiming to connect us not only to each other but also to the natural world. Silent Friend follows a majestic ginkgo tree through connected stories in three different eras. It is written and directed by Ildikó Enyedi, a Hungarian filmmaker whose memorable debut feature My Twentieth Century won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 1989. She also won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2017 for On Body and Soul. Ms. Enyedi has been making remarkable films for decades. We’ll catch Silent Friend tomorrow (May 12) at the Angelika at 6:15pm.

While it’s easy to walk down the street in New York City and encounter a range of cultures, encountering diversity in cinema culture is much harder. Hollywood and streaming algorithms are designed to provide us with what we find familiar and comforting. Hollywood traffics in sequels and book adaptations. Netflix calls the ideal show a “gourmet cheeseburger.” While we rebel against billionaires and wars and genocides and environmental destruction, we also must rebel against the cultural powers that limit what we see, isolating us into our own bubbles and promoting what is essentially propaganda. I’ve nothing against “comfort cinema” per se, either in the theater or at home, but let’s be inspired by sonder; there are whole worlds to be explored.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Dear Friends,

I really wanted to choose Mile End Kicks this week. I’d seen the trailer, I really liked Barbie Ferreira in Bob Trevino Likes It, it’s written and directed by rising filmmaker Chandler Levack who incredibly had a movie premiere on Netflix on the same day as Mile End Kicks (Roommates), and it was recommended by a trusted friend. However, I can’t find it playing anywhere in the city. Given it opened only two weeks ago, this is extremely disappointing and illustrative of the problems with the cinema landscape I’ve been discussing.

It’s very easy for cinemas to pull movies and reshuffle their schedules because distribution is all digital today (imagine not long ago when heavy metal containers of 35mm film prints were shipped across the country for every screening). If a movie isn’t performing well initially, who can blame the theaters for swapping it out? Yet therein lies the problem: there’s no time or opportunity to build word-of-mouth support for a good movie when it comes out.

The struggle is intense for films without insane marketing budgets pushing them in front of audiences on opening weekend. What’s apparent, and increasingly proven in practice, is the importance of the filmmakers spending a significant amount of time promoting their movie themselves. Without a Disney or an A24 backing you, your movie will simply not find an audience any other way. It doesn’t matter what festival it played or what awards it has won. The competition in the “attention economy” is fierce and the only way to cut through without gobs of money is with a lot of effort in making direct contact with your potential audience.

The IFC Center, while having its limitations as a theater, solves this problem in part by using digital distribution to play many films on the same day. Tomorrow it is showing thirteen different movies on its five screens, meaning these films get to play a little longer to find an audience. One of the thirteen is Blue Heron, by writer-director Sophy Romvari, a coming-of-age story that has the highest metacritic score of any release this year. Did the metacritic score help its release in theaters? Not as far as I can tell. However, having selected Blue Heron as one of the very few movies I can find in current release directed by a woman, I am glad the critics unanimously liked the film. We’ll go tomorrow (May 5) to the 5:15pm screening.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Dear Friends,

I’m writing. I’ve been writing, but for the past few weeks it’s been frustrating getting a handle on what I want to say and how I want to say it. Although I took a theatrical break last week1, I’m still committed to seeing a movie each week in theaters and letting you know about it. So for the time being:

There are three notable films from which to choose. Susan highlighted Two Women, written by Catherine Léger and directed by Chloé Robichaud, and described as “an irrepressible comedy about two mothers who refuse to settle for stagnant lives, and instead pursue the joy they need to feel alive and fulfilled.” Sounds great. We’ll see it at the Angelika on Wednesday (Apr 29) at 7pm.

The other two movies are Blue Heron, written & directed by Sophy Romvari, which has the highest metacritic rating (93) of any release this year, and Mile End Kicks, written & directed by Chandler Levack and starring Barbie Ferreira who plays a rock music journalist. We saw the trailer in the theater a few weeks ago and the movie looks charming and fun. My hope is to see both of these films over the next two weeks, but there’s no guarantee they’ll still be in theaters. Fingers crossed!

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Dear Friends,

Our fourteen-year-old went to see Project Hail Mary on his own and loved it. His friends weren’t free, and I’m glad he just went on his own. I like going to the cinema alone. Although I haven’t seen it, Project Hail Mary seems to be one of the better movie options out there at the moment. In May, when he wants to go to the new Star Wars: Mandalorian and Grogu, I’ll probably join him. It’s hard to resist: we gen-xers return to Star Wars again and again as we all were imprinted by the original release in the summer of 1977. The force is strong.

