There are misguided souls who will tell you that Matt Reeves’ The Batman (2022) is the first time Batman is a detective, and first as film noir. Revisiting Tim Burton’s 1989 original makes all those claims look incredibly silly. It also confirms Reeves’ film is a hackish, boring mess. 

But Batman (1989) has it all. Excitement, romance, action, and the best and most entertaining Joker of all time (better than Ledger and Phoenix by far). It stands heads and shoulders above all other Batman films, because it’s the closest in form and content to an actual comic book.

The colors, the action, the over the top performances are straight from the best Batman adventures of my youth. Even the Nolan films - which have their own James Bond like pleasures, do not match the pure gothic pulp of Burton’s direction and Elfman’s score. 

But considering that our current screen Batman is an emo-incompetent - who can’t fight, solve crimes, or save Gotham from a villain who got his entire shtick from Seven - the 1989 original’s status as a genre masterpiece is fully secure.

Vlacil’s films tread the boundaries between the real world and something more spiritual. In exploring the depths of evil and the true purveyors of grace - he uses amazing camera work and historically poetic production design to tell a tale of petty human resentments gussied up in self-righteous pretext.

As the Chaplain states the Devil tempts us which that is most agreeable. As he finds out for himself- it can be wildly destructive.

Even sociopaths deserve true love and to walk hand and hand into the sunset with their beloved.

A truly twisted and touching love story (with enough verbal, sight and physical gags to impress Groucho), that really only could’ve come the mind of Elaine May. She and Walter Matthau are so well matched and have so much chemistry that this insane movie actually works.

Love is so much more important than money. It gives purpose. It brings joy. It can convince you not to commit a heinous murder!

What a glorious film. Elaine May forever!

The gold standard for all action-spy thrillers. Every thing comes together in this film - performances, set pieces, production, casting - to create one of the most satisfying action films of all time.

All future Bond films should see this as the Rosetta Stone. Not all Bond films must copy this slavishly, but the energy and tone? Absolutely.

This is a pure genre masterpiece.

We live in a world run by Mikey and Nicky’s - cheap small time hoods who fascinate us with proclamations of love, loyalty and sympathy - while wallowing in their own petty decadence.

One of the all time great explorations of male friendship - Mikey and Nicky shows how the trappings of genuine and honest friendship can be twisted by resentment and grievance. Casavettes and Falk completely immerse themselves into these characters. 

It’s visceral, seedy and hysterical. If only the studios let Elaine May make dozens of these masterpieces.

*Post-screening Q&A with Elaine May at Film at Lincoln Center

Well Jr, did I ever tell you about the time I crawled through the basement of an ancient building and escaped through a rat infested corridor? And then was chased by a bunch of zealots on boats, all while being seduced by a beautiful blonde double agent? Sounds like one of our adventures?

Must've been a dream!

Seriously - this second film is a major step up for 007, which benefits from all the Hitchcock (The Lady Vanishes / North by Northwest) needle drops. It also looks great - with the European settings, far more lux and interesting than the Jamaican beaches of Dr. No.

As the template for so many great films - from The Last Crusade to Austin Powers, From Russia With Love lives up to its brilliant reputation.

A stone cold classic.

Someday soon the Backrooms and Obsession kids are going to discover Bertrand Bonello and lose their ever-loving minds.

The blocking alone in this film is a tour de force. The film’s deep respect of horror movie tropes and the actual practice of voodoo give it a deep cinematic authenticity.

From the synth score, to “The Craft” like coven that forms - you never forget you’re in a genre movie. But it elevates so far beyond a mere fright fest. 

Along with Hamaguchi, Bonello is one of our greatest living filmmakers.

At five years old, the message was received loud and clear. These villains were terrifying in their persistence, their cruelty and their ridiculous yet somehow intimidating uniforms and trench-coats. And only an act of God could defeat them.

WWII might as well have been ancient history to kids born in the 1970’s. These were words and pictures and stories we read about in school and Hebrew school. Our grandparents didn’t want to discuss it. Our Boomer parents were still obsessed with Vietnam. But Spielberg’s filmography - in particular Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and later Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) really defined the Nazi terror and the American response for Generation X.

These films were spectacle, but they were also warnings and moral fables. These are the bad guys. Look upon their evils great and small. Look at the righteous people like Oskar Schindler who resisted from within, and the boys who landed at Normandy to liberate from across the seas.

