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about: Regina Weinreich

  • The Gotham Awards 2020 Recognizes Five Movies by Women Directors for Best Feature

    Film Awards2
    Kudos to this year’s Gotham Award nominees. Traditionally, the IFP Gotham Awards kicks off the film awards season. As celebrations go, this decidedly downtown dinner brings together New York’s movie making elite while honoring lower budget fare in Oscar-like categories. Ah, longing for Cipriani Wall Street, packed to the gills with the year’s moguls and stars, I will be merely content to celebrate this stellar event pandemic style, perched at my computer in pajamas on Monday January 11, 2021—as I now applaud the choices, some of my favorite nominated movies, that since March, have given me the comfort of knowing the show must go on: To highlight a few in different categories: Time, Beanpole, The Assistant, The Nest.

    The documentary Time from director Garrett Bradley, probably this year’s Oscar non-fiction favorite and a hit at the fall film festivals, puts you in the place of what it means to be incarcerated. With its sharp focus on the Rich family, Time takes you inside, as if Ava DuVerney’s 2016 Oscar nominated doc, 13th, about what pervasive prison life is for black families, becomes your reality.

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  • DOC NYC 2020: In THE MEANING OF HITLER, Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker Explore the Cult of Personality

    Hitler2
    Of the extraordinarily fine offerings at this year’s DOCNYC 2020, The Meaning of Hitler, from directors Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker stands out in illuminating the continued fascination with dictatorial psychopaths epitomized by Adolf Hitler and extending to the Nazis of World War II. Leading off on the topic, novelist Martin Amis,who has grappled with the Holocaust era in several books, wastes no time comparing Donald Trump to Hitler: noting, neither had problems with lying.

    Taking off from Sebastian Haffner’s 1978 German bestseller of the same title, the film features interviews with many experts and provocateurs including Deborah Lipstadt, Yehuda Bauer, Saul Friedlander, Sir Richard Evans, Francine Prose, and Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, Nazi hunters who famously brought Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon” to justice. Exploring Hitler’s meaning takes the filmmakers to Hitler’s bunker in Berchtesgaden, to the memorial site that once was the death camp Treblinka, and to the forest at Sobibor where 250,000 were murdered without a trace.

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  • Joy Behar’s Healthy Disrespect Benefits Guild Hall

    Joy Bahar
    As I write, Joy Behar asks Kamala Harris tasteful if anxious questions about the election/ COVID/ and Joe Biden’s plans on her daytime show The View. Her respect is through the roof, though you know, after years of experience, she has her doubts about the role of government on the planet. Wearing a blue sweater embroidered with the words, “I’m speaking,” she’s a lot to reckon with; with her, nobody’s going to mess. It’s a leap to think of her as a playwright, and now, we must. In five tidbits she wrote, an entertainment to benefit Guild Hall this week titled, A Totally Disrespectful Evening of Virtual Short Plays, she puts her views to dramatic effect. An A-list of her pals—Lorraine Bracco, Dylan McDermott, Robert Klein, Brenda Vaccaro, Chris Bauer, to name a few– mouth off in a variety of situations, culminating in a one-woman tour de force: Behar herself as a shoplifter, offers a step by step how-to, explaining the orgasm as you exit the store, and stating, “If Trump gets re-elected in November, who knows what crimes I might commit.”

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  • Audrey Flack and Amy Zerner: The Goddess and her Wiles at M & M Fine Arts

    Audrey3In her 1986 book, Art & Soul: Notes on Creating, the artist Audrey Flack recounts a time when, housebound in East Hampton, she listened to “Candle in the Wind,” Elton John’s elegy to Marilyn Monroe, allowing the muse to infuse the painting of Marilyn she was working on. Now two drawings of Marilyn, still evocative to the artist, as muse and goddess, are a compelling part of a show at M & M Fine Arts in Southampton: “Smiling Marilyn with JFK” and “Marilyn Phantom of Delight” (2014). The Marilyns, exhibited among many other works by Flack, are paired perfectly with art from Springs resident Amy Zerner. Using “goddess” as their theme, the artists occupy adjoining spaces with paintings, drawings, and tapestries that are distinctly feminist, strongly narrative, featuring bold female entities, provocative and beautiful. Audrey2

    A world class artist, a pioneer in photorealism, a master sculptor, Flack’s expansive career includes a 1974 painting, “Leonardo’s Lady,” currently on view at MoMA. Goddesses are Flack’s metiere, including “Medusa,” depending on how you view the snakes adorning her hair. For me she’s beatific, radiating otherworldliness.

