The Secret Screening

The Secret Screening

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Film Culture & Consulting from the Inside, by Aaron Hillis. Weekly media recommendations and industry tips from a former Village Voice critic. 🌉 bridged from ⁂ https://www.thesecretscreening.com/, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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The Secret Screening
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Street-level grit, snap zooms, a score that struts like Shaft, and a dignified antihero facing obsolescence... Noah Segan's soulful and entertaining The Only Living Pickpocket in New York is a valentine to both The Greatest Shitty in the World and '70s New Hollywood cinema. It's The Friends of […]

thesecretscreening.comFive-Finger Deaths & Discounts****THE ONLY LIVING PICKPOCKET IN NEW YORK**** (2026, dir. Noah Segan) Street-level grit, snap zooms, a score that struts like _Shaft_ , and a dignified antihero facing obsolescence... Noah Segan's soulful and entertaining _**The Only Living Pickpocket in New York**_ is a valentine to both The Greatest Shitty in the World and '70s New Hollywood cinema. It's _The Friends of Eddie Coyle_ for the Venmo era: John Turturro, unsung face of the city, shines as an analog thief in an increasingly cashless world, who still drops emptied wallets in a mailbox so his marks can keep their IDs. After lifting the wrong bag from a mob-connected crypto bro, the ensuing high-stakes countdown doubles as a Turturro-led tour of every borough. 📽️ _****The Only Living Pickpocket in New York****_ (Sony Pictures Classics) opens today in NYC and Los Angeles, expanding October 30. * * * ****JP Harris:**** "Roustabout" (from ****"Shaving a Dead Man"****) **JP Harris** left home at 14 and spent years living off-grid in rural Vermont, learning logging and carpentry to get by. He also picked up the clawhammer banjo, and his career has proved that the oldest things in American music aren't dormant, merely unplugged. The outlaw-punk's new album **"Shaving a Dead Man"** radically strips back to traditional songs as early as the 18th century, performed only by Harris (banjo, lead vocals) and Old Crow Medicine Show's Chance McCoy (fiddle, harmony) in a West Virginia studio the two built from a workman's shack. World-weary, unsentimental and glosslessly hands-on, the record refuses to treat these heirlooms as if they're trapped under museum glass. 🎵 ****"Shaving a Dead Man"**** (Bloodshot Records) drops today on vinyl, CD, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, Amazon Music, and more. * * * ****BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR**** (1990, dir. Brian Yuzna, part of ****"Psycho-Fiction"****) Presented by the essential film-culture site Screen Slate and programmed by founder Jon Dieringer, **"Psycho-Fiction: The Surreal Nightmares of Screaming Mad George"** (October 23 - November 4) pays gooey tribute to legendary Osaka-born F/X weirdo Joji Tani (1956 - 2026), whose nom-de-squib was inspired by his love for Screamin' Jay Hawkins and _MAD Magazine_. Featuring a few 35mm prints, including _Society_ (1989, prepare yourself for the mind- and body-melting "Shunting" orgy) and _A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master_ (1988, the first VHS tape I ever owned!), this handmade-horror ~~memorial~~ party includes curated shorts, rarities, even live music. 🎃 ****"Psycho-Fiction: The Surreal Nightmares of Screaming Mad George"**** begins today at NYC's Roxy Cinema, through November 4. * * * **The Market Is Usually Wrong About What's Obsolete.** This week's picks may be a release-date coincidence, and I'm not talking about the predatory nostalgia that powers franchises and reboots. "Dead" is an industry prediction, not an observation. When an industry says a craft is finished, it usually means the economics stopped working for the people selling it... not that audiences stopped wanting it. Somebody still wants to watch a man lift a wallet with his hands, or see latex do something a CGI render can't, or hear a newly recorded ballad older than the recording industry itself. So here's the tip, whether you're making films or covering them: don't ask what the market wants next. Ask what it just declared no longer viable. The appetite regularly outlives the business model, and the person who shows up to creatively fill that gap looks like a genius. ****Shunt 'em if you got 'em!**** Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Working on something the market has declared dead?**** That’s often the best time to make it. My film consulting page has options. [Details here.] ***** Send this to a good friend,**** who can subscribe for FREE and get it in their inbox every Friday. _No spam._ Just two minutes of useful recommendations. Subscribe
The Secret Screening
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As a plague sweeps 17th-century France, theocrats need a scapegoat and the king needs a city's walls torn down, so church and state join forces to destroy a hedonistic priest (Oliver Reed) who won't bend. Banned, butchered, and buried, Ken Russell's notorious moral-panic masterwork The Devils […]

thesecretscreening.comSinnerman Buns****THE DEVILS**** (1971/2026, 4K restoration, dir. Ken Russell) As a plague sweeps 17th-century France, theocrats need a scapegoat and the king needs a city's walls torn down, so church and state join forces to destroy a hedonistic priest (Oliver Reed) who won't bend. Banned, butchered, and buried, Ken Russell's notorious moral-panic masterwork **_The Devils_** has finally been reassembled and restored in all its uncut NC-17 vices and virtues (the long-lost "Rape of Christ" sequence recovered from a print Russell supervised before his death). It's an intense psychosexual fever dream that mirrors life in America today: corruption dressed as virtue, zealotry wearing the crown, the whole rotten pageant of faith weaponizing a woman's body and visions as instruments of power. 📽️ _****The Devils****_ (Warner Bros. Clockwork) is now playing in U.S. theaters, including 35mm screenings in select venues. * * * ****HALLOWARRIOR**** (2026, dir. Ben Sottak) It's a pestilence double-feature! Humanity has been mostly wiped out in Ben Sottak's action-horror romp _**Hallowarrior**_ , yet lone teen Pumpkin (_Hereditary_ 's Milly Shapiro) still strings up festive lights, sends radio broadcasts into the void, and waits for trick-or-treaters at her family's isolated farmhouse. A strange, melancholy setup becomes a gory home-invasion siege with the arrival of raiders (led by Shannyn Sossamon) and some choice practical effects. A brisk, affectionate Halloween curio that plays like _Home Alone_ in a corner of the _Mad Max_ universe. 🎃 _****Hallowarrior****_ (Shudder) is now streaming you-know-where. * * * ****June McDoom:**** "Human Angel" (from ****"Follow the Light"****) Nina Simone, Bobbie Gentry, maybe a little Cocteau Twins? **June McDoom** ’s debut, **"Follow the Light"** , lets its influences float past: delicate alt-folk melodies, harp, synth, drums, and an oscillating dub low end, blurring into a dreamy, liminal haze both inviting and mysterious. The Florida-raised, NYC-based singer-songwriter's roots help explain the sound: her grandfather was a preservationist of _mento_ (Jamaican acoustic folk, the prototype for reggae and ska) and her father a DJ who built his own home sound systems. Her family called the records she gravitated toward "sleepy music," but here it's a compliment. 🎵 ****"Follow the Light"**** (Jagjaguwar) drops today on vinyl, CD, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, Amazon Music, and more. * * * **Two Questions for Michael M. Bilandic.** Ever embracing weirdos in his shaggy lower-Manhattan comedies, the DIY auteur (_Jobe'z World_ , _Hellaware_) returns with **_Cabaret Boys_** , an irreverent ensemble goof led by Theodore Bouloukos as a "galaxy-brained" therapist alongside cameos by Adam Friedland, Larry Clark and Abel Ferrara. Bilandic and I caught up before tonight's sold-out World Premiere at the Roxy, part of The Downtown Festival (through Oct. 18): **How do you still find outsiders in a city that keeps pricing them out?** I don't really think of things the way you're framing it, about gentrification, past or present. I'm interested in what's entertaining in front of me right now. I was reading this Post article about the Meatpacking District; there's this crew bothering these girls at soccer practice every day. One of them wears a penis-nose mask that says "Mr. Anger" on it, and he has 30 piercings. His homie is called "Firebug" and sets all the benches on fire. Another guy in a Groucho Marx mask hangs out with them at this gas station on 8th Avenue. It's just weird out there. **The microbudget freedoms of your films give them a "putting on a show" joy. What would you do with a six- or seven-figure budget?** I would do a great job. It would be the greatest movie these guys have ever seen, and they'd be so happy that they put their money into it. They say there's nothing harder than making it look easy. Doing stuff cheap isn't a virtue. It's just how it is, not something to be proud of. For the studio, I'd say, "Oh yeah, I'll listen to what you have to say. I'll be respectful to the investors and the executives, and it'll be very painless." It'll be on time, under budget, and they'll be like, "Man, I can't believe we didn't ask this guy to do this a long time ago." ****Blasphemers & other pals! ****Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** How's your film coming along?**** My consulting page has been updated. Script notes, distribution tactics, festival strategy, and more. [Details here.] ***** Send this to your best fiend.**** And subscribe for FREE. Get this in your inbox every Friday. _No spam._ Just two minutes of useful recommendations. Subscribe
The Secret Screening
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More sprawling and every bit as gripping as its Oscar-shortlisted predecessor, Julia Loktev's six-hour epic My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile tracks a dozen dissident Russian journalists, mostly women, as they flee Moscow in 2022 after being branded "foreign agents." Seamlessly assembled […]

