New York City 1997 Commercial Releases
(Reconstructed from my Skandies files for that year and New York Times archives; I didn't start noting week-to-week until 1998. Films seen by yours truly are in blue.)
31 Dec
The Boxer (Jim Sheridan)
O Amor Natural (Heddy Honigmann)
Oscar and Lucinda (Gillian Armstrong)
Week of 26 Dec
Afterglow (Alan Rudolph)
An American Werewolf in Paris (Anthony Waller)
As Good as It Gets (James L. Brooks)
Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino)
Kundun (Martin Scorsese)
Ma vie en rose (My Life in Pink) (Alain Berliner)
Mr. Magoo (Stanley Tong)
The Postman (Kevin Costner)
Wag the Dog (Barry Levinson)
The Winter Guest (Alan Rickman)
Week of 19 Dec
The Apostle (Robert Duvall)
Mouse Hunt (Gore Verbinski)
Titanic (James Cameron)
Tomorrow Never Dies (Roger Spottiswoode)
Will It Snow for Christmas? (Sandrine Veysset)
Week of 12 Dec
Amistad (Steven Spielberg)
Deconstructing Harry (Woody Allen)
For Richer or Poorer (Bryan Spicer)
Home Alone 3 (Raja Gosnell)
Hugo Pool (Robert Downey)
La recontre (Alain Cavalier)
Scream 2 (Wes Craven)
Week of 5 Dec
Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant)
Office Killer (Cindy Sherman)
Other Voices, Other Rooms (David Rocksavage)
Twisted (Seth Michael Donsky)
We Free Kings (Sergio Citti)
Week of 28 Nov
Alien Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
Bang (Ash)
Bent (Sean Mathias)
Dead Heart (Nick Parsons)
Flubber (Les Mayfield)
Tar (Goetz Grossmann)
Welcome to Sarajevo (Michael Winterbottom)
Week of 21 Nov
A Couch in New York (Chantal Akerman)
How I Spent My Summer Vacation (John Fisher)
John Grisham's The Rainmaker (Francis Ford Coppola)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Clint Eastwood)
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (John R. Leonetti)
The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan)
Week of 14 Nov
Anastasia (Don Bluth & Gary Goldman)
Bugis Street (Yonfan)
Habit (Larry Fessenden)
The Jackal (Michael Caton-Jones)
Kiss or Kill (Bill Bennett)
The Man Who Knew Too Little (Jon Amiel)
The Mouse (Daniel Adams)
Nick and Jane (Richard Mauro)
One Night Stand (Mike Figgis)
Slaves to the Underground (Kristine Peterson)
The Tango Lesson (Sally Potter)
Week of 7 Nov
Bean (Mel Smith)
Cold Around the Heart (John Ridley)
The Deli (John A. Gallagher)
Eve's Bayou (Kasi Lemmons)
The Knowledge of Healing (Franz Reichle)
Mad City (Costa-Gavras)
Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (Kirby Dick)
Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven)
The Wings of the Dove (Iain Softley)
Week of 31 Oct
Critical Care (Sidney Lumet)
Grizzly Mountain (Jeremy Haft)
I Love You, I Love You Not (Billy Hopkins)
Red Corner (Jon Avnet)
SwitchBack (Jeb Stuart)
The Wind in the Willows (Terry Jones)
Week of 24 Oct
Beaumarchais, the Scoundrel (Édouard Molinaro)
Cremaster 5 (Matthew Barney)
FairyTale—A True Story (Charles Sturridge)
Foreign Land (Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas)
Gattaca (Andrew Niccol)
A Life Less Ordinary (Danny Boyle)
Taxi Lisboa (Wolf Gaudlitz)
The Twilight of the Golds (Ross Kagan Marks)
Wonderland (John O'Hagan)
Week of 17 Oct
The Devil's Advocate (Taylor Hackford)
Eye of God (Tim Blake Nelson)
Gummo (Harmony Korine)
I Know What You Did Last Summer (Jim Gillespie)
Playing God (Andy Wilson)
Telling Lies in America (Guy Ferland)
Week of 10 Oct
Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Deep Crimson (Arturo Ripstein)
Gang Related (Jim Kouf)
Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai)
The House of Yes (Mark Waters)
Lilies (John Greyson)
Love Always (Jude Pauline Eberhard)
Most Wanted (David Glenn Hogan)
Napoleon (Mario Andreacchio)
Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (Srdjan Dragojevic)
RocketMan (Stuart Gillard)
Seven Years in Tibet (Jean-Jacques Annaud)
Year of the Horse (Jim Jarmusch)
Week of 3 Oct
Fast, Cheap & out of Control (Errol Morris)
Forgotten Silver (Peter Jackson)
Kiss the Girls (Gary Fleder)
Like a Bride (Guita Schyfter) [1994]
The Locusts (John Patrick Kelley)
The Matchmaker (Mark Joffe)
Nénette et Boni (Claire Denis)
U Turn (Oliver Stone)
Washington Square (Agnieszka Holland)
Week of 26 Sep
The Assignment (Christian Duguay)
The Edge (Lee Tamahori)
The Ice Storm (Ang Lee)
Kicked in the Head (Matthew Harrison)
The Lay of the Land (Larry Arrick)
Mondo Plympton (Bill Plympton)
100 Proof (Jeremy Horton)
The Peacemaker (Mimi Leder)
Ripoux contre ripoux (My New Partner at the Races) (Claude Zidi) [1990]
Soul Food (George Tillman, Jr.)