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  • Ric Burns on Making Oliver Sacks: His Own Life: Narrative is Therapy

    Oliver Sacks
    Waxing euphoric, documentarian Ric Burns, exclaimed, “The story in 14,233 lines was an attempt to get to the bottom, to heal the world.” He was not speaking of Doctor Oliver Sacks and his biopic, Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, of the noted neurologist and writer of Awakenings (1972) and The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (1985), the subject that brought us together on the phone this week, but of a current project on Dante, the Italian Renaissance author of The Divine Comedy: “Now in 2020,” said Burns, “Everything needs healing.”

    The theme of healing unites these films for Ric, the younger brother of Ken Burns, to whom he apprenticed himself for the mini-series The Civil War and other projects, before striking out on his own. Oliver Sacks: His Own Life was featured in last year’s New York Film Festival—he says of the prestigious festival: “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” but as he’s made the rounds, including the 2019 Hamptons International Film Festival, he’s found, “People really gravitate toward Oliver Sacks.”

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  • David Byrne’s American Utopia: Spike Lee’s Documentary Brings Us to Our Senses

    American Utopia
    Back before the pandemic made everything stop making sense, David Byrne opened his American Utopia at Broadway’s Hudson Theater, the most entertaining show in town. Everybody knew it, and tickets sold like hot cakes. Of course, so much in America had stopped making sense prior to the unanticipated lockdown; as upbeat as American Utopia was, a sly critique marked every song in this unique musical, immigration, leadership, and Black Lives Matter. Now that Spike Lee has made a film of the staged performance, with the great Ellen Kuras’ cinematography, and now that the film has opened the Toronto Film Festival last week, and will be featured in the upcoming New York Film Festival before it airs on HBO in October, a new audience can have a close up view of the most exuberant, life affirming, and topical musical, just before our elections.

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  • John Waters on Fire: New York Film Festival Poster Boy

    Film at Lincoln CenterSpeaking of bad boy artists such as himself, writer William S. Burroughs proclaimed that “You become respectable if you stick around long enough.” John Waters, the creator of the nastiest images in movie satires, would gag at the implication of respectability, and if you check out the irreverence of his poster for the 58th NYFF, you can see his level of impropriety at work. No boundaries. Nothing sacred. Some of our finest directors—Scorsese, Almodovar, Godard, Varda, Jenkins— trashed. How very John Waters!

    And yet, the bad boy in brocade jackets is on a roll! This past May, when he received an honorary degree from The School of Visual Arts, Waters wore a traditional gown, cap, and latex gloves, all in black, his signature pencil thin ‘stache under an artsy mask. Pulling it off, he consoled the graduates who’d been robbed of a “normal” graduation: “If you do die tomorrow, at least you’ll have a college degree.” As SVA’s President David Rhodes conferred upon him a Doctor of Fine Arts, Waters thanked everyone for their support of a lunatic: “Just call me Doctor Dirt.”

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  • Ethan Hawke Lights Up Tesla

    Ethan HawkIn director Michael Almereyda’s poetic hands, genius inventor Nikola Tesla is an absorbing if brooding subject. In Almereyda’s latest movie Tesla, he is the focus, and played by Ethan Hawke who had starred as Hamlet—the archetypical absorbing if brooding subject– in Almereyda’s 2000 movie. Here Tesla fascinates, having also been depicted, a secondary character in 2019, in Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s The Current War, played by Nicholas Hoult. In this past December’s run-ups to Oscars, in the last gasp of influencer screenings, Michael Shannon who stars as George Westinghouse in that movie asked if the Motion Picture Academy members were paying attention to that very special and important truth-based drama. Alas, I had to report, they were not. This glimpse of history was simply not electric. And Almereyda’s movie, now screening as part of a tribute to his oeuvre at the Museum of the Moving Image, may not be on the awards radar either, but in its poetry of image, performance, an a-chronology of vision, it is a bold and beautiful work, and memorable for Ethan Hawke’s Tesla. You’ve gotta love his slightly off rendition of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”

