UNDINE (Christian Petzold 2020)
Turning from the wartime intensity of his great trilogy completed with the 2018 Transit to an intense romance hung on the water nymph myth. Swift storytelling and high romance.
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UNDINE (Christian Petzold 2020)
Turning from the wartime intensity of his great trilogy completed with the 2018 Transit to an intense romance hung on the water nymph myth. Swift storytelling and high romance.
FRENCH EXIT (Aazel Jacobs 2020)
An eccentric bauble for the NYFF's Closing Night Film. A once very rich widow now out of money cashes out all her baubles in euros and goes to a friend's apartment with her son, taking the money and a black cat possessed by the spirit of her late husband.
Maybe Oscar material for Michelle Pfeiffer as Frances Price, ably backed up by Lucas Hedges as her son, Malcolm.
The 58th New York Film Festival Main Slate
Links to reviews:
Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen 2020) Opening Night
Nomadland (Chloé Zhao 2020) Centerpiece
French Exit (Azazel Jacobs 2020) Closing Night
Atarrabi & Mikelats (Eugène Green 2020)
Beginning (Dea Kulumbegashvili 2020)
The Calming 平静 (Song Fang 2020)
City Hall (Frederick Wiseman 2020) doc
Days 日子 (Tsai Ming-liang 2020)
The Disciple (Chaitanya Tamhane 2020)
Fauna (Nicolás Pereda 2020)
Gunda (Victor Kossakovsky 2020) doc
Hopper/Welles (Orson Welles 2020) (Spotlight series) doc
I Carry You with Me/Te Llevo Conmigo (Heidi Ewing 2020)
Isabella (Matías Piñeiro 2020)
Malmkrog (Cristi Puiu 2020)
Mangrove (Steve McQueen 2020)
MLK/FBI (Sam Pollard 2020) doc
Night of the Kings/La Nuit des rois (Philippe Lacôte 2020)
Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi 2020) doc
On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola 2020) - sold out
Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen 2020)
The Salt of Tears/Le sel des larmes(Philippe Garrel 2020
Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue/一直游到海水变蓝 (Jia Zhangke 2020) doc
Time (Garrett Bradley 202) doc
Tragic Jungle/Selva Trágica (Yulene Olaizola 2020
The Truffle Hunters (Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw 2020) doc
Undine (Christian Petzold 2020)
The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sangsoo (2020) - sold out
NYFF 2020: BEST OF
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Docs rock
This is a year unlike any other any of us have known. But New York doesn't quit. Film at Lincoln Center surmounted all obstacles to provide a real festival, in hybrid form, virtual (open to the whole country) combined with local drive-in presentations. They did their best with what they had. And it was good.
The Main Slate was packed with documentaries - more than any other year: why on earth so much factual stuff at a time when we need cheering up? Have we grown intolerant of frivolity, of charm? Nonetheless non-fiction films did provide more of the festival's real satisfactions. Gunda (Victor Kossakovsky 2020) and Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi 2020) manage to combine the greatest artistry and the greatest meaning. The Truffle Hunters (Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw 2020) has charm and perfection even if it may be far down on the scale of "relevance." Time (Garrett Bradley 202) and MLK/FBI (Sam Pollard 2020) are more workmanlike productions with important messages on the timely subjects of police brutality and racism. In City Hall, about Boston, Frederick Wiseman reliably provides a rich story in impeccable non-fiction style. So there are six documentaries in the Main Slate - unprecedented, all of them really good, even if it wasn't essential to include every one of them in this elite list.
That may bespeak a thinner feature list this year and perhaps that was true. The way the Centerpiece film Nomadland (Chloé Zhao 2020) mixes a famous actress with authentic, found people felt false, yet it'll probably be the Main Slate's most talked-about American film ; there were hardly any, anyway. (I missed Sofia Coppola's On the Rocks but it sounds like a minor effort, as is the closing night French Exit (Azazel Jacobs 2020), a mere bauble, albeit a notable showcase for Michelle Pfeiffer.)
Three favorite features
Three that impressed are: The Disciple (Chaitanya Tamhane 2020), Days (Tsai Ming-liang 2020), and Undine (Christian Petzold 2020). The first two won't be for everyone, and Undine is less substantial than the trilogy from Petzold that proceeded it. The Disciple is a complex drama about entering the demanding world of classical Indian music. Days is a slow cinema study of an older man encountering a younger man and briefly connecting. Undine is a witty, sexy riff on the water nymph legend set in contemporary Berlin.
And Steve McQUeen
A surprise was the three from Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" series scheduled for TV release. I wrote them off as more filler, not real movies, and more stuff where McQueen browbeats us, all very wrong on my part. McQueen is a lot better than I realized and is working in top form, and these films - they are films - about the struggles and triumphs in different historical moments in the life of the London West Indian community, are passionately acted and filmed and breathlessly intense and exciting films. Put "Small Axe" on your to-do list.
There are three other titles that, however flawed, matter or show great promise: Beginning (Dea Kulumbegashvili 2020), I Carry You with Me/Te Llevo Conmigo (Heidi Ewing 2020) and Night of the Kings/La Nuit des rois (Philippe Lacôte 2020).
But there was no great or universally acclaimed feature film this year. No Marriage Story, no Pain and Glory, no Parasite. No Ash Is Purest White, no Burning, no Shoplifters. No Call Me by Your Name, no Lady Bird, no Zama. No Manchester by the Sea, no Moonlight, no Toni Erdmann. And that is just to review the past four years in reverse: the Main Slates of 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016.
John Waters' poster for the 2020 (58th) NYFF
Neglected to show John Water's (typically) deliciously cheap and tasteless and funny NYFF 2020 poster.Quote:
Waters said of the poster design, "Since none of my films were ever chosen to be in the New York Film Festival, I was thrilled to be asked to design this year’s poster. I always knew I’d get my ass in there somehow! What better way to show my respect and irreverence for this prestigious event than to bring along Globe Poster, Baltimore’s famous press that promoted the best rock-and-roll shows all over America for decades? Trashy? Classic? Maybe it’s all the same in 2020 when we have to reinvent moviegoing itself."
-The Gothamist.
Quote:
The posters, which will be for sale, are being both silkscreen-printed and letter-pressed on Cougar 130lb paper.
Waters also was involved in a pesonal appearance at a notorious drive-in double feature he chose and introduced in person of Pasolini's SALO and Noë's CLIMAX.
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CITY HALL (Frederick Wiseman 2020)
Opens Friday, November 13, 2020
in the Roxie Virtual Cinema.
This means all in the US will be able to watch it, for a fee.
NOTTURNO (Gianfranco Rosi 2020)
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NOTTURNO Opens Today, Friday, Jan. 22, 2021, in Virtual Theaters & Jan. 29, 2021 On Demand
Of all the year's documentaries, this one is the most universal and the most haunting. It's wide-ranging content focuses on the longtime violence that has wracked the Arab Middle East. With extraordinary access it takes us to Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon and shows us intimately how as the director says, "greed and ambition" have led to "military coups, corrupt regimes, authoritarian leaders and foreign interference" and then to "tyranny, invasions and terrorism" in a "vicious circle" - feeding off each other and leading to endless suffering. And yet amid all this horror there is beauty. A great and underappreciated film.