Folk singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco crashed onto the music scene in the early ‘90s, unapologetically bisexual, political and feminist. She toured relentlessly, thrashing out hundreds of frenzied shows that were part mosh pit, part hootenanny and part full-on tent revival, then selling cassette tapes from the trunk of her car to make it to the next gig. She founded her “non-corporate queer-happy” label, Righteous Babe Records, and is now 30+ years into a career as an independent entrepreneur. This intimate doc captures her at home and recording her Revolutionary Love album at Justin Vernon’s (Bon Iver) artists' retreat in Wisconsin. “How does somebody like me move towards 60 like this?” she asks with a laugh. 1-800-ON-HER-OWN takes us on an intimate road trip, offering DiFranco as a relatable contemporary “everywoman” with her own epic fails and hard-won victories. (dir. Dana Flor, U.S., 2024, 79m)

Timothée Chalamet plays Bob Dylan during his legendary transition from acoustic to electric in the mid-60s, scripted by Jay Cocks (The Age of Innocence and Gangs of New York). Filmmaker James Mangold (Ford vs. Ferrari)’s Altman-esque ensemble piece has Chalamet bumping up against a starry cast that includes Elle Fanning (Suze Rotolo), Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez), Edward Norton (Pete Seeger), Nick Offerman (Alan Lomax) and Boyd Holbrook (Johnny Cash). (dir. James Mangold, U.S., 2024, 135m)

Actor Jesse Eisenberg blossoms into a first-rank director with this new classic about mismatched cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin in an extraordinary performance) who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. “It’s a frequently laugh-out-loud funny odd couple road trip movie whose emotional wallop sneaks up and floors you.” – Hollywood Reporter “It’s a delight and a revelation — a deft, funny, heady, beautifully staged ramble of a road movie.” – Variety

Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winner film firmly positions him as a significant modern auteur. It begins as a sexually explicit Pretty Woman. Ani (Mikey Madison), a lap-dancer, is not above providing extra services if the price is right. Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the spoiled son of a Russian oligarch, can’t get enough of her. Their impromptu marriage sends their relationship into wildly unpredictable territory. Nothing will prepare you for Madison’s pedal-to-the metal comic intensity and the raw street cred she brings to every scene. Baker (The Florida Project) continues to display his mastery in depicting people leading unconventional lives on the margins of society. With Anora, he adds outrageous slapstick comedy and a pulse-pounding crime story to his repertoire. (dir. Sean Baker, U.S., 2024, 138m) “There are few filmmakers as open-hearted, as stone-soup inventive, as Baker is. This playful yet emotionally fine-grained film is his best yet.” – Time “Baker has created nothing short of pure movie magic— it will make you giggle and inexplicably tear up on repeat (sometimes within the same sequence).” – RogerEbert.com

Bob Clark, who later made Christmas Story, defined the slasher film genre in this 1974 cult classic. Both films take place in big, lit-up, snowbound houses. In the later film, it’s a suburban nuclear family home preparing for the holidays; in Black Christmas, it’s a sorority house being stalked by a serial killer. Both look so warm, inviting, and communal that it’s hard to imagine how anything really awful could happen there. But the happy facade gets cracked quickly, scaring the bejeezus out of us for its full runtime. (dir. Bob Clark, U.S., 1974, 98 min.)

A Saugerties tradition returns: great local music to ring in the new year on the Orpheum stage. This year’s event features the thrash metal band Firing Squad; Rosegold, winner of Chronogram’s Best Local Band in 2025; Latin sounds from The Noche Bueno Band; and more metal from Saugerties favorites Porcelain Helmet and Medicine Day. One ticket gets you all five bands.

The original film was a smash hit, a memorable feature about an adventurous teenager who becomes a master way-finder, sailing across the ocean to fulfill the ancient quest of her ancestors. Now Moana and Maui are reunited three years later for an expansive new voyage alongside a crew of unlikely seafarers. (dir David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, and Dana Ledoux Miller, U.S., 2024, 100 min.) “A vibrantly rendered adventure that combines CG animation with traditional storytelling and colorful characters, all enlivened by a terrific voice cast.” — Hollywood Reporter

Horror auteur Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse) returns with his long-simmering passion project, a remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 iconic classic. It’s a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her. Eggers’ obsessions with fairytales, folktales, and mythology inform Nosferatu which stars Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter, a woman whose soul is seduced by the vampire (Bill Skarsgård) while her husband Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) fights to save her. As with Eggers’ previous work, there is an adherence to an authentic, period-specific, attention to detail and an ongoing obsession with the ambiguous nature of evil. (dir. Robert Eggers, U.S., 2024, 132m)

Daniel Craig, shifting dramatically from 007, shows a whole new side in this bold adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ revolutionary novel. A stand-in for a pre-fame Burroughs,, William Lee is a dissipated refugee from America in the ‘50s, who arrives in Mexico City’s underbelly, to negotiate his “corrupt” desires. “Queer” tells the story of Burroughs’ love affair with Eugene (Drew Starkey), who he initially sees as an underground vision of rapture. In Luca Guadagnino’s (Call Me By Your Name, Challengers) telling, the film is a luscious, barbed comedy of liberation, then a trippy road comedy about the search for mind-altering transcendence. (dir. Luca Guadagnino, U.S., 2024, 135m)

Johan Grimonprez’s kinetic, urgent documentary features musical performances by jazz legends Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Nina Simone who in the ‘60s doubled as cultural ambassadors to Africa. Their roles as unknowing decoys in the CIA’s plot to assassinate Congo’s prime minister Patrice Lumumba threads through this deeply researched, richly textured tapestry — which scrambles the simplistic good guys/bad guys narrative, foregrounds powerful women behind the revolution and sheds new light on a global conspiracy playing out often right in view. (dir. Johan Grimonprez, Belgium /France /Netherlands 2024, 150 min.) “Thrilling, galvanizing… crackling with energy, ideas and formal daring… Political history has never felt so energizing and dynamically alive as it does here.” – Screen International

Tomoroh Taguchi, plays the “Salaryman,” an average Joe who accidentally runs over a maimed “Metal Fetishist” with his car. The next day the metal within him begins to spread, eventually taking over his whole body, cell by cell:: 90% iron, 10% flesh. Meanwhile, the Fetishist seeks out the Salaryman, urging him to join his cause to “create an entirely metal world.” The film fires on multiple levels — including as a Cronenbergian AIDS analogy — it never fails to live up to whatever you perceive it as. (dir. Shinya Tsukamoto, Japan, 1989, 67 min.)

As a drum roll before James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown’s Christmas release, this powerful doc shows Dylan’s transition from troubadour to rock star, accompanied by Joan Baez, Johnny Cash and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Murray Lerner and his crew capture vital performances in images of rapt attentiveness. The sound mix is crisp, the black-and-white photography is shimmering, and the songs are heard in all their enigmatic glory, performed by an artist with uncanny gifts. (dir. Murray Lerner, U.S., 2007, 83m)

This Wizard of Oz musical spinoff via Broadway is the story of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) – soon to be the Wicked Witch of the West – and her unlikely friendship with good witch Glinda (Ariana Grande). Based on Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, it explores themes of power, and the nature of good and evil — all contrasted against the world of Oz. Known for its iconic songs like “Defying Gravity” and “Popular,” the Broadway show was nominated for ten Tony Awards, winning three. Director John Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights) has split the film into two parts, the next arriving next year, so as to deepen the characters. (dir. John Chu, U.S., 2024, 160 min.)