Quietly, New York City is adding movie theaters. True, the Ziegfeld has closed, but last month, Brooklyn gained the Syndicated; this week, the Lower East Side welcomes the Metrograph Theater. To mark the occasion, the Metrograph begins its life with “Surrender to the Screen,” 16 films whose plot lines feature the film-going experience.
The selections on opening day — Friday, March 4 — are pure New York: Woody Allen’s “The Purple Rose of Cairo” and Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” (which pivots on Robert De Niro’s porn-movie date with Cybill Shepherd). The first weekend also includes cinematic landmarks like Jean-Luc Godard’s “Vivre Sa Vie” and Peter Bogdanovich’s “The Last Picture Show,” as well as Joe Dante’s seldom seen, uncommonly sweet “Matinee,” starring John Goodman as a B-movie producer who opens his latest horror flick, “Mant” — “half man, half ant, all terror” — in Key West, Fla., during the Cuban missile crisis.