Week of 19 Sep
Aaron's Magic Village (Albert Hanan Kaminski)
The Birth of Love (Philippe Garrel) [1993]
Going All the Way (Mark Pellington)
In & Out (Frank Oz)
Intimate Relations (Philip Goodhew)
L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson)
The Long Way Home (Mark Jonathan Harris)
My Sex Life, or How I Got Into an Argument (Arnaud Desplechin)
The Myth of Fingerprints (Bart Freundlich)
A Thousand Acres (Jocelyn Moorhouse)
The Toilers and the Wayfarers (Keith Froelich)
Wishmaster (Robert Kurtzman)
Week of 12 Sep
Bandwagon (John Schultz)
Capitaine Conan (Bertrand Tavernier)
Delinquent (Peter Christian Hall)
Different for Girls (Richard Spence)
The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca (Marcos Zurinaga)
The End of Violence (Wim Wenders)
The Game (David Fincher)
Latin Boys Go to Hell (Ela Troyano)
My Mother's Courage (Michael Verhoeven)
Riding the Rails (Michael Uys & Lexy Lovell)
A Self Made Hero (Jacques Audiard)
Yo soy, del son a la salsa (Rigoberto López)
Week of 5 Sep
Family Name (Macky Alston)
Fire Down Below (Félix Enríquez Alcalá)
Gravesend (Salvatore Stabile)
Julian Po (Alan Wade) [possible error; might not have opened in NYC]
The Keeper (Joe Brewster)
Mouth to Mouth (Boca a boca) (Manuel Gómez Pereira)
Week of 29 Aug
Excess Baggage (Marco Brambilla)
Hoodlum (Bill Duke)
Kull the Conqueror (John Nicolella)
She's So Lovely (Nick Cassavetes)
Trojan Eddie (Gillies Mackinnon)
Week of 22 Aug
Conspirators of Pleasure (Jan Svankmajer)
Fire (Deepa Mehta)
G.I. Jane (Ridley Scott)
Leave It to Beaver (Andy Cadiff)
Masterminds (Roger Christian)
Mimic (Guillermo del Toro)
Money Talks (Brett Ratner)
Pippi Longstocking (Michael Schaack & Clive A. Smith)
A Smile Like Yours (Keith Samples)
Sunday (Jonathan Nossiter)
Week of 15 Aug
Cop Land (James Mangold)
The Delta (Ira Sachs)
Event Horizon (Paul W.S. Anderson)
The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo)
Mon homme (Bertrand Blier)
Paperback Romance (Ben Lewin) [1994]
Steel (Kenneth Johnson)
Week of 8 Aug
Career Girls (Mike Leigh)
Conspiracy Theory (Richard Donner)
Def Jam's How to Be a Player (Lionel C. Martin)
Free Willy 3: The Rescue (Sam Pillsbury)
Hamsun (Jan Troell)
Molom, a Legend of Mongolia (Marie-Jaoul de Poncheville)
Soul in the Hole (Danielle Gardner)
Week of 1 Aug
Air Bud (Charles Martin Smith)
In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute)
Lisbon Story (Wim Wenders) [1994]
Love Serenade (Shirley Barrett)
187 (Kevin Reynolds)
Picture Perfect (Glenn Gordon Caron)
Spawn (Mark A.Z. Dippé)
Week of 25 Jul
Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen)
Alive and Kicking (Nancy Meckler)
Box of Moonlight (Tom DiCillo)
Good Burger (Brian Robbins)
Guantanamera (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea & Juan Carlos Tabio)
A Life Apart: Hasidism in America (Menachem Daum & Oren Rudavsky)
Love's Debris (Werner Schroeter)
Star Maps (Miguel Arteta)
The Winner (Alex Cox)
Week of 18 Jul
Café Society (Raymond De Felitta)
George of the Jungle (Sam Weisman)
Kiss Me, Guido (Tony Vitale)
Late Bloomers (Julia Dyer)
Mrs Brown (John Madden)
Nothing to Lose (Steve Oedekerk)
Operation Condor (Jackie Chan) [1991]
The Swan Princess: Escape From Castle Mountain (Richard Rich)
Week of 11 Jul
Brilliant Lies (Richard Franklin)
Contact (Robert Zemeckis)
4 Little Girls (Spike Lee)
Shall We Dance? (Masayuki Suo)
Shooting Porn (Ronnie Larsen)
A Simple Wish (Michael Ritchie)
This World, Then the Fireworks (Michael Oblowitz)
Week of 4 Jul
For Ever Mozart (Jean-Luc Godard)
Men in Black (Barry Sonnenfeld)
