ART: The Met opens its doors on a Monday for a special Christmas Eve event. They suggest stopping by for the 18th-century Neapolitan Nativity scene Christmas tree, along with some of their special exhibits -- the Age of Rembrandt, Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works and their fashion exhibit will stock your stuffing with eye candy. 9:30am to 5:30pm // The Metropolitan Museum of Art [1000 Fifth Ave] // Pay what you want MOVIE: The......

Arnaud Desplechin in Focus Museum of the Moving Image When Gothamist saw cinematographer-turned-director Arnaud Desplechin's film Kings and Queen two years ago, we knew we were watching something unique. His movie about a French woman and the three important men in her life—her adorable son, her crazy ex-husband and her dying father—unfolds so organically you get completely caught up in the complex characters, utterly forgetting that Desplechin is expertly telling his story in a very......

Fritz Lang: King of Noir Museum of the Moving Image, through Sept. 30 With his fascination with psychologically shady characters and a visual aesthetic that's equally as shadowy, it's no surprise that when German director Fritz Lang came to the United States during World War II he became a major practitioner of that very American genre, film noir. The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens is devoting a whole month of screenings to Lang's......

The French Connection (directed by William Friedkin) Film Forum through September 6th A New York City procedural cop movie classic and the winner of five Academy Awards, a new 35 mm print of The French Connection gets a one-week run at Film Forum starting this weekend. Starring Gene Hackman as the porkpie wearing detective Popeye Doyle in a career defining role, the movie follows the attempt of a French criminal (Fernando Rey) to smuggle heroin......

In honor of the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birthday, the city of Vienna commissioned a special festival of visual art, music, dance, architecture, and film called New Crowned Hope. The name refers to the Masonic lodge Mozart co–founded, a venue in which he made his last public appearance. Beginning this weekend, the Brooklyn Academy of Music will host screenings of six films made for the festival by some of the most exciting directors......

MOVIE: Michael Moore is in town with his latest film that's pissing off the government while informing the nation, Sicko (trailer here). Get ready to be filled with rage as the carpet is pulled back on the American healthcare system and much, much more. 7pm // Museum of the Moving Image [35th Avenue at the corner of 36th Street, Astoria] // $10 * Moved to June 28th! * THEATER: Prolific British playwright Alan Ayckbourn has......

It's Only A Movie: Horror Films From the 1970s and Today Museum of the Moving Image, Queens Boo! It's time to hide your eyes and scream with delight over at the Museum of the Moving Image, as they'll be showing six weeks worth of old and new horror films starting tonight. You could say that scary stories are always about what metaphorical bogey men society fears most, but that became particularly evident in the horror......

In the masses of offerings at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, there's quite a few strong New York-centric selections both in and out of competition to seek out. Granted at $25-$14 per, tickets for the festival don't come cheap, so if you're going to see something at the fest make it a local joint. Our favorite film so far at the festival has been West 32nd, a thriller directed by NYU alum Michael Kang (The......

They don't make "downtown It girls" like Edie Sedgwick any more, which is why it's fortunate that Andy Warhol spent so much time capturing her on camera during the height of their artistic collaboration. The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens is devoting a retrospective to these films starting this weekend and running through Apr. 8. Featuring 15 16 mm movies, many loaned by the Museum of Modern Art, the series also includes footage......

Don't you just love that feeling of "discovering" a new artist that no one else knows about yet? The New Directors/New Films festival curated by the Film Society at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art's Film department have been keeping New Yorkers ahead of the cinema curve for 35 years now with their annual series. In the past they've showcased such newbies as Chantal Akerman, Pedro Almodóvar, Héctor Babenco, Terence Davies, Guillermo del......

Nothing distracts from this sub-freezing weather like a good flick. Here's a few options out this weekend in New York Theaters. Ryan Phillippe works hard to figure out Chris Cooper's espionage secrets in the new thriller Breach. Cooper is always great and for our money, you can't beat Laura Linney so hears hoping this drama lives up to its smart cast. Someone recently told us that eventually they'll run out of comic books to turn......

Get your creepy crawly on with two potentially frightening movies out this weekend. Yet another '80s horror staple is getting the remake treatment with Dave Meyers' The Hitcher. Little do the college couple Grace (the former Mrs. Chad Michael Murray, Sophia Bush) and Jim (Zachary Knighton) know what's in store for them when they pick up John Ryder by the side of the road. Though it would seem clear from his various bad guy roles......

You know it's the beginning of January when the gyms are filled with New Years resolution exercisers and the movie theaters are filled with post-New Years dreck. Frankly, it's best to focus on getting caught up on last year's best (see our Top 10 and the subsequent comments for suggestions) and leave this week's releases for suckers with movie money to burn. Hilary Swank often stars in Oscar-lauded movies but her newest about an inner-city......

Two quite controversial and buzzed about movies hit New York theaters this weekend. So far the critical opinion of raving lunatic Mel Gibson's new foreign language feature, Apocalypto, seems to be pretty favorable. The movie about a Mayan family man and the invading nearby tribe, sounds like it is painstakingly composed but has quite a bit of gratuitous, sadistic violence. Lisa Schwartzbaum in EW even calls it "the weirdest, most violent movie of the year,"......

It's December today and you know what that means...let the rampant awards season speculation commence! As the year comes to a close, it's that magical time when all of the movie studios begin unloading their most precious commodities into our theaters, making sure things come out in New York (and LA) before Dec. 31 so they'll be eligible for this year's Academy Awards. But of course, we're still weeks away from any nomination announcements for......

