Nyff 2014

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Wed., 8 Oct. P&I screenings and public showings of Assayas' CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (heavily attended) and Robert Kenner's MERCHANTS OF DOUBT (Spotlight on Documentary sidebar)

Olivier Assayas: Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)

About acting, about aging, about intergenerational rivalry, about the media circus and handheld devices and social media, about the Swiss Alps, about theater vs. film, this movie was conceived as a vehicle for Juliette Binoche. Well it's a well acted, serious and impressive film, but I found it heavy-handed and overlong; Kristen Stweart great though fore sure, a revelation. She is relaxed, quick, sophisticated, smart -- and makes a place for herself as one of our best young actresses and should get more European roles as well.


Robert Kenner: Merchants of Doubt (2014)

The issue is very important: global warming. The angle is the paid liars and hype artists, wearing various hates as scientists or writers or media mavens, who work for Exxon Mobil or the Koch brothers and sell the idea that global warming is nothing to worry about, that it doesn't exist, that it exists but is a good thing. The film compares this game to magic tricks and finds that a number of the same people work working several decades ago to sell the idea that cigarettes are good for you and nicotine isn't addictive. Kenner's previous film was the 2009 FOOD, INC., showing that most food production in the US is controlled by the same five big companies.

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Alex Ross Perry: Listen Up Philip (2014)

For this Sundance hit, indie filmmaker Perry received Hollywood producer backing and was able to assemble a dream cast of Jason Schwartzman, Elizabeth Moss, Jonathan Pryce, Dree Hemingway, Krysten Ritter, and Joséphine de La Baume with Eric Bogosian as voice-over narrator for his acid and sometimes hilarious portrait of a cruel narcissistic young novelist mentored by a famous older version of himself based on Philip Roth. Schwartzman is Philip. A very New York film that might be considered Perry's SQUID AND THE WHALE (which similarly had a home town debut in the 43rd NYFF, in 2005 (the first one covered in Filmleaf).

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NYFF52 AT A GLANCE: DAY 15
October 10, 2014

TODAY'S P&I SCREENINGS [done!]
11:15AM FOXCATCHER (134min)
*Press conference to follow with Director Bennett Miller, Steve Carell, Mark
Ruffalo, Anthony Michael Hall, Sienna Miller, Channing Tatum and Vanessa Redgrave
6PM CITIZENFOUR (TBD) LOCATION: BOW TIE CHELSEA CINEMAS, 260 W 23rd St (b/t 7th Ave & 8th Ave)

FREE NYFF EVENTS! Sponsored by HBO
NYFF Live Talk: Albert Maysles (Iris) 7:00pm | Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater

TODAY'S SCHEDULE
Iris 3:45pm | Francesca Beale Theater
Spotlight on Documentary World Premiere. Q&A with director Albert Maysles and Iris Apfel.
CITIZENFOUR 6:00pm | Alice Tully Hall
Main Slate World Premiere. Directed by Laura Poitras
The Forest 6:00pm | Francesca Beale Theater
Special Events U.S. Premiere. Directed by Arnaud Desplechin. Screening with Claire Denis's Voilà l’enchaînement.
Hiroshima Mon Amour 6:00pm | Walter Reade Theater
Revivals Directed by Alain Resnais.
A Letter to Three Wives 6:30pm | Howard Gilman Theater
Joseph L. Mankiewicz Retrospective
Suddenly, Last Summer 9:00pm | Howard Gilman Theater
Joseph L. Mankiewicz Retrospective
Listen Up Philip 9:00pm | Francesca Beale Theater
Main Slate Q&A with director Alex Ross Perry and actor Jason Schwartzman.
Life of Riley 9:00pm | Walter Reade Theater
Main Slate U.S. Premiere.
Foxcatcher 9:00pm | Alice Tully Hall
Main Slate Q&A with director Bennett Miller and actors Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Vanessa Redgrave, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller, and Anthony Michael Hall.

LOOKING AHEAD: TOMORROW
Closing Night screenings of Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance; final screening of Foxcatcher, CITIZENFOUR, and Life of Riley; and free HBO Directors Dialogue with Laura Poitras! Plus, join us Sunday for encore screenings of some of NYFF's sold out films. See schedule here

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From yesterday:

Bennett Miller: Foxcatcher (2014)

Based on a true story of crime in the world of the very rich in the Nineties. Strange old-money American millionaire John E. Dupont maintains a wrestling training camp at his Pennsylvania estate. Over time he eventually shoots and kills one of the wrestlers, one of two brothers who have been at the camp for some time. An oppressive and somewhat heavy-handed film. With Sienna Miller, Mark Ruffalo, Steve Carell, and Channing Tatum.