Out to Sea (Martha Coolidge)
Wild America (William Dear)
Week of 27 Jun
East Side Story (Dana Ranga)
Face/Off (John Woo)
Gabbeh (Mohsen Makhmalbaf)
Head Above Water (Jim Wilson)
The Innocent Sleep (Scott Michell)
Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (Shinya Tsukamoto) [1992]
Week of 20 Jun
Batman & Robin (Joel Schumacher)
Dream With the Fishes (Finn Taylor)
Fall (Eric Schaeffer)
For Roseanna (Paul Weiland)
Frank and Ollie (Theodore Thomas)
The Last Time I Committed Suicide (Stephen Kay)
MURDER and murder (Yvonne Rainer)
My Best Friend's Wedding (P.J. Hogan)
Underground (Emir Kusturica)
When the Cat's Away (Cédric Klapisch)
Week of 13 Jun
Dust of Life (Rachid Bouchareb)
End of Summer (Linda Yellen)
Hercules (John Musker & Ron Clements)
Speed 2: Cruise Control (Jan de Bont)
Squeeze (Robert Patton-Spruill)
Temptress Moon (Chen Kaige)
Ulee's Gold (Victor Nunez)
Waco: The Rules of Engagement (William Gazecki)
Wedding Bell Blues (Dana Lustig)
Week of 6 Jun
Bliss (Lance Young)
Buddy (Caroline Thompson)
Con Air (Simon West)
The Pillow Book (Peter Greenaway)
Timothy Leary's Dead (Paul Davids)
Week of 30 May
Chronicle of a Disappearance (Elia Suleiman)
Gone Fishin' (Christopher Cain)
Mondo (Tony Gatlif)
Portland (Neils Arden Oplev)
Rough Magic (Clare Peploe)
'Til There Was You (Scott Winant)
Trial and Error (Jonathan Lynn)
Week of 23 May
Addicted to Love (Griffin Dunne)
Brassed Off (Mark Herman)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg)
Ponette (Jacques Doillon)
Week of 16 May
Brothers in Trouble (Udayan Prasad)
La Promesse (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
Love! Valour! Compassion! (Joe Mantello)
Night Falls on Manhattan (Sidney Lumet)
Rudyard Kipling's The Second Jungle Book: Mowgli and Baloo (Dee McLachlan)
Sprung (Rusty Cundieff)
The Van (Stephen Frears)
Week of 9 May
Fathers' Day (Ivan Reitman)
Fetishes (Nick Broomfield)
The Fifth Element (Luc Besson)
Nowhere (Gregg Araki)
Twin Town (Kevin Allen)
Underworld (Roger Christian)
Week of 2 May
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Jay Roach)
The Bloody Child (Nina Menkes)
Breakdown (Jonathan Mostow)
Broken English (Gregor Nicholas)
Children of the Revolution (Peter Duncan)
Commandments (Daniel Taplitz)
The Designated Mourner (David Hare)
Diary of a Seducer (Danièle Dubroux)
Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas)
Ripe (Mo Ogrodnik)
Truth Or Consequences, N.M. (Kiefer Sutherland)
Warriors of Virtue (Ronny Yu)
Week of 25 Apr
All Over Me (Alex Sichel)
A Brother's Kiss (Seth Zvi Rosenfeld)
A Chef in Love (Nana Dzhordzhadze)
Female Perversions (Susan Streitfeld)
Flamenco (Carlos Saura)
Nothing Personal (Thaddeus O'Sullivan)
Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (David Mirkin)
Shiloh (Dale Rosenbloom)
Volcano (Mick Jackson)
Week of 18 Apr
Camp Stories (Herbert Beigel)
8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (Tom Schulman)
Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (Shûsuke Kaneko)
Hollow Reed (Angela Pope)
Kissed (Lynne Stopkewich)
McHale's Navy (Bryan Spicer)
Murder at 1600 (Dwight Little)
Scopitone-A-Go-Go (Dennis Nyback)
To Have (Or Not) (Laetitia Masson)
Traveller (Jack N. Green)
Week of 11 Apr
Anaconda (Luis Llosa)
Così (Mark Joffe)
Grind (Chris Kentis)
Grosse Pointe Blank (George Armitage)
Paradise Road (Bruce Beresford)
Schizopolis (Steven Soderbergh)
Week of 4 Apr
Chasing Amy (Kevin Smith)
Childhood's End (Jeff Lipsky)
Double Team (Tsui Hark)
Inventing the Abbotts (Pat O'Connor)
Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (Bernard Rose)