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  • Poetry in a Pandemic: Bukowski, Towle, Giorno, La Prade

    Charles Berkowski
    For Charles Bukowski’s 100th birthday, coronavirus or not, attention must be paid. Famous in movies portrayed by Mickey Rourke (Barfly) and Matt Dillon (Factotum), the subject of a 1973 documentary by Taylor Hackford, Bukowski was a one-of-a-kind, sexy despite huge facial crevices left by acne, crude: he once described writing a poem was like taking a big bear shit. Now there’s a new documentary assembled from a rare, rediscovered 1981 interview by Silvia Bizio, an Italian journalist, You Never Had It-An Evening with Bukowski, directed by Matteo Borgardt, and whether or not you agree with Bukowski’s view of poetry composition, it is a must-see for a glimpse of this boozing, chain-smoker who fascinates with every word.

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  • Blair Underwood’s Ecstatic Face in The Pack, a Virtual Premiere at Guild Hall


     Guild H
    The season would not be eh, the season without all-star comedy from Eugene Pack. He was back virtually on Sunday premiering a program of 3 short works to benefit Guild Hall, starring Matthew Broderick and John Leguizamo performing together for the first time, Blair Underwood and Sherri Shepherd, and Rachel Dratch, Cecily Strong, Andrea Martin, Santino Fontana and Maulik Pancholy. The talented Dayle Reyfel, Pack’s partner and frequent ensemble player, appeared in an unusual way. The playlets inaugurated the final leg of a series that will include some live, distanced, performances in the Guild Hall garden, all sold out. Reached by phone in LA, playwright/ performer, Eugene Pack said he is busy bringing actors together, but he wants everyone to know The Pack owes more to film, although it sounds more like an innovative hybrid, reflecting our current states of creativity.

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  • Dr. Ruth Westheimer on Author’s Night: Sex Talk in Brief

    Ruth Westhiemer2
    Dr. Ruth Westheimer    , now 92, gets hot and heavy talking about sex. This year’s Author’s Night being different from all others, her talk was on Zoom, no touching allowed. Which does not mean it was phone sex, or phoned in. One of the joys of listening to the pint-sized therapist who loves to boast that her grandkids are taller than she is, is hearing her say the words vagina and penis with aplomb, whether or not the discussion calls for it. That’s part of her schtick, getting people used to the vocabulary, and the action. This year she is celebrating a reissue of her Heavenly Sex, dispensing the wisdom of the sages on her subject. “In the Jewish tradition,” she says, “sex is an obligation between husband and wife,” especially on Friday night, the beginning of the Sabbath. The sages were the best at sex therapy, she opines, because they suggested the man say to his wife, you are the best, an effective aphrodisiac. A husband can enter the vagina from behind, leaving the clitoris for stimulation. Good to know.

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  • Charlize Theron in The Old Guard: Some Myths Don’t Die

    CharletFrom the look of Charlize Theron throughout her new Netflix movie, The Old Guard, immortality is not what it’s cracked up to be. Grimacing while engaging in the most athletic combat against warriors, scientists and opportunists who want to package her “gift,” she’s not having it. Called “Andy,” short for Andromache, so you know she goes back to Greek myth, she has already endured the fall of Troy and murder of her son. But through the ages, with medieval torture repeated endlessly, she’s the embodiment of the Myth of Sisyphus. Loneliness, watching loved ones die, may be worse, or facing drowning over decades as she does, having committed the sin of witchcraft alongside fellow immortal Quynh (Van Veronica Ngo), encased in an Iron Maiden. And yes, a legend Andy is, all fierce, her body finely tuned, not a gussied-up Wonder Woman. Watching Andy go through her paces is thrilling.

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  • South Etna: A Pop-Up Provides Food for Thought in Montauk

    South Etna
    If it is true, you are what you eat, at South Etna’s inaugural show in Montauk, “Painting is Painting’s Favorite Food: Art History as Muse,” art was most nourishing. At this week’s official gallery opening, a masked affair of course, scenesters and artists alike gathered in the outdoor space beside the exhibition space to talk art, to see each other, and queue up to view the work, only four at a time in the two-room faux Tudor space. Over Pimm’s and iced tea, a lively group including Cynthia Rowley, Ugo Rondinone, Stella Schnabel and many others congratulated Amalia Dayan and Adam Lindemann on this tasteful pop-up gallery. As joyful as the art is colorful and fresh, curated by Alison M. Gingeras, the event was a nostalgic nod to our pre-pandemic celebrations.

