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FACETS OF THE PAST: JIMIN SEO AND DIANA SEOHYUNG CELEBRATE PARK HYUNKI AT GALLERY HYUNDAI

Who: Jimin Seo, Diana SeoHyung
What: An evening of special readings
Where: Gallery Hyundai New York Project Space, 529 West Twentieth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
When: Wednesday, December 17, free with advance RSVP, 6:00
Why: “I am a child of nothing / that is to say / I am a child of books and the voice they sang / into my body, and like a ghost stole my voice / to sing whatever they have to say to you / in my first language, in every language, not for sale, not for sale, 사라지는 팔짜,” Jimin Seo writes in his debut poetry collection, September 2024’s OSSIA. On December 17 at 6:00, the Seoul-born, New York City–based poet will be at Gallery Hyundai New York Project Space in Chelsea to participate in a special evening of readings in conjunction with the exhibition “Park Hyunki: Pass Through the City,” which features video and photographic installations, alongside archival material, by the late Korean minimalist video pioneer who passed away in 2000 at the age of fifty-seven. It was originally presented in 1981 on a fifty-foot-long trailer truck moving through the streets of Daegu in southeast Korea. Jimin will read from Park’s writings in Korean as well as from OSSIA. He will be joined by writer and translator Diana SeoHyung, who will share her translation of Park’s text in English. Admission is free with advance RSVP.

“It may have been vague then, but at that time, I wholeheartedly put my energy into moving towards anything but technology. I became fully absorbed in and moved towards various facets of our past – our images, the videos of our past, and their paradigms,” Park wrote in 1978. “Once I decided to see it this way – our ways, my ways – I felt at ease, as there was no need to consider or worry about our neighbors. Therefore, that is when I began to experiment by using past footage with ponds, rivers, and springs as the stage of my work, near the Nakdong river.” The gallery exhibition continues through February 14.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

NOT JUST BLACK AND WHITE: MEET THE CARTOZIANS AND ARMENIAN AMERICAN HERITAGE

Lawyer Wallace McCamant (Will Brill) seeks to help Armenian immigrants gain US citizenship in Meet the Cartozians (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

MEET THE CARTOZIANS
Second Stage Theater at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 14, $69-$125
2st.com/shows

Talene Yeghisabet Monahon makes a giant leap forward with her exquisitely rendered new play, Meet the Cartozians, a timely and sensitive tale of immigration, assimilation, racial profiling, and culture. The first act takes place in 1923–24 in Portland, Oregon, as Tatos Cartozian (Nael Nacer), an Armenian-born Christian, and his family must fight to prove he is white to prevent the US government from canceling his naturalization. The second act occurs one hundred years later in Glendale, California, as four American-born Armenians prepare to share stories celebrating their heritage on a reality show hosted by an immensely popular celebrity influencer (Tamara Sevunts) who is a descendant of that family.

“We are all trying to uh, let’s say, make sense? Of why this is happening now,” Hazel (Obie winner Susan Pourfar), Tatos’s daughter, says to their well-heeled lawyer, Wallace McCamant (Tony winner Will Brill), in 1923, a sly reference to the treatment of immigrants and people of color today.

A century later, Alan O’Brien (Brill), a production tech on the TV program Meet the Cartozians, tells the guests, “So let me get this straight. The original Cartozians fought to be white so that Armenians could have privileges, right? And now, it sort of feels like Armenians are fighting to not be white . . . so you can like, get more privileges. Am I right about that?”

In 1923, Tatos, a soft-spoken man who speaks heavily accented broken English, lives in a lovely home with his wife (Sevunts), their daughter, Hazel, and his mother, Markrid (two-time Tony winner Andrea Martin). While Hazel and her brother, the impeccably attired Vahan (Raffi Barsoumian), are adapting to the American way of life, the stern Markrid is trying to preserve as much Armenian tradition as she can. After insisting that Wallace take a piece of her homemade kadayif, a sweet dessert, and seeing that he has not finished it, she is offended. Hazel asserts, “I’m sorry. In Armenia, it is a bit rude not to eat. But in America, I think maybe it is rude to force someone to eat.” When Markrid brings out a plate of the sesame-based simit, Wallace declines to taste one, further upsetting Markrid.

