New York Film Academy - Los Angeles Library

11/30/2021

The NYFA Library now has Binge Boxes! Check out three films at a time around a fun topic. Drop by and check them out!

09/27/2021

It's that time of the year again! Come by the library to check out our interactive Banned Books Week display and celebrate your right to read!

03/10/2020

In Old Joy (2006), two old friends reunite for a quietly revelatory overnight camping trip in Kelly Reichardt's breakout feature, a micro budget study of character and masculinity. As they drive from Portland into the woods in search of a secluded hot spring, expectant father Mark (Daniel London) and nomadic Kurt (Will Oldham) make fumbling attempts to reconnect, butting up against the limits of their friendship and coming to grips with just how much their paths have diverged since their shared youth.

Tom Dawson of The BBC wrote of the film, "Notable for its visual beauty, its melancholic Yo La Tengo score and its subtle performances, it's an impressively understated and sensitively observed work."

The Library now has The Criterion Collection Blu-ray Edition of the film available.

Old Joy: Northwest Passages By Ed Halter On Film / Essays — Dec 12, 2019 On Film Essays Features Interviews Visual Analysis Short Takes In Theaters The Daily Inside Criterion Sneak Peeks Tech Corner Criterion Designs Production Notes Top 10 Lists Closet Picks FYI On the Channel Almost from the mom...

03/06/2020

Until the End of the World (1991), conceived as the ultimate road movie, this decades-in-the-making science-fiction epic from Wim Wenders follows the restless Claire Tourneur (Solveig Dommartin) across continents as she pursues a mysterious stranger in possession of a device that can make the blind see and bring dream images to waking life. This breathless adventure in the shadow of Armageddon takes its heroes to the ends of the earth and into the oneiric depths of their own souls.

Jordan Hoffman of The Guardian wrote of the film,"The scenes of artistic, scientific and communal triumph were significant. The isolated, solipsistic anger of each character, lost in their own identity loop, seemed like a perfect analogy for the conflicts in eastern Europe in the mid-1990s...[but] watching it now, even with its dull patches, it seems like a miracle."

The Library now has The Criterion Collection Blu-ray Edition of the film available.

Until the End of the World: The End of the Road By Bilge Ebiri On Film / Essays — Dec 10, 2019 On Film Essays Features Interviews Visual Analysis Short Takes In Theaters The Daily Inside Criterion Sneak Peeks Tech Corner Criterion Designs Production Notes Top 10 Lists Closet Picks FYI On the Chann...

03/03/2020

The Story of Temple Drake (1933), loosely adapted from William Faulkner's controversial novel Sanctuary, is a notorious pre-Code melodrama staring Miriam Hopkins as Temple Drake, the coquettish granddaughter of a respected small-town judge. When a boozehound date strands her at a bootleggers' hideout, Temple is subjected to an act of nightmarish s*xual violence and plunged into a criminal underworld that threatens to swallow her up completely.

Though some of the more salacious elements of the source novel were not included, the film was still considered so indecent that it helped give rise to the introduction of the Hays Code.

The Library now has The Criterion Collection Blu-ray edition of the film available.

The Story of Temple Drake: Notorious By Geoffrey O’Brien On Film / Essays — Dec 3, 2019 On Film Essays Features Interviews Visual Analysis Short Takes In Theaters The Daily Inside Criterion Sneak Peeks Tech Corner Criterion Designs Production Notes Top 10 Lists Closet Picks FYI On the Channel As...

02/27/2020

In All About Eve (1950), from the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) moves relentlessly towards her goal: taking the reins of power from the great actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis). The cunning Eve maneuvers her way into Margo's Broadway role, becomes a sensation and even causes turmoil in the lives of Margo's director boyfriend (Gary Merrill), her playwright (Hugh Marlowe), and his wife (Celeste Holm). Only the cynical drama critics see through Eve, admiring her audacity and perfect pattern of deceit.

Ben Walters of Time Out wrote of the film, "Joseph L Mankiewicz's film dissects the narcissism and hypocrisy of the spotlight as sharply as [Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd], but pays equal attention to the challenges of enacting womanhood."

The Library now has The Criterion Collection Blu-ray edition of the film available.

All About Eve: Upstage, Downstage By Terrence Rafferty On Film / Essays — Nov 26, 2019 On Film Essays Features Interviews Visual Analysis Short Takes In Theaters The Daily Inside Criterion Sneak Peeks Tech Corner Criterion Designs Production Notes Top 10 Lists Closet Picks FYI On the Channel Bette...