“Never again!” is a prominent theme of each film. Indiana Jones sums it up for the audience perfectly:

Each of these films is a grand and spectacular statement designed to shake the audience by the shoulders. They demand your attention and force you to see the truth of evil and the imperfect heroism that left it in defeat.

But in 2026, with the world careening between catastrophes - fueled by hatreds, rhetoric and political divisions that more than passingly resemble those of the 1930’s - do we still believe in the power of a spectacular truth, a miracle like the Ark of the Covenant, or a righteous German industrialist, or a company of soldiers dedicated to the prospect of life above all?

Or has it all descended into brutal cynicism and separate realities?

Disclosure Day (2026) is Spielberg’s resounding answer. It is a statement of faith in truth, human empathy and spectacle.

As the spiritual (and maybe actual?) sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982), Disclosure Day shares both films’ sense of chase and obsession — both with alien visitors, and our own human weaknesses.

But as the capstone of that trilogy, he’s chosen The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) as its touchstone inspiration. The film includes tremendously humane performances from Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson and especially Emily Blunt — who plays her character like Annie Hall imbued with Rogue-like superpowers. She delivers a massive tour-de-force.

And while I found the film incredibly moving — the criticisms of the film’s naiveté must be taken seriously — especially when one looks at the critiques of spectacle that emerged during the 1930’s.

François Truffaut, a close Spielberg influence and collaborator memorably said “I don't think I've really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war”.

Spielberg’s filmography bears this out. In each of his big four WWII films, there is a nominally happy ending. The good guys win. The bad guys are vanquished by man and a righteous God. The audience should never forget the glorious fight of the Greatest Generation. It is spectacular and emotional and wonderful.

Spectacle has been a powerful tool in showing us the terrible realities and impact of the Nazi terror - but it is ultimately an impotent weapon in showing the truth of its appeal and rise to power. Worse yet, an understandable sense of triumphalism left many believing the fight against such inhumanity was won forever. Indiana Jones literally rides off into the sunset.2

The past 25 years have been more than a rude awakening from this sort of end of history optimism. Today our world bears more than a passing resemblance to the exhausted Liberal Europeans who made the fatal mistake of plunging the world into darkness.

Like them, we’ve been exhausted by small but sapping conflicts in far off lands. We’re experiencing radical technological change, and have been whipsawed between pandemics, market crises and political instability that swings from one extreme to the other.

Are we really so different? Weren’t the Nazis a unique and demonic form of evil? More like Thanos or Emperor Palpatine. Wasn’t it all Hitler?

The broadened access to restored and translated media tells a far more complicated and familiar story. Were bourgeois Germans uniquely susceptible to evil? Are we more resistant or resilient? Could “it” or some version of “it” happen here? What were the human stories that led to the cinematic spectacle of the Nazi Terror and WWII?

Written contemporaneously in the waning days of Weimar, Gabriele Tergit’s Käsebier Takes Berlin (1931) feels like an old school 1930’s screwball comedy that takes place in the world of Cabaret. Berlin in 1929 is stocked with grouchy old school newspaper editors, young writers on the make and women with snappy remarks — who might just be too clever for their own good.

Gabriele Tergit’s real name was Elise Hirschmann, but it might as well have been Lois Lane. According to her official biography — she was the court reporter for the Berliner Tageblatt, where “she covered abortion trials, thefts, murders, bankruptcies and political violence”. Her 1933 escape from the SA is a tale worthy of a Jean Renoir film — with escapes to Prague and trips to Jewish Palestine before settling to safety in London.

But before all of that, Käsebier Takes Berlin was a huge commercial success. Tergit’s ironic, enervated cosmopolitans are cynical about politics, despite the highly polarized environment (and people) who surround them. The journalists and novelists and playwrights decry the death of the intellectual, and the serious newsmagazine but also help the rise of a marginally talented, nostalgia wrapped folk singer Georg Käsebier (translates to George Cheese and Beer) capture the hearts and minds of the city. As the over-the-top hoopla devolves into brain-rot and cheap merchandise, they snark passively and waste money and time on nonsense.

And who can blame them?

After a “long inflation”, and forty-plus years of seemingly endless wars, Tergit’s Berliners have sardonic humor about their decline. There’s a languidness and seen-it-all before attitude — even as they endure long waits for reservations at the hottest restaurants and chatter about the latest fashions and popular entertainment. On the margins there are insane right wingers and dogmatic Leftists arguing and sniping at each other — but no one takes them, or anything else too seriously.