thesecretscreening.comWelcome to Earth, Now Get Out****MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS: PART II – EXILE**** (2026, dir. Julia Loktev) More sprawling and every bit as gripping as its Oscar-shortlisted predecessor, Julia Loktev's six-hour epic **_My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile_** tracks a dozen dissident Russian journalists, mostly women, as they flee Moscow in 2022 after being branded "foreign agents." Seamlessly assembled across several countries, this must-see finds these young truth-tellers building makeshift families with their colleagues and still bravely reporting. It's an uncanny, unnerving experience (especially as an American today) with the slow recognition that fascism creeps in so stealthily that you can lose your country before you notice. 📽️ _****My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile****_ (self-released) is now playing in NYC at Film Forum (Q&As this weekend with Loktev & subjects). For more cities and dates, click here. * * * ****Death Valley Girls:**** "Basic Witch" (from ****"Welcome to Earth"****) **Death Valley Girls** frontwoman Bonnie Bloomgarden lost her Altadena home in the Eaton Fire, and her dog not long after. **"Welcome to Earth"** emerged from that ruin, not as a grief record but defiant, communal, joyful psych-pop about the invisible threads between people, pets and places that don't burn. Girl-group harmonies drift through hazy psychedelia, saxophones snake through fuzz guitars, chant-ready choruses feel like we're all in the room singing together. It's the final album to feature keyboardist Gregg Foreman, who died after the sessions. That knowledge may cast a shadow, yet the record leans into the light. 🎵 ****"Welcome to Earth"**** (Suicide Squeeze) drops today on vinyl, CD, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, Amazon Music, and more. * * * ****CASTRATION MOVIE CHAPTER III**** (2026, dir. Louise Weard) I was late to the party on Canadian auteur Louise Weard's expansive, Hi8-shot, semi-improvised, trans anthology until her latest standalone installment, **_Castration Movie Chapter iii. Junior Ghosts—Premorphic Drift; a fragmentary passage_** , which has earned comparisons to Rivette and Fassbinder. A nine-year relationship fractures when Trent comes out as Tiffany (Henri Gillespi), and Izzy (Avalon Fast) hardens as her cruelty sharpens. Shot in long takes, this zeitgeist-humping vision of modern miscommunication and ugly epiphanies radically subverts the coming-out tale by focusing on the transphobic partner, though Weard herself has the juiciest lines as a problematic support-group sponsor. John Waters would tell you it's okay to laugh. 🏳️‍⚧️ _****Castration Movie Chapter III****_ (Muscle Distribution) is playing in NYC at BAM (Oct. 11 - 14). For more dates and times, click here. * * * **Two Questions for Annie Sprinkle.** The sexologist-turned-artist and her life/creative partner Beth Stephens will be at NYC's Anthology Film Archives (Oct. 10 - 11, Saturday sold out!) for their surprisingly mirthful climate-crisis doc **_Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency_** , which will be introduced with an "Ecosex 101" primer to better love the Earth. We caught up by Zoom this week: **You've moved from sex work to performance art to academia to climate activism. Could you talk about that through-line?** I've been doing work about sex for 53 years, and I'm a multimedia person so I do every kind of art. But it depends what I'm excited about and want to share, the opportunities that come. Climate change is connected, for me, to my sex education work. I was born to be an activist. I've now collected a few lifetime achievement awards, and Beth and I are getting another one in Berlin next week. I'm going out with a bang, pun intended. **When you and Beth co-direct projects, do you have habits or rules that differ from your day-to-day together?** For us, life is art, and we hit it off 24 years ago. We started making art on our first date. We had an infrared camera and put it under the covers, you know, for a sexy date. So we love to collaborate, and of course we get into arguments, even about things we agree on. It gets hairy, and we get passionate. If we have a fight, I'll take 50% of the blame; I'm walking wounded. And she'll take 50%; she's the walking wounded, and we go from there. ****My desirable friend!**** Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Seen my new consulting page?**** If you'd like a second set of eyes on your strategy, I have a few spots open for one-on-one consultations. Script notes, distribution tactics, and more. [Details here.] ***** Send this to a dear friend. Subscribe for FREE.**** Get this in your inbox every Friday. _No spam._ Just two minutes of useful recommendations. Subscribe
The Secret Screening
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Circulating for decades as an undecipherably murky bootleg of outsized reputation, E. Elias Merhige’s experimental 1989 landmark Begotten has no dialogue or recognizable psychologies (credited characters include "God Killing Himself" and "Son of Earth – Flesh on Bone"), but possesses a violently […]