    As you enter the gallery on the right, a post-expressionist painting, “The Seated Painter (After Vermeer),” illustrates at once the quality of work in the exhibition, and its theme, the way in which art inspires art. A figure seated at an easel has his back to us, perhaps the artist known as Maryan himself in 17th century dress, from 1966. Born Pinchas Burstein, Maryan survived Auschwitz and lived for a time in New York, famed among artists.

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  • Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin Star in a Revival of Same Time, Next Year to Benefit Guild Hall, Directed by Bob Balaban

    Baldwin Moore
    In case you were wondering what A-list actors were up to sequestered in the time of COVID-19, Bob Balaban works hard as ever from his home in Sagaponack, developing content for when “the gates are lifted,” and looking to help the community. With an idea for supporting Guild Hall, he got Alec Baldwin who got Julianne Moore, the result: a benefit staged reading of Bernard Slade’s two-hander, Same Time, Next Year opening on July 12 on Zoom.

    Said Josh Gladstone, GH artistic director, confronting the challenge of keeping its virtual doors open, “this is our third Zoomed show. “Balaban brought the idea to us.” Alec Baldwin supports so many cultural projects out east, and Julie wants to, but usually has scheduling difficulties; now she is out in Montauk, and everyone is free.

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  • Remembering Milton Glaser in Tangier

    Glaser2
    By the summer of 1983 when I met him, designer/ illustrator Milton Glaser, who died this week at age 91, was already famous. The founder of Push Pin Studios, a founder of New York Magazine, had already created the iconic sign, I [heart] New York, as well as so many other memorable designs, you knew his work before you knew who made it. Glaser was a friend of Silas Rhodes,  the founder of The School of Visual Arts, and taught graphic design at the school, participating in a summer program in Tangier, Morocco.

    Silas liked to surround himself with talented people, and knowing that the writer Paul Bowles resided there, added creative writing to the program that already offered photography, fine arts, and graphic design. Paul, however, did not teach. That’s where I came in, with a freshly minted Ph.D. in American literature, having written a dissertation on Jack Kerouac, who Paul knew in the New York literary circles he occupied when he visited New York. More often, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, all came to see Paul. That summer, our group included, aside from Milton, Brice Marden, Mary Ellen Mark, Louise Bourgeois, Marshall Arisman, Ed Benguiat, Duane Michals, and guests passing through, Pete Hamill, and Francine du Plessix Gray.

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  • Willem Dafoe in Abel Ferrara’s Tommaso: When in Rome . . .

    Tom
    Abel Ferrara makes movies the way Jack Kerouac writes fiction, in controlled spontaneity. The idea for Tommaso, about a filmmaker living in Rome, came to Ferrara as he was making another film, Siberia, a more challenging work demanding a greater budget for mountaintop scenes in five feet of snow, and forest exteriors. Tommaso is shot in Rome, where both he and his star Willem Dafoe reside in the same neighborhood; with interiors in Ferrara’s home, Tommaso is a take on his own domestic scene. His wife Cristina Chiriac stars as Tommaso’s wife, their daughter Anna Ferrara stars as their daughter. What a daring set up! Your friend playing an aspect of you making love to your wife!

    As Dafoe explained the process in an interview on this past week, the actors know the start point of a given scene, but don’t know where they will end up. Dafoe, a great theater actor, handles the improvisation, especially well, partnering with cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger, but, he says, he finds more freedom in more structured filmmaking. Still, their close relationship helps with an improvisational strategy: Ferrara could tell Dafoe a story, and he, says Dafoe, “tries to inhabit what he’s talking about.”

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  • Remembering Photographer Elsa Dorfman

    Elsa
    A longtime collaborator with Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, and other literary figures, photographer Elsa Dorfman was a true American original. A portrait artist often associated with her main instrument, the large format 20" x 24" inch Polaroid camera, Dorfman, an influence to poets, and, from all reports, a great friend, died this week at 83.

