In The Woman in the Window, Amy Adams plays Anna, plucked from the controversial novel by Dan Mallory and thrust onto the screen by director Joe Wright. She’s an agoraphobic child-psychologist, embittered by routine boredom and separated from her husband and 8-year-old daughter. Anna spends her day isolated in her spacious 121st Street Harlem brownstone — with very little to do outside taking her daily cocktail of pharmaceuticals and passing out with a film noir each night. There are always…

Rifkin’s Festival follows a retired film professor obsessed with the European classics he taught at NYU. At one key point, as Rifkin blathers to his psychoanalyst about attending Sans Sebastian alongside his wife (a publicist), he laments how “film festivals are no longer what they were,” reminiscing on the halcyon days when cinema was art. The use of analysis within the film functions as a framing device that replicates the essence of the practice. Manifesting his egotistical nature—reflecting Rifkin’s perception—this…