Licensed to Kill (Arthur Dong)
A Mongolian Tale (Xie Fei)
The Saint (Phillip Noyce)
That Old Feeling (Carl Reiner)
Week of 28 Mar
B.A.P.S. (Robert Townsend)
Cats Don't Dance (Mark Dindal)
The Devil's Own (Alan J. Pakula)
The Hotel Manor Inn (Wayne Chesler)
Love and Other Catastrophes (Emma-Kate Croghan)
The Sixth Man (Randall Miller)
Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse (Anne Belle & Deborah Dickson)
Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (Shuki Levy & David Winning)
Week of 21 Mar
Crash (David Cronenberg)
Gray's Anatomy (Steven Soderbergh)
Liar Liar (Tom Shadyac)
Mandela (Angus Gibson & Jo Menell)
The Quiet Room (Rolf de Heer)
Selena (Gregory Nava)
Week of 14 Mar
City of Industry (John Irvin)
Drunks (Peter Cohn)
love jones (Theodore Witcher)
Week of 7 Mar
Boys Life 2 (various)
The Daytrippers (Greg Mottola)
The Eighth Day (Jaco Van Dormael)
Flipping (Gene Mitchell)
Gentlemen Don't Eat Poets (John-Paul Davidson)
Good Luck (Richard LaBrie)
Jungle 2 Jungle (John Pasquin)
Private Parts (Betty Thomas)
Rhyme & Reason (Peter Spirer)
Sleepover (John F. Sullivan)
Sudden Manhattan (Adrienne Shelly)
The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye)
Week of 28 Feb
Booty Call (Jeff Pollack)
Donnie Brasco (Mike Newell)
Follow Me Home (Peter Bratt)
Hard Eight (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Kama Sutra (Mira Nair)
Rats in the Ranks (Bob Connolly & Robin Anderson)
Smilla's Sense of Snow (Bille August)
Tromeo & Juliet (Lloyd Kaufman)
Week of 21 Feb
Blood and Wine (Bob Rafelson)
Lost Highway (David Lynch)
Rosewood (John Singleton)
Salut Cousin! (Merzak Allouache)
Week of 14 Feb
Absolute Power (Clint Eastwood)
Boyfriends (Neil Hunter & Tom Hunsinger)
Cyclo (Tran Anh Hung)
Dangerous Ground (Darrell Roodt)
Fools Rush In (Andy Tennant)
That Darn Cat (Bob Spiers)
Touch (Paul Schrader)
Unforgotten: Twenty-Five Years After Willowbrook (Jack Fisher)
Vegas Vacation (Stephen Kessler)
Week of 7 Feb
The Beautician and the Beast (Ken Kwapis)
Dante's Peak (Roger Donaldson)
Farmer & Chase (Michael Seitzman)
Hotel de Love (Craig Rosenberg)
Margaret's Museum (Mort Ransen)
The Pest (Paul Miller)
subUrbia (Richard Linklater)
Visiting Desire (Beth B)
Week of 31 Jan
GRIDLOCK'd (Vondie Curtis Hall)
johns (Scott Silver)
Meet Wally Sparks (Peter Baldwin)
Prisoner of the Mountains (Sergei Bodrov)
Saint Clara (Ari Folman & Ori Sivan)
Shadow Conspiracy (George P. Cosmatos)
Waiting for Guffman (Christopher Guest)
Week of 24 Jan
Angel Baby (Michael Rymer)
Angel Dust (Sogo Ishii) [1994]
Dine on Dine (various)
Fierce Creatures (Robert Young & Fred Schepisi)
In Love and War (Richard Attenborough)
Kolya (Jan Sverák)
Prefontaine (Steve James)
A Tickle in the Heart (Stefan Schwietert)
Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern (Steven Ascher & Jeanne Jordan)
Zeus and Roxanne (George Miller)
Week of 17 Jan
Albino Alligator (Kevin Spacey)
Metro (Thomas Carter)
Ulysses' Gaze (Théo Angelopoulos)
Week of 10 Jan
Inside (Arthur Penn)
Jackie Chan's First Strike (Stanley Tong)
The Jew (Jom Tob Azulay)
The Relic (Peter Hyams)
Screwed (Alexander Crawford)
Turbulence (Robert Butler)
Date unknown
I noted these two films as NYC releases at the time, but now, 20 years later, cannot find any evidence (on the Internet) of said release. (See also Julian Po, which was definitely released on 5 September, but for which I can find no evidence of its release specifically in New York.)
Dancehall Queen (Rick Elgood & Don Letts)
Out of the Present (Andrei Ujica)