Talking about the case, Wallace says, “In 1790, the good men who founded this country extended the offer of naturalized citizenship to all ‘free white persons of good character.’ That was who they felt oughta become American citizens.” Vahan, who works with his father, sister, and naturalized uncle in the family’s successful oriental rug business, proclaims that they are solid white Christians, but Wallace explains that other factors are involved, including skin and hair color, eye and face shape, and “the terrific tendency of Armenians to intermingle and procreate with white populations all over the world.” Wallace commiserates with the Cartozians, pointing out that his paternal grandfather emigrated from Ireland during the potato famine and experienced bigotry when he first came to America.

They also refer several times indirectly to the genocide of approximately 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during WWI, leaving them without a nation. “It is no longer a place,” Tatos says. Hazel counters, “I think it is fine to say Armenia still. I say Armenia when I speak of home.” Tatos responds, “This is our home. Portland. America.”

The cast of Meet the Cartozians portrays different characters in 1924 and 2024 (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

In 2024, Robert Zakian (Nacer), Rose Sarkisian (Martin), and Nardek Vartoumian (Barsoumian) are in the home of Leslie Malconian (Pourfar), which features a Christmas tree, a rack of clothes, film equipment, an oriental rug, and an empty chair facing a table and a couch. The four TV guests, who have never met before, select over-the-top costumes that are supposed to represent their heritage, but they have become so Americanized that they don’t really know that much about where they came from.

When Leslie brings out two plates of homemade simit, one gluten-free, Rose starts an argument about Armenian cuisine, which she is not fond of. “I miss the food Mama made,” Robert says wistfully, a potent comment since the actors portraying Robert and Rose played Tatos and Markrid in the first act. Alan, whose family, like Wallace’s, emigrated from Ireland, tries to commiserate with the Armenians, pointing out that his paternal grandfather experienced bigotry when he first came to America and was not considered to be white; Brill plays both Alan and Wallace.

As the characters await the arrival of the host, they get into heated discussions about Armenian history, cultural appropriation, skin color, politics, and the genocide. Praising an episode of the series in which the host visited Armenia, Rose notes, “Most people in the world never knew what the Armenian genocide was before that. Many people didn’t even know that Armenia was a country before that.” Nardek adds, “A lot of people still don’t, sadly.”

They certainly will know after seeing Meet the Cartozians.

The play was inspired by the pop-culture phenomenon Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the reality show that detailed the lives of the Armenian American Kardashian clan for twenty seasons, and the actual 1925 court case United States v. Cartozian, in which the Portland firm of McCamant & Thompson represented rug dealer Tatos Osgihan Cartozian in his quest to gain American citizenship.

Monahon, a Massachusetts-born, New York City–based actor and playwright of Armenian and Irish descent, has previously explored historical fiction in The Good John Proctor (the Salem witch trials), Jane Anger (the 1606 London plague), and How to Load a Musket (Revolutionary and Civil War reeanactors). In Meet the Cartozians, Monahon has superbly melded fact and fiction, expertly linking the two different time periods and relating the action in both eras to today’s arrest, deportation, and murder of legal and illegal immigrants, often based on racial profiling. Tatiana Kahvegian’s sets and Enver Chakartash’s costumes further delineate the differences Armenians experienced in 1924 and 2024.

Monahon and Tony-winning director David Cromer (Prayer for the French Republic, A Case for the Existence of God) have created believable characters involved in convincing situations that, although they are specifically about Armenian Americans, also relate to so many others who have come to the United States in search of a better life. The outstanding cast includes three actors of Armenian descent, Barsoumian, Sevunts, and Martin, whose name adorns the Andrea Martin Performing Arts Auditorium in Armenia.