    In 2017, I met her when her pal Errol Morris made a film about her, The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography, his most intimate documentary. Usually working with out-sized personalities, McNamara to Rumsfeld, the murderous gasman of Zyklon B, to name a few, documentarian Errol Morris has the further distinction with his 1985 The Thin Blue Line, of having changed the course of one man’s destiny with his investigative work, unearthing evidence that showed he was innocent of murder.

    Elsa Dorfman, a neighborhood friend seems a smaller portrait indeed, but the filmmaker caught up with this mild-mannered photographer just as the Gentle Giant movers were removing some large-scale Polaroids for storage, so his picture of her surprises as it covers the technical aspect of Polaroid photography, and perhaps, the end of an era. This conversation from that time, as the film was about to open after a distinguished festival run including the New York Film Festival, reveals something of Dorfman’s charm. Errol and Elsa complete one another’s sentences.

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  • John Waters Cajoles Graduates at SVA Commencement: Become Covid-19 Commandoes!

    John Waters
    Superstars Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey may be grabbing headlines offering online encouragement to college graduates this season, but John Waters did the job this week, dispensing discordant wisdom to designers and other artists graduating from The School of Visual Arts. The ceremony, usually held at Radio City Music Hall, featured far flung speakers, Waters himself at a podium with curtain backdrop from his home in Baltimore, setting of his most famous satiric films including his underground homage to filth, Pink Flamingos, and his breakout commercial hit, Hairspray. A dapper dresser in brocade jackets, Waters wore a traditional gown, cap, and latex gloves, all in black, his signature pencil thin ‘stache under an artsy mask. Pulling it off, he consoled the graduates who’d been robbed of a “normal” graduation: “If you do die tomorrow, at least you’ll have a college degree.”

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  • Kristin Scott Thomas in Military Wives: A Virtual Premiere

    Wives
    Virtual premieres are new to me, and definitely to Kristin Scott Thomas who attended for her latest film Military Wives this week. After explaining that the film opened in the UK for five minutes before being shut down in the pandemic, the director of this feel good movie, Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty), introduced his stars, Sharon Horgan and Kristin Scott Thomas, while Thomas groused about the bleating of sheep being shorn. Isn’t that the way with Zoom? You may overhear the chit chat as you wait to be admitted. One advantage of a virtual premiere, she said getting into the novelty, “You can wear your own dress.”

    In Military Wives, a movie about a women’s chorus of military wives based on a true story, she plays Kate, a mother who has lost her teenage son in war. A control freak, and Kristin Scott Thomas is a master of contained rage, (her next role as Mrs. Danvers in Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of Rebecca should confirm), her bossy character commands the women’s group to sing. And sing they do, getting as far as London’s Royal Albert Hall. Sharon Horgan plays Lisa, another commanding leader of this group, orchestrating the music and writing lyrics. As she describes this character, her reaction to her husband going off to Afghanistan is red wine. Who can’t relate to that? “This is the right film for isolation and anxiety. You will reach for tissues and laugh out loud.”

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  • Guild Hall Hosts A Revived Reading of Tennessee Williams

    Tennassee Williams
    The works of Tennessee Williams are a goldmine for veteran actors, and Guild Hall has a rich history of producing his plays. At one such event, here’s how it went for a reporter and Eli Wallach. How old am I? asked Eli Wallach playfully. The occasion was a staged reading of works by Tennessee Williams in 2011, his words from memoirs, letters, and scenes from his work, most memorably The Glass Menagerie, in honor of the playwright’s centennial year. 91, averred a reporter. With a smile, his finger gestured up. Meeting the challenge, the reporter counted to 95. His face glowed. That’s it. That great evening at Guild Hall, directed by Harris Yulin who also performed, featured Mercedes Ruehl as Amanda Winfield, and on May 16, just nine years and, in the time of COVID-19, a world later, that evening will be revived at a staged reading of “Portrait of Tennessee: The Words of Tennessee Williams,” this time on Zoom.

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  • Remembering Jerry Stiller

    JerryStiller 2
    Of course, everyone remembers Jerry Stiller as George Costanza’s father on Seinfeld. Festivus? Remember the holiday of Festivus famously celebrated by George’s dad? Way before that he was the Stiller of Stiller & Meara, one of the greatest comedy teams ever, with his wife Ann Meara. And, as if I were paying a shiva call to his son Ben Stiller and family from my sequestered perch, I will recount a tale or two from this beloved curmudgeon comedian who died yesterday at age 92.

