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The New York Film Festival 2025
The 63rd annual event dazzled with A-list stars, but our critic found hidden gems among the foreign films By George Blecher Transylvanian hijinks are on display in Radu Jude’s Dracula . October 22, 2025 Though the 63rd New York Film Festival featured a lot of films by American directors like Noah Baumbach, Jim Jarmusch, Bradley Cooper and Kathryn Bigelow, you won’t read about them here. I figured they’d be online or in theaters in the blink of a cinematic eye, so I stuck wi
George Blecher
Oct 2410 min read
The unstoppable solipsist
George Blecher 11 August 2025 The Courts have acquiesced, the populace is compliant and the Democratic Party is splintered. Without any...
George Blecher
Aug 126 min read
Reign of terror
George Blecher 11 June 2025 Four months into Trump’s second term and the president’s ICE raids on immigrants, triggering protests in Los...
George Blecher
Jun 118 min read
The Virus-Man
New Croton Review Spring 2025 by George Blecher Click on the image to read the story Here's a new story of mine in the latest issue of...
George Blecher
May 181 min read
Coping with the imperial presidency
George Blecher 31 March 2025 It’s only two months into Trump’s second presidency and Americans are already suffering from nightmarish...
George Blecher
Apr 58 min read
America’s new young generation looks away from Europe
The United States is changing, perhaps for the better, though not in politics. And they are less and less “European”, argues the American...
George Blecher
Nov 4, 20245 min read
The 62nd New York Film Festival: A Mixed Bag
Our reviewer did his best. But even with an abundance of movies to choose from, this year’s offerings weren’t quite as good as he’d hoped...
George Blecher
Nov 1, 202412 min read
Taking the Plunge: Swimming Places We Loved
Late-summer memories of magical swimming spots, past and present, in Yonkers and Port Washington, not to mention Singapore and Tokyo—plus...
George Blecher
Sep 1, 20245 min read
Pretty Big Fish by George Blecher
New Croton Review: Spring 2024 A few minutes after I hook the pretty big fish, he explodes out of the water in a torrent of foam and...
George Blecher
May 19, 20246 min read
Edible Memories: At Le Café Arnold, Chicken Flambé and V8 juice
European elegance—slightly ersatz—at a French establishment that was once a mainstay on Central Park South By George Blecher April 19,...
George Blecher
Apr 20, 20244 min read
Running scared
George Blecher 18 March 2024 Biden’s State of the Union speech seems to have proved that he could survive another four years in the White...
George Blecher
Mar 21, 20247 min read
Job at Alphabet City’s Connelly Theater: An Ecstatic Review
Spellbinding. Nothing short of phenomenal. So says our reviewer, George Blecher, of this 80-minute two-hander that starts out as a...
George Blecher
Mar 5, 20244 min read
Art Cinema—An Endangered Species?
A rundown of six New York Film Festival films (two of them terrific; the rest—not so much), plus concerns about serious films in the age...
George Blecher
Oct 29, 202312 min read
I’ll Never Forget … Billie Holiday, June 15, 1957
The night the music came alive at the Loew’s Sheridan Theatre, New York City By George Blecher The main event: Billie Holiday topping the...
George Blecher
Aug 24, 20235 min read
The Hand-Model
by George Blecher A woman my father claimed was a famous hand-model lived down the street in a faux-Tudor house too big for one person. I...
George Blecher
Aug 24, 20234 min read
The City as Desire
A child of the boroughs ventures forth in midcentury Manhattan By George Blecher Photos by Angelo Rizzuto. Library of Congress, Prints &...
George Blecher
Jun 13, 202315 min read
The old man scores some points
George Blecher February 16 2023 The faith in American unanimity that Joe Biden expressed in this year’s State of the Union speech sounded...
George Blecher
Feb 19, 20236 min read
Our Book Reviews are Back. Part 1: Fiction
We start with four novels, telling tales—and tales within tales. Because…isn’t reality overrated? The Swedish writer Lina Wolff wears her...
George Blecher
Dec 27, 20225 min read
It could have been worse
George Blecher 14 November 2022 The red tide never surged but the re-election of numerous brazen careerists and hardline crazies is bad...
George Blecher
Nov 14, 20227 min read
Leopoldstadt on Broadway: A Review
Tom Stoppard’s highly anticipated take on the tragedy of Austro-German Jews is only occasionally riveting By George Blecher 1899: Two...
George Blecher
Oct 31, 20226 min read
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