GOINGS ON JUNE II - 17, 2025

What we're watching, listening to, and doing this week.

- Michael Schulman

John Cazale was one of the indelible character actors of the nineteen-seventies, but his career was tragically brief. He acted in only five feature films—all Oscar nominees for Best Picture. He played Fredo Corleone in the first two parts of “The Godfather,” as well as antsy sidekicks in “The Conversation” and “Dog Day Afternoon” (pictured) and the guy who doesn't go to Vietnam in “The Deer Hunter,” which came out eight months after he died, of cancer, in 1978. He was forty-two. To celebrate Cazale’s ninetieth-birthday year, Film Forum plays all five of his films, June 13-19. It’s a chance not only to revisit a string of stone-cold classics of the New Hollywood but to pay closer attention to the guy who's off to the side, filling his unglamorous characters with delectable grace notes.

ABOUT TOWN

DANCEHALL | In the nineteen-eighties, the Jamaican singer and d.j. Ophlin Russell became one of the most significant figures in dancehall music, as Sister Nancy. Dancehall, a child of reggae, was less downtempo, more open to electronics, and dominated by the “sound system”—groups of d.j.s who perform in clashes to determine the superior crew. Dancehall is a club culture, but Sister Nancy’s reputation was cemented in the studio. Her 1982 début, “One, Two,” is a genre landmark, including “Bam Bam,” among the greatest songs ever made. Performing alongside JonnyGo Figure, a local d.j. who carries on the musical legacy, the icon keeps stoking an eternal party.—Sheldon Pearce (Public Records; June 15.)