HUDSON VALLEY CRUCIAL VIEWING: March 27- April 9

Your Guide to Repertory Movies in the Hudson Valley

Author

Bel Simek
March 26, 2026

Hi movie fans, long time no see! We took a bit of an unplanned hiatus this Winter, as I’m sure some of you noticed, but we’re back and ready to bring you our classic movie commentary for the Spring! In KFF news — we’ve got our next series at Upstate Midtown, “Contained Spaces,” beginning on April 5th with our screening of Chantal Akerman’s revelatory Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. We’re focusing on “bottle movies” this month, with four movies that perfectly encapsulate the genre and also break some of its conventions to great effect. I hope to see y’all there! Now, without further ado, let’s get on to the movies.

THE LIST

Friday, March 27

Bel’s Pick: If you follow me on social media you probably saw me dramatically posting about this series at Community Theater this coming weekend. While I was being (slightly) facetious about losing friendships with people over Béla Tarr’s films, he is one of my favorite directors, and I think his films have gone severely under seen by a lot of people. Tarr is probably most well-known for adapting a number of works by Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai. (Krasznahorkai won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year.) Tarr’s films capture a surreal melancholy tinged with brutalism and his unflinching perspective on the apocalyptic bleakness of humanity is not for the faint of heart. Doesn’t really sound like I’m trying to sell you on this movie, huh? In spite of its heaviness, I think Werckmeister Harmonies captures something deeply spiritual in its meandering narrative and philosophizing. Lawrence van Gelder’s review of it in The Times said that it “beckons filmgoers who complain about the vapidity of Hollywood movie-making and yearn for a film to ponder and debate” which I think pretty much hits the nail on the head. I’ll also say, this was the first of Tarr’s films I ever saw, and it transformed me instantly into a lifelong fan. To me this film is essential.

We missed the anniversary of David Lynch’s passing while we were on our hiatus so I want to just take a moment to give Inland Empire its flowers. This is still the Lynch film I struggle with the most, both in making sense of it and in even getting up the guts to watch it. His most perturbing and most experimental work, Inland Empire might show us better than any of his other films the incredible performances he can pull from his collaborators. Even though I wanted to watch this movie through my fingers the first time I saw it, there is no denying how magnetic Laura Dern’s performance is, even when the movie itself strays towards incomprehensible. Give it a revisit if you haven’t in a while.

Saturday, March 28

Okay I promise I won’t go on and on about Béla Tarr again here, but! Maybe just for a moment. This was Tarr’s last feature film, written in collaboration with Krasznahorkai and co-directed by his wife Ágnes Hranitzky (who he also worked with on Werckmeister Harmonies.) He pivoted towards more multidisciplinary form of visual arts in his later career and also opened the international film school film.factory. The Turin Horse is loosely inspired by a rumor that the whipping of a horse in Turin caused the breakdown of Friedrich Nietzsche (I mean do you need a better origin story than that?) In what is rather typical of Tarr’s style, the film is composed of 30 long takes, drawing inspiration from the cinema verite style to depict the monotonous daily lives of the titular horse’s owner and his daughter. Interviews with Tarr suggest that the shadow of Nietzsche lies not in the horse but in the malaise of the world that the father and daughter live in, a general sense of the end looming from the outset. The Turin Horse serves as a capstone, in my mind, to Tarr’s apocalyptic outlook on the human condition, but its gorgeous cinematography make it impossible to look away from. Once again, ESSENTIAL.

I recently watched Judd Apatow’s documentary series about the inimitable Mel Brooks. The best parts of that documentary is listening to Brooks’ talk with candor about his life and career in Hollywood, especially as he pivoted towards his production company, Brooksfilms. All of this preamble is just to say I wish I could’ve been in the room when Mel Brooks watched Eraserhead for the first time. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that without Brooks’ support we would not have Lynch’s career as it exists today. Though The Elephant Man is often dismissed as saccharine and (fairly) problematized for its relationship to disability and otherness, Lynch’s voice still shines through in the otherwise routine Hollywood flick.

Sunday, March 29

Monday, March 30

Tuesday, March 31

Wednesday, April 1

A perfect synthesis of what cross-cultural genre film can and should be. Ana Lily Amirpour takes the vampire myth and twists it, incorporating subtle commentary on gender, sexuality, power, and Iranian politics. Promoted as the “first Iranian vampire Western” Amirpour drew inspiration from classic spaghetti westerns, reimagining the anti-hero archetype typically seen in the genre. Shot in black-and-white and entirely in Farsi, the film invokes a neo-expressionism with its cinematography and gritty world-building. This was a favorite for teenage Bel, as I’m sure you can imagine. Well worth the revisit (and especially a first time watch).

Thursday, April 2

Friday, April 3

Saturday, April 4

I wrote about Wings of Desire in our last newsletter. As always, and absolute must see. Go, go, go.

Love Phantom of the Paradise and love trying to imagine exactly how they’re going to wrangle this shadowcast performance. Famously a box office flop but a critical darling, I think it’s fair to say that Brian de Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise is still a divisive film. You either love it or you can’t stand to look at it. I’m firmly in the “love it” camp. It’s exactly what I want out of a rock opera — horrifying, lofty in its inspirations, and having so, so much fun. Maybe I’ll catch y’all at this one. Personally, I can’t wait to see them pull it off.

Sunday, April 5

Widely considered one of the greatest films of the 20th century, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman is an early example of the “slow cinema” movement, focusing on the intimate details of widow Jeanne Dielman’s life. Though Akerman did not set out to make a feminist piece, the film’s intimate focus on Dielman’s daily rhythms and her mutable roles (sex worker, widow, housewife, victim, and assailant) create a nuanced portrait of womanhood. We watch as the world she is confined to (her apartment) is encroached on by the exterior world. Feminist critic B. Ruby Rich wrote: “Never before was the materiality of a woman’s time in the home rendered so viscerally… [Akerman] invents a new language capable of transmitting truths previously unspoken.” This movie asks you to be voyeur as much as it asks you to be a sympathetic ear to its protagonist and demonstrates with utilitarian grace all of what cinema is capable of.

Monday, April 6

Tuesday, April 7

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