Laura Poitras: Citizenfour (2014)

A nicely edited first-hand account of the Edward Snowden story. It provieds full context and meanings, but the key element is seeing Snowded himself up close in his Hong Kong hotel room as he and Guardian correspondents, mainly Glenn Greenwald, publish his revelations about NSA spying into personal details of everybody.

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NYFF52 AT A GLANCE: DAY 16
October 11, 2014

TODAY'S P&I SCREENINGS [done!]
10AM BIRDMAN (119m)
*Press conference to follow with Director Alejandro G. Innaritu, Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Ryan, Andrea Riseborough
LOCATION: AMC Lincoln Square, 1998 Broadway (between W67th/68th)

FREE NYFF TALK!
HBO Directors Dialogues: Laura Poitras (CITIZENFOUR) 4:00pm | Walter Reade Theater

TODAY'S SCHEDULE
CITIZENFOUR 1:00pm | Walter Reade Theater
Main Slate World Premiere. Directored by Laura Poitras
Foxcatcher 2:00pm | Alice Tully Hall
Main Slate Q&A with actors Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller, and Anthony Michael Hall.
Life of Riley 2:00pm | Francesca Beale Theater
Main Slate U.S. Premiere.
CLOSING NIGHT! Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance
Main Slate Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and select cast members in person at ATH screenings.
6:00pm & 9:00pm | Alice Tully Hall (ATH)
6:15pm & 9:15pm | Walter Reade Theater
6:30, 6:45, 9:30, 9:45 | Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center

TOMORROW: BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!
Join us all day tomorrow for encore screenings of previously unavailable festival favorites! Sponsored by Citibank. See schedule here

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Alejandro G. Iñárritu: Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtues of Ignorance) ( 2014)

The Closing Night film, a tour de force and a complete change of pace for the Mexican director, again as in GRAVITY working in English with an American cast. Still overly ambitious, maybe, but the heavy-handed "significance" of 21 GRAMS, BABEL and BIUTIFUL is gone in favor of humor and satire and the main actors, Michael Keaton and Edward Norton, had great fun with this material. Another of the New York Film Festival's many "New York movies" this year, shot almost entirely at the St. James Theater on 44th and Broadway, from whence Keaton wanders through Times Square clad only in his skivvies followed by the director's virtuoso dp Emmanuel Lubezki in one more of the film's seamless long takes accompanied by the beat of drums, a sequence that clinced my feeling this was somehow similar to Leos Carax's mind-bending HOLY MOTORS (NYFF 2012).

ROUNDUP: 52nd New York Film Festival 2014

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ROUNDUP: 52nd New York Film Festival 2014

As usual, the New York Film Festival had depth and high quality. If there wasn't anything to sweep me away like Amour and Holy Motors, any amazing trip like Lif of Pi, anything as smart and witty as The Social Network or as profound as Sokurov's The Sun, this isn't the selection committee's fault, because this year seems a bit light on dazzlers. Personally I wasn't deeply impressed by any of the American features, but New York-related films came through strong with the street drug story Heaven Knows What, Gere's stunt as a homeless person Time Out of Mind, Perry's smart and mean Listen Up Philip, and Mexican director Iñárritu's Broadway theater tour de force Birdman.

Then we come to "foreign" films that were various kinds of delight. '71 is an intense historical thriller set in Bellfast at the height of the Troubles, and with it the French-born Yann Demaarge, who works in England, emerges as a world class filmmaker. The Film Society favorite Hong Sang-soo's Hill of Freedom is another disarmingly slight-seeming little gem. Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner is both grand and quiet, a marvel of acting and the recreation of period the Brits can do so well. Abderrahmane Sissako shows himself to be one of the world's great filmmakers in the serene, beautiful, memorable Timbukto, which, almost surprisingly, is about jihadist brutality and violence in northeastern Mali. It still seems like a visual poem. There were a number of smart and elegant French films (nothing great from Latin America, nor anything else from Asia): the one I liked best is Bertrand Bonello's dreamy and beautiful Saint Laurent, for which he was able to assemble some tolerably cool actors, to say the least. Graf's German historical film Beloed Sisters was rich and beautiful. It's almost a miniseries though. And why are so many features over two hours? Assayas' Clouds of Sils Maria is an example of a serious art house film with ideas that overstayed its welcome because its editor put away his scissors too early.

