Film
| 12 May 2026 | 01:06
From Italian director Virgilio Villoresi’s “Orfeo.” (
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Humphrey Bogart pensive in “Casablanca.” (
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Marilyn Monroe and her iconic pink dress in “Gentleman Prefer Blondes.” (
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Anthology Film Archive at at 32 Second Ave at East Second Street. (
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Film at Lincoln Center
70 Lincoln Center Plaza
212-875-5825
While Film at Lincoln Center is a year-round destination for movie buffs, air conditioning lovers can rest assured they don’t slack off for summer, when the spaces around them abound in outdoor cultural programming. Indeed, though technically it will still be late spring, one get can a head start on the season by catching the “Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2026” series from May 28 to June 4. Perhaps the most intriguing title, particularly for Metropolitan Opera fans who love Monteverdi, is Virgilio Villoresi’s “Orfeo,” which presents “the hero as a loner pianist in a sensual reimagination of the underworld...combining beautiful 16mm photography, handcrafted sets, meticulous stop-motion animation, and in-camera optical effects.” Also, any chance to see Roberto Rossellini’s 1946 anthology film, “Paisan”—the follow up the previous year’s epochal “Rome, Open City” —is not to be missed.
Intrepid Museum
Pier 86, West 46th Street and 12th Avenue
212-245-0072
www.intrepidmuseum.org/free-movie-night-series
Everyone loves the Intrepid Museum and rightfully so. Launched as the USS Intrepid in April 1943 from Newport News, Virginia, the Essex class aircraft carrier served in the Pacific Theater during World War 2, including the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines and the Battle of Okinawa. In March 1965, the Intrepid was the recovery ship for Gemini 3— the first manned flight of the Gemini program—which carried Lieutenant Commander John Young and Major Gus Grisson, thus the basis for the decomissioned boat’s original name of Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Thankfully, one needn’t go to war or into orbit to watch movies on the Intrepid’s flight deck. Indeed, you don’t even need money because admission to the monthly screenings is free! This year’s series kicks off with “Top Gun” on May 22, followed by “Independence Day” on June 26. Breaking with the military theme but including an Intrepid cameo, the cryptogaphic crime thriller “National Treasure” plays on July 31, with the rousing animated Russian-American mouse movie, “An American Tale: Fievel Goes West,” following on August 28.
Pier I Picture Show
Riverside Park at West 70th Street
Hold your horses armchair proofreaders, you’re not looking at it wrong—it really is Pier I. That’s I as in the letter, like “Aye Aye, Skipper!” Ask an Egyptologist and they might wish the pier was denoted with a hieroglyphic Eye of Horus to prevent confusion but since this keyboard doesn’t have glyphs, the story goes like this: starting at the Battery, Hudson River pier numbers run up to 99—which is at West 59th Street. North of here, everything gets a letter name, thus Pier I, a former car float pier for the New York Central Railroad, at West 70th Street. Movie nights here run Wednesdays from July 8 through August 19. The series kicks off with two 1981 entries: the iconic “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and more controversially, “The Great Muppet Caper.” Are Kermit the Frog, Fozzie the Bear and The Great Gonzo (a sly Hunter S. Thompson nod) believable as crime reporters in England? You make the call. As for the ultra-iconic Michael Curtiz directed “Casablanca,” which opened nationally in January 1943, pick your favorite quote, though bear in mind there are few more apt occasions to say “I came to Casablanca for the waters.”
Anthology Film Archive
32 Second Ave.
212-505-5181
You can’t make the rounds of Manhattan movie palaces without stopping at Anthology Film Archive and this summer those rounds include the two zeros at the end of the Allen Ginsberg Centennial. That’s right bards and bardettes, the 1965 May King of Prague (Kral Majales) turns 100 on June 3. To celebrate this, Anthology has lassoed together numerous films featuring the author of “Howl,” “A Supermarket in California,” “Kaddish,” “C.I.A. Dope Calypso,” “Capitol Air,” and so much more. Among the highlights: Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s landmark “Pull My, Daisy”; an incredible 1968 episode of William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line” with Ginsberg as irrepressible guest; and Martin Scorsese’s documentary, “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story.” Another remarkable series to check out is devoted to the theatrical artist Robert Wilson, including documentaries on 1972’s “Overture for KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE,” whose cast included dance critic and poet Edwin Denby, and 1990’s “Black Rider,” a collaboration between Wilson, Tom Waits, and William S. Burroughs which the trio adapted from August Apel’s influential 1810 short story, “Der Freischütz.”
Film Forum
209 W. Houston St.
212-727-8110
If there’s any Manhattan movie palace one could just wander into, whether running from a fierce summer thunderstorm or fleeing Henry Miller’s air-conditioned nightmare for the cineaste’s air-conditioned dream, and see something great it’s Film Forum. Nestled mid-block between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street, one hopes the venue will play host to neighborhood resident Julian Schnabel’s still unreleased 2025 masterpiece, “In The Hand of Dante” (adapted from Nick Tosches’ 2002 novel) but in the meantime, there’s a 13 film Marilyn Monroe series, (May 29 through June 11), celebrating the Centennial of her birth, to savor—and debate. Not to argue in a negative way, mind you, but one thing the series highlights is how much wider Monroe’s range was than is often presumed. If always a “sex symbol,” the Marilyn of Howard Hawks’ “Gentleman Prefer Blondes” (1953), Billy Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot” (1959) and John Huston’s “The Misfits” (1961)—her last film one that also features indelible performances from Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift and Thelma Ritter—is more than that also. As Lee Strasberg eulogized at her funeral, “Marilyn Monroe was a legend. In her own lifetime she created a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived background could attain. For the entire world, she became a symbol of the eternal feminine.”