thesecretscreening.comCursed Objects We Cherish****BEGOTTEN**** (1989, dir. E. Elias Merhige) Circulating for decades as an undecipherably murky bootleg of outsized reputation, E. Elias Merhige’s experimental 1989 landmark **_Begotten_** has no dialogue or recognizable psychologies (credited characters include "God Killing Himself" and "Son of Earth – Flesh on Bone"), but possesses a violently abstract beauty to slice open your third eye. Shot on B&W 16mm, each frame then rephotographed through neutral-density filters (a meticulous four-year process), this squirmy, fleshy, loamy creation myth has a nebulous grain that moves like weather, thickening the dark and tearing open the light. The wonderful new 4K restoration's images are clearer and therefore more unsettling, an avant-masterpiece for the witching season. 📽️ _****Begotten****_ (Kino Lorber) is now playing in NYC at the IFC Center. For more cities and dates, click here. * * * ****THE LAST FIRST: WINTER K2**** (dir. Amir Bar-Lev) Doc filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev's career examines the stories people tell themselves to justify their actions. _The Tillman Story_ dismantled a military myth, _Happy Valley_ probed a community protecting a monster, and _Long Strange Trip_ found a jam band's spiritual hunger. With **_The Last First: Winter K2_** , he turns to the last unconquered prize in mountaineering: the first snowy-season ascent of K2. In 2021, dozens of climbers converged on the world's second-highest peak, including an ill-advised commercial expedition. Bar-Lev's archival team assembled a portrait from the inside (GoPros, drones, iPhones) that rejects the genre's heroic gloss. It's a gripping existentialist parable about unchecked self-regard, tragic hubris, and a racial reckoning at 28,000 feet. 🎤 _****The Last First: Winter K2****_ (Apple Original Films) is now streaming you-know-where, and opens today in select theaters. ****LEENALCHI:**** "Ultimate Prescription" (from ****"SUGUNGGA"****) Led by composer-bassist Jang Young-gyu, who scored _Train to Busan_ and _The Wailing_ (both screening in Metrograph's new series dedicated to him), Seoul seven-piece **LEENALCHI** features four pansori-trained vocalists, two electric bassists, drums, synths, and zero guitar. Finally available here after its 2020 South Korean release, the immediate psych-riff grooviness of **"SUGUNGGA"** hits in the guttural deliveries of four vocalists trading lines and characters (about a Dragon King who sends a turtle to find a rabbit's liver to cure his sickness!) and abrupt pitch shifts that hit like percussion. Brian Eno himself said the band "changed the way I think about music and Korea." 🎵 ****"SUGUNGGA"**** (Luaka Bop) drops today on vinyl, CD, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, Amazon Music, and more. * * * **Two Questions for Alex Karpovsky.** Though best recognized as Ray from HBO's "_Girls_ ," Karpovsky has been writing and directing idiosyncratic features since 2005's _The Hole Story_. World premiering tonight at the New/Next Film Festival, his new dark comedy **_Riptides_** stars Steve Little as an oddball boogie-boarder with big dreams and bigger delusions. We caught up in Baltimore today: **What itch does filmmaking scratch for you that acting doesn't?** Control, mostly. Even if you get to improvise, you're there to serve someone else's vision. When you direct, you get to sculpt an idea and world in which you have the final say. It's a way to nurture your own specific creative expression. If I only acted, I would feel sort of impotent. Especially as an actor working periodically, sometimes the phone doesn't ring. When you're making a movie, you're taking action and putting your fate in your own hands. New/Next**is my favorite new discovery fest this decade. Thoughts?** I don't know any festival in America at the moment that has as much hype and word-of-mouth reputation. Everyone is incredibly excited about it. At least, my circle of friends are like, "What did you see at New/Next? What got in? How does it compare?" Eric Hatch is a great programmer who I knew from the Maryland Film Fest. He just creates a buzzy festival where the parties are fun, and the filmmakers who show up are incredibly cool. I've made so many friendships from the Maryland days, that was another desire to play here. ****What's new & next? ****Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Need a gut-check for your film project?**** If you'd like a second set of eyes on your strategy, I have a few spots open for one-on-one consultations. Script notes, distribution tactics, and more. [Details here.] ***** Send this to a friend. Subscribe for FREE below.**** Get this in your inbox every Friday. _No spam._ Just two minutes of useful recommendations. Subscribe
The Secret Screening
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People-watching in New York, poking around gorgeous apartments... location scouting must be a dream job, no? First-time filmmaker Paula González-Nasser spent six years knocking on strangers' doors and charming her way into private spaces. The Scout, her quietly enthralling corrective of slowly […]

thesecretscreening.comI Wanna Gig Like Common People****THE SCOUT**** (2025, dir. Paula González-Nasser) People-watching in New York, poking around gorgeous apartments... location scouting must be a dream job, no? First-time filmmaker Paula González-Nasser spent six years knocking on strangers' doors and charming her way into private spaces. **_The Scout_** , her quietly enthralling corrective of slowly accumulating indignities, follows her exhausted stand-in (Mimi Davila) as she races through a day to find TV-pilot interiors. Shot in wide, patient frames that mirror a scout's wandering eye, this modest yet poetically observed dramedy about the emotional labor of transactional relationships finds the universality in banal frustrations. 📽️ _****The Scout****_ (Greenwich Entertainment) opens today in NYC at Film Forum (Q&As this weekend). For more cities and dates, click here. * * * ****PULP: WHAT DO YOU DO FOR AN ENCORE?**** (2026, dir. Garth Jennings) In all their thrift-store glamour and art-school misfit energy, Pulp were never really Britpop. They were older than the Gallagher brothers and Damon Albarn, weirder, more sexually uneasy, more interested in class resentment and social humiliation than in swaggering. Reflectively narrated by the still gangly, theatrical and capable-of-making-a-massive-arena-feel-intimate frontman Jarvis Cocker, director Garth Jennings' scrapbook concert doc **_Pulp: What Do You Do For an Encore?_** captures the band touring behind "More," their first album in 24 years. For the die-hard fans, this is hardcore—but newbies should also find it booty-shakingly joyful. 🎤 _****Pulp: What Do You Do For an Encore?****_ (MUBI) is now streaming you-know-where. ****Adult DVD:**** "Jesus Christ Supercar" (from ****"Adult DVD"****) Predictably, I gravitated toward **Adult DVD** 's self-titled debut LP based on the novelty name alone. The Leeds six-piece have been building a following for years (two EPs, slots at Glastonbury and Green Man, a genuinely baffling level of fame in Japan) and have finally bottled their live chaos. It's impolite dance-punk dressed in warped synths, jungle-adjacent breakbeats, and Harry Hanson's sneering, character-driven vocals. The songs are populated by coffin dodgers, cowboys losing it in the supermarket, and conspiracy theorists, all rendered with silly-smart lyrics that point out the hypocrisies in our ridiculous modern society. 🎵 ****"Adult DVD"**** (Fat Possum Records) drops today on vinyl, CD, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, Amazon Music, and more. * * * **Three to See at the** 64th New York Film Festival**.** NYFF (through Oct. 12) kicks off tonight with James Gray's _Paper Tiger_. A recommended trio I've seen: the exclamation point in Tony Gilroy's _**Behemoth!**_ promises spectacle and instead delivers a graceful, low-key study of a conflicted cellist (Pedro Pascal), the kind of intelligent, grown-up drama we claim we want and then don't show up for. It trusts its audience, unlike the overdirected, emotionally fraudulent _Tár_. Satirist _par excellence_ Radu Jude's **_The Diary of a Chambermaid_** moves Mirbeau's novel to contemporary Bordeaux, where a Romanian au pair endures passive-aggressive French intellectuals and a meta-theatrical subplot commenting on its own source material. And Sandra Wollner's **_Everytime_** , an experimental drama about grief that eerily bends time (and your senses!) as a family travels to Tenerife, was easily my favorite film at Cannes. Maybe that's a tough sell, but see it anyway. ****Still with me?**** Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Need a gut-check for your film project?**** If you'd like a second set of eyes on your strategy, I have a few spots open for one-on-one consultations. Script notes, distribution tactics, and more. [Details here.] ***** Send this to a friend. Subscribe for FREE below.**** Get this in your inbox every Friday. _No spam._ Just two minutes of useful recommendations. Subscribe
The Secret Screening
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The eponymous mastermind of HBO's "How To with John Wilson," who turned quotidian NYC observation into some of the funniest, most sneakily profound TV of the decade, now explores permanence, fragility and mortality through the gray stuff under our feet. Wilson knows his absurd premise shouldn't […]