There is a new woman-directed film in wide release called You, Me & Tuscany, directed by Kat Coiro, who to her credit has a full career directing both television and features. It’s the kind of general audience mid-budget film that in an ideal world would go to women directors at least half the time. Hollywood needs ten times more Kat Coiros. That said, I saw the trailer and am personally not interested in seeing it this week. If you’re in the mood for a warm and sunny romantic comedy, check it out.

Besides that, the dearth of new women-directed films continues as in NYC the Film Forum, IFC Center, Angelika, and Alamo Drafthouse all have none on offer. The local standout is Quad Cinema which has not one but two playing: a documentary by Sophie Fiennes called Acting, and a feature debut by writer-director-actor Katarina Zhu called Bunnylovr.

Although both seem well worth checking out, I’m opting for Zhu’s Bunnylovr because she is attending a Q&A after the screening. It’s always fun to meet the director and listen to her discuss her work. We’ll attend the Tuesday (Apr 14) screening at 7:20pm – but note Zhu is showing up for Q&As on Wednesday and Thursday as well.

By the way, we watched last week’s pick, Jimmy and the Demons, at the Quad, and I highly recommend that film if you get the chance to see it. Most documentaries succeed on the appeal of their main characters, and director Cindy Meehl’s choice of subjects knocks it out the park. Thoughtful and heartwarming, it’s worth every minute to spend time with artist Jimmy Grashow and his wife of over fifty years, Guzzy. It’s great to leave the theater inspired.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Dear Friends,

This is the toughest week for women-directed films so far this year. There’s no new wide release, and we’ve already seen all the holdovers save one (the new Colleen Hoover novel-adapted movie, Reminders of Him. Hard pass.) If you’re looking for a woman-directed film worth going to the theater to see this week, Annemarie Jacir’s Palestine 36 expanded into more cities and is excellent.

We’re dealing with a lack of options, and within those options, frankly the choices aren’t very good. I’m almost ready to give up on choosing only women-directed films for this year. Almost. I’m a stubborn person, and with some digging I found five under-the-radar movies from which to choose. One of these is directed by the well-known director Sofia Coppola. I’ll skip Marc By Sofia, though, because I’m not a fan of the fashion industry (the upcoming, heavily-promoted The Devil Wears Prada 2 is directed by a man (how lame is that??) so thankfully I don’t have to watch it).

Three of the other choices have very attention-grabbing titles: You’re Dating a Narcissist!, Dead Lover, Castration Movie (what do these titles reveal about the current mental state of women??) but with Susan’s input am choosing a documentary called Jimmy and the Demons by esteemed director Cindy Meehl. Her debut feature, Buck, about renowned horse whisperer Buck Brannaman, won the U.S. Documentary Audience Award at Sundance in 2008. Her latest film is about a sculptor searching for meaning while creating the biggest, and most personal, commission of his career. We’ll see it at the Quad Cinema on Tuesday (Apr 7) at 6:05pm.

As a final note, I struggle with the cognitive dissonance of choosing films while witnessing our demonic country (with Israel) drop bombs on hospitals and schools in Gaza and Iran and indiscriminately lock up immigrants at home. Too many of us are just letting these atrocities happen. I attended a march last Saturday and know many others who did. That one weekend day is just a hint of movement in the mobilization required for the US to change course. Marches are meaningless if they don’t develop into further collective action: strikes, boycotts, divestment, disruption. Art is one of many things worth living for, and while I encourage you to make time to go to the movies (or the theater, or a concert), it is incumbent on all of us to RAISE OUR VOICES and BUILD COMMUNITIES to fight for ALL the children who inherit our world.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Dear Friends,

This summer I’m making a feature film called In The Long Run. Erica and Susan, women in their fifties, run eighteen miles through the streets and parks and over the bridges and along the waterways of NYC as part of their training for the New York City Marathon. We’ll experience the city through their movement as they undergo this remarkable (for the non-runner) yet standard (for the marathoner) feat of athletic endurance. Over the course of the run–and anyone who has trained for a marathon will relate–their conversation will have a wide-ranging, free-association quality to it; reflections of where the mind goes as the miles stack up.

That’s the movie: two women running 18 miles through NYC.