As funny as Meet the Cartozians is, it also tackles ongoing complex sociopolitical issues that are pervasive in modern-day America, under the current administration; even Kim Kardashian herself went public with criticism of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, particularly how ICE is tearing families apart. Somewhere, the Cartozians are smiling down on her and Monahon as the battle continues.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON? CHERRY LANE REOPENS WITH DELIGHTFULLY WEIRD WEER

Mark brings Christina closer to him in Natalie Palamides’s Weer at the Cherry Lane (photo by Cherry Lane Theatre/A24)

WEER
Cherry Lane Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 21, $89-$169
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

One of my favorite theatrical moments of the year happened in Natalie Palamides’s outrageously funny and insanely inventive Weer. Mark is making a critically important phone call, and I desperately prayed for Christina to quickly return to the stage and answer it. I looked to the far corner, anxiously waiting on the edge of my seat, hoping she would pick it up — when it suddenly hit me that Christina was already there: Weer is a one-woman show in which Palamides is playing both roles, the right side of her body Mark, the left side Christina. Palamides, a trained improv clown, had me believing there were two fully embodied characters in the extraordinary ninety-minute satiric, deranged rom-com like no other. I rejoiced, so thoroughly in love with my reaction.

I went into Weer knowing absolutely nothing about it; I didn’t know who was in it or what it was about. And that made it all the more memorable. The run, which was extended several times at the newly refurbished Cherry Lane, is sold out, so I don’t mind sharing the details of my experience here (spoiler alert!), but if you’re planning on trying to get rush or standby tickets, don’t read on until after you’ve given it a shot.

The Pittsburgh-born Palamides won the Total Theatre Award at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival for Nate — A One Man Show, a big success on Netflix two years later. In the wildly unpredictable and participatory performance, Palamides wrestles with male toxicity as she portrays Nate, a gruff, hirsute dude who announces early on, “I guess I get to do whatever I want . . . to whoever I want . . . in this room.”

Weer takes place during a New Year’s Eve gathering in 1999, complete with worries that all hell might break loose at midnight, when Y2K threatens to destroy the world. But for ninety minutes, all hell does break loose onstage, as the narrative shifts to 1996, when Mark and Christina meet-cute, and then back to the party, where the couple faces several challenges. Palamides’s awesome costume (by Ashley Dudek) and over-the-top makeup feature a flannel shirt, a bushy mane, a beard and mustache, and chest hair on one side, a belly-revealing red knit top, long hair with colorful clips, jewelry, and a woman’s shoe on the other, positing Mark and Christina as old-fashioned gender stereotypes; he has a deep, gravelly, full-throated voice, while she has a softer, more compassionate tone.

Natalie Palamides plays both roles at the same time in Weer (photo by Cherry Lane Theatre/A24)

Palamides, who also wrote and directed the show, expertly flips sides — or individual body parts — as Mark and Christina talk, kiss, dance, argue, shower, drive, and have sex on Gabriel Evansohn’s wonderfully scattershot set, which is filled with surprises that arrive with the pull of a rope or a step on an odd prop (designed by lucas a degirolamo). Word of warning: You will be provided with a plastic poncho if you’re in the first row, and not just because water might be sprayed.

There is no official script; the sturm and drang is all in Palamides’s head as she incorporates the audience into the controlled mayhem, mugging to the crowd, tossing out knowing glances, and asking a few people to join her onstage or speak from their seats. She has us eating out of her hand every step of the way, at least when we’re not practically rolling on the floor laughing. She has a ton of fun toying with the physical concept, sharing such self-reflexive dialogue as “She’s like my other half” and “Weer never gonna be separated like that again,” as well as the psychological approach, exploring the elements of masculinity and femininity in each of us.

Palamides, who does a lot of voice work on cartoons (Bob’s Burgers, Duncanville, Haunted Hotel) in addition to playing Mara in the Progressive insurance commercials, is irresistible as Mark and Christina, whether she is clothed or unclothed, baring her body and soul in uproarious ways. She also includes an apt Gen X soundtrack, with such songs as Aimee Mann’s “Save Me” (“If you could save me / From the ranks of the freaks that suspect / They could never love anyone”), Smash Mouth’s “All Star” (“Well, the years start comin’ and they don’t stop comin’ / Fed to the rules and I hit the ground runnin’ / Didn’t make sense not to live for fun / Your brain gets smart, but your head gets dumb / So much to do, so much to see”), and Pearl Jam’s emotive car-accident cover “Last Kiss” (“Oh, where, oh, where can my baby be?”).