thesecretscreening.comThick as a Brick****THE HISTORY OF CONCRETE****(2026, dir. John Wilson) The eponymous mastermind of HBO's "_How To with John Wilson_ ," who turned quotidian NYC observation into some of the funniest, most sneakily profound TV of the decade, now explores permanence, fragility and mortality through the gray stuff under our feet. Wilson knows his absurd premise shouldn't hold together, opening **_The History of Concrete_** with a failed pitch to skeptical execs, a DIY parody of nonfiction filmmaking that doubles as a confession. His gently irreverent method (free-associative voiceover, handheld wandering, chance encounters with strangers who become accidental characters) drifts curiously from gum-blasting contractors to a tattoo-preservation business to a 52-day race in Queens, each digression circling back to the material that binds us. 📽️ _****The History of Concrete****_ (Magnolia) opens today in NYC at IFC Center (intros/Q&As all week) and Wilson's co-owned Low Cinema. For more cities and dates, click here. * * * ****Railcard: "Two Steps at a Time"**** Indie-pop veterans Rachel Love (Dolly Mixture), Ian Button (Papernut Cambridge) and Peter Momtchiloff (Heavenly) formed **Railcard** in London after meeting at a gig and discovering they were born within weeks of each other in 1962 (as in, of the same railcard vintage). Along with keyboards and trumpet kisses from Allison Thomson (Trash Can Sinatras), this jangling, C86-influenced debut of restless '60s pop hooks is a swinging charmer with nods to Northern Soul. It's light, fizzy and entirely uncynical, which is harder to pull off than it sounds these days. 🎵 ****"Two Steps at a Time"**** (Skep Wax + Slumberland Records) drops today on vinyl, CD, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, Amazon Music, and more. * * * ****NO OTHER LAND**** (2024, dir. Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor), part of ****"Rubble on Screen: The Cinema of Demolition and Destruction"**** Call it the post-history of concrete: Anthology's **"Rubble on Screen: The Cinema of Demolition and Destruction"** (September 18 - 24) traces how filmmakers have depicted material wreckage since the Lumière brothers' minute-long _Demolition d'un Mur_(1895), in which a knocked-down wall is rebuilt in reversed footage, one of cinema's earliest magic tricks. Across seven programs, the series questions the human costs and who gets to deploy these images? Among the curated picks are Oscar winning doc _No Other Land_ , Jia Zhangke's Golden Lion winner _Still Life_ , and J.P. Sniadecki's immersive, unexpectedly funny _Chaiqian_. 🏗️ ****"Rubble on Screen"**** (Anthology Film Archives) is now playing in NYC through September 24. * * * **The "_Obsession_ Effect" is Mostly a Myth. **TIFF wrapped its first official market this week, and everyone was chasing the next Curry Barker jackpot (a $750K production that scored a $15M deal and became a $513M global success). But the _Obsession_ deal started way before TIFF, at Cannes, where a producer actively sought out the programmer to discuss it and pass along a rough cut. Days before the premiere, I learned horror uber-producers Jason Blum, Roy Lee and Steven Schneider preemptively greenlit Barker's follow-up... without seeing the movie yet. Deals often happen before the premieres, through relationships and positioning, not on the ground. If you're heading to a market with a project, don't wait for the ovations or trade-critic champions. Build the whisper campaign first. Try to make sure the right people know your name before you land. The fest is where the deal becomes public, not where it gets made. ****You, with the eyeballs!**** Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Need a gut-check for your film project?**** If you'd like a second set of eyes on your strategy, I have a few spots open for one-on-one consultations. Script notes, distribution tactics, and more. [Details here.] ***** Send this to a friend. Subscribe for FREE below.**** – get this in your inbox every Friday. _No spam._ Just two minutes of useful recommendations. Subscribe
The Secret Screening
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South Korean writer-director Na Hong-jin's Hope is a monster movie that refuses to behave. His long-awaited follow-up to 2015's shamanic folk-horror The Wailing takes us to a rural village near the DMZ, where a sheriff (Hwang Jung-min) discovers half the population slaughtered by something that […]

thesecretscreening.comNever Forget the Cyber Witch****HOPE**** (2026, dir. Na Hong-jin) South Korean writer-director Na Hong-jin's _**Hope**_ is a monster movie that refuses to behave _.****_ His long-awaited follow-up to 2015's shamanic folk-horror _The Wailing_ takes us to a rural village near the DMZ, where a sheriff (Hwang Jung-min) discovers half the population slaughtered by something that leaves no clear tracks. The first hour is a masterclass in withheld terror, building dread through widescreen devastation and paranoia, before detonating in a relentless collision of action, horror and CGI otherworldliness. Some have criticized the script's dopey lore-building (you want franchise with that?), but this bonkers 158-minute chase is more potent than any Hollywood spectacle junk. The budget's all on the screen! 📽️ _****Hope****_ (NEON) is now playing in U.S. theaters. * * * ****HOT SPOT**** (2026, dir. Agnieszka Smoczyńska) Fans of Polish auteur Agnieszka Smoczyńska's mermaid-horror musical _The Lure_ may not be surprised her dystopian sci-fi noir **_Hot Spot_** was crushed by critics and ignored by mainstream audiences last month—a crime against weird, wild, algorithmically unsafe cinema. In a drought-ravaged future, mulleted detective Andrzej Konopka investigates a murder and tangoes with "cyber witch" Noomi Rapace, who can enter minds without plugging into the AI system that controls water, energy, and thought itself. It's a surreal, gory fairy tale for adults that admittedly doesn't fully add up, but the visual ambition and vibes are sensational. 🖥️ _****Hot Spot****_ (Focus Features) is now available to rent/buy on VOD. * * * ****HUG:**** "Cow With Half Moon Parasol" excerpt from ****"HUG"**** It takes three guitarists to make a **HUG** , the self-titled, mostly instrumental debut from the trio of Noah Georgeson, Gyan Riley and freak-folk mainstay Devendra Banhart. Incorporating field recordings (rain and wind here, a chorus of frogs there) into the rhythmic and ambient structures they glide between, this spontaneous three-week studio session sounds like old friends exhaling together. As a warm invitation to contemplation, the album is not without its playful whims, such as juxtaposing the sacred Sanskrit greeting "Sarva Mangalam" with the Spanish "leche condensada" (condensed milk). 🎵 ****"HUG"**** (Luaka Bop) drops today on vinyl, CD, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, Amazon Music, Qobuz, Deezer, and more. * * * **The Best Films About 9/11 Aren't Really About 9/11.** 25 years ago, I woke up in lower Manhattan to the sound of a plane crash. To this day, I see no point to the clinical, hindsight-lacking reenactment of _United 93_ , and the first-responder lionization _World Trade Center_ was the schmaltziest Ron Howard film that Oliver Stone ever made. Who were these movies for? The people who lived it didn't need to re-experience, and people who didn't couldn't possibly glean much in two hours. But there are worthwhile films about the aftermath, memory, and the strange ways trauma reshapes a life. Meditating on American violence across generations, **_The Cats of Mirikitani_** (2006) finds an 83-year-old homeless artist painting cats and internment camps near Ground Zero. **_The Falling Man_** (2006) uses a single controversial photograph to ask impossible questions about who deserves to be remembered and how. **_Control Room_** (2004) doesn't show the towers at all, only how Al Jazeera covered the ensuing war, revealing (at least then) how little we understand about how the rest of the world sees us. Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for a **_25th Hour_** rewatch. ****Hey, buddy!**** Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Is your film headed for the fall festival circuit?**** If you'd like a second set of eyes on your strategy, I have a few spots open for one-on-one consultations. Script notes, distribution tactics, and more. [Details here.] ***** Send this to a friend + subscribe for FREE below**** – get this in your inbox every Friday. _No spam._ Just two minutes of useful recommendations. Subscribe
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What if you could photograph the past? That's the vertiginous premise of Jack Auen and Kevin Walker's Chronovisor, a singular spellbinder turning the act of research into a riveting noir conspiracy. A Columbia scholar (Anne-Laure Sellier) stumbles upon the story of a Benedictine monk who claimed […]

