A Time to Stir is author and filmmaker Paul Cronin’s epic, a definitive documentary that commemorates a transformative counterculture moment— when Columbia University students commandeered the university for a week in the spring of 1968. (Its title comes from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense: “When the country…was set on fire, it was time to stir.”) Cronin tracked down photographs and film footage from official and personal archives, and he interviewed some 700 participants, creating a detailed cinematic record of the week-long occupation. In 2018, Cronin released a 7.5 hour version, then expanded it into a towering,15-hour cut two years later. Now with the help of editing wizard Blake Gingerich he’s assembled a powerfully sleek, 90-minute version ready for theatrical release. (dir. Paul Cronin, 2018/2024, 90 min.)

Raised in Rhinebeck, Nathan Silver is a hometown boy who has built an impressive, micro-budget filmography. His latest may turn out to be his mainstream breakthrough. Amiable and gently comic on the surface, his films often exist a degree or two removed from reality. In his latest effort. Jason Schwartzman plays an upstate New York cantor who’s lost his voice because he’s mired in grief. One evening, he steps out into the middle of a darkened street and lies down, hoping to die. He regains consciousness in the almost-angelic presence of Carla O’Connor (Carol Kane), who was his music teacher back in elementary school.This could easily become the stuff of high-concept shenanigans, but it goes in surprising, emotional directions. (dir. Nathan Silver, US, 2024, 111 min.)

This extravagant, wide-screen, Technicolor melodrama follows a small-town English teacher (James Mason), who is treated with the “wonder drug” cortisone. Bursting with energy, discontent, and fury, Ed turns on his students, neighbors, and friends—and, ultimately, his family. Mason’s megalomania is heightened by Ray’s exuberantly lurid approach Nicholas Ray has been called the poet of American disenchantment, and in Bigger Than Life he shows how plainly he saw manias building in America.” (dir. Nicholas Ray, USA, 1956, 95 min.)

We commemorate Poughkeepsie’s own Ed Wood’s 100th birthday by playing Tim Burton’s suitably idiosyncratic biopic about the celebrated auteur who made Z-movies on the outermost fringes of Hollywood in the 1950's. Wood is best remembered for the transcendent tackiness of Plan 9 From Outer Space and for Glen or Glenda, which achieved midnight movie notoriety. Burton shows a dauntless guerrilla film maker who assembled his own band of outsiders as a stock company. He is played here by Johnny Depp. As part of the festivities we host a party featuring a fervent conversation between Katie Cokinos Ed Wood scholar/enthusiast Joe Blevins who has chosen some choice clips.

Sam is a wise-beyond-her-years 17-year-old with a solid head on her shoulders and an innate ability to notice and observe those around her. She’s set to go on a three-day hike in the Catskills with her fiftysomething type-A dad, Chris (James Le Gros), and his snarky lifelong friend. Good One is a movie that keeps all its combustion tightly coiled and contained. From the get, new director India Donaldson has a tremendous command of pace and silence. (dir. India Donaldson, US, 2024, 89 min.) “It’s a killer debut for both Donaldson and Collias, and it will be exciting to see what both can do with the momentum a picture like this can provide. — Consequence

Martin Scorsese calls it “one of the cinema’s great operatic works! convulsive and passionate, filled with bold, stylistic strokes.” It’s the cracked story of a saloonkeeper (Joan Crawford) and an old flame (Sterling Hayden) – the eponymous Johnny – fighting to survive a lynch mob. Nick Ray’s baroque, emotionally tormented Western, photographed in “gorgeous Trucolor” – and looking better than ever in this new 4K restoration – bursts at the seams with sexual tension and anti-McCarthy allegory. While some American reviewers were perplexed it was championed by future French legends like Rohmer, Godard and Truffaut who called it “dream-like, magical, delirious… the Beauty and the Beast of the Western”. (dir. Nicholas Ray, US, 1954, 110 min.)

Lana Wilson (Miss Americana) profiles seven psychics, some of whom may have the power to commune with the dead. They also have the ability to sit across from someone they’ve never met before and show them a clear — and often reassuring — reflection of their greatest anxieties. “Most people who enter into this feel like they’re making this shit up,” one of her subjects admits, “and then proof happens.” (dir. Lana Wilson, USA, 2024, 108 min.)