The three "major" films idea, opening, centerpiece, and closing, is a bit phony from the cinephile POV, burt the Film Society's choices this year made sense. Fincher's big glitzy Gone Girl was an entertaining opener. I don't know what P.T. Anderson was doing with Inherent Vice, but he is a director I get excited about whose work gets into cineplexes. The closing film, Iñárritu's Birdman, is a welcome change of pace for him and a whild tour de force, if not as profound as it may think it is.

Below is a list I made up for a poll. Don't take it too seriously: five is an arbitrary limit, and I forgot to mention some things I liked, like the Hong Sang-soo, and made upt the list before seeing Iñárritu's Birdman, which clamors for award consideration in various categories. So apparently does Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher, but I found that film very unsatisfying, far too long and too one-note, despite how uneasy it makes you. Something of the same could be said of Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars, which is clever and slick but makes no sense and misses its targets, its satire probably out of date. But as with some other choices (compare PTA), it's a film by a filmmaker whose failures you still have to see .

Another late item was Poitras' Citizenfour, which makes sense to include in the Main Slate though a documentary because of the outstanding importance of its subject, Edward Snowden at the moment of his NSA revelations in Hong Kong, and their meaning, but is also an exceptionally cleanly made film. The Festival had a lot of Spotlight on Documentary sidebar films and there were press screenings of some that showed merit, though mostly documentaries are something you watch if you're interested in the material, and they're rarely moving and unique as for example Man on Wire, To Be and To Have, or My Architect happen to be. Doc masterpieces are scarce as hen's teeth but "interesting" (to somebody) docs are very common and very available nowadays (a good thing, but a cause for festival jury reserve: for example, "Spotlight" NYFF film Merchants of Doubt was "interesting," but there are many films on closely related topics and the technique and look were boilerplate. Wiseman is an icon, like Maysles in his eighties still making documentaries and everything he does demands festival attention. But what a bore he can be sometimes! Let me mention Ethan Hawke's doc debut Seymour: An Introduction, a charming and informative film about a remarkable elderly New York piano teacher (another New York film!), very well made and not to be dismissed because its maker is a kind of celebrity.

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE
You can vote for up to 5 films.
1. '71 (Jann Demange 2014)
2. Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh 2014)
3. Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako 2014)
4. Two Days, One Night/Deux jours, une nuit (Jean-Pierre, Luc Dardenne 2014)
5. Saint Laurent (Bertrand Bonello 2014)
[6. Beloved Sisters/Die geliebten Schwestern (Dominik Graf 2014)]

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
1. Citizen Four (Laura Poitras)
2. Tales of the Grim Sleeper (Nick Broomfield 2014)
3. Red Army (Gabe Polsky 2014)
4. Seymour: An Introduction (Ethan Hawke 2014)
5. Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait/ (Ossama Mohammed, Wiam Simav Bedirxan 2014)
[6. National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman 2014)]

BEST DIRECTOR
1. Mike Leigh, Mr. Turner
2. Abderramane Sissako, Timbuktu
3 Yann Damange, '71
4. Jean-Pierre, Luc Dardenne, Two Days, One Night
5. Bertrand Bonello, Saint Laurent

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE
1. Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night)
2. Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner)
3. Jack O'Connell ('71)
4. Richard Gere (Time Out of Mind)
5. Ibrahim Ahmed (Timbuktu)

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE.
1. Kristen Stewart (Couds of Sils Maria)
2. Hannah Herzsprung (Beloved Sisters)
3. Ben Vereen (Time Out of Mind)
4. Mark Ruffalo (Foxcatcher)
5. Carrie Coon (Gone Girl)

BEST SCREENPLAY
1. Timbuktu
2. Mr. Turner
3. Listen Up Philip
4. Gone Girl
5. Saint Laurent

BEST ENSEMBLE
1. Mr. Turner
2. Saint Laurent
3. Heaven Knows What
4. Two Days, One Night
5. Birdman [originally Foxcatcher]




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The lists above were fitted to the template of an Indiewiere poll, whose "best picture" poll results are given below. Obviously I am on a a different wavelength, except that it's nice to see Timbuktu so much appreciated. I do not share the enthusiasm for Sils Maria, Whiplash, Horse Money, The Wonders, anything till you get down to nos. 13, 16, and 17. This is, obviously, also not just a list of Main Slate films but "best films" of the festival. In some of the other categories, my choices came up higher than here, e.g., the screenplay of Listen Up Philip. was in the top five. See full details of this poll go here.