thesecretscreening.comGoing to Movies to Read Books****CHRONOVISOR**** (2026, dir. Jack Auen & Kevin Walker) What if you could photograph the past? That's the vertiginous premise of Jack Auen and Kevin Walker's _**Chronovisor**_ , a singular spellbinder turning the act of research into a riveting noir conspiracy. A Columbia scholar (Anne-Laure Sellier) stumbles upon the story of a Benedictine monk who claimed to have invented a device capable of displaying any historical moment on a TV screen—including the crucifixion of Christ. In close-ups of archival texts, with key passages highlighted or translated via floating text, this hypnotic 16mm discovery argues that the most radical act in our digital consolidation age might be the patient, physical work of reading. Or, what if structural filmmaker Michael Snow made _The Da Vinci Code_? 📽️ _****Chronovisor****_ (Grasshopper Film) opens today in NYC at Film at Lincoln Center (Q&As this weekend). For more cities and dates, click here. * * * ****BARBARA FOREVER**** (2026, dir. Brydie O’Connor) Brydie O'Connor's **_Barbara Forever_** is a lovingly crafted tribute to lesbian avant-garde film pioneer Barbara Hammer (1939-2019), a vital record of a life lived in fearless defiance of erasure. Constructed from Hammer's vast personal archive and even narrated by her (using audio she'd recorded throughout her life), the film captures the tactile eroticism and curiosity of her early work to her layered experiments with optical printing, to her late-in-life documentation of her battle with ovarian cancer. "Touching another woman’s body, it changed my life. It had to be shown," Hammer explains in this poignant and illuminating celebration. 🏳️‍🌈 _****Barbara Forever****_ (Strand Releasing) opens today in NYC at Film Forum (Q&As this weekend), with two Barbara Hammer shorts programs on Sep. 5th + Sep. 9th. For more cities and dates, click here. ****The Go:**** "All Dimensions Are Loose" (from ****"Free Electricity"****) Jack White played on **The Go** 's 1999 debut, yet their sophomore album **"Free Electricity"** circulated for 25 years as a bootleg for Detroit rock obsessives. Maybe it was the label expecting the more digestible garage flavors that moved units, or the band punished for trying to sneak their version past, but it's hard to understand today why this live-wire squall of MC5-style overdrive, Stooges-y swagger, and lysergic haze was rejected back in 2001. Heavily influenced by the cosmic free-jazz improvisations of Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra, perhaps this exciting long-lost record simply needed time to catch up and normalize its chaos. 🎵 ****"Free Electricity"**** (Sub Pop Records) drops today—finally—on vinyl, CD, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, SoundCloud, and more. * * * **Two Questions for Vaishali Sinha.** The Brooklyn-based filmmaker's urgent yet gentle-humored new documentary Give it a Shot, about the push to launch the first reversible male contraceptive, premieres today in NYC (with Q&As all week). **How do you get people, especially trial subjects, to speak so candidly?** I happily tell everyone that talking about sex is the easiest thing to do. You'd be surprised how much people will open up and allow a peek into their personal lives. I want people to imagine a future in which male birth control is possible. It would be great if we can actually talk about it in a way that's not just simply funny, but can actually exist. Because I do think it's coming down the pipeline. **How did my consulting help you?** I remember something you said that I still carry with me: your film doesn't necessarily have to take the mainstream major festival path, and that's not something to be disappointed by. Your champions could be elsewhere—women's film festivals, science film festivals, South Asian film festivals. And truly, that is what has happened. These smaller fests with incredible concentrated audiences have been our cheerleaders. So whenever we get the occasional rejection, I think, "Aaron said, don't be disheartened." ****Did this tickle you?**** Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Is your film headed for the fall festival circuit?**** If you'd like a second set of eyes on your strategy, I have a few spots open for one-on-one consultations. Script notes, distribution tactics, and more. [Details here.] ***** Send this to a friend + subscribe for FREE below**** – get this in your inbox every Friday. _No spam._ Just two minutes of useful recommendations. Subscribe
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Class war is just another day at the country club in Rafael Manuel's visually witty, quietly devastating debut Filipiñana—my absolute fave from Sundance this year. At an exclusive golf course outside of Manila, the film unfolds in leisurely deadpan tableaux (some have cited Wes Anderson, but I'd […]

thesecretscreening.comEat the Rich, Even When Gamey****FILIPIÑANA****(2026, dir. Rafael Manuel) Class war is just another day at the country club in Rafael Manuel's visually witty, quietly devastating debut **_Filipiñana_** —my absolute fave from Sundance this year. At an exclusive golf course outside of Manila, the film unfolds in leisurely deadpan tableaux (some have cited Wes Anderson, but I'd suggest Jacques Tati or Roy Andersson in their precise choreography of space and power) as a newly hired "tee girl" (Jorrybell Agoto) experiences a sweltering day of microaggressions in servitude. Go for the lush artificial-paradise pastels and intricately framed whimsy, stay for the metaphoric meditation on the complexities and hierarchies of post-colonial Filipino identity. Later, we can discuss the audience's complicity over some Jollibee's. 📽️ _****Filipiñana****_ (Kino Lorber) opens today in NYC at Film Forum (Q&As this weekend) and in Toronto at Lightbox. For more cities and dates, click here. * * * A hysterically messy indie throwback to the raunchy R-rated studio comedies of the early 2000s (_Pineapple Express_ , _The Hangover_), Macon Blair's _**Idiots**_ —originally titled _The Shitheads_ —works best with a crowd. Down-on-their-luck schlubs Dave Franco and O'Shea Jackson Jr. are hired to transport a wealthy _enfant terrible_ (Mason Thames) to rehab, the premise echoing Hal Ashby's _The Last Detail_ if the prisoner were an unconscionable TikTok monster and the escorts were barely functional adults. In these bleak sociopolitical times, here's one for those mourning the loss of mid-budget laugh riots in the multiplex. (Although I think this NSFW trailer is more enticing than the one above.) 🍿 _****Idiots****_ (IFC) opens in theaters today. ****Hakushi Hasegawa:**** "Suffocation Diary" (from ****"Honest Feeling Album"****) Is nonbinary Tokyo composer **Hakushi Hasegawa** 's maximalist whirlwind **"Honest Feeling Album"** short-circuiting in real time, or is that my overstimulated brain? First gaining attention in Japan's netlabel scene as a teen, the now 27-year-old artist grew tired of the isolation of solo composition at a computer and formed a live band (HaHa and the Hairpins) for a wildly unclassifiable, hyperactive fusion of avant-jazz, deconstructed breakbeats, pitch-shifted J-pop and terrifying noise. Cute meets creepy in this thrillingly aggressive reminder that the most honest expressions are sometimes the ones that refuse to be easily explained. 🎵 ****"Honest Feeling Album"**** (Brainfeeder) drops today on Bandcamp (including CD/vinyl), Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, TIDAL, and more. * * * **I Love a Fake Happy Ending.** Movies that give you the warm, fuzzy conclusion you crave and then snatch it away with a disquieting reveal—feed 'em to me! It's a provocation as old as cinema that forces you to ask: What were you hoping to see, and what does that say about you? Rafael Manuel uses it brilliantly in _Filipiñana_ with a "false ending" (not a spoiler) that directly implicates us in the film's critique of inaction and complicity. The move echoes _Funny Games_ auteur Michael Haneke, who built a career on pointing fingers at the viewer, forcing us to confront our own passive consumption of violence and suffering. Too often today, when a film challenges us, the response is to blame the work. "It didn't make sense... It was boring... I didn't get it." We've lost the patience to sit with things that refuse to hand us easy answers, and assume it's the art's fault, not our miscomprehension. "What is the film saying?" isn't the right question, but "what are we bringing to it?" ****Ya dig?**** Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Is your film headed for the fall festival circuit?**** If you'd like a second set of eyes on your strategy, I have a few spots open for one-on-one consultations. Script notes, distribution tactics, and more. [Details here.] ***** Send this to a friend + subscribe for FREE below**** – get this in your inbox every Friday. _No spam._ Just two minutes of useful recommendations. Subscribe
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Lithuanian filmmaker Andrius Blaževičius' Sundance-winning drama How to Divorce During the War is a bitterly comic portrait of brittle relationships and bourgeois complacency that reminded me of Force Majeure. Just as a Vilnius family's breadwinner (Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė) chooses the worst […]