We’re going to launch a crowdfunding campaign on May 1 (my birthday!) to bring people in to the project and cover the costs of making the film.

In The Long Run is aligned with the NonDē50 project that includes the community participation of over a hundred cinema-makers at this point, all working to create at least fifty films in 2026. I’m proud and excited to be a part of this hopeful endeavor that seeks to build a better world through cinema.

I will be sharing updates and thoughts about In The Long Run all year long. The movie is an extension of an actual long run, sweaty, muscular, wise, tactile, real, humorous, meditative and surprising, by two powerful women.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Dear Friends,

In an effort to promote a monthly film-themed social event: welcome to Last Tuesday Cinema Club! Our inaugural film (woman-directed of course as that’s the theme for 2026) is Forbidden Fruits, based on a play and co-written by Lily Houghton, directed and co-written by Meredith Alloway. It’s clearly a very female-forward film, a horror-comedy about store employees at a mall who are part of a coven. The movie premiered ten days ago at SXSW and is getting a wide release from IFC Films.

We’re going to the Regal Essex Crossing screening at 7:20pm on Tuesday, March 31. Tickets are only $10 each if you sign up for a free Regal Crown Club membership. Join us if you can! We’ll go out afterwards to a nearby watering hole to socialize and talk about what will hopefully be a film that sparks and isn’t just sparkly.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Dear Friends,

After four years of running Warner Bros. Discovery, and overseeing a 14% revenue decline over that span, CEO David Zaslav reportedly stands to personally gain in the neighborhood of $700,000,000 if the deal with Paramount Skydance goes through. So many amazing movies could be financed with 700 million dollars, and instead that’s going to a single person1. Even in capitalist terms, this is a grossly distorted, inefficient allocation of resources.

At the same time, the new company will be saddled with $79 billion in debt. It’s a massive leveraged buyout, and no one believes it will work out well for the company, its employees, or for cinema (note Paramount Skydance stock is down 25% since the merger announcement less than a month ago). Much of our economic system has been reduced to financial engineering schemes that benefit a miniscule number of people at the expense of everyone else.

Besides sending a hundred-year-old, and still successful, movie studio into debt-fueled oblivion, the deal further consolidates our media ecosystem. The Secretary of War has already been quoted as saying he looks forward to CNN being absorbed by CBS so the existing coverage and criticism of the government is quashed even further.

With all this on the table, the movement to BLOCK THE MERGER is substantive and well-organized, and even those without a foot in entertainment per se have a stake in the outcome given the disaster it is for consumers and the implications for society.

In contrast to the ongoing story of the rapacious private equity returns of the “Epstein Class”, this week’s movie pick is based on the true story of a woman fighting the company that towed her car–out of which she had been living. Called Tow, the movie is directed by Stephanie Laing and stars Rose Byrne in what I expect to be another compelling, believably-unhinged performance. It’s playing at the Angelika but we’ve seen too many movies there recently. Tow is getting a slightly wider release and thus is playing at a couple AMC theaters in the city. We’ll attend the AMC Kips Bay for the Tuesday (Mar 24) screening at 7:15pm.

How many examples of obscene inequality are we going to see before we rise up and demand justice, fairness, and consideration for all people?

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Dear Friends,

I saw four more women-directed films in February. It’s interesting to think when the Oscars come around next year I’ll have watched exclusively women-directed films for this newsletter in 2025. I guess it’ll seriously handicap my Oscar ballot in 2027–I’ll have to invent my own. As vapid and self-serving as the Oscars are, they do draw much-needed attention to cinema, and thus I will watch them tonight.

The clear winner from last month is Kristen Stewart’s The Chronology of Water. She and her collaborators understood the story they wanted to tell and made so many aligned decisions the end result is a complete work of art. Whatever you think of the story, the elements of cinema–time, space, editing, image, sound, voice, music, physicality, emotion, imagination–are brought together sure-handedly into a compelling whole. Personally, I thought the story worth telling and appreciated the cinema-makers’ approach to the challenging material.

The repartee between Jodie Foster’s character and her ex-husband (played by Daniel Auteuil) are by far the best parts of Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life. The rest of the film is not compelling, and I didn’t respond to what it was trying to achieve.

Amanda Kramer’s By Design is more of an experimental film than a traditional narrative. I admittedly was hoping for more Charlie Kaufman-esque surrealist storytelling conundrums, but instead the movie is more of an earnest exploration of different forms of, and reactions to, contemporary femininity. The acting is good, but the style is plastic and staged. It feels more like performance art than a movie.