The title, Weer, comes from how Mark’s family ridiculously pronounces the word deer as if they were Elmer Fudd — the hunted animal figures prominently in the show — and how both Mark and Christina are not able to exactly figure out their relationship through the years, often repeating to each other “Weer,” as in “We’re . . . ,” but unable to finish the thought.

I have to admit that when I first entered the Cherry Lane, I was extremely concerned. Purchased in 2023 by the film company A24, the theater has a smaller lobby area where ticket holders battle for space with diners waiting to go into the new, upscale Wild Cherry restaurant. There was a long, roped-off line for the restrooms, and a concession stand was selling popcorn and drinks as if we were seeing a movie. (Notably, it is now a for-profit venture where it previously was a nonprofit, making its location on Commerce St. rather apt.) Popcorn at the theater? The smell and noise had me on the brink of a conniption. Fortunately, Weer is so engaging, and the laughter so continuous, that those anticipated distractions melted away quickly, as the audience had no time to eat or drink. I do wonder what will happen during a quiet, dark drama, but that’s for another day.

Even the program gets in on the entertaining absurdities, with whimsical art, an advertisement in which Palamides offers relationship advice via email, and a spread that asks, “Whose side are you on?”

I know whose side I’m on.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

PREACHING TO THE CHOIR: THE FAGGOTS AND THEIR FRIENDS AT PARK AVE. ARMORY

Kit Green leads a multitalented cast in disappointing North American premiere at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

THE FAGGOTS AND THEIR FRIENDS BETWEEN REVOLUTIONS
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
December 2-14, $40-$165
www.armoryonpark.org

The continuing attempted reclamation of the longtime gay slur “faggots” continues with the North American premiere of Ted Huffman and Philip Venables’s parable The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, running at Park Ave. Armory through December 14. In this case, it’s a lost cause.

Jordan Tannahill’s Prince Faggot, about queerness and the British royal family, just received yet another extension at Studio Seaview. In September, Baryshnikov Arts Center presented Kevin Carillo’s Figaro/Faggots, a mashup of Larry Kramer’s satirical 1978 novel, Faggots, and Mozart and Da Ponte’s 1786 opera, Le nozze di Figaro. And in August, TheaterLab staged Topher Payne’s Angry Fags, an election tale that deals with queer stories in a post-Trump world.

A baroque fantasia with music ranging from folk to medieval to opera to dance, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions was adapted from writer Larry Mitchell and illustrator Ned Asta’s 1977 book, when the F-word in question was much more a part of rampant homophobia and gay-bashing; the fifteen-member cast says “faggots” about a hundred times in a hundred minutes, but that doesn’t necessarily make its use sting any less, depending on one’s history with it.

The performers are already congregating on Rosie Elnile’s wide open set as the audience enters the massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall, building a sense of community. On three sides of the neatly arranged platform stage are numerous unmatched chairs, a clothes rack, a few tables, and such instruments as a harp, a gong, a cello, and several pianos on wheels. The show begins with the following declaration, complete with surtitles projected on a small screen hanging from above:

“It’s been a long time since the last revolutions / and the faggots and their friends are still not free. / There still exists a faint memory of the past when the faggots and their friends were free. / The memory lives in the faggots’ bones. / It appears late at night when their bones are quietest. / When the memory visits them, the faggots know / that they must find each other in order to survive. / So while the men are sleeping, they emerge from the corners of the devastated city / and they go searching for other faggots in the hidden places: / in alleyways and abandoned piers and empty parks and unlit warehouses. / And there, in the moonlight, the faggots will enact the ritual of the brief encounter.”

The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions is based on a 1977 illustrated gay parable/manifesto (photo by Stephanie Berger)

The show is constructed like a healing ritual as the performers, all of whom participate in the storytelling and play an instrument, hold hands, hug, dance, form a circle, and offer warm, caring smiles to one another and the audience. Olivier Award–winning transdisciplinary artist Kit Green, wearing a series of tight-fitting, colorful gowns and skirts with high heels (the otherwise casual costumes are by choreographer Theo Clinkard), serves as a kind of host and narrator, leading the festivities, along with her right-hand colleague, Yandass, who stands out in a dynamic solo dance. The rest of the energetic, multitalented cast consists of soprano Tamara Banješević, accordionist Valerie Barr, plucked-string instrumentalist Kerry Bursey, cellist Jacob Garside, chamber musician Conor Gricmanis, woodwind doubler Rianna Henriques, soprano Mariamielle Lamagat, baritone Themba Mvula, pianist and music director Yshani Perinpanayagam, transdisciplinary artist Meriel Price, countertenor and multi-instrumentalist Collin Shay, baritone Danny Shelvey, and harpist Joy Smith.