thesecretscreening.comMidlife Director's Block****HOW TO DIVORCE DURING THE WAR****(2026, dir. Andrius Blaževičius) Lithuanian filmmaker Andrius Blaževičius' Sundance-winning drama _**How to Divorce During the War**_ is a bitterly comic portrait of brittle relationships and bourgeois complacency that reminded me of _Force Majeure_. Just as a Vilnius family's breadwinner (Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė) chooses the worst possible moment to inform her stagnating filmmaker hubby (Marius Repšys) she's bored in their marriage, Russia's invasion of Ukraine goes full-scale. He moves in with his propagandized Russophile parents and she self-righteously quits her job to take in Ukrainian refugees, escalating the film's entertaining critique of Europe's moral fatigue through public solidarity and private selfishness. 📽️ _****How to Divorce During the War****_ (Zeitgeist/Kino Lorber) opens today in NYC at IFC Center (Q&As this weekend), and in Los Angeles on August 28. For more cities and dates, click here. * * * ****BLOOD SHINE**** (2025, dir. Emily Bennett & Justin Brooks) Leveling up the scale and aesthetics of their low-budget psychological horror _Alone With You_ , filmmaker duo Emily Bennett & Justin Brooks' psychosexual chamber chiller** _Blood Shine_** is a more literal, visceral version of the "filmmaker blocked by his own complacency" tale. When a profoundly arrogant director (David Call) retreats to a remote cabin to jumpstart his next franchise installment, he's taken captive by a religious zealot (Bennett) who claims her sadistic basement rituals will elevate him to godhood. A hypnotically shot two-hander built on unpredictable menace and surprising tenderness, this folk-horror indie is (unlike Gen Z) unafraid to be horny. 🍿 _****Blood Shine****_ (Dark Sky Films) opens today in NYC at Cinema Village (Q&As this weekend), and is also now available on VOD. ****Rapsody:**** "God Gotta Afro (ft. KARABO YA MORENA)" (from ****"God Gotta Afro & Gold Hoops"****) One of hip-hop's sharpest pens (with collaborators like Kendrick Lamar and fans like Barack Obama), Grammy-winning emcee **Rapsody** expands her lyrical precision to a soulful, dense, image-rich meditation on Black identity, womanhood and self-love. Inspired by the whitewashed gospel music she encountered during a trip to Ghana, the North Carolina rapper's anthemic title track for **"God Gotta Afro & Gold Hoops"** finds divinity in satirical declarations ("Look just like my momma's momma's momma's momma's continent"), while other tracks call out hypocrisy, urge the shedding of ego, and celebrate Afrofuturism—including a George Clinton collab paying tribute to jazz mystic Sun Ra. 🎵 ****"God Gotta Afro & Gold Hoops"**** (We Each Other x Roc Nation) drops today on vinyl, CD, Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, Qobuz, Amazon Music, and more. * * * **Consider a Title Change.** Forgive me the high-falutin' authority here, but a film title is a promise. It’s the first thing your audience sees, setting the expectation for their viewing experience. I was recently consulting with filmmakers whose one-word title made their project sound like a gritty thriller or revisionist Western. But the film itself is a quiet, character-driven drama about guilt and reconciliation. The protagonist could have stepped out of a John Ford movie, but the story's emotional register is closer to a 1970s antihero character study. A title doesn't need to be a full synopsis, but it should signal the genre and tone you're delivering. If it's too ill-fitting, it creates a mismatch that leaves audiences feeling confused or misled... and if it's too generic, you'll be lost forever in search-engine results. ****You approve?**** Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Is your film headed for the fall festival circuit?**** If you'd like a second set of eyes on your strategy, I have a few spots open for one-on-one consultations. Script notes, distribution tactics, and more. [Details here.] ***** Send this to a friend + subscribe for FREE below**** – get this in your inbox every Friday. _No spam._ Just two minutes of useful recommendations. Subscribe
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Contained thrillers are a staple of modest-budget filmmaking, those tense stories built around an economical, manageable setting... but who needs another cabin in the woods? A lean, mean chamber mystery that makes a virtue of its claustrophobic confines, Brock Bodell's feature debut Hellcat […]

thesecretscreening.comThis Trailer Ain't Big Enough For Both of Us****HELLCAT**** (2025, dir. Brock Bodell) Contained thrillers are a staple of modest-budget filmmaking, those tense stories built around an economical, manageable setting... but who needs another cabin in the woods? A lean, mean chamber mystery that makes a virtue of its claustrophobic confines, Brock Bodell's feature debut **_Hellcat_** introduces us to a discombobulated woman (Dakota Gorman) as she wakes up in a moving camper with a festering wound, a mysterious voice crackling at her through a taxidermied coyote-head, and a ticking clock. You might see the nightmare gambit coming, but it's a clever and propulsive ride, anchored by Gorman's fierce, grounded intensity. 🖥️ _****Hellcat****_ (Shudder) begins streaming today you-know-where. * * * ****Sparks:**** "Whippings and Apologies" (from ****"Live on the Moon"****) For over fifty thrilling, weird and essential years, **Sparks** have been pop's most brilliant and unclassifiable contrarians. As lionized in Edgar Wright's _The Sparks Brothers_ , synth maestro Ron Mael (the one with the mustache, 81 years young this week!) and falsetto-belting frontman Russell Mael (the one with the energy) have built a singular, ever-shifting catalog blending glam, new wave, art rock, and operatic ambition. Russell's voice is as sharp and theatrical as ever on my favorite group's first full-band concert album, **"Live on the Moon"** , a career-spanning deep dive with a playful lunar conceit, introduced from "space" by Cate Blanchett. 🎵 ****"Sparks Live on the Moon"**** (Transgressive Records Ltd.) drops today on vinyl, CD, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, and more. * * * ****IT'S A SUMMER FILM!**** (2021, dir. Sōshi Matsumoto), part of ****"Summer in Japan"**** In the quiet breezes of Japanese cinema, all the melancholy, magic realism and heat seem to accelerate when you're growing up. That fleeting feeling is gathered across 12 features in Brooklyn Academy of Music's new series **"Summer in Japan"**(Aug 14-20), spanning seven decades from Ozu to Obayashi and beyond. But the true treasures are the repertory rarities not streaming anywhere: experience the legendary long takes of Shinji Somai's delirious teen odyssey _PP Rider_ , Soushi Matsumoto's charming high school sci-fi comedy _It's a Summer Film!,_ Yoshimitsu Morita's offbeat romance _Main Theme_ , and Shinji Aoyama's angsty revenge thriller _Helpless_. 🇯🇵 ****"Summer in Japan"**** (through August 20) starts today at BAM. * * * **Budgetary Limitations Can Be Helpful Influences.** _Hellcat_ is an inspiring reminder that "contained" doesn't mean "limited," but focused. The best low-budget films don't fight their constraints; they weaponize them. Cinema nerds all know the near-doom backstory on _Jaws_ , that Spielberg's mechanical shark didn't work, looked fake, kept breaking down. Deciding not to show "the great white turd" (as infamously nicknamed by the crew), Spielberg instead shot from the shark's POV, used John Williams' iconic score to suggest its presence, and let our imaginations do the rest. That's the lesson of the contained thriller. No budget for a car chase? Set it in a camper. Can't afford a big location? Make your locale the point. The obstacle isn't a failure of creativity, but possibly the raw material for it. Ask "what can we do with what we have?" ...and then get wild! ****Hey buddy, you dig?**** Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Is your film headed for the fall festival circuit?**** If you'd like a second set of eyes on your strategy, I have a few spots open for one-on-one consultations. Script notes, distribution tactics, and more. [Details here.] ***** Send this to a friend + subscribe for FREE below**** – get this in your inbox every Friday. _No spam._ Just two minutes of useful recommendations. Subscribe
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In his tender, deeply New York sophomore feature Late Fame, former NYFF director and critic Kent Jones adapts Arthur Schnitzler's 1895 novella (from a ruthlessly funny script by May December's Samy Burch) about a forgotten poet given a second act by a group of young admirers. Longtime postal […]