Lastly comes the, to me, ghastly Midwinter Break. We didn’t walk out, I guess somehow expecting it might eventually come together, but no, the script is very poor, the story is lame, and beyond two solid (indeed, perhaps Oscar-worthy given the material!) performances by the stage actors Lesley Manville and Ciaran Hinds, I see no reason whatsoever why this movie was picked up by Focus Features for release. They should use their considerable resources to back better films–like The Chronology of Water, which received a very limited theatrical release even though, unlike the other films, it did not feel made for anything but the cinema.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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The Academy Awards are Sunday night. Only one of the ten Best Picture nominees is directed by a woman (Chloe Zhao, Hamnet). Last year, there was also only one (Coralie Fargeat, The Substance), and the year before, a high-water mark with three (Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall; Greta Gerwig, Barbie; Celine Song, Past Lives). Of course this follows when, as I’ve stated before, fewer than 10% of the top 100 films are directed by women. Hollywood is culturally short-changing us. It is incumbent upon those of us who are aware of this patriarchal bias to seek out culture with purpose and support the creative voices that the business sidelines and ignores.

As I considered my own list of favorites for the year, it really boiled down to three: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Best Picture, Director, Actress), It Was Just an Accident (Foreign, Screenplay), and The Secret Agent (Actor, Cinematography). Check them out if you haven’t already. They’re excellent!

Our pick of the week is Palestine 36, directed by Annemarie Jacir. We’re lucky enough to be going to a screening where she will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A at the Angelika Film Center on Tuesday (Mar 17) at 7pm. I’ve seen the trailer, and the film appears to be a compelling historical epic from a different point of view than what we are normally shown, although it gives a lot of screen time to the British stars (Jeremy Irons and Liam Cunningham) which naturally brings to mind Lawrence of Arabia. Ninety years later, Western power is still in ceaseless imperial war in the Middle East. The vast majority of the world is ready for this insanity to come to an end, and I hope this movie is a cultural step in that direction.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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I am sad to report that the movie I saw last Tuesday night, Charliebird, had an attendance of only two patrons besides myself. The movie won a top award at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City last June, yet with nine months to prepare almost nobody came to the theater by the fifth day of its release. This is a real shame.

The producers of Charliebird found a distribution partner in Freestyle Digital Media1 and, not knowing anything about their specific deal, the takeaway nonetheless is obvious: a modest distribution company, no matter how capable, is not equipped to make a film successful at the box office. If cinemamakers want to make personal work outside the ever-more gated and dysfunctional Hollywood system, they have to accept the fact that they must focus as much on creating their audience as on creating their actual film. It’s a tall *%#ing order but there’s no choice.

Alternatively, cinemamakers can try to work within the system and avail themselves of a multi-million dollar marketing campaign. The competition is fierce, though, as only 100 films a year receive that level of support, and if you’re woman director, that number plunges to below ten. What survives that gauntlet?

In part to find out, after three months of only seeing niche films with small releases and limited ad budgets, this week I’ve elected for a double bill of Hollywood system-supported films in wide release by female directors: Wuthering Heights (dir. Emerald Fennell) and The Bride! (dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal). I find the similarities in their key art design curious, as if they’re a black and a white version of similar films: the closeup of a couple in an embrace, the woman on the left below the taller man, the blonde seduced by the brawn. The eyes tell a different story, however, as Jessie Buckley’s character challenges the viewer directly whereas Margot Robbie’s succumbs completely to her story.

That these big-budget women-directed films exist at all counts as a positive, I suppose, and I’m curious to see what emerged out of the process. I know little about either. Wuthering Heights has done quite well at the box office, whereas, five days in, The Bride! has not and is unlikely to become a success. I’ll see Wuthering Heights at the Cobble Hill Cinemas at 5pm and The Bride! at the same theater at 8pm. Hopefully I won’t be alone: all that money should buy more theatergoers.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Dear Friends,

Many events today are driven by greedy sadistic billionaire bullshit. The world is rife with it. In Hollywood, this has taken the form of the big news of the week, as the Ellison family’s Paramount, with substantial funding from the Saudi National Fund and other foreign entities, are the new buyers of Warner Bros Discovery, having made a superior offer to Netflix’s. Netflix received a $2.8 billion kill fee: I find that disgusting. For the country and the film business the switcheroo from Netflix to Paramount is just going from bad to bad. There are many entities fighting this merger; maybe it’ll collapse.