Indiewire 2014 NYFF Best Picture poll

1. Inherent Vice
2. Timbuktu
3. Clouds of Sils Maria
5. Birdman
6. Whiplash
7. Gone Girl
8. Horse Money
9. The Wonders (2014)
10. Foxcatcher
11. The Blue Room
12. Goodbye to Language
13. Mr. Turner
14. La Sapienza
15. Maps to the Stars
16. Saint Laurent
17. '71
18. Heaven Knows What
19. Jauja
20. Listen Up Philip
21. Eden (2014)
22. Li'l Quinquin
23. Pasolini
24. CITIZENFOUR
25. Hill of Freedom
26. Beloved Sisters
27. Queen and Country
28. Hiroshima, mon amour
29. Eden
30. Time Out of Mind
31. Two Shots Fired (Dos Disparos)
32. Misunderstood

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Sad FSLC note: R.I.P. Don Shul, Chief Projectionist, Walter Reade Theater
(Chief screening venue of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)

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In Remembrance of Our Friend and Colleague Don Schul (1949-2014)

Quote:

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The Film Society of Lincoln Center has lost a longtime friend and admired colleague. Don Schul, who served as our Chief Projectionist and is recognized as a pioneering force in helping establish the Walter Reade Theater as one of New York's finest exhibition venues, died on Sunday, November 2, at his apartment in Greenwich Village. He was 65 years old.

A New York City native, Don Schul began work at the Film Society just as the Walter Reade Theater opened nearly 25 years ago. Prior to that he worked at the Magno Screening Room in Times Square where he developed a relationship with the New York Film Festival programming committee, including then Programming Director Richard Peña, who regularly viewed films at the venue along with former Film Society Executive Director Joanne Koch.

Hailed by his colleagues as "The Man Who Built the Walter Reade Theater," Don Schul was certainly responsible for building its reputation as a premier New York City cinema. REST OF ARTICLE

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Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako 2014)

Now in theatrical release in the US Wed. 28 January 2015 starting at Film Forum, NYC. A Best Foreign Oscar nominee. Of my top five narrative feature choices of NYFF 2015 it's the mot unusual. A marvelous film. Don't miss it.

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ACADEMY AWARD® NOMINEE!
Best Foreign Language Film

"CRITICS’ PICK. A rich evocation of daily life. A political film in the way that THE BICYCLE THIEF or MODERN TIMES is a political film. It feels at once timely and permanent, immediate and essential."
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times
Read the full review here.

"Gorgeous. Visually stunning."
– Violet Lucca, Village Voice

"Top 10 films of 2014"
– James Quandt & Amy Taubin, Artforum

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TIMBUKTO is now showing in Northern California.

Abderrahmane Sissako: Timbuktu (2014)

Sissako's serene, poetic vision of jihadist oppression in northern Mali. Abderrahmane Sissako, born in Mauritania and educated in Mali, is an African director whose concerns and outlook are broader and loftier than most. In Timbuktu, when he looks at the way the temporary jihadist takeover of northern Mali by the Ansar Dine group in 2012 quickly undermines the human dignity and way of life of the people, he does so with a surprising serenity that is at once poetic, gently ironic, ferocious, all-encompassing, and brave.

New Yorker (Anthony Lane) review
NY Times review

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Ethan Hawke's SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION is in limited US theatrical release. Highly recommended. If you love classical piano or if you love intelligent and wise maturity, this is a must-see. Landmark theaters. In the Bay Area at the Albany and Embarcadero Cinemas.

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SEYMOUR BERNSTEIN IN SEYMOUR: AN INTROCUCTION

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The Safdie brothers' HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT officially opens tomorrow Friday, 29 May 2015 (Landmark Sunshine NYC); actually started playing there Thursday evening.

Metiocritic rating 76% but based on 7 reviews.

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D'Angelo is now (Labor Day 2015) listing the Safdie brothers'Heaven Knows What in his 2015 top ten.* It didn't grab me that way. I have better memories of the unexpected performance of Richard Gere (directed by I'm Not There script writer Oren Moverman) in a down-and-out-on-the-streets-of-NYC role in Time Out of Mind.Well, that one is opening in theaters Wed., 9 September 2015.

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*The Duke of Burgundy
Right Now, Wrong Then
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Forbidden Room
Carol
It Follows
Breathe/Respire
Tu dors Nicole
Heaven Knows What
Mustang
(More info on this list here.)

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Asia Argento's MISUNDERSTOOD/INCOMPRESA gets US release tomorrow, Fri., 25 Sept. 2015 - Metacritic rating 62..