thesecretscreening.comLate Stage Poetry****LATE FAME**** (2025, dir. Kent Jones) In his tender, deeply New York sophomore feature _**Late Fame**_ , former NYFF director and critic Kent Jones adapts Arthur Schnitzler's 1895 novella (from a ruthlessly funny script by _May December_ 's Samy Burch) about a forgotten poet given a second act by a group of young admirers. Longtime postal worker Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe) published a slim volume of poetry in the '70s before retreating into comfortable anonymity. Tracked down by the foppish leader (Edmund Donovan) of a band of trust-funded Whit Stillman rejects, Ed is reluctantly drawn into their world of literary salons, performance spaces, and one manic pixie cabaret singer (Greta Lee). The seduction of recognition and the persistence of artistic hope are reminders in this urbane tale that some ghosts are worth honoring. 📽️ _****Late Fame****_ (Magnolia Pictures) opens today in NYC at BAM (Q&As tonight + tomorrow), with a nationwide rollout to follow. * * * ****A POET**** (2025, dir. Simón Mesa Soto) But what about the daily indignities of a life spent waiting for fame? The titular lead of Colombian auteur Simón Mesa Soto's cringe comedy _**A Poet**_(first-time actor Ubeimar Rios, a real-life teacher who took the role for extra cash) peaked before anyone noticed and has since lapsed into self-pitying obscurity and alcoholism. Divorced and living with his mom, this walking problem takes a job teaching poetry to teens, but his efforts to mentor a soft-spoken discovery (Rebeca Andrade) collide with a literary establishment he despises. An absurdist takedown of the art world anchored by Rios' farcical, goblin-like performance, this 16mm-shot South American answer to _American Fiction_ frames self-destruction as a form of righteous rebellion against the damn gatekeepers. 🖥️ _****A Poet****_ (1-2 Special) begins streaming today on MUBI. ****John Carpenter:**** "Revenge" (from ****"Cathedral"****) **John Carpenter** has spent a lifetime building nightmares, on film as well as in the synth-chugging soundscapes that score them (I mean, is his _Halloween_ theme any less iconic than Michael Myers' mask?). Working with longtime musical collaborators Daniel Davies and son Cody Carpenter, **"Cathedral"** is the horror godfather's first "classic metal" album to date, and doubles as the soundtrack to his first original graphic novel (LAPD detectives vs. ancient demons!), all inspired by a vivid dream. Evoking a never-realized _Prince of Darkness_ sequel, this creepy companion piece is thrilling as a standalone listening experience in all its crushing guitar riffs, anthemic melodies and thunderous energy. 🎵 ****"Cathedral"**** (Sacred Bones Records) drops today on vinyl, CD, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, and more. * * * **Adaptations Are About Translation, Not Replication.** Thinking about Kent Jones' update of a 19th-century novella, or Carpenter turning a dream into a graphic novel and an album, it's funny that we still judge adaptations by fidelity. The enduring ones know they're moving between unlike mediums. An internal monologue that sings on the page can kill a scene on-screen. Patrick Süskind's novel "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" conjured scent in my brain; two decades later, Tom Tykwer's film version couldn't make you smell a thing, no matter how tightly he zooms in. That's why _Naked Lunch_ and _A Clockwork Orange_ look nothing like their "unfilmable" source texts. Cronenberg and Kubrick understood that slavish exactitude would have resulted in unwatchable messes. They took the essence (mood, ideas, central fears) and made the most of their audiovisual constraints. If you want faithfulness to the book, read the book. If you crave cinema, let the filmmaker interpret and remix with abandon. ****You approve?**** Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Is your film headed for the fall festival circuit?**** If you'd like a second set of eyes on your strategy, I have a few spots open for one-on-one consultations. Script notes, distribution tactics, and more. [Details here.] ***** Send this to a friend + subscribe for FREE below**** – get this in your inbox every Friday. _No spam._ Just two minutes of useful recommendations. Subscribe
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A furious DIY fusion of hip-hop spectacle, political commentary and Afrofuturist dystopia, Ngozi Onwurah's Welcome II the Terrordome was the first feature directed by a Black woman to be distributed in the UK, except the savage critics couldn't feel its gravity in 1995. Finally getting its […]

thesecretscreening.comThe Owl is Not What He Seems****WELCOME II THE TERRORDOME**** (1995, dir. Ngozi Onwurah) A furious DIY fusion of hip-hop spectacle, political commentary and Afrofuturist dystopia, Ngozi Onwurah's**_Welcome II the Terrordome_** was the first feature directed by a Black woman to be distributed in the UK, except the savage critics couldn't feel its gravity in 1995. Finally getting its righteous due in a vivid 2k restoration, this burning sci-fi fable (prophecy?) imagines a near-future Britain where Black citizens are confined to a ghetto territory, trapped between police violence, drug wars, and the constant threat of state-sanctioned death. Named for a Public Enemy single and driven by a soundtrack that doubles as narration, it's a punk-as-hell provocation fueled by rage that's woefully more palpable today. 📽️ _****Welcome II the Terrordome****_ (Janus Films) opens today in NYC at BAM (Q&As tonight + tomorrow), with a nationwide rollout to follow. * * * ****WILD INSIDE**** (2026, dir. Penny Lane) Documentary filmmaker Penny Lane makes you care about unorthodox subjects you're surprised to lean into: Richard Nixon's home movies, the grassroots politics of satanists, Kenny G's smooth jazz. Now she turns her curious eye to Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who infamously escaped from the Central Park Zoo in 2023 and somehow survived for over a year as a free bird in Manhattan. A crowdsourced miracle of iPhone videos and stunning photographs by devoted birders and jaded New Yorkers (not mutually exclusive), **_Wild Inside_** is a sneakily profound meditation on animal-human relations, urban ecosystems, and thorny ethical debates about conservation. It's witty, tender, devastating, yet ultimately hopeful. 🦉 _****Wild Inside****_(Sandbox Films) opens today in NYC at the IFC Center, with Q&As + Greenwich Village birdwatching tours (!) this weekend. For more cities and dates, click here. * * * ****Arca:**** "Sueño" (from her ****"XXXXX"**** livestream) A sought-after collaborator for icons like Björk, Madonna and Rosalía, Barcelona-based "diva as technology" **Arca** is known for her visceral, transhumanist collisions of experimental noise, reggaetón, IDM, and baroque vocal fragments. Her disorienting first album in five years and most relentless to date, **"XXXXX"** is a brilliantly aggressive, occasionally funny, 16-track labyrinth of glitched-out club mutations that are dense, amorphous and uncompromisingly wild inside (note the owls on the cover). Classical competitions with a heart murmur throb and crunch against metallic surfaces, hypnotizing us in the darkness with bright maternal melodies and intergalactic ambience. 🎵 ****"XXXXX"**** (XL Recordings) drops today on digital (MP3/WAV), Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, Amazon, Deezer and more. * * * **Don't Forget to Look Up From the Fest Schedule.** I learned this my first time at the Florida Film Festival back in 2008, when filmmaking brothers David & Nathan Zellner (_Sasquatch Sunset_) made a vacation out of their trip. They played mini golf one day, fed hot dogs to alligators the next, and even woke up at 5am to swim with manatees. They weren't ignoring the festival; they were doing it all the way up! They bonded with other artists over these absurd, specific experiences in a way you never can in a crowded theater lobby. We get so focused on the screenings and meetings that we forget destination festivals are a shared adventure. New places, tasty local delicacies, unusual roadside attractions... those are the bonding moments that build real relationships and spark more inspiration than, say, another disposable panel discussion. (The only other detail I remember from FFF '08 is stepping into a hot tub with my phone in a swimsuit pocket, whoops.) ****You approve?**** Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Send this to a friend + subscribe for FREE below**** – get this in your inbox every Friday. _No spam._ Just two minutes of useful recommendations. ***** Is your film headed for the fall festival circuit?**** If you'd like a second set of eyes on your strategy, I have a few spots open for one-on-one consultations. Script notes, distribution tactics, and more. [Details here.] Subscribe
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Aaron Hillis on Michael Mann's MANHUNTER: THE FINAL CUT, Matt Johnson's NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE, Robyn Hitchcock's "The Confuser" ...and why Pitching is an Important Filmmaking Skill to Hone.

