Adorable-dog alert. But here, too, is one of screwball’s most equitable couples, Nick and Nora Charles, sparring, bantering and (endlessly) drinking. Deftly played by William Powell and Myrna Loy, the crimebusting pair constitute a vision of Manhattanite sophistication never rendered as sharply—even through Hollywood’s prism. (Plus, the pooch, Asta, seriously adds value.) W.S. Van Dyke’s 1934 comic mystery screens tonight at 92YTribeca, a venue you should seriously make friends with.

I can’t even hide how geeked out I was to meet the director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist this weekend. (I once interviewed him on the phone, but this was better.) Hooper, a soft-spoken Austinite with terrific, jaw-dropping Hollywood stories, was, as always, a gentleman and definitely the highlight of my trip to Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors convention. Is there photographic evidence? You betcha.

Children of the night, sad as it is to say, Film Forum’s Tod Browning festival concludes this evening with Dracula (duh). We bow in gratitude. But please, adventurous programmers: Let’s one day have a complete Browning retro of newly struck prints. Even though it’s somewhat creaky, 1931’s Dracula deserves props as the first thriller superproduction—an extremely atmospheric one. Of course, Bela Lugosi casts a superb warp on the film. (If you’ve been watching these Browning movies, imagine Lon Chaney in the role; rumors persist that he would have played the Count had he not died the year of shooting.) Dracula is the beginning of Hollywood’s golden age of horror and an essential for any viewer. And if you remember Martin Landau’s advice in Ed Wood, it’s also very romantic. Date movie!

There’s nothing like a frightumentary about corporate-run agriculture to get us eating salads for a day or two. Our sister blog The Feed has an exclusive interview with Robert Kenner, director of the forthcoming Food, Inc. Check it out, then eat a single leaf of fresh basil. Tonight’s screening of the documentary at the Times Center (presented by Museum of the Moving Image) is long sold out, but maybe you can sneak in—you’ll be rail thin!

Is tonight the night you finally go see Rashomon? Yes. We think it is. You’ve been putting it off, putting it off—yeah, it’s a biggie, but you had to go see Star Trek first, and also that Pixar movie, etc. But tonight you’ll commit. Film Forum is a lovely place to be, especially on a Thursday. You’ll feel like a real connoisseur. And this new restoration of Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 breakthrough is pretty tops. Subjectwise, the movie is about as modern as they come: Truth can shift and bend, depending on your perspective. So who cares that the film is close to 60 years old? You can appreciate older things. You can see value in cinema’s history. You’ve heard about samurai and Japan and Toshiro Mifune and want to learn more. See? You’ve totally psyched yourself up to go see Rashomon.

If seeing Woodstock tonight feels a little too grandpa-y, maybe you want to dial your time machine forward, to the early ’80s, when the almost-famous Anvil flirted with success. The band is still toiling at its art, and Sacha Gervasi’s fine documentary, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, is still in theaters. Our critic loved it, saying “it turns the nail-biting tension up to 11″; we also chatted with the band, a winningly sincere combo. The doc calls to you tonight for a special screening at the Village East at 10pm—after which Anvil will emerge, triumphantly, and play a live set! There will be no more cathartic a moment ever.

And maybe you’re thinking: No thanks, I’ve already graduated high school. But you’d be wrong—way wrong, man. Because this isn’t any ordinary Woodstock. It’s a special 40th-anniversary version with buckets of extra performance footage. So yes, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix and Joe Cocker—but also the Grateful Dead, Mountain and Creedence Clearwater Revival (bands that were never included in earlier editions). The Film Society’s ticket price for tonight special 7pm screening is a steep $25, but watching this classic document with a crowd is definitely the way to go. A respectable journalist recently told me that he actually got a contact high from witnessing the new cut. I don’t know whether to trust him, because he’s a big, fat loadie. But still.

Ever been to the French Institute Alliance Française? No? You’re missing out. Its programming is uncommonly adventurous, its seating is tush-friendly, and you get that self-congratulatory feeling of supporting a treasured NYC arts venue. And tonight’s the perfect moment for you to start your patronage: It’s showing Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt—to these eyes, the director’s finest film—starring the lovely Brigitte Bardot. It’s the kind of movie that can spur some serious Francophilia. Here’s our six-star review.

We just can’t stop mouthing off about this sick Tod Browning stuff. Once again, people: There’s a great old-Hollywood cult director to be discovered on Monday nights at Film Forum. Last week I went to see The Unknown with a pal and we couldn’t help but be floored by all the psychosexual awfulness intended for our enjoyment. (The crowd went nuts.) Tonight’s dark gem, 1928’s West of Zanzibar, is a favorite of retro auteur Guy Maddin. What’s in store? Two competing magicians! One paralyzes the other from the waist down! But there’s revenge to come—in colonialist Africa! Also, a daughter…and a brothel! (Seriously, those exclamation points are merited.)

There is no more perfect summer movie than the one unspooling at BAM tonight at 6:30 and 9:30pm, in a 35mm print. As the 1986 sequel to a beloved thriller, Aliens faced frightening expectations from fans and studio heads alike—expectations ably shouldered by Sigourney Weaver, who was even Oscar-nominated for this performance (a rarity for sci-fi action). Perhaps more significantly, the movie is James Cameron’s finest two hours, even with T2 and Titanic ahead of him. Here are all of his signature moves: the capable, steely-eyed heroine, the precisely tooled action sequences, the dark humor and fanatically detailed production design. I remember seeing this movie on my 15th birthday. Even then, as a precritical adolescent, I felt like I was witnessing some kind of history. Aliens is the essential 1980s blockbuster, both solidly Reaganite and deeply anticorporate. It will make you understand why Hollywood so often shoots for the moon.

Isn’t it time to learn how to be a man already? So many of the films we’re meant to enjoy end up celebrating the little boy in all of us. (I’m looking at you, Spielberg, Lucas, Tarantino.) Cool Hand Luke, meanwhile, takes place in the community of adults, specifically a rural, Southern penitentiary. Our hero is Paul Newman (a peak performance), offending the guards with his unbroken spirit. The movie plays this afternoon and tonight as part of Film Forum’s invaluable “Con Film Festival.” You’ll feel smarter and more seasoned when you leave the theater.

Dolls in general: creepy or cute? Discuss. They’re either unbearably sad (especially in black-and-white movies) or possessed. And do I have to bring up the evil clown from Poltergeist? Didn’t think so. Anyway, you probably know what you’re getting into when the film is called The Devil Doll. To be completely accurate, it’s a shrinking-serum story; the sweet old lady in this photo is actually an escaped convict in drag (Lionel Barrymore) who sends little people out to commit murder. You so want to see this movie tonight; Film Forum’s spooky Tod Browning fest rolls on. Here’s a little background on the notorious Hollywood cult director.

To understand the fierce, neurotic brilliance of late monologuist Spalding Gray, you only need to see one film—and this is it. Gray turned his experience playing a small role in The Killing Fields into a hilariously slippery referendum on actors’ vanity and foreign intervention. Director Jonathan Demme, for his part, made Gray’s onstage rant as visual as it could be. (In 1987, Demme could pretty much do no wrong, poised between the Talking Heads and Married to the Mob.) We still can’t wrap our heads around Gray’s sad 2004 demise, an apparent suicide, and suggest paying tribute at tonight’s 8pm screening at IFC Center. Demme will be in attendance and will speak.

Don’t even begin to tell us you haven’t seen Freaks. We accept you anyway. It plays tonight at Film Forum as part of a new Monday series devoted to the strange, anxiety-ridden filmography of director Tod Browning. Browning is the kind of mysterious legend who attracts a crazy cult. Born in 1880, he ran off to join the circus as soon as it was humanly possible. Vaudeville followed, then Hollywood in 1913, at that time a wide-open town. Two years later, he crashed his car in a horrifying accident that required two years of secret surgery and convalescence. Subsequently, many of Browning’s films concern personal catastophe; he bonded with star Lon Chaney, made a truly upsetting revenge movie about a limbless romantic (The Unknown) and hit it huge with 1931’s Dracula. The best Browning films have that scary, musty feel of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard: hauteur and entitlement cut short by awful fate. See as many of these as you can.

Star Trek rolls back the ages on the original crew, but what exactly makes a successful rethink of a franchise with whiskers? It’s not a simple shave. Dave and Josh chatted on the subject.

Josh: So what makes a killer reboot?
Dave: One that understands the basics of the material that we know and love—the characters, the scenarios, the mythology—and yet adds something new to the mix.
J: Precisely. Like looking backward and forward at the same time.
D: How so?
J: Like with Star Trek. If it didn’t have some nods to the old dialogue, we’d be bummed. But it can’t just be that.
D: Right! What would you single out as a really good reboot besides the new Star Trek?
J: The obvious example is Casino Royale, which I actually prefer to virtually every other Bond film. (I know—ducking.)
D: Are you ducking from all those Blofield and Pussy Galore fanatics out there?
J: All those David Niven fans.
D: The hard-core George Lazenby–ites! Read more »

How do we know that Charlie Chaplin’s classic satire is a touch dated? First, its protagonist is dehumanized by something called a “job” (?). Second, the factory where he works races ahead toward greater profits, and it’s set somewhere in America. Finally, no company would ever cut loose its Little Tramp, if only for morale’s sake. Despite these obvious anachronisms, you should go to tonight’s 9pm screening at Middle Collegiate Church, because the movie is totally fun. Plus, cryptoceleb-organist Cameron Carpenter will be accompanying the movie live.

To us, it makes perfect sense that the guy responsible for the Janice Muppet, Jim Henson, got his start as a young hippie-pants writer, contributing zeitgeisty specials to network television like Youth 68: Everything’s Changing…or Maybe It Isn’t. That screens tonight—twice!—for the first time in decades at 92YTribeca. Don’t expect a cameo by Animal, but the show’s got fuzzy warbling aplenty: Jefferson Airplane, the Mamas and the Papas and Vanilla Fudge all make appearances.

Okay, this clip is either going to make you cry laughing or drive you totally insane—like, for days. Click below at your own risk. It comes from Jerry Lewis’s Cracking Up (1983), and features the most annoying accent in movies, ever. You don’t have to be French to like Jerry. And while Cracking Up has its weaknesses, it’s an extremely rare booking and screens three times today at BAM. Keith also wrote an appreciation of BAM’s current rep series, “The Late Film,” which you should read immediately.

1974: Not the smoothest of years, with Nixon fleeing the White House and all, but almost certainly the funkiest. While boxers Ali and Foreman trained for their “Rumble in the Jungle,” a detachment of American musicians jetted to Zaire to take part in the scene. The outcome, chronicled in the head-bobbingly exuberant Soul Power, was a three-day concert of classic artists performing at their peak. James Brown is a whirling, caped superhero; B.B. King seduces his audience with bluesy string-bends. The footage here has the same raw, intimate feel as 1996’s When We Were Kings, about the fight itself. If Soul Power isn’t quite as well shaped or revelatory as that fight doc, it still feels like an essential part of the story. History was being made during those weeks in Africa, not just the burnishing of Ali’s mythology but a global dream of black power and tuneful confidence. The movie screens tonight and twice more; you’ll have tons of fun with it.

Who is Maïwenn (center)? You’ve seen her before, as this sexy alien in The Fifth Element or tied up in the French horror movie High Tension. She is also sisters with the sylphlike Isild Le Besco, an award-winning actor in France, and has a salacious romantic past with Luc Besson. Most importantly, Maïwenn boasts a sense of humor about herself—one would have to, if you’ve been dumped for Milla Jovovich—and a mean streak that she’s turned into a successful stand-up career. Finally, Maïwenn is a director, as such people often become. All About Actresses is her mockumentary about a director (Maïwenn herself) falling for her vain celebrity subjects. The names are not important; they’re mostly Gallic stars. But the film gets at some scalpel-sharp ideas of fame and aging, universal concerns. It screens tonight and two more times—definitely worth checking out.