    March 15, 2008 at Judith Crist’s “Survivor’s Party.” I am the guest of Sylvia Miles, and Jerry Stiller installs himself between us on Judith’s couch. Jerry Stiller tells the story about his Versace suit—he had had some sort of attack and went to the hospital—came out feeling incredible, thrilled with life. He goes by Versace where he had purchased a suit for $900 just a year before, and the salesman remembers him. He tries on this suit for $1200, a gorgeous blue silk with subtle dots woven in. Jerry says, but I bought one last year for only $900. Can’t you do something about this? Come on man, says the salesman. Don’t do this, but Jerry persists. Who can you call? Well Gianni is dead and Donatella is in Milan. Call her in Milan, and he gets the suit for $900.

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  • Chiara Mastroianni in On a Magical Night/ Rendez-vous with French Cinema

    On aMqgical Night
    As of the beginning of March, Film at Lincoln Center was abuzz with plans for the annual Rendez-vous with French Cinema, with On a Magical Night to screen, and filmmaker Christophe Honore, and his star Chiara Mastroianni to attend. The festival kaboshed, like much of everything, the film is now available: strandreleasing.com. The director and star, distanced in Paris apartments with their respective cats, talked about their film on Zoom.

    The French do have a way of making infidelity, especially a beautiful, feisty older woman with younger men, seem a rite of passage. Mastroainni plays Maria, married to Richard (Benjamin Biolay) who catches on by reading her student’s sexually charged texts on her phone. She leaves for a hotel across the street and the apparition of Richard’s younger self (Vincent Lacoste) comes calling. That’s the movie’s set up, and even when it is charming and funny, disloyalty carries its own weight.

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  • Remembering Michael McClure

    McClure
    A West Coast beat, Michael McClure was less of a presence in New York than the seminal figures: Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, but he was no less of a master poet, combining his love of nature with traditional forms such as villanelles, sonnets and sestinas. One of the last beat poets, Michael McClure (87) died this week.

    Back in 1956, at the pivotal Six Gallery reading, where Ginsberg read Howl for an audience for the first time, and a shy Kerouac passed around a jug of red wine, as legend has it, McClure performed his 1954 poem, “For the Death of a Hundred Whales,” breaking down its ballad meter to A-B-C-B rhymes, to form a “cubist poem,” as he explained in his “The Beat Journey: An Interview.” He combined a love of theater, poetry, and art with his ecological concerns, and, among his credits, performed with Ray Manzarek of The Doors.

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  • Felt Sad, Posted a Frog (and other streams of global quarantine): What is “Essential?”

    Frog3
    The writer/ editor Gordon Lish used to say, riffing off a groaner of a joke, “Everyone has to be somewhere.” For characters in isolation in a new play inspired by the moment, Felt Sad, Posted a Frog (and other streams of global quarantine), the location is all over the place. That, of course, is the point. We are all there, be it Belgrade, Buenos Aires, Bucharest or Berlin. An interweaving of streams by six playwrights—Iva Brdar, Jorgelina Cerritos, Rebekka Kricheldorf, Santiago Loza, Saviana Stanescu, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon—this work glimpses others in their sequestered locales, their loneliness, creativity, frustration, fear presented up close the way we are experiencing others these days—only, this is a work of theater, and like it or not, we’re in it.

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  • Julia Garner in The Assistant: He’s Not That Into You

    The Assistant
    Remember when the big news was the rampant sexual predation in our culture? Roger Ailes, Matt Lauer, men who preyed on women seem like proverbial spuds compared to the current threat on all our systems. The movie The Assistant, about Jane, an aspiring film producer in her entry level job at a movie studio goes through her routine, making coffee, copies, reservations, and observes some unsavory activity between a new hire and the much older unnamed, unseen boss. When she attempts to report her employer’s impropriety, the film takes on a timely edge, and made many who saw it at early screenings think of Harvey Weinstein in the Miramax years and beyond, just as the movie mogul was then the big news of the day, convicted after 87 women accused him of sexual misdeeds. Now, The Assistant is available on DVD, AppleTV, and Amazon Prime Video, and, while it has lost that hot topic punch as far as #MeToo, it gains in being emblematic of a bygone world in severe disrepair. If we ever go back to the office, it’s got to be better than this.

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