If you've been living under a pop culture free rock, you may not be aware that Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie about his Kazakhstan journalist character, Borat is out this weekend. Sadly, Gothamist wasn't able to make it to an advance screening of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan but a very reliable source on comedy assures us that "it's the funniest movie ever." While the officials from Kazakhstan......

Dear lord, it's only mid-September but already the amount of new releases flooding theaters is getting a bit overwhelming. Brian De Palma's highly anticipated adaptation of James Ellroy's novel, The Black Dahlia hits theaters this Friday. Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart are Los Angeles detectives investigating an extremely grisly Hollywood murder of a young starlet in the late '40s. Hartnett's real life Girl Friday, Scarlett Johansson's also in the cast, as is Oscar winner Hilary......

Tonight the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens will be screening for the first time in the US, director Jonas Mekas's most recent film, A Letter From Greenpoint. It's a lovely, personal movie filled with vignettes and Mekas's musings about leaving SoHo for Brooklyn after 30 years. He moved from Lithuania to New York in 1949, where he organized the first downtown avant garde film screenings, founded the Anthology Film Archive, worked as a......

Those mother-bleeping snakes. That mother-flipping plane. You know what we're talking about. This weekend marks the premier of the film that blog buzz built, Samuel L. Jackson's action adventure Snakes on a Plane. Hopefully it will be as cheese-tastic as it seems from the trailers and the title. However, whether you're first in line tonight at a midnight screening or not, there's still loads coming up to see at the movies. As for the other......

Looking ahead to this week's movie options, there's a few indie-sized pics and one massive, Super Big Gulp-sized car racing comedy. Ordinarily Gothamist is all about championing the cinematic little guy, but when it's this goofy, yet earnest we say go for the excess. But to the small fish first: Quinceañera is a Los Angeles coming of age story centering around one Mexican-American girl, Magdalena and the traditional celebration which marks her 15th birthday. A......

Last summer, audiences fell hard for Owen Wilson's aging frat boy with a heart of gold routine in The Wedding Crashers. This weekend, he brings his lunkhead prat falls to the comedy You, Me and Dupree with co-stars Matt Dillon, Kate Hudson and Michael Douglas. From the previews it looks like most of the humor is scatological in nature but do you really need anything more complex in an A/C-tastic cineplex? Another movie up that......

After last week's huge box office take for X-Men, you know that we're in it: the bang-up summer blockbuster season. However, even with all of this energy of over the top new releases in the air there's still some amazing old movies screening this weekend too. So you better get a watchin'. Not content to sit back and let her ex-husband get all of the real relationship/on screen relationship press, Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn......

The conspiracies are swirling, the evangelical Christians are frothing at the mouth, it can only mean one thing: Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code opens this weekend. Will you get sucked in to the Hollywood thriller madness? It's not even Memorial Day yet but Gothamist already has summer blockbuster fever. In case you've been living under a Dan Brown-free rock, The Da Vinci Code is an adaptation of Brown's best selling novel about a series......

Today marks the first day of National Museum Month. This means, amongst other things, that it's the first day of Bank of America's Museums on Us! program. This program allows free access to 56 cultural institutions (19 in New York) - and to this day stands as the only nice thing that BOA has ever done for us cardholders. Here's the deal: if you are a Bank of America or MBNA cardholder, you will be......

This week the multiplexes seem practically flooded with new releases, in addition to the good things already out, so much so that Gothamist is starting to fall behind on our movie consumption. But never fear, we shall surely rally. Here's a few suggestions to guide your own weekend viewing. To get them out of the way first, there's two sequels coming out that might be worth your time if you fall into a certain demographic......

This week at the movies, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that the new releases are seriously scrapping the bottom of the quality bucket. How many weeks now has it been that we've had this complaint? The good news is that, as per usual, there's load of other fascinating movie related events In New York to sink your teeth into with relish. Someday soon someone should tally up the release record......

Happy Friday the 13th! Get out there and tempt fate this weekend... MUSIC: Songs of Rebellion brings musicians and artists together to invoke songs and images of rebellion. Some come out and get stirred up! Participants include Lenny Kaye, Invert, Kenny Wollesen, Marc Ribot, Rebecca Moore, Bonfire Madigan, Hanifa Walidah, John Frazier, Jeff Lewis, Seth Tobocman (slides and music with Eric Blitz, Steve Wishnia and Emilio (zef) China), and filmmaker Jem Cohen. Little know fact:......

Don't get confused – today is Friday. Gothamist has been a bit under the weather, hence our little weekend movie preview showing up today rather than on its usual Thursday. And while we all anxiously count down the minutes until Monday's Golden Globes, there are a lot of great movie options available without even considering all the 2005 films hoping to take home a prize. Some Quick Gothamist Picks: One of the best places to......

Ah January. That lovely first month of the year which big Hollywood uses as its annual dumping ground. The Awards eligibility period is over, and now is the time to catch-up on all those films being talked about that came out at the same time over the past few weeks. Still, New Yorkers are lucky as we retain many filmgoing options. Sure you can check-out the latest video game adaptation from hackmeister Uwe Boll, but......

When The Constant Gardener came out at over Labor Day weekend, we instantly called it one of the year's best. We'll stand by that judgment, and although the film has departed from general release nor will it be available on DVD until Jan. 10, if you haven't seen it, we enthusiastically suggest you make your way out to Astoria tonight for a 7:30 PM special screening at Museum of the Moving Image. But we wouldn't......