Anchored by the iconic performances of James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, this is Ray’s best-known work. Shooting for the first time in CinemaScope, Ray creates a complex mise-en-scene in which virtually every shot vibrates with an intensity of feeling and color, most famously in Dean’s red jacket, a symbol of his emotional volatility and a visual link to Joan Crawford’s costume in Johnny Guitar. “You’re tearin’ me apart!” wails Dean’s Jim Stark to his apron-clad dad Jim Backus, and a generation of frustrated Eisenhower-era teens chimed in. Ray’s fable of adolescent angst has in its celebrated planetarium scene, the elevation of teen torment to the cosmic plane. (dir. Nicholas Ray, USA, 1955, 111 min.)

Divine G (Colman Domingo), imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group with other incarcerated men. When a wary outsider joins the group, the men decide to stage their first original comedy, in this stirring true story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art, starring an unforgettable ensemble cast of formerly incarcerated actors.

In the late 1890s, the Canadian government created a network of boarding schools for Indigenous children in order to, in their words, eliminate the “Indian problem.” The callous operation separated kids from their families and stripped them of their culture. After 93 unmarked graves were discovered in 2021, an investigation on the Sugarcane Reserve ensued. This urgent documentary follows the fact-finding mission. At the heart of the film is a question about action. How do you act when faced with violence from the past? What does accountability look like? (dir. Julian Brave NoiseCat, Emily Kassie, USA, 2024, 107 min.)

In the late 1890s, the Canadian government created a network of boarding schools for Indigenous children in order to, in their words, eliminate the “Indian problem.” The callous operation separated kids from their families and stripped them of their culture. After 93 unmarked graves were discovered in 2021, an investigation on the Sugarcane Reserve ensued. This urgent documentary follows the fact-finding mission. At the heart of the film is a question about action. How do you act when faced with violence from the past? What does accountability look like? (dir. Julian Brave NoiseCat, Emily Kassie, USA, 2024, 107 min.)

Shocking, resonant and flamboyantly fun, “The Substance” tells the story of an aging Hollywood actress-turned-aerobics-workout-host, named Elisabeth Sparkle and played by Demi Moore, who gets fired from a TV network because she is now deemed too old. In a rage of desperation, she calls a number that’s been handed to her anonymously and gets hooked up with a sinister sci-fi body-enhancement program known as The Substance. The film becomes like “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” retold as a dream/nightmare of the trillion-dollar culture of cosmetic enhancement. (dir. Coralie Fargeat, US, 2024, 140 min.) “The Substance” is the work of a filmmaker with a vision. She’s got something primal to say to us. Moore’s performance is nothing short of fearless. She’s playing, in some very abstract way, a version of herself (once a star at the center of the universe, now old enough to be seen by sexist Hollywood as past it), and her acting is rippled with anger, terror, despair, and vengeance.” —Variety

A mix of interviews, animation, and verité, When My Sleeping Dragon Woke follows veteran actor and TONY-nominated playwright Sharon Washington as she struggles to create a play about her fairytale upbringing living in the NY Public Library. As the play nears closer to its premiere, it becomes clear that some stories can only be told by digging deep into the past – but the unforeseen cost is waking the family dragon. Contrasting the live-action are a series of animated segments used to recount Sharon’s upbringing from the perspective of her childhood self. The animations parallel the books she read growing up, resulting in a more fantastical depiction of life in the NYPL.

In their first film since Burn After Reading (2008), Brad Pitt and George Clooney reunite in this new comedy. A professional fixer ( Clooney) is hired to cover up a high-profile crime at a woman’s (Amy Ryan) apartment. But when a second fixer (Pitt) shows up and the two “lone wolves” are forced to work together, they find their night spiraling out of control in ways that neither one of them expected. (dir. Jon Watts, USA, 2024, 108 min.)

In their first film since Burn After Reading (2008), Brad Pitt and George Clooney reunite in this new comedy. A professional fixer ( Clooney) is hired to cover up a high-profile crime at a woman’s (Amy Ryan) apartment. But when a second fixer (Pitt) shows up and the two “lone wolves” are forced to work together, they find their night spiraling out of control in ways that neither one of them expected. (dir. Jon Watts, USA, 2024, 138 min.)