It’s a particularly weak week for new movies with only one wide release: the horror sequel Scream 7. There’s an obvious pick of the week for us New Yorkers, however: Charliebird, which won the best narrative feature award at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Written by and starring Samantha Smart, and directed by Libby Ewing, the Texas-based film is about a music therapist and the bond she forms with a troubled teenage patient. We’ll see it on Tuesday (Mar 3) at the Angelika at 7:25pm.

When I started this weekly movie pick 15 months ago, I thought it might develop into a cinema club of some kind. I haven’t really tried to make that happen, but now I’d like to try. Starting on March 31, at the end of the month my weekly pick will be tagged as the Last Tuesday Movie Club, and not only will I choose the movie, venue, and time per usual, I will also choose an after-movie hangout spot. I suppose I’ve experienced a lot of pleasure going to the movies every week, but not enough discussion. Save the date!

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Dear Friends,

I have mentioned the concept of NonDē cinema in this newsletter a few times. Let me take a brief moment to explain further what it means: there is a group of cinemamakers connected by Substack that have coalesced around an endeavor to change the way films are made and distributed, having determined the current model is badly broken and ultimately fails to serve both audiences and artists. Roughly speaking, NonDē is an open-source think tank – which is revolutionary in of itself because, traditionally, making and releasing films has been a series of “closed moats” where the artists are shut out of much of the business and left to compete, instead of collaborate, with each other.

Many of the readers of this newsletter are on the audience-side of cinema. What does this nascent movement mean for you? To be perfectly honest, I’m not quite sure. Part of what’s developing is an opportunity for you as an audience member to connect more directly with films and the creatives behind them by participating earlier in the process. Instead of learning about an upcoming film through an expansive marketing campaign or algorithmic push, you’ll already follow the cinemamaker and will know what her next film is going to be and when it will come out. Hopefully, a screening of the film will be a culminating event you won’t want to miss.

Something unusual, yet seismic nonetheless, just happened along these lines. At the beginning of February, the second-most popular film in theaters nationwide was Iron Lung, written and directed by YouTuber Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach with a relatively low budget (reportedly $3 million). The film is self-distributed and lacked an extensive marketing campaign. What Markiplier has, though, are 38 million (as of today) subscribers to his YouTube channel, many of whom had been following the development of the film for years. Their support convinced theaters to book the film, and they showed up to see it.

My personal creative lane is going to be much different than this YouTuber, and it’s safe to say I will never reach 38 million supporters of my work. I don’t have to, however, in order to make my films and consider myself successful. The basic principle is the same: your participation with my process and willingness to respond to it, share it, and be excited about it, helps fuel the engine.

In contrast to everything I’ve just been talking about, our next movie pick of the week is getting a traditional release from Focus Features – one of the few remaining distributors of “films for adults” (they also distributed Hamnet). Directed by Polly Findlay, a British theater and film director, and adapted from the eponymous novel by Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break is about a long-married couple’s trip to Amsterdam. The trip stirs up memories and discussion about their past, present, and future. We’ll see it at the Angelika on Wednesday (Feb 25) at 7pm.

Executives at Focus Features made a business decision to promote and put into theaters this particular movie. The cinemamakers count themselves lucky, I’m sure, to receive this kind of increasingly rare old-school institutional support. The reduction in number of theatrical distributors and films they release has ushered in the NonDē movement to build alternative approaches to bring audiences and movies together.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Moving on to next week’s film pick: disappointingly, in all of NYC I can find only three new woman-directed movies: Wuthering Heights (Emerald Fennell), Twenty-eight Years Later: The Bone Temple (Nia DaCosta), and, in a single time slot in the morning each day at IFC Center, the Oscar-nominated documentary The Perfect Neighbor (Geeta Gandbhir).

OK, so I just watched the Bone Temple trailer and there’s no way. I’m too squeamish even for the trailer, and on top of that a friend who is not squeamish told me he didn’t like the first 40 minutes because of all the human torture. Are we even glad a woman directed this movie? I guess?

I am not at all sold on Wuthering Heights and Susan refuses to see it with me anyway. Instead, I’m waiting for the novel to become available at my local library–I’ve never read it, and I enjoy 19^th Century English literature.

I do want to watch The Perfect Neighbor, a harrowing film edited primarily with police bodycam and home surveillance footage. It’s available on Netflix, however, and I’m not sure I want to watch it in the theater, much less before noon.