In many ways, Käsebier Takes Berlin is the spiritual sibling to the Carole Lombard classic Nothing Sacred (1937). The “nothing” of this film is Lombard’s Hazel Flagg, a girl from Warsaw, Vermont, reported to be dying of radium poisoning. Her doctor catches that this is a misdiagnosis and tells her so — but Hazel is sick to death of Warsaw, and when a New York reporter named Wally Cook (an all time great straight man performance by Fredric March) turns up smelling a story, she lets him carry her to the city as a beloved doomed angel.

Hazel takes New York by storm — even as her ruse becomes harder and harder to maintain. Carole Lombard was a master at generating sympathy for her morally challenged screwball heroines, and this is one of her finest comedic performances.3

Nothing Sacred is one of the first films shot fully in Technicolor and features glorious aerial and on-location photography of Art Deco-era New York City. The screenwriter Ben Hecht was known as the “Shakespeare of Hollywood”, winning the first screenwriting Academy Award for Josef von Sternberg’s noir essential Underworld.

Two years after Nothing Sacred he famously punched up the screenplay for another Technicolor classic — Gone With the Wind.

Hecht and Tergit might as well have been fraternal twins. They were born four days apart in the late winter of 1894 — Hecht on February 28th in New York, Tergit on March 4th in Berlin. He was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants from Minsk who made their way to Racine, Wisconsin; she was already working Berlin’s courtrooms while he worked an incredibly similar beat in Chicago. Both shared gritty experiences in 20’s era journalism to fuel their artistic endeavors that revealed the machine behind mass media spectacle.4

Of course there are critical differences. The world of Nothing Sacred is one of confidence and progress. Its New York is the city of the future — unbound by history, or pockmarked by war. The President (whose photo appears in a few scenes) is the kindly FDR, who is clearly presiding over a nation that is recovering in strength and capability.

Nothing Sacred has a happy ending. America’s cynicism has always been balanced by its corniness — and that is on full display in Hecht’s script.

But so many fundamentals and particulars of the societies remain eerily similar in kind and reaction .

Philip Roth explored this theme memorably in his alternative history novel The Plot Against America (2004), but other films from the 1930’s like Gabriel Over the White House (1933) had similar ideas. This Hearst funded film has Walter Huston taking power as a benevolent authoritarian dictator (blessed by the angel Gabriel playing Brahms no less) who assassinates criminals and cancels WWI debt.

Ultimately he threatens the entire world with a massive war of American power and strength, unless everyone submits to our will. This is played heroically.

The realities of a country mired in deep segregation, regional/racial polarization, anti-immigrant sentiment and an economic depression were considerably more complicated. So, it’d be nice if we were actually a country of Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers running off to “defeat bullies” - but looking back clearly, that may have only been Jack Kirby’s wish fulfillment, and FDR’s willful leadership.

Is today’s America less immune from the hubris and ennui that infected Weimar Germany? Has mankind truly learned anything? In Disclosure Day, Spielberg gives us an emotionally satisfying conclusion that answers — possibly? He posits that a truth, spectacularly delivered to even the most jaded audience is more than mere distraction. It can be divine and unifying.

It is a highly attractive vision, and one that I was brought up to believe as a creed. But Tergit’s warnings must be taken seriously. She skewers Käsebier because his communion was counterfeit — nostalgia sold to an exhausted populace, who were starved for any sort of relief. Spectacle as brainrot, wholly manufactured for profit and greasing the slide into decadence.

Spielberg’s films reach for honest awe and wonder that he bases in essential truth. Humanity, empathy, a freedom from fear and terror and lies. These are values that Tergit herself never lost faith in, even as the SA chased her out of Berlin.

Disclosure Day distinguishes itself from the empty spectacle that Nothing Sacred and Käsebier Takes Berlin by focusing its last act on a moment that has the potential to shake the world from its doldrums.

Many have picked over the logistics and the “reality” of this moment with extraordinary cynicism — ignoring the hunger for unifying moments we see all around us. But who can deny the power of singing along with tens of thousands at a concert, packing a parade for an NBA championship, or being moved with others in our community at the cinema?

This scene gives the lie to the idea that we’re too divided and warped by digital life to ever be redeemed or experience widespread joy.

