Movies That Define '20s NYC (So Far)
With Jason Bailey, author of FUN CITY CINEMA
Today’s newsletter is one half of a two-part chat with Jason Bailey, author of Fun City Cinema (and, more recently, Gandolfini). There’s no one I’d rather discuss New York, movies, and New York movies with.
Paid subscribers will get access to a longer conversation about a longer span of city and cinematic history, but everyone gets to hear us chat about the 10 movies that have defined the decade in New York movies thus far.
If — and this is a big if — all goes according to plan, this email should be hitting your inbox at the same time as New York City releases the ranked choice vote totals from last week’s mayoral primary. When I was planning my newsletter schedule, I thought we’d be waiting on pins and needles to see who would emerge victorious from the tabulations. I did not think we’d have a clear winner and the potential start of a new political era in the Big Apple when Andrew Cuomo conceded to Zohran Mamdani.
While a general election showdown looms with incumbent Eric Adams, the city I now call home seems poised to turn a page in its history. The first five years of the 2020s have been defined by the further exacerbation of trends from previous decades: the homogenization of the city by increasingly rapacious corporate interests, the stratification by income that pushes long-time residents out of their neighborhoods. Concerns over crime and affordability that pulsated throughout the nation made an impact in New York, as did the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020’s great racial reckoning.
It fascinates me that we’ll potentially have two very different visions of the city duking it out to define this version of the Roaring Twenties. So, what does an Eric Adams cinema look like? (Beyond his memeable moments, of which I feel compelled to link the “____ of America” compilation, comparing himself to Jesus, the Curb theme playing over his post-indictment press conference, awkwardly vibing next to Cara Delevigne, and talking about a shorty in the Far Rockaways. We’ve really been going through it here.) Jason and I talk it out below!
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Movies That Feel More 2010s/First Trump Era: The King of Staten Island, On the Rocks, The Forty-Year-Old Version, In the Heights
Jason adds: “Those are all good ones. In the Heights was the first really good New York movie that came out after I finished the book ... and the first time where I had the realization, "Oh my God, for the rest of my life I'm gonna see movies that I wish I could have put into the book." This is just lucky personal knowledge: it's a razor-sharp, authentic portrait of that neighborhood where I lived when they were making that movie. I was living at 175th and Fort Washington Avenue, and the park where they do the big park scene was where I took my kids every day. We went to that pool all the time. Seeing that movie when it came out was almost like the experience I had when I first moved here that led to writing the book, just being like, ‘Hey, I've been there! I've been to that place that's up in the movie!’”
Not Shot in New York, But Captures a Mood: Fair Play, A Quiet Place: Day One
Jason adds: “A Quiet Place: Day One definitely felt like the most post-COVID New York movie that we've had yet. Even though it's obviously not about that, it's kind of about that!”
Good New York Movies That Don’t Reflect the Time: Babygirl, Birth/Rebirth, Past Lives, The Room Next Door
Jason adds: “I would agree with all of those. Babygirl, I think [Halina Reijn] is very consciously making something that almost feels like it could have been like in the Wall Street/Working Girl era. The echoes of those movies and high finance era are sort of all over that in a terrific way.”
Movies That Feel of the Moment But Aren’t Very Good: Problemista, The Friend, Nonnas, The Scary of Sixty-First
Jason adds: “I like Problemista more than you. Primarily, I found it such a fascinating addition to the tradition of the downtown art scene movie, which really flourished in the '70s and '80s. As that scene has dissipated, primarily for real estate reasons, we haven't seen a lot of portraits of that. But I thought that movie tuned into something that was interesting.”
Documentaries: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Emergent City, Summer of Soul
Jason adds: “All The Beauty and the Bloodshed was my favorite movie of any kind that year, documentary or not. Again, a huge part of it was how deeply entrenched it is in that '80s downtown scene, which is so fascinating to me.”
“One that I would like to throw in, not as a portrait of the era, but just a great vintage New York documentary that I've just seen recently called Uncropped. It's about James Hamilton, who was a legendary New York photographer, mostly for The Village Voice. He took a lot of the great images from the Voice. It's a terrific portrait of alternative print journalism, and through his eyes, the history of the city.”
Coming Soon: Highest 2 Lowest, Mad Bills to Pay
Jason adds: “Yes! Mad Bills to Pay is very much a throwback, tiny indie. It reminded me a little bit of things like [Ramin Bahrani's] Man Push Cart and the microbudget filmmaking steeped in working-class New York portraiture, which there's not enough of. There's too much luxury porn and not enough working class stuff. It's very good.”
THE DEFINING NEW YORK MOVIE OF THE DECADE (SO FAR)
I bet you can guess what I would pick…
I would pick Anora (available on Hulu).
I would, too! You have everything from Eric Adams' New York: a scrappy, working-class person trying to eke out an existence, this fantasy being peddled of an upward mobility, and then being confronted with entrenched powers that just so conveniently happen to be overseas oligarchs who are buying up all the property and making it impossible to live in the city!