So what to do? … wait! What’s this!? Susan mentioned a film to me, and it turns out it just opened at the Quad Cinema ... how did I miss By Design, a woman-made absurdist comedy in which Juliette Lewis swaps bodies with a chair? Problem solved! Written and directed by Amanda Kramer, we’ll see it Thursday (Feb 19) at 6pm.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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Dear Friends,

Along with writing this newsletter, I have been screenwriting and developing film projects. I am very pleased to share with you the wonderful news that one of my scripts, a feature film called Depth of Field, is a finalist (i.e., made the top 10 out of 2,000 submissions) in the American Zoetrope Screenplay Competition. American Zoetrope is the film company Francis Ford Coppola founded in 1969 and since has produced and championed an untold number of films, artists, and creative pursuits.

Here’s the link to the official announcement:

https://www.all-story.com/american-zoetrope-screenplay-competition/

I feel elated, lucky, and inspired that my writing received this accolade. I spent a lot of time and effort creating a story I wanted to see as a movie. I’ll add I did not do this alone; there are many readers whose comments were instrumental in getting the script to the point where such an award was possible. Of course my first and most helpful reader of everything I write is my wife and muse, Susan Jarrell, whose faith, support, and insight provide the foundation for everything I do.

This screenplay award will go a long way towards Depth of Field becoming an actual film, and it will draw positive attention to my writing in general. I am extremely thankful to American Zoetrope for honoring my work in this way, and for supporting stories early in their development generally. The world is made better by good stories.

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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A note from the writer:

I write this newsletter to promote cinema. Today I’d like you to promote cinema by promoting my newsletter. Together we can build a better ecosystem for film, so please spread the word and help me bring more people into the conversation and inspire them to participate as part of the theatrical filmgoing audience. There is power in film and we can take steps to manage that power ourselves to create communities and events that serve audiences and artists in new ways–outside the transactional confines of the multiplex. People are hungry to get off their phones and find in-person connection and experiences. Going to the cinema, and talking about movies and discussing culture, is a great way to do so. Please forward this e-mail to a friend or click the “share” button below! Thank you!

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Back to our (new) regular programming:

This year in order to comment after seeing the films, I plan to publish as a group some thoughts on what we chose to see in the theater the prior month. January’s film picks were all excellent1 and very different from one another. Here, in order of personal preference, are the films we saw with a link to the trailer for each:

All That’s Left of You (writer/director/actor Cherien Dabis)

This is the best, and most accessible, of the four films. Still playing in theaters around the country, All That’s Left of You is a perfectly conceived, quiet epic rooted in the day-to-day life of one family through three generations. The scope is both grand and intimate, a beautiful character study of the challenges and nuances of life under violent occupation. Dabis captures terrific performances of the entire cast, young and old, including her own performance as one of the leads. She directs with a clear vision and tells the story in a rich yet understated manner. When I read what she had to go through to get the film made, I was astounded, and yet that process proved her dedication to and deep understanding of the story she wanted to tell.

My Undesirable Friends – Last Air in Moscow (director Julia Loktev)

I already wrote an entire post (here’s the LINK) about this incredible documentary. There’s a recent update though: the documentary has been acquired by MUBI and will be available to stream on the platform later this year. Keep an eye out.

The Testament of Ann Lee (director Mona Fastvold)

Brimming with physicality, audacious and visceral, The Testament of Ann Lee commits fully to its mysterious story with a vibrant style that incorporates beautiful music and ecstatic, spiritual dance movement. The film is as creatively daring a movie as I’ve seen in a long time. While I didn’t walk away loving it, The Testament of Ann Lee will remain in my mind for a long time. It’s still playing in theaters so catch it there if you can as it is absolutely made for the big screen.

Sound of Falling (director Mascha Schilinski)

A multi-generational, intimately observed film, Sound of Falling is narratively daring and kept my attention throughout. It is also unsettling and relentlessly bleak. I can’t think of another film that melds together images, sounds and scenes in quite the same manner. It’s very effective, and I would venture if the story weren’t quite so depressing the film would have been an arthouse hit. As it is, I’m very glad I saw it and think it deserves its high praise, but can’t honestly recommend you see it at home unless you’re a real student of film or going through an intense German cinema phase.

That wraps up January!

To the pleasure of films and the discussions they spark,

Josh

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