Spielberg has always been a believer who wears his faith and his heart right on his sleeve. Did I fully buy that revelations on TV would capture the world’s attention? In our current age? Not necessarily. But it’s the movies! It is supposed to be fantastical to make the larger point. Disclosure Day urgently insists that radical empathy is humanity’s saving grace.

In an era where cruelty, atomization and loneliness plague so many — Disclosure Day’s “obviousness” and “naïveté about how the world really works” exemplifies our greatest weapon against the cynics. This is a faith shared by Ben Hecht, Gabriele Tergit, and Steven Spielberg, who each confronted the evils of their day with an ever-present hope in human connection.

And while imperfect, it’s still the only path to heroism and redemption.

A rural crime noir with operatic overtones - At Close Range is driven by Christopher Walken’s seductive and casually cruel performance of a small town gang leader.

The aimless youth of this rural Pennsylvania town don’t have much to do and not much hope for the any future. But even the meager material advantages convey so much status and confidence that you can feel the power of even this two-bit thief.

Sean Penn’s performance turns on the conflict between good and evil within himself. And yet his sacrifices feel more necessary than heroic. Is it worth it in this life or the next? 

Loved that “Live to Tell” (a top 5 Madonna song IMHO) is basically the score. 

A true lost classic.

The best Pixar movie in years, Toy Story 5 is so good - it almost (almost) wipes out the abominations of Lightyear, and the whole Covid-era decline that set in at the studio. It's fitting that this film goes back to basics - focusing on childhood development in an age of ever-present technology.

I kind of loved that this film took what could've been a simple moral tale of play good / tech bad, turned into something much deeper about human connection. Having the primary avatar of technology actually be Conan O'Brien's toilet training device "Smarty Pants" is a stroke of genius. The Towelie like design, and smart/stupid poop humor brings Pixar back to its "Brave Little Toaster" roots.

Best of all this film confirms that Zootopia 2 is no fluke. Disney and Pixar animation seems to be on a bit of a run here - with commercial success to match.

Not sure these Toy Story films will always continue to hit - but when they have something to say, Woody, Jessie and Buzz are always a good hang.

So many of the core elements are here in this first, relatively low stakes film. So much more enjoyable and entertaining than the more recent “realistic” Bond films. 

Colorful and bright - Dr. No never lets you forget it’s a comic book or cheap novel cover. And the charm works magically

My high school experience was nothing like this, but somehow this film has always felt extraordinarily familiar. While I fell in love with this movie in high school, it wasn't until college that I truly understood and had met all of the personalities.

And I've never encountered a philosophy more profound than you have to keep L-I-V-I-N, no matter what.

One can certainly read this film, and its sequels as a project that charts the power, reality and possible decline of GenX bourgeois romanticism. Jessie and Celine are ideal lovers because they exist perfectly in time and in memory.

Revisiting their first encounter, I'm struck by how the writing smartly allows them to time travel to their future-selves - possibly metaphorically, possibly actually - to recognize the perfection and importance of this night.

But in June 1995, Nina Simone and Greece lay far in the future, as did so many other things - for them and for us.

It's fitting that this journey begins in Vienna - where so many bourgeois dreams were born in romance, only to crash on the shoals of reality. But the dreams are what make life worth living anyways.

One of Linklater's masterpieces. Glad to finally see it on the big screen.

The spiritual (and maybe actual?) sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. Disclosure Day shares both films sense of chase and obsession - both with alien visitors, and our own human weaknesses.

But as the capstone of that trilogy he's chosen "The Day the Earth Stood Still" as its touchstone inspiration.

Spielberg has always been a believer who wears his faith and his heart right on his sleeve. This film is urgent in its message that radical empathy is humanity's saving grace. Is it obvious to have that message delivered both by a nun and an alien being?

Maybe?

But in an era where cruelty, atomization and loneliness plague so many - obviousness might be our greatest weapon against the cynics.

Tremendously humane performances from Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson and especially Emily Blunt - who plays her character like Annie Hall imbued with Rogue-like superpowers. She's delivers a massive tour-de-force.

Did I fully buy that revelations on TV would capture the world's attention? In our current age? No. But it's the movies! I prefer the fantasy anyways.

Spielberg remains the greatest of all time.

The platonic ideal of a newspaper.

A bell rings in Austin, Texas, and school is out for the summer of 1976.