The book was inspired by Mitchell and Asta’s time living in the Lavender Hill gay and lesbian commune outside of Ithaca that they helped found in 1970, partly in response to the Stonewall riots. “People in gay liberation tended to talk about [how] gay male culture of the 1960s really centered on ideas of isolation and loneliness, and this was going to be what gay communes solved,” Yale historian Stephen Vider says in the 2014 documentary short Lavender Hill: a love story.

Unfortunately, the various components don’t come together to form a cohesive whole, unable to bear the weight of such an underwhelming narrative and never capturing the joy in Asta’s black-and-white line drawings. The Faggots and Their Friends is a fable/manifesto that pits “the faggots” against “the men,” essentially all white cis males who live in and rule the land of Ramrod, led by Warren-and-his-Fuckpole. (Ramrod may have been named for the famed Greenwich Village gay leather bar, where three years after the book was published the West Street Massacre took place, in which a former transit cop shot eight men, killing two.)

The faggots, whose friends include the fairies, women who love women, and the queens, are kind, sweet, good-natured souls filled with empathy and compassion, while the men are corrupt, violent, mean-spirited villains who worship “papers” (money); there is no middle ground, no bad faggots, no admirable men. There is no nuance, too much telling and not enough showing, no dynamic flow or tension in the story and no growth in the characters despite there still being so much hate in America in 2025 amid the rollback of so many rights that were fought for, especially in the 1960s and ’70s.

Adapter and composer Venables and director Huffman, who previously collaborated on such projects as 4.48 Psychosis, Denis & Katya, We Are the Lucky Ones, and My Favourite Piece Is the Goldberg Variations, essentially remain faithful to the book, but what might work on the page falls flat on the stage, and the changes, including repeating phrases, are too didactic, preaching to the choir, overselling the points that are being made, as in the following missive, which was adjusted slightly from Mitchell’s original:

“They attacked anyone unlike them. / After the men triumphed, all that was other from them was considered inferior / and therefore worthy only of abuse and contempt and extinction. / The men decided who was to be hated: / those without cocks, / those whose skin didn’t match their own, / those who were hungry involuntarily, / those who came from other lands, / those who refused to be over-worked, / those who loved their own kind. / These are the ones the men decided to hate.”

They also cut out the characters in the book, such as Heavenly Blue, Loose Tomato, Mildred Munich, Pat, Lee, and Meredith, instead giving us nameless people we know nothing about — except for Green, who delivers a moving, fourth-wall-breaking improvisatory monologue about herself that is cut short by an extended singalong of a difficult melody with pedantic lyrics.

On opening night, there were noticeably few bursts of spontaneous applause from the audience, and there was only a scattered standing ovation at the end, even though it’s become de rigueur for everyone to get up and cheer. In fact, at one point in the show, Green actually told the audience to clap.

That’s never a good sign, particularly when you have the excited crowd already on your side from the very start.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

IT’S COME TO THIS: WTO/99 AT DCTV

Documentary explores Seattle protests against the WTO in 1999 (photo by Rustin Thompson)

WTO/99 (Ian Bell, 2025)
DCTV Firehouse Cinema
December 5-11
www.wto99doc.com
www.dctvny.org

Young and old march through the streets, forming blockades and human chains. Signs denounce globalization and corporatization. Angry farmers and union workers demand they be heard. Cries of fascism ring out. Local police, state troopers, and the National Guard douse protesters with pepper spray and tear gas, toss flash-bang grenades, and shoot the crowd with rubber bullets. Mysterious agitators in all black smash store windows. Donald Trump and Roger Stone weigh in on free trade and tariffs.

A documentary about government intervention into blue cities in 2025? A “No Kings” rally gone bad? Clips from the Rodney King and George Floyd protests?

No, Ian Bell’s riveting WTO/99 is composed exclusively of archival footage of the Battle of Seattle, when, beginning on November 30, 1999, tens of thousands of local, national, and international men and women took to the streets to protest the WTO Ministerial Conference being held in the largest municipality in the State of Washington. Bell includes no talking heads, no experts, no eyewitnesses, only film and video taken by news organizations and individuals. No one is identified by name, and occasional interstitial text notes the time and day, with just little bits of information.

Two early exchanges set the tone. After buying a gas mask, a pair of twentysomethings are preparing to head into Seattle. “I know we are all hoping this is gonna be peaceful, but do you think that the police will use tear gas?” the man asks. The woman answers, “I’m gonna say that, no, they’re not going to use tear gas.” The man says, “What do you think would make them go to that extreme?” The woman responds, “They would go to those extremes if there was a need for it. That’s the positive attention that I want to set out there for them, that they would do it if there’s a need, and I don’t think that there will be.”

On the TV show Seattle Police: Beyond the Badge, a law enforcement official explains, “We’re not looking to provoke anything; in fact, Seattle has a long and well-deserved history of working well with demonstrators, regardless of their views.”

Both sides might have been hoping for peace, but violence escalates as the WTO has to rearrange its schedule. Mayor Paul Schell proclaims, “The city is safe,” despite evidence to the contrary.

Among the familiar faces getting in sound bites are Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Roger Stone, Michael Moore, Amy Goodman, Tom Hayden, Ralph Nader, Howard Schultz, and Alan Keyes. At a club, a supergroup consisting of Dead Kennedys leader Jello Biafra, Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, and Sweet 75 drummer Gina Mainwal rock out for the cause.

In his feature documentary directorial debut, Seattle native Bell and co-editor Alex Megaro weave in events coming from both sides in a fury that matches what is happening on the ground; much of the footage is jerky and low-tech, adding to the chaos. “I think we all need to thank the inventor of video cameras,” one man says.

The film evokes such other poignant works about protests and rallies as Stefano Savona’s Tahrir: Liberation Square, David France’s How to Survive a Plague, and Daniel Lindsay and T. J. Martin’s LA 92, but WTO/99 feels particularly relevant now, given what is happening with ICE and the National Guard in cities all across the country.

“I’ve never seen the United States come to this,” another man says, but now it seems to be happening every week, available for everyone to watch on their smartphones as the discord unfolds in real time.

WTO/99 runs December 5-11 at DCTV Firehouse Cinema, where eight screenings will be followed by Q&As with various combinations of Bell, Megaro, producer Laura Tatham, and archival producer Debra McClutchy, moderated by Goodman, Steve Macfarlane, Krishna Andavolu, Isabel Sandoval, Deborah Schaffer, and David Osit.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

IN CONTENTION: MoMA’S BEST FILMS OF 2025

MoMA has deemed Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s revenge thriller Cloud one of the best films of 2025

THE CONTENDERS 2025
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Series runs through January 7
www.moma.org

Every year, MoMA screens what it considers the best films of the past twelve months from all over the world, in a series called “The Contenders.” Occasionally, directors are on hand for discussions after. Last month, MoMA showed such 2025 favorites as Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon, and Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia. Among December’s best are Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, and Ira Sachs’s Peter Hujar’s Day.

Below is a look at some of the other upcoming class of 2025 contenders; keep watching this space for more reviews.

The United States is under a mysterious attack in Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE (Kathryn Bigelow, 2025)
Tuesday, December 2, 7:00
www.ahouseofdynamitefilm.com
www.moma.org

In A House of Dynamite, director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim meld John Badham’s 1983 War Games with Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Dr. Strangelove and Sidney Lumet’s 1964 Fail Safe in a gripping thriller told from three perspectives as an unidentified ICBM makes its way to America. On the case are Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts), and the president (Idris Elba), who are desperately trying to figure out who launched it — and, even more important, how to stop it. The cast also features Anthony Ramos as Major Daniel Gonzalez, Jason Clarke as Admiral Mark Miller, Gabriel Basso as Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington, Renée Elise Goldsberry as the First Lady, Greta Lee as National Intelligence Officer for North Korea Ana Park, Jonah Hauer-King as Lieutenant Commander Robert Reeves, and, practically stealing the show, Jared Harris as Secretary of Defense Reid Baker. Bigelow pulls no punches as the film builds to a sensational finale. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Bigelow, whose previous movies include Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker, and the original Point Break.

SENTIMENTAL VALUE (Joachim Trier, 2025)
Wednesday, December 3, 7:00
www.neonrated.com
www.moma.org

Danish-born Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier follows up one of the best films of 2022, two-time Oscar nominee The Worst Person in the World, which concluded his impressive Oslo Trilogy, with Sentimental Value, one of the best films of 2025 — and the decade, if not the century. Written by Trier and longtime collaborator Eskil Vogt, the intimate drama begins with a poetic house stating its raison d’être, establishing itself as a character all its own, then cutting to one of the most tense, uncomfortable, and stirring examples of stage fright ever put on celluloid. Renate Reinsve is spectacular as Nora Borg, an actress who, along with her sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), must confront their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), who wants to come back into their lives upon the death of their mother, his ex-wife. Gustav is a famous filmmaker who has written a deeply personal script for Nora, who refuses to work with him. He instead courts popular American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) for the role as Nora weighs her options. Sentimental Value is a heart-wrenching story of family dysfunction, patriarchal manipulation, trauma, and filmmaking that you won’t soon forget.

CLOUD (『クラウド』) (KURAUDO) (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2024)
Tuesday, December 9, 7:00
www.janusfilms.com
www.moma.org

Kobe-born suspense master Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who has made such horror faves as Cure, Pulse, and Creepy as well as such psychological dramas as Bright Future and Tokyo Sonata, is back with an intense revenge thriller that is not for the faint of heart, featuring torture and violence — and a ton of fun. In Cloud, Masaki Suda stars as Yoshii, a quiet, disengaged young man who works at a cleaning factory, supplementing his income as an online reseller, purchasing goods at cut rates — unethically taking advantage of people — and selling them online at exorbitant prices, with no care whether the items are actually legitimate or fakes. He is upset when the owner, Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa), offers him a promotion; Takimoto sees promise in Yoshii, but Yoshii has no interest in taking on more responsibility. When one of his deals makes him a lot of money, he quits his job and dedicates all his time to reselling whatever products he can get his hands on, from designer handbags to anime figures. Yoshii alienates his business partner, Muraoka (Masataka Kubota), and moves with his girlfriend, Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), to a house in a small, faraway town, where a young local man, Sano (Daiken Okudaira), insists on being his assistant. As his deals get more and more lucrative and dangerous, Yoshii builds a well-deserved bad reputation as a ruthless operator, and soon a group of men, armed to the hilt, come after him, determined to get even.

Cloud is a fierce, propulsive trip down the internet rabbit hole, where anonymity might feel safe but reality threatens to blow it all up. Yoshii ruins every relationship he has, with clients, customers, Sano, Akiko, Takimoto, et al., seemingly without any care or regard; he spends hours staring at his computer screen, waiting for his items to start selling, with more concern and passion than he has for any human being. And when the posse finds him, he has no understanding why they want him dead. Suda (Kamen Rider, Cube) is terrific as Yoshii; we are initially offput by his herky-jerky movement and disengagement from society, but as everything closes in on him, we also feel compassion for his potential fate. The film is beautifully shot by Yasuyuki Sasaki and expertly directed by Kurosawa, who knows just how to make the audience squirm, especially at unexpected moments. “Grudges, revenge, they’ll only drag you down,” one member of the posse tells another. “Think of this as a game.” It’s a wry comment on how too many people look at the real world these days.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

’TIS THE SEASON: ALICIA GRAF MACK’S AAADT AD DEBUT AT CITY CENTER

The Holy Blues is part of all-new evenings of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater season at City Center (photo by Steven Pisano)

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
New York City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
December 3 – January 4, $45-$195
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

It’s been a time of change for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. This has been the first year without the shining light of Judith Jamison, the beloved Ailey dancer and artistic director who passed away last November at the age of eighty-one. That month, her successor, Robert Battle, became a resident choreographer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company. And this past spring, longtime Ailey dancer and Juilliard Dance Division dean Alicia Graf Mack was named the fourth artistic director in the history of AAADT.