thesecretscreening.comSo Buffalo Bill Could Run****MANHUNTER: THE FINAL CUT**** (1986, dir. Michael Mann) _**Manhunter: The Final Cut**_ is maybe a misnomer, as the 40th anniversary restoration of Michael Mann's unsettling serial-killer classic is essentially his 2003 Director's Cut with minor trims, extended scenes, and a polarizing color grade that mutes the film's iconic '80s neon and pastels for a more "contemporary" look. Whether that's an upgrade or desecration will fuel nerdy debates, but undebatable is the film's staying power. Without William Petersen's criminal profiler with a haunted obsession, the late Tom Noonan's terrifying, tragic "Tooth Fairy" or Brian Cox as O.G. liver lover Hannibal Lecktor (played with more chilling, clinical realism than Anthony Hopkins), there might not be _Se7en_ or _Zodiac_. 📽️ _****Manhunter: The Final Cut****_ (Rialto Pictures) opens today in NYC, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. For more cities and dates, click here. * * * ****NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE**** (2025, dir. Matt Johnson) Over a scrappy web series and two audacious cult TV seasons, Toronto buddies Matt Johnson and Jay McCarroll (as "themselves") have put two decades' worth of scheming energy into how to book a live gig at the Rivoli. A simple, insane, faux-doc premise built around hidden cameras, unsuspecting real-world participants and meta movie-loving invention, _"Nirvanna the Band the Show"_ expanded into the funniest movie of the past year: **_Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie_**. Still trying to play the same tiny club, the boys' catastrophically backfiring plans (from skydiving to time traveling) present as a heartfelt buddy comedy, a love letter to Drake's hometown, and a mind-blowing magic trick. 🖥️ _****Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie****_ is now streaming on Hulu, as are both TV seasons of "Nirvanna the Band the Show". (My personal suggestion? Start with the film before watching the series.) * * * ****Robyn Hitchcock:**** "My Dead Astronaut" (from ****"The Confuser"****) "I owe a lot to a dead man's cock," begins **Robyn Hitchcock** 's 25th solo album **"The Confuser"** , the eccentrically witty English troubadour's first release as a septuagenarian (not that you'd ever guess from his familiar, vital charm). A "rockin' dismalia record for rocking dismal times" as he puts it, this jangly psych-pop treat waxes whimsically on mortal decay, the fragility of love, and the preciousness of existence itself. With guest spots from Gillian Welch and his former Soft Boys bandmate Kimberley Rew, Hitchcock's latest hits "louder than a mustache on a face," his surrealist streak as evocative as ever. 🎵 ****"The Confuser"**** (Tiny Ghost Records) drops today on CD + vinyl, Bandcamp, Amazon Music, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, and more. * * * **Pitching is an Important Filmmaking Skill to Hone.** Bonsoir from the 30th Fantasia International Film Festival in gorgeous Montréal, where I'm spending the week at the Frontières market. After a day of pitch sessions, I've noticed a pattern: the genre projects that stick aren't the ones with the most polished decks (and don't get me started on the glut of A.I. generated lookbooks). They're from people you'd want to spend two years of production hell with. In this foolishly risk-averse industry, your first impression is often your only chance. Don't read directly from the PowerPoint slides, we can already see them. Find more meaningful horror comps beyond _Get Out_ , _The Substance_ and _The Witch_ that reflect why you're unique. Your job is to make the people across the table feel excitement, curiosity, a sense of shared possibility. Be energetic, be prepared, be someone they'd want to work with. The story matters, but they're ultimately buying into you. ****Dig this?**** Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Send this to a friend + subscribe for FREE below**** – get this in your inbox every Friday. No spam. Just two minutes of useful recommendations. ***** Need eyes on your film or career?**** I consult on festival strategy, script notes, distribution and more. [Details here.] Subscribe
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With a deadpan melancholy to rival Aki Kaurismäki's oeuvre, Carolina Cavalli's The Kidnapping of Arabella is so tonally precarious that it could be called an absurdist buddy comedy, a coming-of-age drama, or a psychological portrait of delusional regret. A chance encounter convinces an aimless […]

thesecretscreening.comZoot Suit, Capisce?****THE KIDNAPPING OF ARABELLA**** (2025, dir. Carolina Cavalli) With a deadpan melancholy to rival Aki Kaurismäki's oeuvre, Carolina Cavalli's **_The Kidnapping of Arabella_** is so tonally precarious that it could be called an absurdist buddy comedy, a coming-of-age drama, or a psychological portrait of delusional regret. A chance encounter convinces an aimless young woman (Benedetta Porcaroli) that a precocious 8-year-old (Lucrezia Guglielmino) is her younger self, the latter going along for the literal ride to punish her self-absorbed novelist father (Chris Pine, speaking Italian with droll authority). Not everyone will surrender to its eccentric — dare I say "quirky" — wavelength, but I found the film an ambitious, constant pleasure and oddly moving. 📽️ _****The Kidnapping of Arabella****_ (Oscilloscope Laboratories) opens today in NYC at the IFC Center (Carolina Cavalli + Chris Pine Q&As this weekend). For more cities and dates, click here. * * * ****AMERICAN PACHUCO: THE LEGEND OF LUIS VALDEZ**** (2026, dir. David Alvarado) Long before he directed _La Bamba_ , playwright-turned-filmmaker Luis Valdez was organizing farmworkers with a theater troupe on the back of a flatbed truck. A joyful, necessary reminder that activism and art are inseparable, David Alvarado's Sundance-winning documentary _**American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez**_ is as vibrantly entertaining as its subject. While conventionally structured around talking heads (Lou Diamond Phillips, Linda Ronstadt, Valdez himself), the restless tapestry of archival treasures is stylishly brought to life by a playful narrator: Edward James Olmos, reprising his suave El Pachuco character (sort of a dandy Chicano hipster) from Valdez's _Zoot Suit_. 📽️ _****American Pachuco****_ (Insignia Films) opens today in NYC at Film Forum (Q&As with Lou Diamond Phillips, Luis Valdez and David Alvarado this weekend). For more cities and dates, click here. * * * ****The Binoculars:**** "Lorene" (from ****"Double Whammy"****) Brooklyn multi-instrumentalists Kaethe Hostetter and Chloë Swantner turned their long-running musical sisterhood into **The Binoculars** , built on a deceptively vintage Americana foundation: violin, guitar, lap steel, and close-harmony vocals. Recorded live in a day, their brightly inviting debut **"Double Whammy"** is a genre-fiddling covers album of Tex-Mex waltzes, Ethiopian tango, country-folk rarities (long-lost 1966 Arkansas gem "Lookout Heart"), and brother-duo classics (Louvin, Kershaw, Delmore), kicked off by the theme to 1949's _The Third Man_ — __ a tune with a personal twist, as Hostetter's great-grandfather appears in the Carol Reed classic as a shady racketeer. 🎵 ****"Double Whammy"**** (Jalopy Records) drops today on Bandcamp + CD + digital, Amazon Music, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, and more. * * * **Documentaries Shouldn't Skimp on the Cinema.** Look, talking heads can be a necessary evil in non-fiction storytelling. They make sense for _American Pachuco_ , which benefits from its subject being a lively chat, but they're the most common tool in the toolbox. I'm drawn to filmmakers who reach farther: Werner Herzog's "ecstatic truth," or the doc-narrative hybrids that manipulate reality to get at deeper emotional honesty. It's the difference between a lecture (filmed audiobook) and a revelation (experience), using the full medium — sound, image, rhythm, even a little sleight of hand. Make the audience feel something, not just know something. A Wikipedia entry can inform you. A boldly conceived and creatively executed documentary can change how you see the world. ****Dig this?**** Two ways to support The Secret Screening: ***** Send this to a friend + subscribe for FREE below**** – get this in your inbox every Friday. No spam. Just two minutes of useful recommendations. ***** Need eyes on your film or career?**** I consult on festival strategy, script notes, distribution and more. [Details here.] Subscribe

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