On Sunday, June 14, the Cognitive Film Society is proud to present Before Sunrise (1995) and Dazed and Confused (1993) to kick off the summer — because nobody in the history of movies has filmed beginnings like Richard Linklater.

Most films are about endings. The villain vanquished, the case closed, the wedding, the win. Linklater’s great subject has always been a threshold — hours when nothing has been decided yet and everything is still possible. Linklater’s films have always powerfully captured the stretch of time before life truly begins.

Before Sunrise is the best film ever made about a single conversation. Jesse and Céline step off the train in Vienna with no money, no plan, and one night. Possibility is the entire plot. The night in the film is dated June 16, 1994. We’re screening it on June 14 — close enough to call it an anniversary.

Dazed and Confused is the last day of school everyone wishes they had. It’s May 28, 1976, three weeks before America’s 200th birthday, and the kids of Lee High School couldn’t care less. The country is throwing itself a party; they just want to find one. We’ll be watching from the other side of the country’s 250th: the Class of ‘26, looking back at the Class of ‘76.

It’s no spoiler that both films end at daybreak — but like the best memories, the night before is truly all that matters. Linklater treats time itself as the subject. In these films he captures the feeling of being seventeen with an infinite summer ahead and the way one night with a stranger can outweigh years of childhood.

Nothing happens in these movies except everything.

That’s what we’ll dig into on Sunday. We’ll open with a short talk on early Linklater — the run from Slacker through Before Sunrise — and how time became the theme he’s built an entire career playing with: the single day, the single night, the years between.

Between the films, we’ll keep the conversation going with an audience Q&A. Then we time travel to 1976.

The Afternoon

Alright, alright, alright. The summer is about to begin.

1:00 PM — Program begins: a short talk on early Linklater and time

1:15 PM — Before Sunrise (1995)

~3:00 PM — Audience Q&A and intermission

3:15 PM — Dazed and Confused (1993)

Location: Gold Theater at the Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library — 1125 Broadway, Hewlett, NY 11557.

Free and open to everyone, as always.

And keep an eye on your inbox: our full summer and fall 2026 schedule — six screenings, including a first for CFS that involves the Metropolitan Opera — is coming soon.

We hope you can join us on Sunday and at our other upcoming events!

It’d be a lot cooler if you did.

The Cognitive Film Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to cultivating film culture through educational programming and community engagement.

He-Man - ahhhahh— he’ll save everyone of us! If you’re a fan of the original cartoon, or the toys it’s really going to make you smile. It is a candy-colored , Flash Gordon-infused nostalgia bomb.

Does it have MCU-grown worthy jokes? Yes. 

Does it have cheap-looking, over-use of the volume and CGI? No question.

Does its battle sequences blur the line between video game cut-scenes and and actual film. Reader, it jumps right over that line into PS4 territory.

But Masters of the Universe, much like last year’s Superman has heart to spare. It recognizes that He-Man was always about the humane exercise of “the power” vs Skeletor’s desire for unmitigated (and ridiculous) desire to consolidate it.

It’s not a subtle lesson about “masculinity” and who is really strong - but this is a property that ended every 22 minute episode with a heavy handed PSA (and indeed does here as well).

And best of all my 10 year old was highly entertained.

Does this get a sequel? Probably not. But I’d happily sign up for more goofy fun. Hope more people discover this over time.

I too love the Coppola family’s foray into costume dramas and have fond affection for Marie Antoinette and Bram Stoker’s Dracula - but Emerald Fennell never quite gets there.

This film borrows much of their visual language (along with a dash of Age of Innocence and the covers of Harlequin Romance Novels) but the central performances are so wooden and lifeless - that a really interesting film suffers.

I like all the weird flourishes and the departures from the novel - but Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi have negative chemistry.  His relationship with Isabella is radioactive compared to the frosty nothingness with Catherine.

I completely get why this was a hit - and I was interested and entertained. But this could’ve been great and instead it was very ehh…

Very reminiscent of Saturday Night Fever, as we follow a group for urban degenerates and their women worship one of the “stars” of their group. There are lots of beautiful photography of the environs and the people (including a rather Riefensthal-inspired wrestling sequence), and a bullfight - but the pacing - even in this short film is glacial.

This may improve on rewatch, but kind of left me a bit distant and removed from the titular Golfos.

Give em the heater Ricky!