Mhmm! And beyond all of those thematic things, which I agree are 100% there and a huge part of the fabric of that movie and of our contemporary New York lives, there's an intangible thing about being out in the city under semi-sketchy circumstances at night. That After Hours vibe. Knowing what a cinephile Sean Baker is, I'm certain that After Hours was an influence on the film. Beyond anything that you can do structurally or narratively, just the feeling of that incredible second act of that movie with the long night's journey in the day, trying to find this kid and going to all of these weird little places he might be … that is, for me, just quintessential New York cinema.
OTHER DEFINING FILMS
Armageddon Time (available to rent from various digital platforms), which I know is an '80s period piece...
But it's in conversation with the moment.
I feel like the protagonist is not the James Gray surrogate in the '80s. It's James Gray in the 2020s looking back at this period. You could easily bookend it with a section of him reading the events like a storybook narrative or something like that. The Trump elements also tie it directly to the present.
Yes, absolutely.
A lot of these filmmakers, during COVID, looked inward when they didn't have the world to look out on. I think that's why you start to see all these personal stories bubbling to the top, like Steven Spielberg making The Fabelmans.
Blue Sun Palace (now playing in select theaters) is smaller and newer, but I found it to be an intriguing portrait of working-class Chinese immigrants working in the beauty services industry. COVID isn’t directly named-checked, but it feels very present as a force that is driving a culture of fear and isolation around them, as many cynical actors used the pandemic to spread racist fearmongering against them. You saw a lot of Asian communities swing toward Eric Adams in 2021 and vote differently than other minority groups, and I think it’s interesting to reflect that trajectory here.
I don't know this film, so thank you for the recommendation! I'll check it out.
A Different Man (available on Max) was one I waffled a bit on because it does feel somewhat like a movie that takes place out of time in New York. But thinking about it in terms of an outer/inner distinction for Sebastian Stan’s character does feel tied to some of the pandemic-era anxieties. There’s a non-reactionary but post-wokeness approach to identity, too, that configures disability from a lens of individualism rather than collectivism. Especially when Edward is down in the dumps, the city has a way of sending him into even greater spirals of misery.
I would agree with all that! That all makes sense.
The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (available on Hulu) was the first film to thread the needle between the Brooklyn sex comedy and corporate commentary. The satirical element of how she's able to express herself so clearly in these unconventional sexual situations, contrasted with the PowerPoint-driven jargon at her day job, is just a chef's kiss.
I find it really fascinating to see a filmmaker who you feel like represents something of the evolution of the New York filmmaker. There are always pieces of those who came before them mixed with their own sensibility and style. You can see Woody Allen in her. You can see Lena Dunham in her. You can see Claudia Weill in her. But she also has such a unique and candid perspective, particularly as you said in matters of sex, that none of it feels like an echo, homage, or shoutout because it all seems very much her.
His Three Daughters (available on Netflix) feels like the ultimate New York COVID movie, even though it has nothing to do with COVID. But three siblings in a cramped apartment, dealing with a father who’s about to die…
Definitely, yes. God, I love that movie so much! It also really gets the feel of one of those big New York apartment buildings in working-class neighborhoods. There's, again, plenty of portraits of the big apartment building on the Upper East Side, but nowhere near as many of that type of living situation.
Materialists (in theaters) feels like the perfect embodiment of how the city remains economically stratified and how that distills itself into the two men that Dakota Johnson’s matchmaker entertains as her life partner.
The way that real estate functions as character sketching in that movie, I think, is just first-rate.
Nanny (Amazon Prime Video) is the best portrait of post-George Floyd racial dynamics in the city and how people were rethinking how these servile relationships resulted in unequal childcare and maternal arrangements.
Absolutely.
Stress Positions (available on Hulu) so perfectly captures that moment of peak COVID insanity with just enough hindsight to have some perspective on it and point out how ridiculous we were being.
Yes! I lose it for the same reasons. His [John Early’s] frantically wiping things down at the door is such a perfect image.
A Thousand and One (available to rent from various digital platforms) is cheating a little bit because it takes place in the past, but it plays into your book’s thesis about how mayors can set the tone for a city. A.V. Rockwell even works their voiceover into the interstitials as the film transitions between periods of time! I think the film is so great at capturing how the challenges for a mother and son are the consequences of multiple administrations making policy decisions. We can’t untangle the racism and displacement of communities of color in New York from these overlapping choices that play out over a long time horizon.
Absolutely, and that movie has all of that context and texture. But it also feels like a '90s indie movie, just aesthetically speaking. It fits so snugly into that particular time and place.
For my New York-based readers, I must implore you to check out Inherent Vice from July 4-10 in its exclusive one-week 70mm run at Film at Lincoln Center. Especially with Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie looming on the horizon, you’ll want to read why I think this underrated comedy is one of the director’s best.
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd. I’ve also compiled every movie I’ve ever recommended through this newsletter via a list on the platform as well.
It sure feels good to have Wesley Morris back in our eardrums!
Not necessarily film-related, but I found this New York Times article (gift) on the decline of men reading fiction and this Vox article on the resurgence of oral storytelling culture to be interesting companions.
More from Jason for paid subscribers this weekend!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall