Wow, that is one looong stay in the clink! What exactly did Spencer Tracy do to deserve such a stiff sentence, you ask? He takes the rap for girlfriend Bette Davis when she has to give one no-good hood a fatal dose of the what for; prison riots, fisticuffs behind bars, a bust-out and a ride on Old Sparky naturally ensue. Tracy filled in for James Cagney when the pugnacious star demanded that Warner Bros. give him more dough, and if you know the kindhearted red-headed actor only from his double-team work with Katharine Hepburn, you’re be in for a nice shock. This 1932 potboiler finds director Michael Curtiz in peak gun-for-hire form, and we applaud Film Forum for including this underrated drama in its jailcentric Con Film Festival. (Get it? Con Film Festival! Yuk yuk yuk.) Showtimes and info can be found here. Need even more incentive? At tonight’s 6:15pm show, Sing Sing’s actual acting superintendent, Dawson Brown, will discipline the audience beforehand. Keep that noise controlled, or it’s lockdown for all of you!

Want to know what to check out on the rep circuit? Picture This draws your attention to what’s playing today in revival. Consider it your own private film school, courtesy of TONY.

Fans of Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal, take note: You may find their newest collaboration—the genial soccer comedy Rudo y Cursi, opening next week—to be a bit of a letdown compared with their previous ode to full-frontal dude-ity, Y Tu Mamá También. (See our take on the new movie here.) So what better time than now to revisit the gents’ 2001 breakthrough film, in which road trips, terminal diseases, mystical beaches and the mind-expanding properties of a ménage à trois all serve to help two horny young men grow up? Credit the actors and Alfonso Cuarón’s fast, loose direction for the fact that this fresh take on the coming-of-age parable still holds up beautifully; we have our fingers crossed that a proposed Hollywood remake called Your Mom! perpetually remains a rumor and nothing else. You (and your mom) can find info on tonight’s screening here.

Want to know what to check out on the rep circuit? Picture This draws your attention to what’s playing today in revival. Consider it your own private film school, courtesy of TONY.

There are people who hear the phrase a nearly three-hour French adaptation of a literary classic and immediately want to make like Iron Maiden, i.e., run to the hills. (Having sat through Claude Chabrol’s rather lengthy and lethargic take on Madame Bovary, we understand their trepidation.) But Pascale Ferran’s incredible 2006 screen version of D.H. Lawrence’s risqué novel (actually an adaptation of the author’s second version of the story, originally penned in 1927) is anything but a staid Masterpiece Theatre–style slog. Marina Hands’s performance as the lady in question gives you the sense that you are watching someone bloom into their sexuality without feeling the need to avert your eyes, and you can credit Jean-Louis Coullo’ch for making her lover—rough-hewn, middle-aged, bearish and blunt in his looks—still appear sexy as hell. You can get details on the screening here.

Want to know what to check out on the rep circuit? Picture This draws your attention to what’s playing today in revival. Consider it your own private film school, courtesy of TONY.

While those new to the vibrant work of Shirley Clarke have already had the chance to experience her avant-garde shorts and Gotham neorealist features during Anthology’s Clarke retro over the weekend (we’re assuming you were there instead of, like, out enjoying the weather), the program’s one true rarity is a valentine to her longtime fans: Rome Burns. Broadcast as an episode of the French TV show Cinéastes de Notre Temps, this 1970 portrait of the artist as a top-hatted raconteur finds Clarke shooting the breeze about her films, her background as a dancer and a host of other topics, while fellow iconoclasts Jacques Rivette and Yoko Ono cavort in the background. Shown at last year’s Edinburgh Film Festival, its first screening since it originally aired, this hour-long doc offers a unique glimpse of the filmmaker holding court. Don’t miss it; here are the details.

Want to know what to check out on the rep circuit? Picture This draws your attention to what’s playing today in revival. Consider it your own private film school, courtesy of TONY.

“We’re just two girls from Little Rock,” sing Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, kick-starting Howard Hawks’s only bona fide musical into high gear mere seconds after the opening credits have started. (Memo to self: If these two are representative of the Arkansas city’s residents, visit Little Rock immediately.) They are, of course, hardly “girls,” and whether Monroe’s Lorelei Lee and Russell’s Dorothy Shaw truly hail from the Southern town is highly debatable; the duo are professional gold-diggers, so it’s hard to know what’s on the up-and-up. You could easily get caught up in the camp appeal of this classic’s best-known numbers—the hilariously homoerotic “Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love?” and Monroe’s iconic “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” pictured above—or debate the movie’s estrogenic politics with your gender-studies professors until the proverbial cows come home. We simply like to think of this treasure as the one that perfectly blends the strong-willed Hawksian female with the dizzy-dame screwball archetype the director helped establish in movies like Bringing Up Baby (1938). Gentlemen Prefer Blondes plays at Clearview Chelsea tonight at 7 and 9:30pm; here are the details.