“This monumental season draws deeply on Alvin Ailey’s legacy rooted in celebrating the resilience of the human spirit while extending its truth and bold virtuosity to reflect this moment in time and our hopes for the future,” Graf Mack said in a statement about the company’s upcoming annual City Center residency. “Each new creation shares the utterly distinctive voice of its choreographer, testifying to the vitality of the tradition Mr. Ailey gave us and the gifts of spirit that Judith Jamison so lovingly nurtured. I am grateful and honored to be a caretaker of this ever-changing continuum of inspiration, along with Matthew Rushing and the company of brilliant dancers whose artistry will move us all as we take our next steps forward.”

Running December 3 through January 4, the 2025 City Center season features the company premiere of Medhi Walerski’s Blink of an Eye, set to J. S. Bach’s violin sonatas and partita, and a new production of Jamison’s duet A Case of You, originally a birthday tribute to Chairman Emerita Joan Weill, danced to Diana Krall’s version of the Joni Mitchell song.

There are five world premieres from a wide range of choreographers. Inspired by Geoffrey Holder’s book Black Gods, Green Islands, about Trinidad and Tobago, Cuban American theater director and arts educator and activist Maija García’s Jazz Island celebrates the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, with original music by jazz trumpeter Etienne Charles. Matthew Neenan’s Ailey debut, Difference Between, is set to music by MacArthur fellow and two-time Obie winner Heather Christian, who sings in “Tomorrow”: “Difference between. Deference, reverence, sever its shoots on the bean / Sanity, brevity, bravery, levity — these are the virtues / are any restored or recorded or / pored over once the romance of it leaves?”

Superstar Jamar Roberts, the company’s first resident choreographer, follows up such gems as Ode, A Jam Session for Troubling Times, and Holding Space with Song of the Anchorite, a reimagining of Alvin Ailey’s 1961 solo Hermit Songs, set to jazz trumpeter Avishai Cohen’s interpretation of a Ravel adagio. In Embrace, Fredrick Earl Mosley incorporates tunes by Stevie Wonder, Kate Bush, Etta James, Maxwell, Ed Sheeran, Des’ree, and P!nk in exploring the intimacy of human connection.

And Urban Bush Women founder and Ailey Artist in Residence Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, collaborating with current Ailey dancer Samantha Figgins and former company member Chalvar Monteiro, looks to the concepts of the Ring Shout and the Door of No Return in The Holy Blues, named after the title of Alvin Ailey’s journal. The twenty-five-minute piece debuted at BAM in June; in a company interview, Figgins explained, “Through life, we have these hills and valleys, our human suffering and our pleasure, our delight, our bliss, our joy, and The Holy Blues is a chance to watch that journey of a group of people — a community, of course, but all individuals — how they tackle the challenges of bringing themselves up out of whatever pain they may be in, out of whatever life throws at them, and how they are able to create something beautiful out of it.”

The thirty-two dancers will also perform the Ailey classics Memoria, Night Creature, Pas de Duke, Masekela Langage, A Song for You, Opus McShann, For Bird — with Love, Love Songs, Reflections in D, Hidden Rites, and Cry; Ronald K. Brown’s Grace; Lar Lubovitch’s Many Angels; Rushing’s Sacred Songs; Elisa Monte’s Treading; and Alonzo King’s Following the Subtle Current Upstream. Many of the programs will conclude with the one and only Revelations, six with live music. In addition, the Saturday family matinees will be followed by a Q&A.

“I join with the entire company in welcoming Alicia Graf Mack in her new role as our artistic director,” Rushing said in a statement. “Her great respect for and commitment to the Ailey mission, along with the perspective and integrity that informs her vision, will help elevate everything we do. We are excited to welcome audiences to New York City Center this holiday season to be uplifted by cherished classics and remarkable new works as the curtain goes up on the next chapter in Ailey’s extraordinary story.”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]