02/25/2020

In Now, Voyager (1942) Nervous spinster Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) is stunted from growing up under the heel of her puritanical Boston Brahmin mother (Gladys Cooper) and remains convinced of her own unworthiness until a kindly psychiatrist gives her the confidence to venture out into the world on a South American cruise. Onboard, she finds her footing with the help of an unhappily married man (Paul Henreid). Their thwarted love affair may help Charlotte break free of her mother's grip, but will she find fulfillment as well as independence?

The film currently holds a 92% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes with a critical consensus reading, "Now, Voyager is a Hollywood swooner with Bette Davis and Paul Henreid in a melodrama to end all melodramas".

The Library now has The Criterion Collection Blu-ray Edition of the film available.

Performances Mother Monster: Gladys Cooper in Now, Voyager By Ella Taylor On Film / Features — Dec 3, 2019 On Film Essays Features Interviews Visual Analysis Short Takes In Theaters The Daily Inside Criterion Sneak Peeks Tech Corner Criterion Designs Production Notes Top 10 Lists Closet Picks FYI ...

02/20/2020

Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen's legendary silent film Häxan (1922) anticipates gothic horror, documentary re-creation, and the essay film, making for an experience unlike anything else in cinema. It uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that witches of the Middle Ages and turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients suffer from the same type of hysteria.

Critic David Thompson of Time Out wrote of the film, "A weird and rather wonderful brew of fiction, documentary and animation based on 15th and 16th century witchcraft trials, Christensen's film has a remarkable visual flair that takes in Bosch, Breughel and Goya."

The Library now has The Criterion Collection Blu-ray edition of the film available.

Häxan: The Real Unreal By Chris Fujiwara On Film / Essays — Oct 15, 2019 On Film Essays Features Interviews Visual Analysis Short Takes In Theaters The Daily Inside Criterion Sneak Peeks Tech Corner Criterion Designs Production Notes Top 10 Lists Closet Picks FYI On the Channel Born in Denmark to...

02/18/2020

In An Elephant Sitting Still (2018), while protecting his friend from a school bully, sixteen-year-old Wei Bu (Peng Yuchang) pushes the bully down a staircase. He later learns that the bully is hospitalized, gravely injured. Wei's neighbor, 60-year-old Wang Jin (Liu Congxi), decides to join him as does Huang Ling (Wang Yuwen), Wei's classmate. Together, they decide their only hope is to flee town. They board a bus to Manchuria, where it is a rumored that a circus elephant is said to be sitting still, seeming oblivious to pain and tribulations of the world at large.

Film critic Justine Smith wrote of the film, "By the movie’s last shot, the camera has stepped outside of the intimate closeness of its characters. They can finally breathe, allowing for a spiritually transcendent ending, one of the greatest in contemporary film history. Suddenly there is scope, perspective, and spiritual silence. The pace remains slack but time has regained meaning outside of suffering, at least for a few hours along an unfamiliar path."

The Library now has the film available on Blu-ray.

It is impossible to watch the film’s final act and not feel the warming sensation that maybe tomorrow will be different, bringing change and offering beauty, love or hope.

02/11/2020

Hustlers (2019), follows Destiny (Constance Wu), a young stripper struggling to make ends meet. That is, until she meets Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), the club's savvy top earner, who shows her the way toward making big bucks. But when the 2008 economic collapse hits their Wall Street clientèle hard, Destiny and Ramona concoct a plan with their fellow st*****rs to turn the tables on these greedy power players in this wild, modern-day Robin Hood.

Variety's Peter DeBruge wrote of the film, "flashy, fleshy and all-around impossible to ignore, Hustlers amounts to nothing less than a cultural moment, inspired by an outrageous New York Magazine profile... adapted by writer-director Scafaria at her most Scorsese, and starring Jennifer Lopez like you've never seen her before."

The Library now has the film available on Blu-ray and DVD.

— which is to say, it brings Champagne-rush s*x appeal and neon-lit style to a wild case in which a crew of enterprising female dancers stripped several rich Wall Street clients of a fortune. Flash…

02/04/2020

In Judy (2019), it's thirty years after rising to global stardom in The Wizard of Oz and showbiz legend Judy Garland (Renée Zellweger) arrives in London to perform a five-week sold-out run at The Talk of the Town. While preparing for the shows, Garland battles with management, reminisces with friends and adoring fans, and embarks on a whirlwind romance with soon-to-be fifth husband Mickey Deans (Finn Wittrock), all while bravely struggling to overcome intensifying anxiety and physical decline.

Zoe Gahan of Vanity Fair wrote on Zellweger's performance, "a stellar stage-stomping performance. It is hard to tell where Garland stops and Zellweger starts... Go and see this film. Laugh and weep, bawl your eyes out—she deserves every tear."

The Library now has the film available on Blu-ray and DVD.

Renée Zellweger plays the legendary performer attempting a late-career comeback